Diploma H2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
November 19, 2024

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Diploma's 2024 results update. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you, everyone online, for joining us, too. I'd like to start by saying a big thank you to the diploma group team sat over there for all their hard work in preparing for today and also to my diploma colleagues online for all their tremendous contribution to our success.

Operator

I'm joined, of course, as usual, by our CFO, Chris Davis. And today, our agenda will be the following. I will give an overview for a few minutes, then Chris will take us through the results as usual, and I'll come back and do an update on our strategy and the businesses. There'll be questions and answers at the end. Okay?

Operator

Let's get started. So it's been a great year for Diploma. We've delivered a strong performance across all of our key financial metrics, building on our long term compounding track record. We continue to diversify our specialized businesses to drive organic growth, scale and resilience. I'm pleased to see such good growth in a tougher environment.

Operator

We brought 7 quality businesses into the group, spending £293,000,000 supporting future organic growth and great returns. And we've disposed of 3 small non core entities as well. We continue to develop our value add businesses to improve the customer proposition and drive our margins. And all of this, we do with discipline. Despite challenging industrial markets, the outlook and our 2025 guidance are really positive.

Operator

So we're in good shape. I'm particularly pleased with this year's performance in a tougher environment, as I said. Delivering our ambitious EPS growth together with the discipline of excellent returns in the good times and the bad, is what defines, in my mind, quality compounding. Organic growth of 6% was volume led, and reported growth of 14% reflects a strong contribution from our acquisitions. Margins have risen again, up 120 basis points to 20.9%, now sustainably over 20%.

Operator

The benefits of scale and performance combined with accretive acquisitions. As a result, maintaining our long term track record, EPS grew by 15%. As I said, discipline is key to long term compounding success. Cash conversion was 101%. The balance sheet is in good shape at 1.3 times.

Operator

And importantly, return on capital has improved by 100 basis points to 19.1%, reflecting particularly the quality of the acquisitions we've made over the last 5 years or so. In line with our policy, we've declared a progressive dividend up by 5%. So overall, another strong performance. Looking briefly at the longer term picture. The group has compounded revenue and EPS growth at 15% 16%, respectively, over many years.

Operator

And we've done it at very strong returns on capital. We're confident we can sustain this over the long term through our differentiated business model, our powerful decentralized culture and our clear strategy. Our guidance for 2025 and our updated financial model reflect that positive outlook. It's the people and culture that make this kind of track record happen. I'd like to thank again all of my brilliant diploma colleagues for their dedication to delivering great service to our customers.

Operator

Our value add business model lends itself to a decentralized management approach, an empowered culture of commerciality, accountability and continuous improvement. This is our secret sauce, and preserving it as we scale is critical. So how do we scale it? Well, firstly, we keep it focused with portfolio discipline and simple strategic and performance frameworks. Next, we maintain lean structures with exceptional dynamic leaders.

Operator

And while we review the business' progress regularly, as you would expect, we also actively manage the mood of the organization to ensure agility, pace and great execution. And finally, while preserving our decentralized culture, we can also enjoy the benefits of a bigger group by creating networks and best practice sharing to become more than just the sum of our parks. I'll hand over to Chris.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Johnny. Good morning, everybody. And I'm delighted to be here once again to present another strong set of results. As ever, I'll take you through the numbers before handing back to Johnny to give a bit more color on what's behind the numbers later. Our diversified growth portfolio or portfolio growth strategy drives strong sustainable revenue growth, and this has been another great year.

Speaker 1

We've delivered 6% volume led organic growth, and revenue is 14% up overall, up to 10% from acquisitions and a little headwind from FX. Controls increased organically by 10%. In International, we benefited from market share gains in the growing aerospace, defense and energy markets. And in Windy City Wire, we benefited from share gains in the growing data center market. Seals was up 1%, a resilient performance given customer destocking in the first half and ongoing market softness in the second half of the year.

Speaker 1

Life Sciences delivered 6% volume growth 6% revenue growth, driven by particularly strong performances in our scaled Canadian and Australian businesses. And I'll now move to operating margin. On the back of an 80 basis point improvement in 2023, we've improved operating margin by a further 120 basis points in 2024 to a very pleasing 20.9%. Our acquisitions contributed strongly to margin this year, but in addition, we had good underlying margin expansion across our Controls and Life Sciences sectors, offsetting some contraction in Seals. Overall, we grew adjusted profit by 20% of the year to GBP 285,000,000 Now I said on the last slide that our revenue growth was volume driven, but the ability to pass on input cost increases through pricing is a key measure of our value add model and the solutions we bring to our customers.

Speaker 1

Our businesses benefit from performance improvements and operational leverage as they grow, and we then selectively reinvest a proportion of this to scale the businesses, building out management teams, enhancing systems and upgrading facilities to ensure that we can continue to deliver our value add solutions at scale. So to round off on the ambition side of sustainable quality compounding, I'll just turn to EPS growth. Net interest expense was up to £27,000,000 That's driven by the increase in average debt having self funded the acquisitions in the year. So all in, our blended cost of debt has decreased a touch to 5.3%. Adjusted profit before tax, therefore, has increased 19 percent to £258,000,000 and earnings per share increased by 15% to 145.8p.

Speaker 1

This continues our long term track record and would have been 19% growth at constant currency. So now let's turn to the disciplined side of sustainable quality compounding, starting with cash conversion. Our capital light business model, coupled with our discipline, drives strong and consistent cash conversion. And this year, we delivered 101% conversion ahead of our financial model, delivering free cash flow of nearly £200,000,000 Working capital increased by only £8,500,000 as we continue to carefully manage inventory across the group. We spent £14,000,000 of net CapEx on facilities and systems upgrades across a number of our businesses.

Speaker 1

And we invested £311,000,000 on the acquisitions of Peerless, PAR and 5 smaller bolt on acquisitions, as well as paying for deferred consideration for acquisitions in previous years. We paid £77,000,000 in dividends, reflecting the 5% growth in line with our policy. So taking all of this together, net debt has increased to £420,000,000 and leverage to 1.3x, well within our policy of 2x and significantly below any covenant thresholds at 3.5x. So a quick word on those 2024 acquisitions. Peerless was clearly the biggest acquisition in the year, and we're really excited about it, both what it's achieved already and its longer term prospects.

Speaker 1

And Johnny will speak about that shortly. PAR is strategically important for R and G in the U. K, strengthening its seals and gaskets division through both product extension and end market expansion. But those smaller acquisitions are just as important, and we've completed another 5 this year. The average price for bolt ons is around £5,000,000 an average multiple of 5 times EBIT.

Speaker 1

That means 20% return on capital in year 1. But we're just as disciplined about the effective recycling of capital as we are about its deployment. We do not often dispose of businesses and never for performance reasons, that's on us. But we view it as key to responsible stewardship of capital to find new homes for businesses that no longer align with our strategy or our business model. We passed on 3 to new owners after the year end.

Speaker 1

Cubo is a high quality seals business in Switzerland and Austria, and it was better suited to a more manufacturing focused owner who could open up markets in Germany. Pennine was part of R and G in the UK was increasingly focused on one large supplier to whom we sold the business, enabling RNG to focus on its core Fluid Power businesses. Gremtec is part of the ISG connectors business in controls is located in France and supplies different end markets to the wider business. So let me say a little more about return on capital. Effective capital stewardship is perhaps the most important aspect of sustainable quality compound compounding, and we measure our performance through ROATSI.

Speaker 1

In fact, we're a little obsessive about it. Disciplined organic investment to scale our businesses, disciplined acquisitions and occasionally divestments. The discipline of a progressive dividend and balance sheet discipline to manage leverage. Now we target returns in the high teens, that's as much an art as it is a science. We believe that it hits the right balance between putting our capital to work and maintaining a prudent balance sheet.

Speaker 1

And over the last 5 years, we've delivered average returns of 18%, and that's testament to the quality of the acquisitions we've made. We're particularly pleased with our We're particularly pleased with our performance this year, adding 100 basis points to ROATSI to achieve 19.1%, about twice our cost of capital. And during the year, we took further steps to strengthen our balance sheet to provide capacity and flexibility to support sustained profitable growth. Building on the revolving credit facility refinanced in 2023, we issued the Group's 1st U. S.

Speaker 1

Private placement in the first half of the year with a second issuance towards the end. So over the past 18 months, therefore, we secured close to £900,000,000 worth of facilities termed out to 2,036. In other words, we have ample capacity to invest in further growth with cash at undrawn facilities of £450,000,000 and significant headroom to any covenant. Now I'll close with some guidance for the year, but first wanted to outline an update to our medium term financial model. As you know, our financial model sets out how we think about sustainable quality compounding, ambition with discipline.

Speaker 1

It gives an indication of what you should expect to see from Diploma over the medium term. And it all starts with organic growth. We've delivered an average of around 5% for the past couple of decades and it's our most important driver of value. So the growth part of our model remains unchanged. Where we have updated our model is for a 300 basis points structurally stronger operating margin.

Speaker 1

The combination of operating leverage from growing our value added businesses, plus some accretive acquisitions means that we feel that we've transitioned from being a high teens to a 20 plus margin group. But ambition is nothing without discipline and there are no changes to that side of the model. So to close on 2025 guidance, Diploma has an excellent track record of compounding growth and delivering strong financial returns through the cycle. Diversification, both within individual businesses and across our portfolio, drives revenue resilience. Our value add propositions drive margin resilience.

Speaker 1

And our Asset Light business model drives resilient cash generation. So whilst we remain mindful of the uncertain economic backdrop, our outlook for 2025 remains broadly in line with our financial model, albeit with organic growth and operating margin slightly ahead at 6% 21%. Or put another way, we will absorb the impact of those disposals I talked about with profit outperformance in the base business. And I'll now hand you back to Johnny to give a little more color behind the numbers.

Operator

Thank you, Chris. Well done. Right. Before moving into the businesses themselves, I'm just going to give you a quick reminder first of our strategy. And our strategy is to build high quality, scalable businesses for sustainable organic growth.

Operator

We drive organic growth in what I call our 3 buckets: positioning behind structurally growing end markets, penetrating further in core developed geographies and extending our product range to expand our addressable market, Small concentrated businesses stepping out of their niche and taking their specialized proposition to new places, they all have fantastic opportunities to grow. This strategy drives exciting sustainable organic growth, scale and increased resilience. This is complemented by selective high quality acquisitions, as you've heard, that drive future organic growth and at great returns. And to keep the portfolio focused, we occasionally divest of businesses that are not our model or are not ours to scale. You've heard about a few of those from Chris.

Operator

Our value add model and our powerful decentralized culture are our key differentiators. And as we go from small to large, we naturally have to do things a bit differently while always preserving these differentiators. So building effective scale is key to the strategy, developing our businesses and our group to become better, not just bigger and as such, to sustain long term delivery. Delivering value responsibly is central to our commercial and operational strategy and is embedded in our culture. Through it, we can make a meaningful difference.

Operator

So looking at our 3 growth buckets now. One of the really exciting opportunities is to access structurally structural end market investment trends. A few, not all, but a few are on this slide. Our products and services face really well into these, and we're working to further develop our exposures. In the year, for example, we've extended our presence in IVD and data centers, in renewables, to name a few.

Operator

And through acquisitions, we've also increased exposure in aerospace, infrastructure and medical. The group today is significantly more diversified than 5 years ago, and the strategy will continue to drive growth and increase our resilience. Now let's look at the significant white space opportunity in the other two buckets, geographical penetration and product extension. Geographically, we are focused on the core developed economies. As you can see, penetration is still very small today in our product verticals across the U.

Operator

S, the Europe and the U. K. We don't need to go to higher risk developing markets for our growth. Over the course of this year, we've added a little more exposure to our U. S.

Operator

And European fasteners through the acquisition of Peerless. We can also add new product verticals, but we don't want to go crazy with that. Portfolio focus is important to us, but we'll selectively ensure it suits our business model and we have the right to scale it. There is still plenty of white space for us to go after. Our businesses, of course, have to execute on this growth strategy.

Operator

And I've said many times that we are on a journey towards great sales execution at scale. The businesses have done really well at key account management, technical capability, agile response. We want more business development capability, too, a more strategic and structured approach to market development and great B2B sales processes. So we're providing the network, the workshops and best practices, the investments to develop most of this more of this, sorry. It's exciting that we can still get better at sales execution.

Operator

We use our capital to accelerate organic growth with bolt on acquisitions, and we've got a strong track record of delivering that at great returns. We can expect it to continue. Long term, we have fragmented markets, a well developed approach and a compelling proposition to sellers as the home of choice. We keep our discipline and the journey won't be linear, but the pipeline is encouraging, is well diversified with a growing hopper of opportunities. A few words now on the sectors.

Operator

Progress in Controls has been excellent. Organic growth was 10%. Our international Controls businesses have continued to see market share gains on top of the tailwinds from structurally growing end markets such as Aerospace, Energy and defense. Our aerospace fasteners businesses Clarendon and Peerless have done excellently, and I'll talk about the latter in a minute. Our interconnect business ISG has had a very good year, particularly in U.

Operator

K. Motorsport. We disposed of their small non core entity, Gramtech, in October. We have more work to do to improve our 2023 acquisition, TIE. The Automation segment has been tough, and we're making some changes to improve our execution.

Operator

Windy City grew very well at 7%, a combination of mix and volume. The business is well positioned in the data center world, and we're investing in digital for future growth, too. Excellent margin progression, up 200 basis points, was driven by product mix, leverage and accretion from acquisitions. Controls has great momentum into the new year. We welcomed Peerless into the group in May, and it's been a fantastic start for them, a family owned specialty fasteners business based out of New York State, predominantly serving aerospace markets.

Operator

The excellent leadership team have been running it for 30 years and are staying with the business. Peerless has clear value add evidenced by its strong margins, supplying high quality, high demand fasteners with technical service, breadth of inventory and speed to market, all into critical fuselage applications in the highly regulated aerospace market. The prospects for growth are very exciting, a backlog of new aircraft manufacturer and a healthy MRO market. They have a strong reputation for quality and access to product in a complex supply chain and cross selling potential too with our existing Clarendon Fasteners business. With over 80 key customers, the business has a well diversified customer base.

Operator

The performance has been exceptional. Strong double digit growth at accretive margins will drive over 20% return on capital in the 1st year. But performance will, of course, normalize towards its long term track record, but we continue to be really excited about Peerless' future prospects. Sales has been our most resilient sector in recent years. Organic growth of 1% reflects systemic destocking and a tougher manufacturing and industrial backdrop.

Operator

I'm really pleased that a more diversified sector kept its head above water in this environment. Markets have affected mainly our U. S. OEM business and our U. S, U.

Operator

K. And European aftermarket businesses. Elsewhere, though, good diversification into renewables and water treatment particularly have supported some balance in the year. VSP, our U. S.

Operator

MRO gasket business had a great year too. And we started on the journey of cross selling Dixa products into the U. K. And the U. S, albeit still very early days.

Operator

We're taking the opportunity during tougher times to invest in talent, technology and facilities, effectively accelerating our scaling strategy to prepare ourselves for the positive prospects ahead. We've already done this with success in Life Sciences, and I'll say a few more words on that in a minute. Margins this year in Seals are therefore just a fraction down. We acquired 4 businesses into RNG in the year, the largest being Parr Group, which has started very well. We've also disposed of 2 small non core entities to keep the portfolio tight.

Operator

We expect the sector to improve as the year progresses. And the medium term prospects for the sector are really exciting: Infrastructure investment, renewables, water treatment, all good tailwinds. We're still early on our Fluid Power journey too, taking a broader product capability to more markets. I'm really pleased with Life Sciences' progress. Markets have stabilized following a few tough years of disruption post pandemic.

Operator

We've made significant improvements to management and the business, and performance this year has been really encouraging. We performed particularly well in Canada and Australia, taking market share in medtech and diagnostics markets. We've broadened our product range, reflecting new technology and key growth diagnostic spaces such as genetic screening and autoimmunity testing. In Europe, we've refocused our portfolio during the year, exiting low value products and directing our resources at our exciting business development pipeline. We've invested significantly in scaling our businesses in the sector in the last few years.

Operator

I'll speak about that in a moment. It's good to see margin progression on the back of it. The long term prospects for the sector are exciting, increasing diagnostics investment and the backlog in surgical procedures provide a market tailwind. And we're improving our management, our business development and our infrastructure to execute on the growth opportunities. We've used the more challenging health care environment in the last few years to invest in and improve the businesses.

Operator

It's a good example of the scaling strategy in action. And as much like the journey I mentioned, we've just started in Seals II. Over the course of the last few years, we've upgraded Life Sciences Sector Management as well as in the regions, and I'm really pleased with the quality of the team. We continue to invest in the commercial talent around the sector, too. Scale advantages in Life Sciences distribution are are extra important because you become the single route to market, and therefore, suppliers seek us out.

Operator

It also, of course, improves service and efficiency. So we now have state of the art homes having consolidated our Australian and Canadian businesses into one facility each. The platform in Life Sciences is ready for future growth. So to summarize, we've delivered another strong performance and made good strategic progress too. We're excited about the long runway of organic growth ahead.

Operator

Some fantastic new businesses have joined the group and the pipeline looks encouraging. Discipline is key with the balance sheet in good shape, cash flow strong and returns excellent. And despite tough industrial markets, our outlook for next year is really positive. We're confident in delivering sustainable quality compounding over the long term. So we'll take questions and answers now.

Operator

If you wouldn't mind just giving us your name and your institution, that would be very helpful.

Speaker 2

It's David Brockton from Deutsche and Numis. Can I ask two questions, please? The first one in relation to Life Sciences and the second one in relation to Peerless. In terms of Life Sciences, obviously, you can see the benefits from that repositioning of the Canadian, Australian business clearly coming through. I just wanted your reflections on the market backdrop in Europe and what the outlook is for that business, please?

Speaker 2

And secondly, in respect of Peerless, clearly, it's an exceptional performance. There's been, I guess, from a market backdrop, a bit more uncertainty as to respect what the OEMs are doing. So I just want to sort of understand what the near term outlook is for that business and to what extent you are or not affected from that? Thanks.

Operator

Yes. Okay. We're very pleased with where Life Sciences got to. It's been a lot of hard work over the last few years. I think as most of us would recognize, health care hasn't been an easy place post pandemic.

Operator

But as I said in the just a few minutes ago, so delighted with the work that the team have put in. Canada and Australia are in fantastic shape and winning market share. We probably we bought a couple of businesses in Europe 3 or 4 years ago, Dave. We've probably had to work a bit harder at them in a difficult environment to get them to where we want to get them to. And that's why I referenced a minute ago the portfolio adjustments.

Operator

But now that we've done that, we're starting to see some good results come through, particularly in the Nordics. We're already seeing that come through. And in Ireland as well, we're confident about that, too. So I feel, having made some good investments in management, having done the hard work around the portfolio, that the European business is well set up for growth. Just on Peerless, although we're delighted with Peerless, it's a great business.

Operator

It's got a good management team, more than a good management team. It's got an excellent management team. And I'm sure you've seen this from your other experiences. If you're in the right place in the supply chain in Aerospace, you really are going to do fantastically. And they have both the quality reputation, which, of course, in this environment is so important, but they also have product availability and speed to market.

Operator

And those two things are key factors within the Aerospace environment right now. And that puts them in position A, which is the first thing to say. In terms of the growth, well, I think we all know, you don't need me to tell you, there's a huge backlog in newbuilds. The reality is that, from our perspective, I don't get too fussed as to whether Airbus say they're accelerating by X or X minus 1. It doesn't really matter.

Operator

The backlog is still enormous. If Boeing are going to be a bit slower, the backlog is still enormous. And what we see in our position is that irrespective of that backlog that we're serving, there's also a corresponding MRO market that we serve as well. So we almost benefit on both sides of that equation. I don't get too worried about the speed of acceleration of that backlog because I know it's coming for the long term, and I also know we'll benefit on the repair side anyway.

Operator

We're not too exposed, by the way, just as a sub clause. We're not too exposed to Boeing in any material way. Peerless has over 80 customers, as I said a minute ago, of which Boeing as an end customer is very, very small. So overall, the near term prospects are very good. It's not going to do what it's been doing in the last 5 months, forever, 6 months.

Operator

Of course, it's not going to keep going at that rate. But we're incredibly confident that it's going to get to a kind of normalized growth rate, which I think we said when we bought it, it's about 9 ish percent at 30 ish percent margin. So fantastic if it normalizes at that level.

Speaker 3

James Bayless from Berenberg. Two questions, if I may. On that fast growing end market slide you had up earlier, I think in your 2023 CM centimeters centimeters centimeters centimeters centimeters centimeters centimeters centimeters centimeters centimeters centimeters centimeters centimeters D, you said around 30 5% of group revenues were exposed to those, which was up from around 20% in 2018. Do you have a sense of where that is on an underlying basis as of today? And then how we should be kind of mapping that back to 6% organic growth going forward?

Speaker 3

And then the second question is just on inventory. You've delivered 100% free cash flow generation or conversion even for 2 years in a row now, both of which I think were down to inventory management. I guess question for Chris there is, is there much more to come out of that side? If we think about the likes of Peerless coming in, potentially structurally higher inventories, how much more can you manage out? And should we be thinking about potential for model outperformance over the medium term?

Speaker 3

Thanks.

Operator

Okay. I'll let Chris do the inventory one in a second. I mean, on the end markets, I don't really think it's helpful to become stuck on a reporting number for end markets, to be honest. Because the reality is that you can it's horses for courses. You could change anything.

Operator

You could there's lots of different optics to it, right? Lots of different end markets that are favorable or not. So I don't think it's particularly helpful to get too tied down to a number. I think that what is important is the direction of travel. And I have no doubt that from when we did the Capital Markets last year to now, we've only increased our exposure to structurally growing end markets.

Operator

And Peerless is a good example of that. Whether you call Aerospace structural or not is a debate, but certainly, you could argue a good end market. So we've increased our exposures. I've no doubt about that. I do think it supports our growth over the long term.

Operator

And importantly, I think it supports resilience. And I'll go back to what I said at the beginning of the presentation, which is the diversification strategy of our businesses and the quality of the acquisitions that we're bringing in to get us well positioned in the end markets is improving the resilience of the group. And I think delivering 6% organic growth in this environment is testament to the improving quality of the group. And I think being able to deliver our kind of financial model in the tougher times as well as the good times is what quality compounding is all about. And that's why I think that for me, this year's numbers are as good as any we've produced.

Speaker 1

And look, on inventory, I mean, first of all, I think 90% free cash conversion is the right number for the medium and longer term. A business is going to need some working capital as it grows. That said, you're right, we've done a couple of 100s, and you're right, we've done that through some very careful inventory management. And I say careful advisedly, we've got businesses where availability of inventory is really key to the value proposition. And you mentioned Peerless, and Peerless is one of those.

Speaker 1

I mean, one of the reasons it is doing so well is it's got advantaged access to inventory. So look, never say never. I think there are 2 or 3 businesses that are potentially still carrying a little bit too much. We might be able to squeeze some more out. But for the long term, 90 is the right number.

Speaker 4

Dan Cowen from HSBC. First question on TIE. Just wondering if you can talk a little bit about what's happening there and what you're doing with it. And yes, I'll leave it there, but just that one. Thanks.

Operator

Okay. You don't want your second one?

Speaker 4

I'll ask it now.

Operator

Go

Speaker 4

on. Seals, you talked about investing in Seals? Yeah. Can you tell us or give us an idea of what you're doing there? What are the changes you're making and how you would expect that then to have an impact?

Operator

Yes. Okay. TIU First. Yes, it's been a bit tougher. I mean, I think I said it in the presentation, it's been a bit tougher than we expected at the time.

Operator

I'll use the unfairly, I'll use your question to talk about our Dixa acquisition as well. When we bought Dixa in the kind of European aftermarket, we kind of knew it was going to be tough for 12 or 15 months. And it has been as expected. I guess, with getting better now, we're pleased to say. But with TIE, I guess, it was a bit more unexpected because going into that acquisition, we had expected the Automation segment to be pretty buoyant, right?

Operator

And as it turns out, and I'm sure many of you will know from your business that Automation has been pretty tough over the last 12 or 18 months or so. I think inwardly looking, our execution hasn't been brilliant either. And we've had to make some management change, which we're still in the process of finalizing right now. But once we have done that, I feel pretty good. I mean automation, especially with the political changes in the U.

Operator

S. And the onshoring of manufacturing with constrained labor pool, automation has got to be a great long term end market to be in. So, I have no doubts about the future of the market they're in. The quality of the business model is great. We're upgrading management, and that will put us into a great position.

Operator

And I'm sure TIE will be very successful for us. It's worth noting that sometimes we headline on businesses like Peerless for obvious reasons or a few years ago, it was Windy City because they come out the tracks flying and deliver fantastic performance from day 1. It's not always the way. I wish it was, but it's not always the way. And sometimes, it's just a bit harder yards.

Operator

But that doesn't mean that the acquisition isn't valuable, Diploma. We're long term holders. It might just mean that for certain circumstances, we might just have to work a bit harder or be a bit more patient. But nevertheless, acquisitions like TIE and Dixa will be hugely valuable to us even if they're not headline makers today. Your question on seals.

Operator

Oh yes, we're investing in seals. Yes. I mean, we're earlier stage than what I talked about in Life Sciences. I think the point is that the point I wanted to make really was, we have a scaling journey as part of our strategy for all of our businesses, but we're being brave enough to use harder market environments to maybe accelerate that in a few instances. And I talked about it in Life Sciences, but in Seals, we're starting on a very similar journey.

Operator

We have already made a few management changes and investments in management, which I'm pleased about and I'm sure are going to bear fruits probably with 1 or 2 more to make. And we have already invested in a few facilities as well and possibly with 1 or 2 more to invest in over time. So it's just that kind of thing, which will build the platform and make us better businesses and better prepared for when the sales market comes back, which it absolutely will.

Speaker 5

Sandler from Stifel. A couple of questions for me, please. Firstly, on the new 20% plus margin target, do you think all divisions can achieve that level of margin over the medium term or should we expect controls to be slightly above and others maybe slightly below? And then secondly, I think you previously spoke about mapping out the Life Sciences opportunity in the U. S.

Speaker 5

And U. K. Apologies for what you said this, but is there an update on that or any thoughts on how that could progress?

Operator

Yes. I'll do the Life Sciences quickly and then let Chris cover margin. Yes, I think when I talked about that, I think we've talked about it a bit at the seminar, didn't we? I think as I said at the time, we're not ruling out the possibility of those being exciting markets for us. But at the same time, I wasn't making any commitments to either.

Operator

We continue to look at it. I think there are opportunities for us in those markets. I would say definitively there are. That doesn't mean you can always realize them though. The health care environment for acquisitions, given the status of health care as a whole, has been a bit slow post pandemic.

Operator

People don't sell great businesses in tougher times. They wait for better times. So we haven't seen a lot of acquisition pipeline in Life Sciences. However, that started to pick up now. And Peter Sollberg, our CEO of Life Sciences and myself have looked at 1 or 2 things.

Operator

So will it happen? It could do. The nature of acquisitions means I never commit to anything. But certainly, the U. K.

Operator

And the U. S. Are potential markets for us, yes.

Speaker 1

And on margins, I wouldn't get too head up on sector by sector margins. It's more business by business. We have a range in our group from sort of teens to 30s, typically, as you know, inversely proportional to asset utilization. So where we have business models that require us to hold a little more inventory, we're usually rewarded with higher margins. What I would say is every one of our businesses has the opportunity to raise its individual margin.

Speaker 1

There is operational leverage in every one of our businesses. And therefore, I don't look at any one thinking it can never get to 20.

Speaker 6

It's Zack Alcaroudi from Morgan Stanley. Just one remaining for me, please, on the M and A pipeline. I think you previously said it was in the region of GBP 1,000,000,000 Is that still the case? And also, could you remind us of which end markets you would want to prioritize when you're deploying that capital? Thank you.

Operator

Well, I mean, numerically, the pipeline remains in the same kind of ballpark. I'm not going to get into X's and Y's. It changes every day of the week, but it remains in the same kind of ballpark. What's important for me as a measure is that we keep putting more into the hopper. So when we were here for the seminar last year, I think we were at 2,000 or 2,500, I can't remember, one of the 2 in terms of the full hopper.

Operator

We're now at 3,000. So we're putting more in there, which means you get more opportunity coming out the bottom. And that's the encouraging thing. So I feel good about the pipeline. The second part of your question, sorry, was about?

Speaker 6

Yes, which sort of end markets you're

Operator

Oh, yes, yes, yes. End markets. Well, look, our acquisition strategy continues to be to bolt on businesses that can support our individual businesses' organic growth. Sometimes people get distracted by Peerless and the Windy City Wire. Of course, they're very, very important, but the majority of our acquisitions support our business units and their ambitions to grow organically.

Operator

And of course, they have, within their organic growth ambitions, some of the end markets that we talked about before, each one slightly different for obvious reasons. So the acquisition strategy very much tracks the end market strategy. It might not be that we're always buying for end market. Sometimes it might be about geography or product extension, thinking about the 3 buckets. But generally speaking, it will have some aspect of end markets within it as we move the group more and more towards those.

Operator

So there isn't any one that I'm going to point to because it will be disparate across all of our businesses.

Speaker 4

Who's next?

Operator

Online? Yes,

Speaker 7

we've got one line. The first is, please, can you comment on Q4 trends and exit rates by sector? Have you seen any slowdown?

Speaker 1

Do you want me to take it? We're not going to comment on Q4 trends and exit rates specifically by sector, but we haven't seen any material slowdown. We have been very consistently now at 6% organic growth for at least these last 4 quarters actually. I'm not going to trip over trading days and things like that, but the key message here is one of consistency. There is no slowdown.

Speaker 7

Great. And one final one. Well done on the results and your great work on the balance sheet. Are you now self funding or would you consider equity issuance for further M and A?

Operator

Well, I think we talk a lot, don't we, about what quality compounding means to us. What it means to us is ambition and discipline, as you've heard today. And there are many aspects to the discipline, returns, balance sheets, cash flow. And I think we feel that self funding is a discipline of great scaled compounding. We have raised equity in the past because of exceptional circumstances to do with opportunities exceeding our balance sheet muscle at a given time.

Operator

But I think we've grown up a little bit now, haven't we? We've got a better balance sheet, thanks to some of the work that Chris has been doing. We've got capacity on our balance sheet. So I feel that self funding is the way that we should go. However, I'm not going to be childish about it.

Operator

We can't forever rule out the possibility that a fantastic thing comes up that I think warrants our shareholders having a look. And if that happens, then of course, we should consider it. But as a principle, we should be self funding.

Speaker 7

There's one more online. According to the M and A note, it looks like Peerless had margins of 46% in the year versus the 30% you guided to. What drove that? And is it sustainable?

Speaker 1

Yes. Well done for quickly getting to the note at the end of the accounts and coming in with 46%. That is correct. It's broadly two factors. It is the amount of business which is done in the spot market versus the contracted market, and that is driven by the sort of stop start nature of production at the moment in the with some of the sort of OEM troubles we talked about earlier.

Speaker 1

And businesses such as Peerless and Clarendon, by the way, small nimble businesses, benefit in that sort of turbulence. No, it's not sustainable for the very, very long term. And as Johnny said earlier, we sort of stand by. This business was doing 9% growth in margin in the 30s for many years, and that's what we would expect it to normalize back to.

Operator

Thank you very much for joining us, everybody. Have a great day.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

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Earnings Conference Call
Diploma H2 2024
00:00 / 00:00