Speedy Hire H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
November 21, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • Half’s revenue was down only fractionally, but gross profit margin improved from 54% to 56% and EBITDA margin held at 22% despite higher payroll costs.
  • Operating cash flow conversion rose to 97% of EBITDA (from 93%), although higher CapEx of £26.4 million led to a small free cash outflow.
  • Investment in hire fleet accelerated, with £26.4 million spent in H1—£10 million more than last year—and a full-year CapEx guidance of £45–50 million.
  • Specialist segments saw strong growth: Lloyd’s British test-inspection business was up 11%, and the trade & retail unit returned to profitability.
  • The Kazakhstan joint venture profit fell to £0.7 million from £1.9 million last year, reflecting project phasing in the oil & gas sector.
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Earnings Conference Call
Speedy Hire H1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 2 speakers on the call.

Operator

good afternoon to everybody, and thank you for taking the time to join today's call. As Hannah says, I'm Dan Evans, Chief Executive of Speedy. And with me is Paul Rainer, our Chief Finance Officer. To get started, just as a bit of a general overview, I would summarize by saying that we remain in a challenging challenging, excuse me, but manageable market conditions out there across the sectors that we work within. We have continued, and we'll talk about it throughout the presentation, to progress the Enable phase of our five year velocity strategy that we articulated at our CMD some eighteen months ago.

Operator

And that's been really important to us. And as I say, we'll come back to that. We've accelerated investment in the higher fleet to support that growth and to support the contract wins that we've talked about last year and with some things that we've got coming up as well. Those contract wins continue to give us confidence, and we continue to work towards a strong pipeline of those opportunities as we go forward. Some of you will be aware that we have a business called Lloyd's British Inspeedy that was acquired in 2016.

Operator

That's a test inspection certification business, TIC. It was a really important piece of development for us in year one of our velocity strategy, which we refer to in the appendices of this pack, and that was up circa 11% in the period, which was really pleasing, clearly. We've continued with our trade and retail proposition, which is now profitable from a previous loss making position, and there are some interesting ways forward and compelling for our future growth opportunities aligned to our strategy that we're working on there. And we were delighted to be able to confirm that we're mobilizing our contract with Amy slightly earlier than originally anticipated. I'll just hand you over to Paul.

Operator

Good afternoon, everybody. Paul Rainer, CFO. I'm going to talk some a bit more detail a minute on our P and L account balance sheet and cash flow. But in summary, our half's revenue was down fractionally over last year. For those of you who know us and those of you who don't, we sell fuel to our customers where we basic and that's based on a retail cost the wholesale cost of fuel.

Operator

Wholesale cost of fuel has gone down, the revenue goes down, but the margins stay the same because we charge our customers wholesale cost plus a fixed margin. We've been very regimented with our pricing disciplines. And in a minute, I'll show you a slide on where we've improved rate across all our segments despite and then despite a reduction in volume. We won't chase lower volume work just for the privilege. The our gross profit margins have improved from 54% to 56 which I think demonstrates that pricing control.

Operator

We have had to put through pay rises for our staff and we in the first half, we basically increased our payroll by about £2,700,000 from the April 1. So whilst our margins have increased, we've managed to maintain our EBITDA margins at 22% despite the increase in costs to our employees. I work very hard on cash within Speedy Hire, and one of our key metrics is operating cash flow, which in reality is the cash you generate before you pay for CapEx. We have a conversion target of about 90%, and it's good to see that we converted 97% of our EBITDA into operating cash versus last year, which was 93%. So it's a similar cash flow number half on half, and that allows us to have the cash to invest in higher fleet.

Operator

We invested £26,400,000 in new CapEx ahead of our customers wanting the product. We talked about Amy and other contracts we've won in the last year. They need to have the we need to have a kit to hire to them. So we spent £10,000,000 more than last year's first half. So that meant we had a small free cash outflow versus last year's 10,600,000 inflow.

Operator

It's a key metric of our free cash flow, which is all our cash before returns to shareholders and M and A. And for the full year, we would anticipate a free cash flow being positive in the low teens million from where we are today. And our net debt finished the half at about £112,000,000 It was up on last year's September 24 because in October 23, we spent £20,000,000 buying a company called Green Power Hire, and I'll show you the impact of that in a second. We look through our dividend, and we've held it at the half as an interim at 0.8p per share, and that will be payable in January 2025. If I could turn over the page, Hannah.

Operator

This is our income statement, which gives a bit more color. Our higher business, and that's where we make the most of our margin, is basically flat half on half, which basically represents strong price discipline with our customers. It's still a very tough market. Dan used the phrase nervous, and I think he's right. We've seen one big administration in the half, a company called ISG.

Operator

It collapsed in September, and our debt when it collapsed was £180,000 Back in February, when we first was worried about the financial conditions, we were owed £1,500,000 and the revenue was about 500,000 a month. So we managed the debt write down. And when we finished, we are the revenue was very, very small. And the fortnight in the run up to is administration. We didn't hire anything to them.

Operator

You have to be very vigilant, and we're not chasing volume for that. So our services business, if you exclude fuel, was down a couple of percent half on half. But the good news is that our Lloyds British business grew 10% within that segment. Fuel, as I explained a little bit earlier, is linked to the wholesale cost that we sell. So that was down, but the margin impact was negligible.

Operator

Our overheads grew and principally that's related to the salary rises we put through. And overall, we maintained our EBITDA margins at 22%, the same as last year's half. Our joint venture, however, was disappointing, and it produced a £700,000 of after tax profit our share versus last year's 1.9 And that's really relating to project phasing. It's in Kazakhstan, and it's in the oil and gas sector. Three years ago, before Dan and I worked together, it had a record year, and it's come down since then.

Operator

It's purely oil and gas and the way it works in Kazakhstan. We have got a higher interest charge and that's linked to more debt and also buying GPH last October. We have spent a lot of money on higher fleet and that's we are finding that coming through in our utilizations now. And it's pleasing to see that since the October, our utilization has increased to about 58.5%. This time last year, was 57.5%, which is good because it also means the kit we bought is actually being hired out to customers.

Operator

And we're seeing that in our revenue since the September, which in our core hire is up about 3% and it's continuing to do that. If you could turn the page, please, Hannah. This is an analysis of our customer segments and we've talked before, we have two our customers split between national and regional. National will be our top 200 customers, the likes of Belfast, Amy, for example, and regional would be those in the regions. And the their business revenue is flat half on half.

Operator

This time last year, our regionals were down 6%, which means that it's now stabilized. And I think we would categorize the revenue in the regionals as probably it's bottomed out. It shouldn't get any worse from here. We've got the rate up in those two segments. The volume is has gone down, and we will not chase revenue for the sake of it.

Operator

We are seeing we're still seeing within the regionals insolvencies. They've come off their peak from February, March of earlier this year, but we have to be very vigilant and we look at debt and overdue debt very, very closely. And I have I host a weekly meeting looking at all our overdue debts to make sure we don't we don't miss miss them. Trade and retail, we've done a lot and Dan will talk about it in a bit more detail. This time last year, we had concessions within the B and Q network, and by the March 2024, they were all closed.

Operator

And overall, that month's been changed. It's now profitable. Last year, it lost money because each concession had four or five full time equivalents and trying to hire out a range of up to 25 products was not profitable at all. And the customer was quite happy to change the model to be digital and Dan can talk about that. We're exploring more opportunities in this segment over the second half and beyond as we develop other relationships.

Operator

I could turn over the page. This is a very simple bridge of the profit. We if you look at it from left to right, we have improved our gross margin and that's good in the business. We take a strong look at our balance sheet and assets that aren't working for us, that aren't being hired, low utilization, and we will dispose of them into auctions. The auctions are pretty full at the moment.

Operator

I mean, that's a feature of the economic environment. So we made a small loss on disposal at the half compared to last year, but I prefer the cash in the bank, you know, reducing interest bills and and benefiting us rather than it just sat there not being not being used. We spent £2,700,000 in a in a salary rises for our people, which over a year is just over £5,000,000. The year before in the in the full year, we spent about £7,000,000, and that was at the height of inflation. In a minute, I will just finish off and about the impact of the chancellor's budget on us.

Operator

But in the half, it's £2,700,000 The Kazakhstan joint venture is down fractionally on last year, and you've got higher interest to give you where we are. One thing we did talk about in the numbers with the analysts and the shareholders we've met is how we get to our full year numbers from where we were and where we are now. Well, one of the things that we're mobilizing Amy, that will be additive to last year's second half. We think the Lloyd British growth will continue, which will also add to the second half along with the trade and retail. And so then to finish off with a 3% growth so far this fiscal second half, If we do that and it continues and there's no reason to see why it wouldn't, we can see a pathway to our full year expectations.

Operator

If you could turn over our focus on the balance sheet. As Dan said, we've invested in kit in the first half and our balance sheet on itemized has gone up to £193,000,000 from 182,000,000 six months ago with a small increase in non itemized. But that kit is being hired out and so the utilization rates are better than this time last year. I work very closely with my teams on working capital and I've spent the last six months looking at reducing our overall overdue debt, which has been successful. And now I'm focusing on the way our supply chain is interactive with suppliers to improve their terms to us.

Operator

If our debts are days on average of sixty to seventy days, we should be trying to move suppliers in that direction. We don't have much pushback. We just have to discuss it with them in bit of detail occasionally. We've got good bank facilities of £180,000,000 which expire in eighteen months, two years time. So our balance sheet is pretty strong.

Operator

Within that, you've also within the joint ventures at the top of the page, we've got about 6,000,000 our share investment in our Kazakhstan JV, which is a sensible JV and has produced a lot of cash for us over the last couple of years. If I move on to the next page, which is a cash flow bridge, you can see our operating cash against our EBITDA is nearly 97% converted, which I think is a good stat. I put a target when I first started here to try and get 90%. I still maintain 90%, so a target to have. And if I can just consistently beat it, that's good.

Operator

It enables us to invest in our kit. And you can see where we spent money, pounds 26,000,000 versus last year's 16,000,000 We have guided the market that in the full year, we still would expect CapEx to be 45,000,000 to £50,000,000 in the full year. The other thing you'll see £2,900,000 of cash in from the joint venture and that is basically last year's profits being paid out as a final in the period. Since October 22, the joint venture has paid us into our UK bank accounts nearly £10,000,000 So whilst we have minimal control over the business, and that's why we account for it as our share of after tax profits. It's a particularly cash generative asset for us.

Operator

Slightly higher interest and tax there, gives you free cash outflow with dividends paid, the final dividend paid in the half. We have invested £600,000 in our share of share capital of Speedy Hydrogen Solutions, the joint venture we established with AFC Energy last year, and that's aimed at hiring to the market hydrogen generators. So for the full year, I expect we could get to free cash flow that would cover cash cover the not only the final dividend, but also the interim dividend, which is in the region of £3,800,000 £3,900,000 payable net this January coming up. If I move on to my last slide, which is how does that look like in our metrics, Dan explained and talked before, we have our velocity suite of measures, which is not only about profitable growth in terms of EBITDA, strong operating cash flow. Our leverage at 1.8 is higher than our what we'd expect to be a mean of about 1.5, but that's because of accelerating cash CapEx ahead of the investments we're making in our customer base.

Operator

And we'd expect that leverage to fall at the year end to about 1.5 times. Utilization at the September was 50.7. It's now, as you said earlier, 58.4%. As we enter into our strongest half of our fiscal year, that's when we sell our range of lights and we work on the rail, etcetera, etcetera. And so returns to shareholders at 0.8p is our interim dividend, which is the same as last year.

Operator

So if I now pass you on to Dan for the business update. Thank you very much. Yes. Thanks, Paul. So if we just have a bit of a look at the overall market at the moment, and we stick to PMI being the indices that we're looking to talk through it.

Operator

The PMI shows positivity over the last eight months, But I would just caveat that with the fact that from a construction perspective, that has been down circa 3% from an O and S perspective. You can see that over the next two calendar years, we would expect to see some improvement there. And I think when we look at other indices that we have access to across the market, contract awards, contract starts, you can see lots of contract awards start to happen. It's when these contracts will start in the market that will see us hopefully come through into a period of positive opportunity and growth that reflects those forecasts that you can see on that second point. Our customer base is very diverse.

Operator

I think that's really important to cover. But we have continued to see that weakness in the nonresidential or commercial construction space. That does continue to be a bit of a challenge for us. That is the area where we've seen a greater impact of the things that Paul talked around, around administrations, etcetera, etcetera, and also some greater price competitiveness. Again, I'm sure we can see those opportunities coming back around.

Operator

But at the moment, that does remain a slightly tougher part of the market. Infrastructure does remain positive for us, and we are CP7 has now commenced. Yes, I think there was a little bit of a lag, which could have been to do with a few things, rail strikes from last year, just getting the control period moving. But there's some really positive things in there for us. We did well in control period six, and we look forward to working with our customers again as we enter the next control period.

Operator

It was great for the two years that Paul and I have been talking to the market. There's been various questions and comments and changes about HS2. We were delighted to see the continued support for the project. It's a project we're really proud to work on and the fact that it's going into London, we have that confidence from the new government. We very much welcome that.

Operator

It is still obviously a very significant project for us and the customers that we work with in The UK. And additionally, AMPHAT, which has not yet to start, but there are obviously lots of conversations being had about work winning and tendering and how we can support our customers, not just in hire, but in test inspection and certification. That is a project that we again look forward to and the resilience it will offer us. And the wider energy sector, whether it be nuclear with the major newbuild sites across The U. K, the smaller modular reactor program.

Operator

And obviously, the government also recently confirmed that size well continues to go ahead, which is really positive. But energy more widely, things like the great grid update, the gas great grid upgrade, the gas infrastructure, etcetera, is a really core part of our focus. And broadly, from a higher perspective, we see our market share as consistent year on year. We are doing a little bit of work to split out market share because we've got things like the test inspection certification business, fuel, where we'll hope to give a greater level of granular detail of that in the future, a bit like we did at the Capital Markets Day. So in terms of people in ESG, we're again really pleased to see a positive drop in our voluntary attrition.

Operator

When Paul and I took post, we were in the mid-20s. We're down at just over 15%, which is the best we've seen it as a business in the records that we have. And I'm sure it's fair to say there is some impact of the market in that. But I'd also like to thank all of the hard work of our people that the things that we have done across our strategy are hopefully, and we'll talk about some of them, making Speedy a better place to work and a place where people want to be and grow their career as we go forward. We've continued to work roll out flexible working, We've got that or we have offered that in around three quarters of the business.

Operator

And we've tried some things that haven't worked. We've tried some other things that have worked. But we're trying to have a modern thought process and greater flexibility that we can work with most of our colleagues on. And in terms of diversity from a female perspective, we're not in this for badges and rosettes. It is genuinely important to this business to ensure that we're a place where women in leadership and women throughout our various roles and responsibilities feel comfortable, feel that they can grow their career and that we embrace the opportunities that offers us as an organization.

Operator

We work really hard on that, and we look forward back to that continuing. And we've updated previously that we've now got some real improvement in that coming through across the business. And I am pleased to see, we've not always done as good a job as we would like in terms of internal communications and reaching the wider workforce in terms of technology. But I was delighted with the recognition that our team got in terms of internal communication. From an ESG perspective, being ranked as an EcoVadis platinum business, rating us in the top 1% businesses for sustainability globally.

Operator

We put an RNS reach out about that a few weeks ago, very, very proud of what that means to us. And we haven't set out to achieve that. That is an output of the commercially sustainable activities that we're undertaking. Continue to invest capital in the right type of carbon efficient equipment. Again, it must be commercially sustainable.

Operator

If it doesn't add value to us, our shareholders and our customers, we won't do it. And 56% of our revenues are therefore overall coming from that product with our CDP A- level retained. I don't apologize for focusing on health and safety. We have recently partnered with Rossber to ensure that we are their key partner to rolling out the National Accident Prevention Strategy. What that means is taking the lessons that we learn in the workplace and helping our people and the community of businesses that we work in ensure that we have less accidents at work and less accidents at home.

Operator

Overall, that leads to more people being at work and greater productivity from an economic perspective. So we are delighted to support that. We've continued to roll out our collective responsibility campaigns, covering key issues across our business and our industry as well as continuing to provide that safety culture training to operational leaders and managers across the business. Our leading indicator reporting, and if you've been around the speedy business, we've got QR codes on the wall that anyone can interact with to report a hazard, a near miss, a positive observation. We continue to see those grow 26% year on year.

Operator

And as they grow, we see our lagging indicators, people getting hurt, which is always unacceptable. We are seeing them come down. So our riddle accident frequency rate and our lost time frequency rate improving. And we've had our third visible leadership day and our stock campaign across the business, where we spend the day out in the business ensuring that it's only about health and safety, which has gone really, really well. And health and safety performance is always critical to be in a great place to work and winning and retaining the right types of customers.

Operator

So if we move into strategy, what I wanted to give you in terms of what we said we would do in the business is a bit of a feel for what you would see in Speedy Hire today. This was a slide again that we used in the CMD. We talked about it last year end. In terms of what that means, we're ultimately our network, our logistics and our assets is how you would see Speedy Hire. In our network, we have continued our service center evolution.

Operator

On the front page of today's analyst pack is a picture of our new Birmingham, where we've shut three suboptimal stores to open one. Those energy the energy efficiency of those stores is always an improvement. Now our National Innovation Centre in Milton Keynes is an EPC A plus net negative site. We don't do that everywhere because it isn't always the right financial decision to take. But we continue to have a look at the lessons we've learned from our innovation center and how we can roll that out into the new sites or the retrofitted sites that we're bringing online across the business to ensure that we are consuming less energy, but again, in a financially sustainable way.

Operator

All of this leads to us being able to improve the customer experience, whether that's parking being available, shops and customer areas looking consistent, toilets being available, it being a nice place to be to get what you want and expect as easily as possible on an optimal logistics route from your higher end services provider. It allows us to put more services in those single sites, again, more products in one site, greater customer experience, and we are factually seeing those sites be a place where our colleagues are staying with us more, and you're seeing those in the attrition numbers that I talked you through previously. From a logistics perspective, we are pushing to be data led, and I'll come on to that in a moment in terms of year two of our strategy. But historically, we've had a lot of our depot managers running where we're going, what we're doing, in what order we're doing it. Now we'll be using the benefit of data to ensure that we're doing things in the right way in the most effective order and with the right type of customer communication.

Operator

That will allow us to consolidate our loads better, especially with more services in single sites, as we said on the previous slide, again, to enable that increased efficiency and with improved route optimization and enhanced customer experience. What all of that means is we are able to take miles off the road If we're more effective in where we're going, when and with less need for loads to be on separate vehicles, that will lead to less miles driven, that will lead to less carbon output, and that will lead to speedy being able to manage our costs and ensure that we're working as effectively as possible. From an asset perspective, we continue to increase the scope of AI. We are able to see the improvements that AI can offer us in terms of utilization. We offer we use AI on about 400 products in the business at the moment.

Operator

So clearly, there's a scope for that to be increased. I'm going to talk to you about CRM in a moment, but being able to use CRM as we go forward to plan where our assets should be, in line with the work that we are winning, will be a really important step for Speedy. And assets are getting cleverer, whether it's telemetry and how we manage fuel, right the way through to sensor technology and assets being able to tell us and our customers how they're working, do they need testing, is there a problem, we will ensure that optimizing our network, our logistics and our assets is core to how we roll the strategy forward. And you will see examples of all of this happening, not everywhere yet, but this is not completed. But these are things that you are seeing in Speedy Hire to done.

Operator

And we look forward to developing that as we go forward. Thank you, Hannah. So what I wanted to talk you through was what you can expect to see from our velocity strategy and transformation program in year two. In the appendices of the pack, we've included what we undertook in year one, and Paul talked to you through some things earlier, like we put a system into our test and inspection business, Lloyds British, and we're now seeing the benefit of the growth of that. We digitized our trade and retail offering to make it more digitally scalable.

Operator

We're seeing the improvements in that. This is not an exhaustive list, but it is some key things that we wanted to highlight to you, so you can see that we're on it in terms of what we would expect to happen. We have a new digital channel being launched in and around our website. Our website has not always been optimized in the way that it would like we would like it to be. And we have started to see parts of this go live already.

Operator

We will continue to build on it. We will continue to release new updates to the website. But what I can tell you is we are already able to trade in slightly different ways where we have larger customers now actually trading directly through our website. It makes us more efficient. It makes our customers more efficient.

Operator

It reduces the chance for error rates. And it is a really exciting way for us to be able to widen our channels to reach our customers, and we'll continue to roll that out between now, Christmas and beyond. We are imminently going to launch a new CRM. We have never had a nationally optimal CRM. As I explained on a previous slide, that allows us to manage our pipeline of customer and opportunity better, yes, absolutely, but also forecast more accurately the type of kit, the type of products and services that we are working on our customers on with our customers, where should they be, in what volume, we will have that level of data and intelligence centrally that we've not had before.

Operator

So hopefully, that allows that to be additive to the work winning capability of the Speedy business and the accuracy of how we're able to forecast these things going forward. We're in a process of going through the selection and integration of an order management system. So this will include things like logistics, things like our platforms that we've just talked to. But when we get orders into the business, which piece of equipment is it that we're selecting to go on that order and on what van will it be deployed and on what route will it go, managing the life cycle of that order from a customer to ensure that we're able to take out some of the ineffective bit in the middle, support our people, but ensure that we get the benefit of that data and systemization and take some of the benefit of the growth opportunity in margin expansion as we go forward. A really key part of our development, but harmonized with other things that we're talking about and we're doing.

Operator

We do expect in year two of our strategy to grow our partnerships in trade and retail. We're very proud of our relationship with B and Q and the way forward that we forged in year one of our velocity strategy. But we need to grow it. We need to grow what we're doing with B and Q, and we need to do that with other partners as well across the space. We have a system led logistics trial live in one of our regions.

Operator

It is something that we're doing today, and that is something that we expect to roll out through the business in year two of the strategy, so that we can ensure that we optimize our vehicles, as I said on the previous slide, around where they're going, the route they're following, in what order we're doing those deliveries, collections or exchanges to ensure that we are the most efficient business as possible and that we are communicating with our customers proactively. It's something that is really important to having an effective order management system, digital platform, so that we are always communicating where are we, where is my piece of equipment, when can I expect it with all customers? We are continuing to focus on our specialist business growth engine. We've talked about test and inspection today, and we're really pleased and excited by that. We are continuing to invest in the hydrogen electric and electric powered access machines, and we are really pleased with the utilization of those assets and the improvement that, that's giving us in differentiating our powered access business as we go forward.

Operator

And importantly, following the acquisition of Green Power Hire last year, some investments that we've made this year in those products and our generator fleet, the growth of our power and energy business and the complexity of the challenges of where does energy come from across our sector and the products that we serve. And I would hope to have some other specialist businesses to talk to you about as we go forward. I've said to you that we intend to expand our use of AI. We are using that on regional dynamic pricing, and we are starting to review the opportunities for AI to help us around bid intelligence and how we look at bid management, bid writing as we go forward. And core to our focus is how we use it on assets.

Operator

So we've done a lot of learning over a lot of years. Now how can that help us buy more intelligently at the right time, move assets more effectively, link it to the CRM? And ultimately, can we use it on more assets? Because we can see that the utilization is slightly better on the assets where AI is applied in the main. And then we will be ensuring that we are aligning our resource to the key growth sectors available to us in the market.

Operator

So we've spoken about the likes of rail, water and energy, to name a few, But we will make sure that Speedy's resource, whether that's our people, our capital, our assets, the right things to do to drive the growth in the business going forward with the opportunities supported in the marketplace that look really encouraging for the future, and we look for hopefully more of that as we go. So if we just go on to the final slide around the summary and outlook, we do have resilient performance in the first half. I think you can see that in a challenging but manageable backdrop, there are opportunities where we're driving forward with a strongly diversified range of customers and the sectors that which we enjoy and support. We do think it's important that we get long term commitment from the government to the infrastructure and construction sectors. We are a massive employer of people, and it will be great to see these larger infrastructure schemes, the planning consents and all of the things that we need to support growth in our sector give us that long term way forward that we're all looking for.

Operator

We are continuing to invest in our velocity strategy and the higher fleet capital that we need in order to drive the wins and renewals that we've got, but also to continue to support that as we go forward. If we were to not invest in our strategy and our hire fleet, we would be concerned that, that wouldn't allow us to win the type of business that we've been able to talk to you about and the type of business that we are hopefully going to be able to talk to you about when we speak to you again in the future. October and November trading has started well with revenue up circa 3% and ahead of that same period, as Paul spoke to you about from the prior year. And we were delighted to be able to say that we are mobilizing the AIMEE contract earlier than expected in addition to the pipeline that we'd articulated previously. We do expect a second half weighting consistent with prior periods, and we have that maintained interim dividend that Paul talked to earlier with an expectation from the Board that we meet our full year expectations.

Operator

So ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your time and for listening. I'll hand back to Hannah.

Speaker 1

Awesome questions. How has CP7 started?

Operator

I think I mentioned, I think it's been slightly slower to move than some of us would have liked if that's a little bit of a lag from rail strikes earlier in the year, sort of Christmas time ish and a bit later, a bit of a change of who's doing what. I think there has been a bit of a lag, but I think we're starting to see now the right type of noises and the work come through that would give us confidence that CP6 as a spending period, as a committed investment in The UK infrastructure, I think it offers us a great short, medium and long term opportunity.

Speaker 1

Thank you. And you mentioned the £600,000 investment in your JV with AFC Energy in the last year. But are you able to give some guidance on how this part of the business is progressing this year and further into the future?

Operator

Yes, look, to start with, really pleased to continue to work with AFC on this JV. At the moment, we have got a small number of machines. So we have committed to 20, which will be phased over the next months. We have had some small delays in those machines coming into the joint venture, but we do we are now working with a number of customers that are interested in the hydrogen fuel cell generator. It does work in tandem with our battery storage unit.

Operator

So that's really quite important to us. It is not something that we're selling to all of our customers. I mean, don't be wrong, it's available to all of our customers. But not everybody is looking for a hydrogen fuel cell generator to be powering their site. So we do have a small number of machines available in the JV today.

Operator

That sits under our Managing Director of Power and Energy. So he takes responsibility for those, along with our battery storage business and our more traditional power generator business. And we've had a number of customers that would have met with us along with the management team of AFC Energy for different reasons, testing the product, understanding what it can do, understanding the value that it would add to their business. And we look forward to seeing more of these assets deployed in the field and that consistent manufacturing pipeline from our joint venture partner.

Speaker 1

Perhaps this question leads on then. This individual says they noticed the 68% of higher fleet was in carbon E. K. Products. Can you provide comfort that the underlying demand is at the right price to sustain margins?

Speaker 1

And is this if it is the case, is this because they are price competitive or are customers prepared to pay more?

Operator

Very, very good question, question we ask ourselves every day. We have an investment decisions committee in the business chaired by myself and Paul. Any asset that we're bringing into the fleet, part of the commercials that we look at is, okay, that's lovely that it reduces carbon, but is it something that our customers are prepared to pay for? Does it support the right level of performance? Or would a customer have to forgive something in order to get a carbon benefit or a waste benefit or a recyclability benefit?

Operator

So I think there are circumstances where customers are prepared to pay for innovation and the question that's come up around will customers pay. I think most times what is absolutely business critical is that if we're selling something as being a sustainable solution in an environmental sense, that we can also demonstrate that it is a financially sustainable or a commercially sustainable solution. So an example being, if I can try and distill it, if a battery storage unit is a cost to you from a higher perspective, but it allows you to consume less diesel, if I'm consuming less diesel, that's costing me less money. I'm then removing the carbon of using less diesel. From a net perspective, that would be a traditionally sustainable decision and a commercially sustainable decision, too.

Speaker 1

Excellent. You might not know the answer to this one, but why has the business not had a CRM system before now?

Operator

I don't know. I think it's something what I can say is because we came to market with velocity as our strategy, and core to the focus of that was on ensuring that we get the right value out of systems, data and digitization. And we needed to ensure that we've got a CRM for everything, each part of the business where we can get all of the growth that's available to the business. If I'm with a customer tomorrow, I would expect to have to interact with the CRM because how would our account lead for that customer know what I'm doing or what I'm interfering with if I've we're not managing that in the right way. So from all of the people that have built this strategy from the ground up right the way through to today, having a nationally effective CRM has been important.

Operator

I know we've had a CRM in this small area over here of the business in the past through acquisition and things like that. But that's not a nationally consistent thing. So great question. Don't know the answer, but I can tell you with confidence that we're going to have one.

Speaker 1

You. A couple of questions around Velocity, and both sort of cost and progress and ambition. So can you quantify the expected full year cost in full year 2026? Does it feel like it's going to plan? Are you having to spend more to progress it in a tough environment?

Speaker 1

And do you still think you're going to reach your goals in five years?

Operator

If you look at first three years of velocity, it's called enable phase and we estimate it's about £15,000,000 a year. Last year, we spent 3 and a bit and it's just because of the way it started and when it ultimately finished over a three year period. We spent 2,300,000.0 in H1 and we estimate about £5,000,000 for the full year this year, probably £5,000,000 here in for FY 'twenty six, which will give you roughly 15,000,000 And then after that, it's the growth phase associated with it. I think the challenge is demonstrating what is the value of a CRM, what is the value of a new website. We can demonstrate the value of closing concession because the business is no longer loss making, it's profitable.

Operator

But maybe Dan's got some those are the numbers anyway. Yes. Look, the two questions towards the end, Hannah, there, just please make sure I do answer I think you asked four questions. But is velocity going to plan? And have we had to slow anything down, speed anything up?

Operator

I'm happy that the sum of all parts is going well. And there have been one or two things that have gone slower than we would have liked. I mean logistics, for instance, I would have rather had the trial live earlier because it is something from a cost perspective, a carbon perspective and a customer experience perspective that is really important to us to get right. But I am pleased that it is now back on track. So not everything is going perfectly all of the time, no.

Operator

But I have a weekly call with the team. The transformation program is governed by someone that sits on our executive team with Paul and I. So I would say, overall, it's going to plan. The reason we've put year one in the appendices of the pack is we've not forgotten about it, but we have done it. So we now expect those things to start to take an effect in the business.

Operator

And hopefully, in a year's time, we're sitting here saying the same about year two, and we're talking to you about what we're delivering in year three. Once we've completed the Enable phase, what we're essentially saying is we've systemized and done a lot of the grunt work and the things that we needed to do where we can take more of the benefit of the growth in the market. And in terms of the targets that we've set out for the Velocity strategy, we are happy that they are the targets that we're aiming for. We the market has remained tough for basically the whole period that we've launched this strategy in. But we can see within the pipeline, the opportunities that we have available to us.

Operator

We are clearly working on things that in the fullness of time will make us more efficient and allow us to expand the margin. And you've seen that a little bit in the year around the EBITDA margin despite some of the pressures that, that's been maintained. So yes, we're sitting here today resolute to those targets.

Speaker 1

Thank you. And you've got a lot to do to reach your full year numbers. Which division do you think will be the biggest contributor to you reaching them?

Operator

Ultimately, we are speedy high. So it's quite hard to answer because other businesses maybe break their businesses up into chunks a little bit more. But test and inspection, whilst the percentage growth number is really good, and we're pleased with it, it is a much smaller part of the business. So the growth will come from speedy higher. If I was to break that down into product categories, which is, I think, probably where the question is derived from, year on year, we're seeing a big improvement in our powered access business with the investments and the divestments that I referred to earlier.

Operator

Our power and energy business is really important to us, and we're pleased with the progression of that as we go forward. And we've spoke about rail with the growth of CP7, again, very important. And this time last year, lighting was a difficult one for us. That's not a division. But as a key product for us, we're pleased that we're sitting here today that the utilization improvements of that product area with a larger fleet year on year is really encouraging.

Operator

I hope that answers the question as well as I'm able to.

Speaker 1

Is your higher market share increasing? Obviously mentioned the auctions are full. And if so, are rates firming as well?

Operator

That's three questions, really. Our market share, we've said, is broadly consistent. We are going to do a little bit of work, as I said earlier, to try and split it out a little bit more because we talk about speedy hire, but Lloyds British is a test and inspection business. We have a fuel revenue stream, albeit small. So I think broadly consistent is the term that we would use.

Operator

The auction houses being full is more systemic that I think a lot of businesses are taking the opportunity to defleet or divest of things that are not performing in the right way for them. We've done a little bit of that, but we're also looking at some ways working with manufacturers or working at other opportunities where we can do that maybe in a more structured way. What was the third point there that sorry, Hannah.

Speaker 1

Think rates firming.

Operator

Look, we've sat here at each opportunity that Paul and I have had to talk with the city and into communications now through equity developments and said, in each of our three customer segments, we've got rates improving overall. We're using AI to help us get the benefit of that more consistently and ensure that, that's right for our customers. But in a tough market, it is also easy for rates to be competitive. And our job is to show value to our customers and value to our shareholders. I still think it's a very competitive market, but I am pleased with the disciplines that Speedy Hire has shown.

Speaker 1

Good. Okay, thank you. In terms of the GreenPower deal, is it earnings enhancing at present? And if not, when do you anticipate it becoming so?

Operator

It is early enhancing as of now over the last twelve months. We've seen our investment in the first half of this year, we spent about £5,000,000 on the BSUs to unleash the product that came out of the acquisition of Green Power Hire. We have utilization of just under 60% of the fleet of about four fifty machines at the moment. When we put a business case together to buy the company a year ago, we put in a target rate volume in terms of a weekly rate to hire one of our product, which which gives us the margins we need to make sure it it it does what it says. And our average rate is above that as I sit here, we sit here today.

Operator

So yes, it's doing what we've said. We sat with the supplier of the products that ultimately is the BSU, and we've managed to get a cost reduction because it gives them certainty of what we want to take over the next two or three years along with improving the payment terms to us. So it's a good business. It took a little while for it to be embedded in our business because it's at the management that came with it had suddenly had access to a lot more customers than they ever had, and it took a while, but that was through and gone by March. So it's doing well.

Operator

And we did a review with our Board a couple of weeks ago, first year of the sort of returns, and it's doing what we set it to be. If I can just build on that slightly as well, Hannah, in terms of what having BSUs in the stable does to the sales pitch. It has been a key part of winning work that we're able to pair that at scale with our traditional Speedy Power generator business and the JV with AFC going forward. And an example I would give you is with one of our national customers, not going to go into who, we recently done a trial with them of saying, look, just take our battery. We know it is leading technology, accessible in the cloud.

Operator

Let's see what we can do for you around your diesel bill, your cost, your carbon, etcetera. And without going into all the nuts and bolts, in a one month trial, we save them in excess of 80% of their diesel just by using our BSU. That for us is incredibly vindicating for what we can do around helping to control cost of carbon, but also demonstrating why investing in the leading battery technology as we see it has added value for Speedy Hire and for our

Speaker 1

customers. Really helpful. Are there any gaps in your store network that needs infilling or further closures required?

Operator

We're always looking at optimizing our network. We will never stop. We have opened one or two depots in the period, aligned to key areas of investment in The U. K, where there's going to be work. And we've only consolidated when it's the right thing in terms of long term business at work in the area, optimizing the right depot with the right logistics and how can we most effectively move our assets around.

Operator

And I wouldn't say that there is a glaring gap in our depot network today, but we're always vigilant. If there was an opportunity to expand the network because from a customer work winning perspective or it became apparent that we weren't in the right place, the great thing is that, that's down to Paul and I to support our teams, and we would just get on and do it. And if there was any part of our network that felt suboptimal or there was an opportunity to consolidate for the reasons that we spoke about around customer experience, colleague experience, we're always looking at it for the right reasons. We're not just shutting depots. That is not the strategy.

Operator

It is all to do with the things that we talked about earlier. And we have a meeting once a month around property investments, just as much as we do around asset investments.

Speaker 1

All right. Thank you. And then so last question, if anyone has any final thoughts, do share them now. The tick business sounds small, but a good opportunity. Are there good M and A opportunities to speed up growth in this division?

Operator

Small but good opportunity is a great summary. We're sitting here today pleased with the investment that we've made in the TIC system. The management reports directly to me, which won't change. That's really important. But we see it at present as organic.

Operator

And there is no M and A in the tick space planned at the moment. As ever, we've got a really supportive board. If that changed or an opportunity came around, I'm sure we would look at it, but it is at the moment an organic view of the future that we have, which would be investment in engineers and investment in widening the disciplines of the business. Great question.

Speaker 1

Somebody heard my call and we have one more. The AIME contract win seems great on the face of it. Do you deem any of your current contracts be at risk in terms of competitors?

Operator

The only contract win is a good contract win. I don't take anything for granted. All of our customers are really important to us. I feel like we've got really good relationships, and we work really hard to ensure that we give them all the right customer experience, the right value and the right retention. It's a competitive market.

Operator

So we will always, I'm sure, have someone that would like one or two of our customers just as much as we'd like one or two of theirs. So I guess the right answer to that is I'm sure it's always happening. And we take nothing for granted, and we'll always be working really hard to that they want to stay wearing a red T shirt. On a monthly basis, Hannah, we review contract wins, post tenders. We also look at why if we've lost business, if we've lost a tender, why?

Operator

And if we've lost a bit of business, why is that? So we are very focused on the wins as making sure there's no leakage either.

Speaker 1

Leaky buckets aren't good. Lovely. Listen, thank you both very much for your time. It's been the full hour. So thank you, everyone, for joining us, and we'll look forward to an update in six months' time.

Operator

Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you, everybody.

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