Ashtead Technology Holdings Plc (AT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Ashtead Technology Holdings Plc Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Allan Pirie, CEO. Good morning, sir.

Thank you, Lily. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. It's an exciting time for the business. We've traded strongly through 2023, and the market is creating a strong growth runway for us. In summary, if I get the slides moving correctly, we increased revenue by 51% last year across all the geographic markets. We increased -- off the revenue, we increased it 35% organically and 17% through M&A. Pleasingly, we increased renewables revenue by 50%. This now accounts for 31% of our total revenue. We also increased our oil and gas revenues by 52%. We increased cost utilization. We increased pricing, which drove gross margins, which increased to 78%. The business is positioned for growth. Last year, we invested GBP 19.1 million of CapEx in our fleet to expand its breadth and depth. We increased headcount organically by 25%, and we also added 203 positions through the acquisition of ACE to finish the year with 527 people. We fully integrated the acquisitions that we did in 2022, and we acquired ACE Winches in November of '23. We continue to view M&A as a key growth driver, and our approach will continue to be selective and disciplined. The structural tailwinds are providing a positive outlook. We continue to see focus on energy security and energy affordability. And we also see our increased recognition that all forms of energy will be part of the transition. Our outlook continues to grow in confidence given the customer backlog increase over the last few months. And combined with the increased customer backlogs and the internal positioning that we have within the business, we believe that the business is well set up for long-term sustainable growth. The Board is encouraged by the group performance in Q1 2024, and the full year '24 expectations remain unchanged. We're really pleased with how the business has come together over the last few years. The platform that we have creates a great opportunity to drive financial performance and further scale the business. We have substantially grown and strengthened the business since we listed in November 2021. And through both organic and inorganic investments, we are building unrivaled capability. We have a reputation for delivering differentiated customer solutions. The market outlook is significantly stronger, and we are well positioned to benefit from that. In summary, we know what we're doing. Our strategy is clear. Our team is focused on executing the plan. Drilling further down into why we believe that we are well positioned, we're building integrated capability through our 3 service lines with a one-team approach and 3 core values at its heart: agility, collaboration and excellence. From a customer perspective, we continue to innovate, developing new products and solutions for our customers. We have the experience and expertise to really add value. We have the biggest independent fleet in the market, and we have proper international reach. As we continue to go through the points on the right-hand graphic, across the bottom coming around the left-hand side, from an investor perspective, we're positioned to benefit from a high-growth market. Propensity to rent has continued to increase given the skill shortage and the lengthy new times or lead times on equipment. Through complementary M&A, we are building enhanced capability and competitive advantage. The business produces strong margins and cash flow. We've got real momentum to continue the growth that we've seen over the last couple of years. I'd like to turn over it to Ingrid, who will walk us through some of the numbers.

Thank you, Allan. I'm delighted to deliver yet another excellent set of results for the year. 2023 was a transformational year for our business as we continue to increase our top line through both organic investment and M&A. 2023 sees the first full year trading of our 2022 acquisitions, Hiretech and WeSubsea, and 1 month results from ACE Winches, which we acquired in November 2023. Our revenue growth, as Allan said, of 51% can be split 35% from organic growth and 17% from M&A, so the full year impact of those 2 acquisitions and then 1 month of ACE with a small reduction from FX. Our EBITDA grew by 82%, and we continue to increase both pricing and cost utilization, delivering a ROIC of 28%, whilst maintaining a robust balance sheet. The graphs demonstrate the growth journey the company has been on over the past few years. The dark bars are the actual and the yellow shows the pro forma, which would add to the 11 months pre-acquisition traded for ACE to look at the business as a whole now. If we had, had ACE for the full year, we would have delivered GBP 149.6 million of revenue, GBP 60.9 million of EBITDA, that's a 41% margin, and then GBP 45.4 million of EBITA, which is a 30% margin. As the mix of services continues to change and we continue to build our service capability, our continued investment in growth, we see go-forward margins in the high 20%. Our revenue growth came from both renewables and oil and gas, with 50% growth in renewables, representing 31% of our revenues and a 52% growth in our oil and gas business. We delivered strong margins while continue to invest in people and facilities to build a business capable of continued growth. At the bottom line, we were delighted to deliver an adjusted EPS growth of 73%. Our cash flow remained strong due to our positive trading results and a positive inflow from working capital. We invested GBP 19.5 million in CapEx in the year, of which GBP 19.1 million was in our rental fleet. And we continue to maintain a robust balance sheet. Our net debt to EBITDA leverage was 1.3x at year-end. And if we look at that on a pro forma basis for the full year of ACE, it's 1x. We delivered ROIC significantly ahead of cost of capital, and this will continue to evolve as we invest in growth, both organically and through acquisition. If you look at our capital allocation priorities, these remain the same as we have indicated in the past. Our pro forma leverage of 1x gives us capacity to continue to invest both organically and inorganically to build the breadth and depth of our business. We will continue with our progressive dividend policy and recommended a 1.1p per share final dividend for approval at our AGM on the 30th of May. And then finally, before I hand it back to Allan, we've made good progress on our sustainability journey with a strategy linked to the 11 of the UN Sustainable Goals. We grew our revenue from renewables by 50%, and this represents 31% of our revenues, and we maintain a 50% target of revenues from renewables in the medium term. Our employees are at the heart of our success, and we remain focused on making sure that we provide the support and development opportunities for them and are investing further in learning and development through 2024.

Thank you, Ingrid. So turning to the market opportunity that's in front of us. We continue to see a strong growth runway for the business. If we look at the graph -- or the graphic on the left-hand side, Ashtead Technology's total addressable market is expected to grow to USD 3.5 billion by 2027 at a CAGR of 11% from 2023. Leading that growth is offshore wind, 25% CAGR, with oil and gas growing at 7%. As I said earlier, the need for a balanced energy transition is increasingly being recognized driven by energy security and energy affordability. In terms of offshore renewables, despite recent headwinds, the offshore renewables market is forecast to grow strongly. Ashtead is very well placed to benefit from offshore wind because of the transferability of our skills and expertise from oil and gas, supporting the same customers for the same type of equipment from our existing locations. We see oil and gas very much being part of the energy transition, and we'll fund the Ashtead Technology's transition to offshore renewables. On the right-hand side, we show a graph of offshore greenfield investment by sanctioning year. As can be seen, over the last 6 years, the average has been $87 billion. That increases, on a forecast basis, over the next 4 years to USD 129 billion, being an increase of 48%. In 2023, of the $128 billion of greenfield investment sanctioned, we saw the sanction of World Bank in the U.K., we saw a significant activity in Norway, and we also saw significant activity coming out through South America, specifically Brazil. Ashtead Technology is very well placed to benefit from all those markets. Turning to offshore wind. To continue this business or for this industry, instead of pursuing gigawatts as we normally do, we thought it would be easier to show the number of offshore wind farms that's in operation. So from the graph, 194 offshore wind farms were operational in March 2024, forecast by Rystad to increase to 501 by the end of the decade, being an increase of 158. If we dial back closer to where we are now and look at the time line out to 2026, the increase is expected to be 43% going from 194 to 277. Of those that need to have -- of the activity that needs to happen to achieve that, 34 wind farms, or 41%, is under construction, 31% -- or 37% is approved with the balance in application. In terms of backlog, Ashtead Technology is not a backlog business, but our customers are. So what we've done here is taken publicly available information to show how backlogs have moved over the last few years. From the left-hand chart, you can see that for 7 customers who made up a significant part of Ashtead Technology's revenue in 2024, backlogs have doubled since 2020. Looking specifically at certain customers, Prysmian Group, which is 100% pure wind, increased the backlog by 109% last year. Technip, very much focused in oil and gas, increased their backlog by 41%. And then the others -- other down the list who operate across both end markets increased their backlogs in varying degrees, and with Saipem increasing by 51%. Not only our backlogs is increasing, but they're also increasing in duration. If we take the key subsea players of Saipem, Subsea7 and Technip, we can see that the backlog that existed at the end of 2023, 29% of that backlog was for execution in 2026 and beyond. Increasing multiyear customer backlog is Ashtead's growth runway for the future. These are all positive market dynamics, which underpin our confidence in our market and our ability to fully execute on our strategy. Last year, Ashtead continued to increase both utilization and pricing. Cost utilization increased by 1% to 45%, with pricing increasing by a further 13%, which offsets any price increases that we saw coming through on wages and supply chain inflation. We're delighted to say that the '22 acquisitions are performing strongly. These were acquired to build our capability in our mechanical solutions service line, consolidating a highly fragmented market. They're both now fully integrated and are now operating under the Ashtead Technology name. We've invested to expand our rental fleet, adding people and also increasing geographic coverage. Customer feedback has been very complementary, and we're continually seeing increased opportunity to hire bundled equipment packages. In WeSubsea, we increased 2023 revenues by 54% compared to the revenues that we acquired at acquisition. The fleet has been dispersed across the Ashtead Technology locations to drive revenues, not only in Europe, but in Asia and also the Americas. Cost synergies were also achieved through subletting the facility and changes to the team. In Hiretech, on a similar basis, we increased revenue by 23% last year. We have also expanded geographic reach of this business and invested in the business through CapEx and building out the team. Both acquisitions are examples of how we fully integrate acquisitions, driving synergies through customers, investments and geographic reach. The M&A strategy that we are following is the same strategy that we developed in 2026. The plan is -- sorry, 2016, I should say. The plan is to do more of the same. We operate in a highly fragmented market. We see an opportunity to build a business of scale with international reach. We plan to become more relevant to our customers through product and solution expansion and expanding further into offshore wind. The M&A criteria is very straightforward, to consolidate a highly fragmented market, to expand geographically, to build out our capability across our existing service lines and to do more to focus in our offshore wind market. Critically, the target criteria that we follow is absolutely key to how we spend our M&A dollars. We're looking at 5 key attributes: strong cultural alignment; market-leading expertise; long-term customer relationships; opportunities to grow our service lines; and also to find revenue pull-through opportunities. We take a disciplined approach to M&A, and we believe that there are further opportunities out there that will considerably strengthen and expand Ashtead's capabilities. We were delighted to acquire ACE Winches in November last year. ACE Winches significantly increases Ashtead's capability in mechanical solutions and also increase our addressable market by 30%. The business that we acquired was in great shape. It's got a great well-invested fleet and a very strong team who have been very welcoming and are engaged with the integration process. We're focused on sales, commercial and financial controls and processes to continue to build out the sales pipeline, to maximize the opportunity in terms of utilization and pricing and to make sure that financial discipline is within the business. To date, trading has been in line with expectation. So in summary, we are well placed to benefit from the long-term structural drivers that are at play in the market. Strategy conviction is high. We believe that we are very well placed to benefit from the energy transition and the supply of secured, affordable and low-carbon energy from offshore energy sources. We are confident in the market, supported by record customer backlogs and increasing multiyear visibility. Turning our attention to 2024. Q1 trading has been strong. Activity levels are high with increasing customer propensity to rent. We remain confident in making further progress during 2024. And with all that in mind, the Board is encouraged by the group's performance in Q1 to date, and our full year expectations remain unchanged. So that's the end of the slides. We'll then move on to questions.

[Operator Instructions] Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via Investor dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. I please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.

Perfect. So a couple of questions around debt levels and interest costs and where we kind of how we're going to manage this debt position going forward. So I'll pick those up. So first of all, in terms of finance costs, our net debt were at GBP 28.7 million in '22. We're at GBP 61.7 million in December 2023, having funded the ACE acquisition fully through RCF. We have GBP 100 million facility available to us, plus a GBP 50 million accordion. So there's still available debt to us. But we're very conscious that we don't want to overstretch the leverage. We're currently at 1.3x as of December 2023. But if we look at that on a pro forma basis, it's actually 1x, so relatively low debt. We are very focused on maintaining debt levels at certainly no more than 2x, but in that sort of 1 to 2x range as we continue to invest in M&A. The business is highly cash generative. So if we do no more M&A, we actually can decrease our net debt very, very quickly. Our cost of debt is a roundabout 2.25% over SONIA. The current facility that we have was recently extended out to April 2028. And I think the other question was around the cost of -- finance cost for next year. So finance cost -- so gross finance costs in 2023 were GBP 4 million. Given that step-up in net debt, we do expect that to increase by just over 50% to just over GBP 6 million in 2024. But as I said, we're very conscious of making sure that we manage that levels. And as we look at doing more M&A, we'll obviously look at the balance of ensuring that we're managing that net debt position as well as looking at the market potentially to look at equity raise at some point if it makes sense to do so. I think there's another question around our current WACC, and that sits in just over 8% currently. I think that probably deals with quite a few questions. A piece around M&A sort of question, which Allan can maybe pick up on, which is around -- obviously, a lot of the growth this year that we -- if we look at the market forecast and the guidance, we've been guiding to a low double-digit growth on the pro forma numbers. The question was what proportion of -- will M&A play going forward. We haven't baked any M&A into the numbers that we've obviously forecasted, but Allan can maybe pick up a bit on what the plans are from an M&A perspective.

Yes. Thank you, Ingrid. The plan on M&A is to continue doing what we've done for the last 7 or 8 years. We've got a clear M&A strategy. We've got a strong pipeline of opportunity that we continue to build. But the one thing that you can't forecast in M&A is the timing of it. We've been very fortunate to do the acquisition of ACE Winches last year. That's a super business. And we did 2 acquisitions in the prior year. Since 2017, we've now done a total of 8 acquisitions, 4 of which were international. The last 3 businesses have all been local here in Aberdeenshire. But we continue to look at acquisitions on an international basis, and it remains a key growth driver for us.

We have still a few questions on here that are relating to the debt. If the guys that are hosting could maybe delete some -- or just remove some of those for us, that would be good. There's one question around the current gap between ROIC and WACC and where we see that moving to. So we have achieved a ROIC of 28% in the current year, and that has been trending up in recent years. When we came to market at IPO in November 2021, we set a target of sort of mid- to high teens and possibly hitting to a 20% ROIC. In '21, we hit 17%. In '22, we hit 21%. And last year, we hit 28%. We do expect that -- ROIC to sort of evolve, particularly as we continue to do some M&A. And we're very much continuing to make sure that we can target that sort of high teens, low 20%.

So there's a question around the fleet. What do you consider to be the critical mass for your rental fleet in terms of size and market coverage? And how do you plan to achieve this to maximize efficiency and profitability? So when we look at the fleet, we have to take that into the context of the market. And when we invest in an equipment, we're making investment decisions for 10 or 15 years plus, given the longevity that we get out for equipment. We've been in business for 39 years, so we know the business well. We see a great opportunity in today's market to put more CapEx to work. So last year, we had an initial budget of GBP 15 million of CapEx. We increased that to GBP 20 million and ended up spending GBP 19.5 million because the other GBP 0.5 million that we had approved, the equipment didn't turn up in time to get into the books for '23. This year, we've increased CapEx further to GBP 30 million and are making good progress in approving that and getting the equipment into the fleet. But when we look at the market opportunity in front of us, we're looking at a number of things. Not only are we looking at the fleet, we're also looking at the utilization or the shape of the fleet. We're looking at the utilization that we get from certain items, and we're also looking at pricing because the way to drive a return on investment in this business is to win business, have the right fleet, get the right utilization and maximize pricing. The business that we've got has got a huge amount of data in it. We are data-led. And we believe that by focusing on the key KPIs, we will get the mix right.

There's a question around trade receivables given that there's obviously a noticeable increase in both trade receivables and the proportion of those past due. I think one thing that's maybe a little bit misleading in the accounts because of the timing of the acquisition of ACE is that we've obviously got all of ACE's full debtor book and balance sheet in the numbers, but they're only the only 1 month of the revenue. So when you actually look at the proportion, the debt, it's not quite as bad as it may look from that. You will see in Note 24 that we do have a sizable proportion in this past due 0 to 90 days. And just to give you some comfort on that, unfortunately, our industry is not one that is known for being particularly quickly. We do chase down our debt pretty hard. We've got the benefit that because we do a lot of churn with our customers, we are not scared to put our biggest customers on stock if they're not paying us on time. We do have a centralized credit control function, and we actually continue to invest in that during the course of last year. But to give you a bit of comfort, the expected credit loss rate that's calculated, obviously, in terms of your previous history of credit losses for the sort of 90 days -- up to 90 days past due is less than 1%. So we've got a strong track record of recoverability. There are some of the older debts, you'll see on the far end of that, trade receivables in the more than 365 days. Those of you that have listened to the call previously will know that we had 1 debtor out in Asia, which is currently in a scheme of arrangement. That scheme of arrangement keeps getting extended. And that's what causes, as I said, the large number that we provided for.

So there's a question about where does the revenues come from. What proportion of your overall revenue is outside the U.K.? The way that we present the revenue is the location where the revenue -- or the equipment was mobilized from or the facility it was mobilized from rather than where it had come -- the revenue comes from. So Europe is our biggest operation. It accounts for -- our European operations account for 65% of our revenues. But from Europe, we are supporting not only the North Sea, the Mediterranean and the Caspian, we are also supporting West Africa and Brazil. If we take ACE Winches as a great example, ACE Winches is based in the U.K., but at the point of acquisition, 79% of ACE Winches' revenue came from outside the U.K. We are a very international business. We operate across 12 locations. We're focused on a global market, and we will move our equipment and resources to wherever our customers require equipment and resource necessity. There's a question around competitors. Who do you consider to be your main competitors? And following on, what are your concerns about the business in terms of weaknesses? So in terms of competitors, we've got a wide range of competitors. On survey and robotics, we've got 3 main competitors, all private equity backed, all international like Ashtead, which are Acteon Group, which includes Seatronics. We've got Unique Maritime, which is based in the Middle East. And we've got Subsea Technology & Rentals. And then there's various other mom-and-pops in various locations. So a concentrated market, 4 main players, of which Ashtead Technology is the largest and leading player. When it comes to mechanical solutions, the market is highly fragmented. So we've got competitors across almost everything that we do from winches to dredges, to cutting equipment, to ROV tooling. But that has created an opportunity for us through M&A to consolidate a fragmented market. And there is no one out there today with the range of skills capabilities across 3 service lines that Ashtead Technology has. And by continuing to build out 3 service lines, we believe that we're increasing not only the moat around the business, but fundamentally positioning the business to add more value to our customers, which is the center of our strategy. In terms of weakness in the business, I wouldn't say it's a weakness. But I think the biggest challenge facing our industry is the skill shortage, the lack of people. And the way that we've addressed that is that we continue to add to our team. We increased our team by 25% organically last year, and we're spending significant amounts of effort and time and money in learning and development. We added an HR Director to our team last year who comes from a learning and development background. That was not by accident. We selected Christine specifically for her skills and capability, so that we could put more effort into growing our own talent. We recruited our recruiter, if that makes sense, to be in the front foot to continue to add to the business. But whilst that is a challenge for us and a challenge for the rest of the industry, they also provide an opportunity for increased propensity to rent because our biggest competitor is actually our customers. And the skill shortage that is in the market, it affects them as far as much as it affects us. And by us investing in our team, growing our team, growing our capability, we're seeing a higher propensities to rent as a consequence.

There's a question about on what basis do we depreciate our fleet. Our survey and robotics equipment is mostly depreciated over 7 years. And our mechanical equipment is a bit of a mix, and there's is a pretty high proportion of sort of 7 and 8 years, and there's some at 10. And then the recent acquisition of ACE, the winches that we bought there are actually depreciated over 15 years. They've got a much longer life. And obviously, we look at that as part of our acquisition accounting, and we're very comfortable. But those depreciation rates, the other part of that question was, have you had to any large unexpected write-downs. And no, we haven't.

So there's a question around project delays. You mentioned there were some project delays and cancellations during 2023. Can you talk about the reasons behind us? What is the current state of play? In the offshore environment, project delays is just one of these things that happen. Projects continue to slip to the right. But given the volume of activity in the market, given that our customers' backlogs are at all-time high, that is not a concern to us. I think the question may have been in the context of a comment I made in offshore wind, where there was some negative press around that market last year, the challenges around increasing supply chain costs, increasing finance costs having an impact on the results of licensing grants and the like. Companies like Ørsted, who have a number of projects on the East Coast of the U.S., we don't see that having any impact in our business whatsoever. The market outlook is very, very strong. There's a question around slowdown in the U.K. offshore given increasing numbers of projects being unfunded and underinvested by oil majors given the tax implications. I think when we look at the U.K. sector of the North Sea, whilst Rosebank was sanctioned last year, the North Sea is a mature basin, and we shouldn't expect to see major projects being sanctioned in that basin. We have focused our business on inspection, maintenance, repair and decommissioning, specifically to -- around oil and gas. And we believe that we are very well placed to benefit from the activity in the North Sea. But if we look at the Norwegian continental shelf, which is obviously still the North Sea, there is a significant amount of activity, not only in terms of inspection, maintenance, repair, but also greenfield development in that market. But as I said before, we are an international business supporting a global market. Our equipment is highly movable, and we will move our equipment wherever the activity needs to be. So at the moment, we see great opportunities across all markets. And we see pockets of high activity in the likes of Norway and Brazil, which we're very much focused on. There's a question around have any of your acquisitions underperformed post acquisition compared to the prior years. The great answer to that is no. We've done 8 acquisitions. They've all performed well. And in many ways, the results of those acquisitions have been far better than our acquisition cases. We bought a decommissioning business in the form of underwater cutting solutions to focus on decommissioning in oil and gas. We're now using that skills and capability to install offshore wind farms and for monopile work. We never saw that at the point of acquisition. I think the thing that we do is we spend a lot of time with the owners and management teams of the business. We diligence them very, very, very hard. And we make sure that we're buying these businesses for the right reasons. And then once we buy them, we fully integrate them to get the synergies, both revenue costs and the added value that comes from increasing the mix. So a big part of our focus is around remaining very selective and disciplined on our M&A to ensure that our 100% hit rate continues.

There's a question around are you considering a move to the main market, FTSE 250 in the short to medium term. If not, why not? Obviously, as a business, we're watching all the changes that are happening to the regulations around the London market, and what we're aiming to do is build a business that is big enough that we have optionality. We've made no decisions on any of that. We're very conscious of the shareholder register that we've got. And it's something that we just want to make sure that, at some point, we have the optionality. But no decisions made.

So there's a question around comments on skills and whether the -- so given your comments on skills and competition, do you see, therefore, more opportunity in services revenue? Yes, we do is the easy answer to that. In terms of services, this is a rental business because we rentalize everything, but we provide services across the 3 service lines that we got. In terms of survey and robotics, that's electronic equipment rental. Most of that equipment goes into the field without people because our customers are well versed in the operation of that. In mechanical solutions, a significant proportion of the equipment goes into the field with our own operators. And on asset integrity, all of our equipment goes into the field with our own people. So as part of building the business, people are at the core of what we do. That's reason why we are investing in the team through recruitment and skills development. And by doing that, we believe that we will drive services revenue. There's a comment around the drop in Ashtead Technology's share value in Tuesday last week. I think the answer to that is that the market is a fickle place. We can control what we are doing as a business. We cannot control what the market does. The stock market on Tuesday was a difficult place with a lot of concern around instability in the Middle East and other places. We did see a significant reduction in share price initially, but it has rebounded well. And if you look at the context of how the share price has performed since we came to market in 2021, we came to market with a share price of GBP 1.62. It's now at 7x plus. And we believe that we've delivered on our promises. We've got a business today that is stronger than it was when we came to market. And we've got a market outlook that is stronger. And our focus as a management team is to continue to do what we've been doing to add value to our investors. There's a question around what are the risks that we face mobilizing and transporting equipment internationally, particularly on shipping rates and geopolitical risks. Yes. So I think that's a good question. I think the easy answer to that is that we can still move equipment with relative ease given the size of it. Most -- all of our survey and robotics equipment can be airfreighted. Some of our mechanical equipment can be airfreighted. Our bigger equipment on the mechanical solutions side can be airfreighted, but it's generally shipped. I think the key difference between now and pre-COVID is it takes slightly longer to move the equipment than it did in the past, and it may cost a bit more. So we plan on where the fleet should be based on what we see through the budget process, through the forecast process that we do 3 times a year and through ongoing customer relationships to make sure we've got the right fleet in the right place at the right time. And I think one of the great strengths of this business is the fact that we are not locked into any one geography, and we've got that flexibility to move the equipment across the world, depending on where the activity is. Sometimes, that is done on our account if we decided to move it proactively. Quite often, the customers will actually pay for the transit of equipment into other markets or other geographies if the equipment is elsewhere in the world. Then there's a question around, do we intend to work in offshore carbon capture and hydrogen sectors. How would this be different for the company compared with oil and gas? Again, a great thing about our business is that we are focused on oil and gas and offshore wind, 2 different end markets that requiring the same skills, capabilities and equipment because our domain is subsea. And if you want to do things subsea, they have to be done from a vessel and they will generally require divers or remote-operated vehicles and the equipment and skills and capabilities that we've got. Carbon capture is not a new thing for us. We worked on the Northern Lights projects for Equinor back in 2018, 2019. We don't see carbon capture as being a massive opportunity for us anytime soon, but we are very well placed to pick up projects in that space [ if and when that happens ].

I think that's all the questions. And Lily, so if you're okay, we'll hand back to you.

Allan, Ingrid, thank you for answering all those questions that came from investors. And of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourselves and the company, Allan, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?

Great. Thank you, Lily. Well, thanks, everyone, for your interest in Ashtead Technology. Thank you for your attendance on the call this morning. We believe that the business is ideally placed to benefit from the market conditions that are in front of us. We came to market in November 2021 with 4 growth drivers. We saw an opportunity in oil and gas. We saw an opportunity to grow our business on the back of a high-growth offshore renewables market. We saw an opportunity around increasing propensity to rent. And we also saw an opportunity to build and grow our business through M&A. And I'm delighted to say that those 4 growth drivers remain very much in place. The market outlook is stronger today than it was when we IPO-ed. And the focus of the team is to continue to execute the strategy that's in front of us. So thank you very much, and we look forward to seeing you on the next call.

Allan, Ingrid, thanks for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Ashtead Technology Holdings Plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.