AtkinsRéalis Group Inc. (ATRL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Welcome, and thank you -- thank you, everyone, for joining us today. My name is Denis Jasmin. I'm the Vice President, Investor Relations at AtkinsRéalis. We're thrilled to see so many of you in the audience today and joining us via webcast. Before we get started, I have a few housekeeping items. First, for the ones in the room, please silence your cellphone and note that for any emergency, you can exit from the venue from the main entrance and the corridor on the right of the stage. Second, for the ones on the webcast, note that you can submit your questions anytime during the presentation. [Operator Instructions]. Lastly, note that a recording and a transcript of today's webcast will be available and archived shortly after the conclusion of the event in the Investors section of our website. Sorry, can I make sure this work? Thank you. Now turning to Slide 3, during today's event, we'll be making many forward-looking statements. I'm not going to read our full safe harbor out loud but I invite you to review the slide when you can. Same for the non-IFRS measure on Slide 4. I invite you to finalize yourself with them when you can. Also before we get going, I would like to acknowledge the land that we are meeting on today. It is the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now on to many diverse First Nation, Inuit and Metis peoples. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit. Turning to the agenda for the day. As you can see, we will have several presentations before the first Q&A session with the individual that we have presented so far. And then we'll take a short break. After the break, we'll have another set of presentations and a second Q&A session with all the presenters. Following the second Q&A session, it will be end of the webcast. But for those in the room, we welcome you to stay as we will be hosting a networking lunch with all the presenters. Finally, as you may have seen as coming in, we have 5 booths presenting some of our key capabilities where some of our experts will be pleased to explain what we do and answer any of your questions. The booths are also available during the lunch time in case you cannot stay as long. And with that, let's get started. First, we will begin with the Value Moment. This is something that we do at Atkinsrealis at the beginning of each meeting with more than 3 attendees. Today's moment will be on talent and Caroline will present it. Caroline.

[Foreign Language]. Good morning. I'm Caroline D'Silva, Director of Learning and Talent Development for Canada region. We are a people business, hiring, retaining, developing talent is absolutely critical to our success. And today, I'm delighted to introduce you to Odyssey, a development program for our early career professionals in Canada region as part of our value moment. The 18-month development program is designed especially for our early career professionals who are fresh graduates from university or college. The learning design is aligned to our purpose which will engineer a better future for our planet and its people. Through Odyssey, it is our aspiration that we will build a robust pipeline of future leaders who embody our values of integrity, safety, innovation, collaboration and above all, excellence. So how do we enable our early career professionals to develop and grow in their careers and above all, thrive? Our participants received technical training through experiencial on-the-job learning. Odyssey provides them with development on people, leadership and life skills, which we all know is so crucial for professional success. Skills such as communicating effectively, presenting with impact, change in stakeholder management, building resilience, emotional intelligence, to name a few. We also provide them with learning opportunities to understand our business so that they are fully equipped to know how we operate our services. And more importantly, how do we deliver our results with excellence. We guide them to the various career resources that we have to craft that development plan focused on skills and experiences. The journey does not stop there. We connect them to the various employee resource groups and knowledge networks to facilitate collaboration, innovation and really enable them to assimilate into our culture. We also assist them in partnering with mentors across AtkinsRéalis, so that they can really gain through the wonderful experience and knowledge we have in our organization, and they can continue to learn, grow, build a strong community and network. The graduate program in our U.K. region serves as a benchmark for Odyssey to grow and learn from their experiences and our collective global strength. We are committed to grow our early career professionals in Canada region. We do envisage a fantastic learning journey ahead. We are confident that through Odyssey, we will build a pipeline of future leaders who will drive our purpose forward. You see Odyssey is not merely a career launch pad. It is truly a testament and our commitment to engineer a better future for our planet and its people. [ Merci ] thank you. I now hand over the podium back to Denis.

Thank you, Caroline. Now let's talk about our 2025 2027 strategy called Delivering Excellence driving growth. Ian, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Denis. And Caroline, thank you so much. What a wonderful value moment, and I'm sure we're going to refer back to that a few times today. So good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. I really appreciate you giving up the time this morning for us to present our Investor Day and the targets that we sent out this morning in our press release. And thank you for those that are on the webcast. For anybody who doesn't know me, I'm Ian Edwards, I'm the President and Chief Executive Officer of AtkinsRéalis. And I've now been doing the job in leading the company for 5 years. I'm a civil engineer. I started my career in the U.K., moved to the Middle East and Asia, in the middle part of my career running business across those regions into Australia. And 10 years ago, came over to join SNC-Lavalin, as it was called then to join this great company and live in North America. So I am actually really proud of what we've achieved in the last 5 years. We've transformed this company. We've simplified it. And we've made a very focused business in the sectors that now we operate. And you remember that the last Investor Day, we set out our targets '22 to '24 in our pivoting to growth strategy. And I think we've delivered really well against that strategy. Today is actually about the future, though, and the next evolution of the company. And myself and my leadership team are really excited to explain to you today how we're going to meet those targets and potentially exceed them in delivering excellence in driving growth. And you'll hear from all of the presidents that run the business, our Chief Operating Officer, Phil Hoare; our Chief Financial Officer; Jeff and our Chairman, Bill Young. And I would encourage you after the presentations are over and the lunch starts, to just go around the booths because some of our staff that run parts of those -- parts of the business, end markets, end geographies are there to actually explain how we drive those markets. So the key message is that we want to try and get across today. And hopefully, these are the takeaways that you leave with today. The pivoting to growth strategy helped us move the company through our transformation to growth. And we've delivered against that growth, I think, really well. We've also been consistently profitable through that period '22, '24. We've simplified the company. We've divested underperforming businesses. And whilst we've still got a couple of divestitures to do, we're on this journey that we set out a long time ago to be an engineering services business, global and a nuclear business. And we are differentiated. We are differentiated in the way that we win, and we'll talk more about that as we walk through both my presentation and the presidents'. But the other differentiated point is that we've been deliberate in where we've positioned this company, both geographically and end market-wise. And that's played out well for us also. And lastly, we are entering a period of accelerated free cash flow now, and we will be very methodical in our capital allocation strategy in how we deploy that capital for future value creation. So this is what we look like today. We, as you can see here, are already 90% engineering services and nuclear. So the transformation journey that we've been traveling is not complete, but we're a long way down that path. We have 38,000 employees. We have significantly grown our head count organically in the last 2 years. And we'll talk more about how we've done that through our talent programs. And we currently stand with a $15.6 billion backlog, of high-quality backlog and profitable backlog. So what drives our talent and culture, which we believe is one of our differentiators. Certainly, the purpose that Caroline talked to, that this purpose that we created to engineer a better future for the planet and its people really resonates with our youth, it resonates with our leaders, and it resonates with our customers. And we actually use this as a guiding light with over 50% of our revenues coming from sustainable projects. And when we put this together, with our values, I think there are 2 things here to take away. First, we are becoming an employer of choice. That's how we're able to organically grow the headcount. And second, our customers actually like working with us. They actually like the services and the people that we provide to them and it's our culture that's enabling us to grow organically. And we think this is a differentiated proposition. We grew our head count in the last 2 years by 8,000 staff, net of attrition. And we're able to do this because we carry out very detailed employment engagement surveys on an annual basis and we listen to what our employees tell us. We respond to what their needs are and we tell them we've responded and asked them if that's fixed it. And we've done this for 5 years. And our engagement with our staff has gone to being one of the lowest in the industry to exceeding all our peers in the industry with our employees. And we've implemented many things such as Odyssey that Caroline talked about. We took 2,000 graduates on in 2023, graduates in early careers. We have development programs for our technical staff for our leaders. We have an ED&I program focused on diversity, but also inclusion. And we have safety programs that keep our people safe physically but also have great concern for their psychological safety and well-being. And we've reinvented many of our offices, so they have -- not having to force people back to the office, we've encouraged them back, and our offices are now vibrant. And lastly, in the fall of last year, we rebranded and that has enabled all of our people to be proud of AtkinsRéalis, all united under one brand. So I'd like to introduce my Chairman, Bill Young. He's going to talk through a couple of slides around the Board and the governance. And Bill joined us in September 2020. He is an engineer with an MBA from Harvard. His early career was with Bain & Co in Europe, followed by operational management roles and in private equity, worked extensively U.K., U.S., Canada, and being very significant on many boards, not least of which Chair of Magna and now Chair of Intact. So Bill, why don't you talk through a couple of slides and I'll step off.

Good morning, and welcome. So a couple of words on the, I think, very experienced and effective Board of Directors. Gary Baughman is a U.S.-based Director, who brings industry experience. He was a senior executive during his career with AECOM and before that Fluor. Mary-Ann Bell is a Montreal-based Director, engineer, who spent most of her career at Bell and spend her career in Telecoms and is the Chair of our Human Resources Committee of the Board. Chris Clark, Toronto based Director, CPA, spent most of his career at PwC where he was the CEO of PwC's Canadian operations. Ruby McGregor-Smith. London-based -- London England-based Director was the CEO of Mitie Group plc and Energy Services company for about 10 years and she is currently a member of the House of Lords, which gives us very useful insights coming out of U.K. government policy. Benita Warmbold, Toronto-based Director, CPA, spent most of her career at CPPAB and where she was the CFO and Senior Managing Director. Benita currently was the Chair of our Audit and Risk Committee, currently chairs our Governance, Ethics and Sustainability Committee. She handed off the Audit and Risk Committee recently to Chris Clark. And then Robert Paré, a lawyer, spent most of his career at Fasken. He's Montreal-based. Robert brings immense amounts of M&A and governance experience to the Board. And then finally, Mike Pedersen, Toronto-based Director, span his career in banking, where we ended up as a member of the senior management team of Toronto-Dominion Bank, where he was an EVP .Mike chairs our spot committee, and that stands for Safety, Project Oversight and Technology. So that's the current board. We're 9, and that's down from 11. So we're thinking through next directors to add to the Board. You can see the competency profile on the right-hand side of the slide, that provides us input to what skills and experience do we want the next 2 directors to have. And the answer to that is we intend to add more industry experience. We intend to add more nuclear experience or add nuclear experience and finally, cyber experience. So in the short to medium term, you should expect that we will be proposing 2 new directors, one of whom will be a French language speaker. So a couple of words on the priorities the Board is focused on. First and probably most importantly, strategy oversight. This is a topic at every Board meeting. We intend to provide a sound -- a sounding board to the management team on strategic matters. And in many ways, the way the Board composition is constructed is to enable us to be as effective as possible at that. Industry-leading integrity, it goes about saying this is -- continues to be an area of laser focus for the Board and the management team. The company has won numerous awards and recognitions in recent years but that doesn't cause any of us to relax in this topic. Risk oversight. There was a significant effort in 2022 to renew the risk enterprise management framework, which the SPOT committee oversees and the SPOT committee also oversees major projects for the company. This is a very important point. So Ian has said publicly on many occasions, the company will never undertake another LSTK project ever. And the SPOT committee of the Board is there as a check and balance against that point. The committee actively engaged in reviewing larger-scale projects and making sure the terms and conditions fit that policy. CEO compensation. We were gratified with the strong level of support this last year, almost 98%. 82%, 83% of Ian's compensation is at risk, which we feel pretty good about. Succession planning. We have an excellent CEO and a very strong management team. Succession planning is very much at the top of our mind as a Board, both in terms of emergency succession readiness, but also longer term, more programmatic succession. And then finally, we are going to move to a hybrid AGM in 2025. And so we'll be moving off the virtual format that we've used for the last 3 to 4 years. Thank you. I hope you enjoy the rest of the morning. Ian?

Yes. Thanks, Bill. Bill and I have been working really close through the transformation over the last few years. So here's my leadership team. And I'm not going to introduce some or all on this slide one by one. You're going to meet most of them today. they will introduce themselves before they actually present to you. But there are 3 people here who won't present today. Andree-Claude Berube, our General Counsel, overseeing our legal matters. She is out there, hands up. Thank you. James Cullens, responsible for our talent and culture program that we've talked about quite a lot already, who's not with us today. And Nigel White, very important position that I nominated a long time ago as Chief Risk Officer, responsible for all risk oversight and ensuring really that we stay within the risk appetite we've defined. And we spent a long time taking risk out of this business, and we're not about to put that back in. And as Bill said, Nigel reports not only to me independently from all of the presidents, but he also reports to a committee of the Board. These leaders have been handpicked by me. These leaders I have taken out of the business or from the open market. And I think we've built here a formidable team. You'll see today the individuals are exceptional individuals, exceptional in the knowledge, experience, passion and drive to send us through into the next evolution of the company. And even more importantly, the tone that we set as a leadership team in the way that we collaborate together and the way we work together is the tone that differentiates this company through the 38,000 employees that we have. And the behaviors that we display and the collaboration that we display, I believe, are reflected in our 38,000 employees that are working with our customers every day. So I want a quick recap on the last set of targets. I'm going to dwell on them. We've talked about them a bit already. But I'm really pleased with the progress that we've made. We decided to pivot to growth when we felt we've fixed some of the underlying issues in the business. And pivoting to growth, we did. We exceeded these targets quite considerably in our organic growth. And we also met most of the other metrics here in terms of profitability, consistency and cash flow. And we exited all of the underperforming businesses, LSTK, oil and gas, et cetera. And we normalized our cash flows, and we got the balance sheet to a place that we said we would get the balance sheet to a year earlier than we actually predicted. So pleased with performance. And on this next slide, this represents what we are as a transformed company. And we've obviously been really focused on simplifying the business. Exiting those business lines that were underperforming. But we're not just taking a view that the job is done. And as we further optimize to expand our margins, we will take any measures that we need to, to get there. And an example of that will be divesting the Scandinavian business, where we've been trying to reinvent that business for years. And ultimately, the best thing was to hand it over to somebody else because we couldn't get it in the margin profile to match the margin profile that we want for the overall group. And we've announced we're going to divest Linxon and we're working on that now. And we're announcing today that we are moving towards divesting the 407 and I won't talk about that in detail because Jeff is going to talk about that. And obviously, we can answer questions later. So we are now a regional engineering services business with 4 regions and the nuclear business, very simple. And the presidents are responsible for those regions plus nuclear. But I also, in our recent reorganization, opened a Chief Operating Officer's office with a very specific purpose to continue to optimize this business. We want to continue to maintain the momentum we've built in organic growth. And we want to expand our margins, and you've seen the targets this morning that we've set ourselves which are achievable in a deliberate and very granular and focused approach that Phil Hoare, our Chief Operating Officer, will present later to get to those expanded margins. So how do we differentiate ourselves? Now I believe there are 4 points of differentiation that we have as a company. Three of them are here that I'll talk through, and there's nuclear on another slide. Our talent. Our talent enables this company to bring all of our global capability to a client locally when they need it. That means we've spent a lot of time while we've been moving through our transformation to connect the organization together. And now our customers, when they see us pitch up, they see us pitch up as AtkinsRéalis, not as a local business in a city or a town. The second, and you're going to hear about this a few times today, is that we're not a company that only offers services to our customers at the very front end of the value chain of developing an asset. Many of our peers will do consultancy services and design services and their capability stops there. It does not for AtkinsRéalis. And that's because of our history and the way that we brought those capabilities together under one company of AtkinsRéalis. So we can give advice, and we can project manage the delivery of projects. We can put projects into operation through commissioning, and we can operate those and ultimately decommission it. And the way that plays out is a customer may only want to buy design services from us. But they also want to buy the knowledge of how to move those design services into a delivery phase. And this is something our customers again and again keep saying, we want more of that. Lastly on this slide, we've positioned the company in fast-growing markets. And I'm going to talk on another slide about those because our markets are being supercharged into a super cycle because of things like the energy transition. Our fourth differentiator is our nuclear business. And clearly, nuclear is a high barrier to entry business. It's highly regulated, and it's very scientific. And as you know, we own the exclusive rights to deploy commercially the Canadian CANDU technology. A technology, which you might not know, which is only one of 6 currently licensed large nuclear technologies in the world. And we're seeing this renaissance of nuclear power as countries, states and provinces are all beginning to realize that the only way to get to net zero 2050 is through nuclear power. We are currently winning many life -- extension projects through the CANDU technology. But ultimately, we'll be winning new build contracts from our newly created product called the MONARK, which is a 1 gigawatt state-of-the-art reactor. So we're now seeing that super cycle in nuclear. And on this slide, I just want to show how we feel our markets are under this kind of sustainable growth super cycle. The energy trilemma for a secure, affordable and clean energy, is definitely fueling nuclear, but it's also fueling our capability in hydro, and it's also fueling our capability in transmission and distribution. Some of the long-standing track records that we've got based out of Canada. But decarbonizing assets, such as buildings, decarbonizing railways by making them electric, putting EV infrastructure in place. All of those things are also fueling our markets. Resiliency work as you get rising tides and floods, you've got to increase the drainage, you've got to increase defenses. And you've got to actually cater for these natural disasters through programs that FEMA has, for example, that we win work from. So that's another sustainable driver. And last, certainly, as part of our business, aging infrastructure. In the core geographies that we have, most of the infrastructure was built in the last century, and a lot of it needs replacing. And that's what the IIJA in the U.S. is all about. It's about replacing infrastructure. And this is essential. Nobody wants bridges to fall down. Nobody wants water quality to go down. No one wants standards of living to drop because infrastructures fail in. So we think our sustain -- our markets are sustainable, and we think we're positioned at the right place. So it's not just about today, though. It's about our new strategy, delivering excellence and driving growth. And whilst we're happy with the targets we've set and we're happy with the strategy we have today, we take this 3-horizon model to how we think about strategy. And the optimized part of our strategy here is very much about what we're doing today, the Chief Operating Officer's office, getting those expanded margins in place, continuing the momentum in organic growth. But accelerate is specifically about 3 things; it's about the U.S. land and expand strategy that Steve will talk about later on, it's about making sure that this privileged position we've got with the CANDU technology, we build the capacity to deploy it, and Joe is going to talk about that. But it's also about now moving to an M&A program. And we're not about to get into transformational M&A off the bat. But we are getting into a program, and Jeff is going to talk about that along with Steve in our land and expand strategy. But explore is about the future. What are the things that we have not even got in our strategy today, which we know are going to get into a super cycle that we have the capability to deploy that we need to really think about for tomorrow and fueling further growth tomorrow. An example of this would be the creation of the EMEA region, I am bringing Christine, who you're going to hear from later into the business. Because we feel there's opportunities that are underserved by us beyond the Middle East and the EMEA region. Just a brief view of capital allocation from me. And obviously, I'm going to leave a lot more of this to Jeff in his presentation. Having strengthened the balance sheet now. We're obviously moving to a place of accelerated free cash flow and we're obviously looking forward to M&A and potentially returns to shareholders. But what I want to make just as a quick point here is we are going to take a very methodical step through M&A. We're already into a program. We've already built a team. We're already engaging targets. But they're going to be tuck-in to start with and then we're going to move from there. We're going to build our transactional capability. We're going to improve and build our integration capability. And we're going to go step by step to get to a point we've got more significant M&A. I just want to reassure you around that. So let's get to the targets. You've seen them this morning. I'm sure they're all familiar with you right away from '25 to '27. We picked a greater than number for our Engineering Services business. Clearly, we've been exceeding this in '23 and even Q1. But this is a long-range target, and we want to be prudent. So we've got to exceed on something we're very comfortable with at 8%. We're going to margin expand. We have a very clear plan for this. And the intention is to expand our margins by 200 to 300 basis points into the range of 17% to 18% by '27. In nuclear, we rather than give you a CAGR 1% because it's not necessarily a straight line because of project wins. We thought we'd tell you where we're going to get to, which is $1.8 billion to $2 billion of revenue in 2027, which is significant growth, clearly, and an EBIT range of 12% to 14%. Production and free cash flow, 80% to 90% to adjusted net income ratio of 25% to 27%. We're going to gain a leverage now of 1% to 2%. Now we're obviously in that range. And we actually believe that these are very deliverable targets with the team and the strategy that we have. So to sum up before I hand over. Hopefully, some of these key messages are starting to land that we've done what we said we would do in our previous pivot into growth strategy. That we've simplified this company, and we will end as a simplified engineering services in nuclear business and that we're differentiated in how we win. We connect it. We have the end-to-end capacity which we believe differentiates us. And we've positioned the company in super cycles, and we think those super cycles are sustainable. So with that, I'm going to pass over to Richard to talk us through the U.K. and Ireland, and Richard has got a really bad back. So just bear with him a little bit, if you would, and he'll hobble over. So thanks, Richard.

Thank you, Ian, and good morning, everyone. I'll try and not let my current state affect the presentation. So good morning, I'm Richard Robinson, I'm the President of U.K. and Ireland for AtkinsRéalis and to briefly introduce myself, I'm a chartered chemical engineer. I'm a fellow of the Institute of Civil Engineers in the U.K., and I also hold an MBA from a leading European school. And I've been with the company for just under 5 years. Before that, I was the Chief Operating Officer of a little program you may have heard of in the U.K. called HS2, high-speed 2, probably the world's biggest infrastructure program at the time. And prior to that, I worked for AECOM for about 8 years. I've got over 25 years of experience in construction, infrastructure and high hazard operations and have worked on both the client side and on the deliberate side in major organizations. And I'm really delighted to be with you today to get a chance to talk about the U.K. and Ireland region, one of my favorite subjects, obviously, and share with you our world-class capabilities, our priority markets and some of the projects we're really incredibly proud to be leading on in the region. And I really firmly believe we are #1 in what we do in the UKI. So the key messages I'd like to leave you with today as we go through this presentation is that we're striving in the U.K. and Ireland to deliver growth from a fantastic market-leading platform. We are really well set up and positioned to deliver growth out of the strong markets in defense, power renewables, buildings and water through our well-established scale in those markets. You would expect, I know, we need to be pretty confident about our business and to be a little bit biased. But I think as we go through this presentation, you'll see why there's some substance to that. We have got a major emphasis as well in the business on some really differentiated offers, our technology, our technology integration, our cyber, digital and management consulting skills, all together with our projects and program management, engineering and end-to-end capability that really come together and deliver something different for our clients. And that's why I really believe we're going to extend from our market-leading position. I'll start with a little snapshot than overview of our region. We have 11,000 staff in the region, a revenue of $2 billion and we are by distance, the largest consultancy of our type in the UKI. And as you know, in this business, scale really matters. We offer clients the full spectrum of our services, engineering projects and program management, management consulting. As you can see, we've got quite a nice balance there, about 1/3 each in each of those areas. 3/4 of our work is in the public sector. And whilst transportation does represent over 40% of our revenue, this mix is actually shifting. We're shifting quite strongly as we grow into the real and kept our share in those strong markets of defense, water, buildings and places, power renewables that I mentioned a moment ago. There's 2 takeaways I'd like to leave you with off this slide, though, that I think you'll be excited about. Our growth story. We've achieved growth of over 25% top line revenue growth in the last 2 years in the UK business. And we've coupled this with strong EBITDA margin performance of 15.4%, which is also on a continuous trend of improvement every year. Secondly, our backlog of $1.7 billion sets -- is up 10.7% actually year-on-year, and that sets us up for a really strong forward performance. And it reflects some really big key wins in quarter 1, actually billions of dollars of frameworks in the transport market as it happens in rail signaling, and I'll talk about that a little bit more in a while. So I see plenty of opportunity for us to continue the performance we've shown in the last few years. We've got a high-performing UK leadership team. We've got a continued ambition for growth, and we've got a laser focus on execution. So I take a moment now to talk about our clients and our strategy with our clients and how we embed ourselves wherever possible with clients to form integrated teams. We are designated by the U.K. government as a strategic supplier because we do projects and programs of such national importance. And that gives us an unrivaled position in long-term relationships in the markets that we work in. It's best described actually by a couple of examples. First one I'd pick up the slide here for you is Network Rail. Network Rail are the U.K.'s rail infrastructure operator and owner. And they've got an annual budget of around $20 billion in O&M. We are #1 in the U.K. in rail, and we hold -- and on top of that, we hold a unique position as a supplier of signaling technology. Signaling, obviously, if you're a rail operator, is so important to you and such a strategic plank of what you do, it gives us unrivaled access to our client in this instance. And we've started the year fantastically with those major framework wins I mentioned a moment ago, where with billions of dollars of wins, we will work with Network Rail for the next decade to help them transform their signaling infrastructure to be fully digital, a fantastic program for us to work on. Second of all, I fear that I think it's probably my favorite example, this one actually is Heathrow. As you know, one of the world's busiest hub airports has been for many years, probably will be for many years to come. And we've worked with Heathrow for decades now on expansion, security and efficiency of what they do. If you go through Heathrow, and you put your passport on a gate and you see a little thing go around and it's doing facial recognition. That's a technology-led technology integration program. That's an AtkinsRéalis project. Once you've gone through the gate or you come back around and you go through security, and you don't have to take your liquids of your bags anymore. Again, that is a technology integration project led by AtkinsRéalis. Those are just 2 examples of the future security program that Heathrow is running and we're leading those types of projects. So a fantastic technology and integration that we do is key, but also where we are, I believe, is really key to our clients. And as you see on this map here, we've got 11 key delivery hubs in the U.K. that we work out of, they are strategically positioned in the biggest cities and/or near our biggest clients. And they are hubs of technology. And as Ian mentioned in is intro, they are fantastic places to work, so we don't have to work too hard to get our staff into them. And that enables us to be right on the doorstep with our clients and work really closely coupled with them, which we think is really important to our long-term client relations. So what else makes me confident of our ability to continue to grow? Pretty much the numbers on this slide are what make me confident. These are the total available addressable market numbers that we see through our analysis in the key markets in which we're positioned. And as you can see, they've got strong compound annual growth rates and also amassed to a huge $40 billion of opportunity for us. A couple of other key points here that I think are really important. So these markets are driven by the trends of aging infrastructure replacement, flood resilience, water purification, defense, power and renewables, energy transition as we've talked about in the intro. And there are also, in many instances, backed by committed government spending. And in the U.K., a number of the major government agencies work on 5-year committed funding cycles. And that's really helpful in giving us stability in the market and in our operations. We've looked to the market opportunities and the tailwinds, I want to spend a moment on how we intend and how we work to capture outsized share through our significant competitive advantages in the markets in which we work. Firstly, I mentioned its scale. Scale is key the nature and it's key for a couple of reasons. It's key because the nature of the challenges our clients face are huge, and it means they're particularly looking for partners to be able to deliver at scale with them. And that enables us, again, to build the deep client relations that I mentioned a moment ago. Differentiated solutions, the management consulting, the cyber, the tech, the digital and particularly technology integration. Those examples I gave you on Heathrow are about technology integration, that is something we're seeing an awful lot of demand for in the markets in which we work. Third on here, and I'd really like you guys to spend some time in our -- obviously, in all of our booths outside, but our global technology center, over 4,000 colleagues in Bangalore and other centers in India and beyond. We've got fantastic leadership. We've got incredible technology skills. We play that into a number of our markets in the U.K., and it enables us to do 2 or 3 things. It enables us to deliver technology at scale. It enables us to grow quickly when the client demands it, and it gives us a really strong cost advantage. So GTC is an amazing thing for us. Last and certainly not least, is our ability to deliver the entire project life cycle through end-to-end capabilities. And I won't labor that one because I think Ian explained that fantastically in the intro. So we've got 4 strategic priorities to drive the growth in the UK market. First are our growth programs, and I'm going to go into each one of these in a tiny bit more detail for you in the time allowed. First of all, are our growth programs. Secondly is our approach to key account management, which given our incredible client set is so important to us, our ability to attract and develop the talent that we need and the things that we're doing right now, the real things we're doing on the ground in net 0 and environmental decarbonization for some of our government clients, which bring -- really bring that market to life. First one then is growth programs. And I think the easiest way for me to explain this is in terms of our clients' challenges. So our growth programs really are the biggest challenges that the U.K. faces today. Water and water supply, which is referenced in the [ MPEC ] which is the investment cycle of the water companies, the submarine enterprise energy transition, these are national scale challenges that require companies of scale that work across the entire path - the entire breadth of those markets. And those markets will usually include several government agencies and government clients, several private sector, major contractors and then a longer supply chain. And only companies like ours, AtkinsRéalis, actually touch these markets right across the breadth. We coordinate that and deliver outsized performance through our growth programs. Again, a good example, I think, is the [ MPEC ] water program, where the U.K. government want to regulate, set the prices, water companies deliver the projects with our help. We work across the whole industry, and we bring technology, planning and analysis and then delivery together. And it's a real venture for these guys that we can bring this sort of scale. The nice add to growth programs is when we work in this way and when we work across industries and we bring this -- we bring coordination actually to the government and the challenge, we are able to deliver outsized growth. Closely allied actually to the growth programs and sitting within the growth programs naturally is our key account management strategy. We have, I believe, a client list to die for. Every single major infrastructure client that any company would want is in our client list in the U.K. So that means quite logically that investing in our top 30 clients is a key strategy for us and key account management is pivotal to our success. It drives the cross-sell of all of our services into every market in which we operate with these clients. This approach drives volume, but it also drives big wins. As an example, which we have on there. We recently won a $70 million contract with National Highways with, who are the agency run all of the U.K.'s motorways. And this is as their digital partner. And it's where we are going to supply cybersecurity, digital, management consulting skills over the next 10 years as they transform their operations, both their back office and operations out on the network to be truly digital. And we did this through taking those set of skills, projecting them through our traditional market of transportation and roads where we would typically win big design contracts into that client. A fantastic example of key account management and cross-sell at work. And there's a so what to this, isn't it? So what's always key and here it is. This approach, our growth programs coupled with key account management, delivers amazing results and 2023 saw us grow our top 30 accounts by 19%, which is even faster than the rest of the UKI business. So when you're growing quickly, the challenge is to attract the talent. And I think key to our competitor advantage actually is our ability to attract and retain the very best talent. I'm pleased to report, we're pretty excellent at that. Firstly, as you heard right at the introduction, we have an industry-leading graduate program, an early careers program. I think commitment and this is key. And for a number of years, we've recruited several hundred people into that program over the last 3 years. And last year, in 2023 alone, we recruited 800 people. For those 800 places, we had over 30,000 applications. Now you might be asking, so what's special about your graduate program or your company? Why do they want to come to you? I think the answer lies in something we've talked about already today, and that's our culture, our company culture. It's something I'm really proud of. I think it's authentic. I think it's collaborative. I think we care about our people and our people care about each other, and that really comes across in the recruitment process. It's one thing to hear me say it, you can see a quote from one of our graduates. We could put 300 quotes like this up from our graduates if we needed to. They talk about our reputation, our projects, our culture and the support we give and I want to tell you, it's absolutely typical of what our graduates would say about us. Secondly, a broader population. So in our VOX survey, you can see on the right-hand side here is the broader -- is the whole company staff survey -- we've been working hard every year to improve that. 76%, I think, is the industry benchmark. You can see we started off a tad below that in 2019, and we weren't too happy about that. And you can see where we are now at 85%. And that is not the end of the journey by any means, and we continue to work really hard on making us the best place for people to work. You heard in the intro from Ian, the key role that we're playing in decarbonizing our client physical estates and infrastructure. In the U.K., for example, we have government -- government departments are leveraging our differentiated skills in net 0 to plan, design and implement net 0 solutions today, real things on the ground today in Net 0. A couple of examples there. The government property agency owns the entire property estate that the government runs throughout the country, huge estate using our services to decarbonize and then a specific in there, the Ministry of Justice who we work closely with on net 0. Another thing in terms of our key capabilities. You heard me talk about technology in Heathrow a moment there. Another great example on the right-hand side of this slide is Translink. Translink are the equivalent of network rail in Northern Ireland, the net -- they're the infrastructure owner of rail in Northern Ireland. And we took our U.K. capability in signaling developed over the last decade and we took that to our client in Northern Ireland and the result of that was $150 million win where we will again work for up to a decade, helping Northern Ireland transform their signaling infrastructure. Signaling is a unique capability that we have, I believe, across our client and our competitors who you would be familiar with. So to bring this to a close, this is the UKI. This is 11,000 passionate and purposeful people backed by over 27,000 excellent colleagues in the group thriving in the market. I know we can build on that success over the past 3 years. We've got a proven leadership team. We've got world-class skills and an unrivaled range of differentiated capabilities that I've tried to describe for you today. We're focused on the right markets with tailwinds and funding. And I'm confident, but I'm definitely not complacent about what we need to do going forward. But make no mistake, we're up for that challenge and we definitely intend to continue to succeed. Thank you very much for your time and attention today. I'd like to introduce my [ ExComm ] colleague, Stephanie Vaillancourt, who will talk to you about Canada. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Stephanie Vaillancourt, and I'm the President for Canada at AtkinsRéalis. I joined AtkinsRéalis in 2016 as Senior Vice President and Treasurer. I was named Executive Vice President for Capital in 2019 and I was named President for Capital and O&M in 2021 until my recent appointment as President for Canada in October 2023. I am a CPA. I have a master in finance engineering. I have more than 25 years of experience in multiple industries. I have a very strong background in commercial, people management, strategy, and finance. Over the next 15 minutes, I would be talking to you about how we are excited in Canada about the opportunity ahead of us. The 5 key message that I would like you to retain after my presentation. First, we've been very successful in Canada for more than 100 years. We have an end-to-end solution. Second, you will see that we are well positioned in the power and renewable market to capture more than our fair share of the energy transition investment. Third, we want to increase our presence in Ontario and Western Canada. And we're going to do it by focusing with our strong presence in Quebec, leveraging our global expertise but also leveraging the momentum with the new brand. Next, we want to rebalance our mix of portfolio. We want to be more involved earlier in the life cycle. We want to do more consultancy, strategy and advisory. And finally, but not the least, we're going to focus on margin expansion. And we have clear initiatives already in place. So who we are in Canada? First, we are a strong market leader with the end-to-end solution. We are diversified across all the market. But we are focusing in all the market in energy transition. For example, transportation, electrification, power and renewables, transmission, distribution, hydro, industrial, battery plan, building and places, we are supporting our clients with their journey to net 0. You can see our backlog, $7.3 billion, almost half of the campaign. So we are really well positioned to drive growth. This is just a sample of client. We too, we've been doing business on an annual basis, repeat business every year. I would just highlight 4. If you take Hydro-Quebec. We've been doing business with Hydro-Quebec every year for more than 100 years. We've been involved in the hydro plant in Beijing. We're doing T&D for them. [indiscernible] to having in Quebec. So we've been with them for like 70 years, 75 years. What are we doing for them? Multiple projects the, latest one, the Pierre-de-Île d'Orléans, major project in Quebec, but we do also smaller projects every year. We do regular business. I would like to point out Rio Tinto, private client outside of mining, they have 6 hydro plants, we've been working for them for 97 years on every part of their plant. So we were there to design, but we also there to do the life extension on those plants. And on an annual basis, we've been working with Rio Tinto. BC Hydro. We've been working for the BC Hydro for 50 years, small project to big project, we are supporting them on Geotech, environmental work but we are also supporting them with EV charging station. One big project, and I was visiting, site see with Ian, Christine, Jeff two weeks ago. This is a new 1,100 megawatt hydro plant that we start operating next year. We've been working on that project for 20 years. So you can see we have a very long-term relationship, and this is just a sample of client in all the sector. We are currently very well positioned in Canada, and you will see at the right time. The addressable market, $21 billion, that offer us a lot of opportunity to growth. And what would be the key element of this growth, there's market trend, energy transition investment, transportation investment. Aging of population will result in investment in health care, aging of infrastructure and digital, you will see that we are strategically well positioned to capture those opportunities by our differentiator. What are our differentiators? We have 3 main differentiators. First, we have a real end-to-end service offering. So we understand all the life cycle of an asset. Give you an example, we were selected on Surrey-Langley Skytrain Extension. Why were we selected? We were selected because we understand design, but we also understand construction management, procurement, project delivery. That is why they select us. We also -- we are leveraging our global experience. We're leveraging our global experience to deliver locally. Another example of a project that we just announced that we won this is the TESCanada. So maybe some of you know this project. This is a green hydrogen project in Mauricie. Why did they select us because we did a similar project in U.K. with Richard. And we were able to bring their experts supporting us here in Canada on that project. That is the differentiator. Our third differentiator is that we are investing in digital. We are investing in digital, so to connect people data, but also to help us deliver more efficiently. But all of this, it's only possible with our people. So today, what I can tell you about our people in Canada, we have right now an attrition rate that is at the lowest level, even lower than pre-pandemic. Caroline, in my Canadian team, really discussed about the entry-level program, but we have program at every level in the organization. We are able today to attract, to retain, but the most important to develop our talent. The Vox survey, Richard discussed the Vox survey. In Canada, we are also well above industry benchmark. And I can tell you, the team in Canada are so proud to work for AtkinsRéalis. There's a big momentum with the new brand. What are our priority? We have 4 priority and I would go more into the details in the next few minutes. First, we want to increase scale in some of the markets that we are underrepresented. Second, we're going to capture -- we want to capture a lot of the investment related to energy transition. The third one, we want to leverage our global capability in the COO office to move up the value stream. And finally, and as I said, not the least, we are going to focus on margin expansion with clear initiatives. First, we have a strong presence today in Quebec, and we have very good foundation outside of Quebec in Ontario and Western Canada, but we see significant opportunity to grow on those underrepresented markets. How are we going to do it? First, we will leverage the momentum of the new brand. That is opening door for us with clients. Second, there's going to be significant investment towards net zero. And you will see in the next page that we are a market leader in that sector. We will -- third, we will leverage our global expertise. We will leverage still the COO office to help us deliver in Canada. And we also leverage through the nuclear. There's a big momentum about nuclear in Canada. So client wants to discuss nuclear, so we are going with them to discuss nuclear. And finally, we will also leverage partnership with indigenous-owned business. Last week, we announced, for example, we announced a partnership with Shwe Miikaan. So for the people here in Toronto, so Shwe Miikaan, so we are working with them to develop the Highway 69 between Sudbury and north of Ontario. We also announced in 2022 a partnership with Indigenous E3. So that is how we're going to leverage their presence outside of Quebec. Second priority, I mentioned earlier that we are a leader in power and renewables. So we are focusing on helping our clients achieve their goal. Just want to highlight on this page, the capital commitment by private sector but government and Crown Corporation, 2 of our regular clients, BC Hydro and Hydro Quebec both announced program of $100 billion in the next decade. The government of Alberta also announced $35 billion of spending to our greener grid. So that is just example. Today, when I look at AtkinsRéalis in Canada is the center of excellence into Atkins for the power and renewables. I will just give you an example. The team in Canada has worked on more than 22 -- not on more than, 22% of all the hydro project in the world. Not only in Canada, everywhere, but we will not stand by our prior success. We will continue to invest in our capability and developing our people. Today, we are able to attract. We are able to retain and we're able to develop our people. We have -- you can see on this slide, we have a full service offering in that sector. It's not only transmission and distribution and hydro, we also understand hydrogen. We understand carbon capture. We understand storage. So we have this full service of capability here based in Canada. So we see substantial opportunity in front of us in that sector. Fourth, we want to move in the value chain. So when we look at our current mix of portfolio, we are more focusing on engineering and design help to project delivery. But we are looking to rebalance this mix, and we'll do it by the support of our COO office. I will give you an example. Right now in Canada, we did not have an architecture and a master planning business, but globally probably something you don't know, we are the eighth largest architect firm in the world. So we are investing in that practice now in Canada, and we'll do it by the support of [indiscernible] Group with the support of GTC. We're also looking at our key account management program that we put in place, Richard discussed the KAM program, we put in place 2 years ago in Canada. So we are developing deeper relationship with clients. What would be the effect of moving up the value chain, deepening our relationship with clients and it should improve also our margin. I would give you an example of a project that we've been very successful, Green Line. What is the Green Line? This is a transportation. This is the largest investment in rail in Alberta. Why have we been selecting to be the delivery partner? Because of our differentiator. We have a real understanding of the life cycle of an asset. So we didn't understand predesign, design, construction, procurement, but also operation and maintenance. So that was what the client was looking for. He was also looking to a partner that has done similar projects outside of Canada. So we did leverage Richard Group in the U.K. So that is the reason we have been selected as a delivery partner for the Green Line project. So today, we have more than -- we have 222 people working part time or full time on this project and we'll be there with the client for the next 6 or 7 years. And the client is very happy. He's very happy because we are an integrated team, and we are developing the skills into his firm. So that is an example of project that we want to do more. Margin improvement, our fourth priority. So this is a journey that already started. It's a journey that started 2 years ago. So we have done things. First, we became a much integrated team in Canada. Before we were mostly focusing province by province by being much more integrated result in higher chargeability -- higher utilization. We also implemented KAM, Key Account Management program. That results in higher win rate and we implanted discipline on [ costs ] and also commercial. So today, when I look at our backlog, we are -- the backlog is at a higher rate than what we are currently delivering because we have been able to secure higher pricing, but we still have a lot of opportunity. One of them is the GTC. There's a booth outside about the GTC. So I invite you to go look at it. Our journey with the GTC in Canada only started 2 years ago. You will learn from Phil that the journey in U.K. started in 2007, if I recall. So a very long time ago. So we're not at the same level of usage. So there's a lot of opportunity there. Second, again, moving the value stream as our third priority should improve our margin. So what we're aiming for is to have a mix comparable of what we have outside of Canada. Fourth one, we're looking at continuing improving our project delivery, and we're going to do it through the COO office. And finally, we want to control our costs and because we are investing in digital and AI, so this is how we're going to drive margin. The takeaway for me. Again, it's the same. We want you to remember, we have been very successful in Canada for more than 100 years. We have been very strong historically in power and renewables, there's a real opportunity, a big opportunity ahead of us. Ontario, Western Canada is an opportunity for us. We also want to move up the value chain. We are investing in architect and master planning where we have real expertise globally. And we want to readjust the mix and margin expansion is a priority for us. Thank you very much. And I will ask my colleague, Steve to talk to you about the U.S. and Latin America.

Hi, everybody. My name is Steve Morriss. I've been in the industry for 35 years and still loving every day of it, just slightly lesser than when I started. For over half of that time, I've been working for AtkinsRéalis in 2 spells and since I returned to the team 3.5 years ago, I've been working. Before that, I was working 10 years with AECOM where I eventually ended up running their $7 billion U.S., Canada and Latin America business. So I'm here to talk to you about our U.S. business and our Global Minerals & Metals business. The third of the 4 regions that we'll hear about before we have a break. So at the essence of the presentation that I want to talk to you about, we've got a clear plan which we're executing successfully to become a top 10 provider in that fantastic strong growing market that is the United States. The second thing is that market, we believe to be very strong with some very good long-term tailwinds. Some would describe it as the best market we've had in the U.S. for 40 years. Three years ago, I was here talking to you about our land and expand strategy in the U.S., and I'm pleased to say that's been working incredibly well. And that not only has given us a good foundation to move forward in the next 3 years, but also confidence that we can hit the targets and we've been working very hard to develop a high-performing culture in our team, like you've heard from all of my colleagues that we think is really starting to give us an edge. And now we're in a position where we can start to accelerate that growth by the investment, both organically and inorganically. So let me give you a sense of that foundation that we've built and that we will build from. To a team of 6,100 and rising, we hired 213 people last month, 33 last Monday. We are winning the war of talent. We've got a great team. It's really growing strongly. That backlog of close to $1.6 billion, probably understates the forward visibility of workload we've got because it's been fantastic at winning onto these big framework contracts that are common in the U.S., and that is giving us -- and our track record of turning that into revenue is really strong. So that gives us real confidence for the future. If you look at the mix of our business, it should give a flavor of the business that we've got, 60% public sector, 40% private sector. If you take our Global Minerals & Metals business out of that, it's about a 75% public sector, 25% private sector split. You'll see we've got a really good balance of capability in the company. And although our strongest market is transportation, it is a great market for us nationally and internationally, and it's something that we're already well inside the top 10 in the U.S. [ for ]. We've now established a strong foothold through our land and expand strategy in every single market that Ian said the company is focused upon. And that gives us a real ability to move forward in the future. So we believe ourselves to be well positioned and making progress. Now given the scale of the U.S. business, I'm going to spend most of my time today talking about that, but I did want to give you a glimpse of our great Minerals & Metals business, our M&M business. It will save us all a few minutes if I just call it M&M moving forward. This is a market where we've got a really strong legacy as a company. We're known as being a market leader and we're particularly strong in the core minerals and metals processing that is the heart of how those customers get their successes. This is an area that, since we started to reinvest in the business, has been one of the fastest-growing parts of our whole portfolio. We've got a strong team and the market, which has historically been quite cyclical, we believe is going to be long term, stable driven by a combination of demand, just the demand for the materials to transform the infrastructure that we'll be talking about all of this morning, supported by the particular need for minerals and metals like copper and lithium and iron as we go through the energy transition. And that's coupled with the drive for decarbonization, which not only drives demand in the industry itself, but also demand to transform the industry, and we think we're really well placed to do both of those things. We're very disciplined in this market. We choose our clients carefully. We choose our projects carefully. We're making good progress. I wish I had time to walk you through that market more, but ask me any question you like afterwards. So back to the United States. I hope that and expect that nobody in the room needs a lot of convincing, what a fantastic market this is. It's strong, it's big. There are some amazing headwinds. It buys on quality and capability and delivery credentials and that really suits us. And in each of the markets that we've now established ourselves in, we have got really strong growth that we can see. And actually, most particularly good for us is that whether it's from a geographic perspective or a market perspective, the markets that are growing most strongly are the ones who're already best established in. And those tailwinds are bipartisan tailwinds. For those of you who travel around the -- you have a great experience with Richard [ Kidd ] in Heathrow. But if you travel along the roads, the railways that there are and the highways of the U.S., you'll see that even with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, there is tremendous, tremendous need for continued investment in all of the things that Ian has talked about earlier. Energy transition is an issue for the U.S. as well. And there's a particular emphasis driving our industrial business, particularly around the need for security of supply. And so a lot going on that really gives us tailwinds and we believe ourselves to be well positioned. So we're making very strong progress. And one of the key factors there is our ability so consistently to win. Our team in the U.S. is driving the best win rates by value of any team I've ever been part of in my very long career. And although every client is unique and every bid needs special attention, if I was to draw out the 3 or 4 themes that I think really position us well to continue to win. The first is we've just got a really good approach from the first client engagement all the way through to the successful delivery of the project. We recently worked with a major management consultancy and asked them to see -- to look for areas and how we can improve it. And they came back and told us they thought it was the best approach to winning work that they had ever seen in the industry. The connectivity, the collaboration not is a lot of fun, but it really works for us. And I have to say the boss did do a good job of describing the end-to-end capability. All I would say is that the more that we are talking to our customers about things like through life, the digital journey, the sustainability journey that starts to bring even more emphasis to the fact that we've got that end-to-end capability. And our people -- we've got a great team, they're really flexible. They work well with our customers. Our customers say when they're going -- when there's challenges on the project that our people respond really well. We partner well, not only with our clients, not only with our partners in the supply chain but also with the communities we serve, and that enables us to keep on winning at those great rates. So as we look to put this business into the top 10, and I want some of Richard's scale that does really matter, then we've identified 4 areas that we really want to prioritize. The first is to grow with key customers. As I described to you 3 years ago, with a number of customers, we've developed a position that's not just #10 in the industry, but it's the first, second or third supplier that they will go to. And even with those great cornerstone customers, we've got an amazing opportunity to continue to grow. If I take our top 4 customers in the U.S., we've grown by over 20% with those top 4 customers in the last 2 years. So even with our best customers, we're the best supplier, we've got a huge opportunity to continue to grow. But on top of that, we have the opportunity to diversify where we've got those strong local presences that are created by those cornerstone clients. So for example, around Florida, where we're super strong with Florida Department of Transport and the Florida Department of Emergency Management, we're starting to win in the markets of transit and water and power and all of the other markets that we do. And that really -- that diversification around those strong hubs makes a big difference to us. And then we will continue our land and expand strategy. It's something we know how to do. We've had a good track record of doing and the acceleration that we can now do as we start to invest organically, and by acquisition will really help to pace us up. And that culture, again, really, we'll keep on building that because it's crucial to how we move forward. So put that on to a picture, the green on this map represents the 6 hubs we've got. The 3 where we're already quite concentrated and we're starting to really diversify out around Texas, Georgia, Florida, those really fast-growing kind of southeastern states. And then the 3 other hubs where the market is huge, where there's big opportunity for us to continue land and expand, the Southwest, which particularly has opportunity too around the industrial space, New York, New Jersey and the Mid-Atlantic. And those kind of [ pink series ], whatever you want to call them, spots on the map are AtkinsRéalis offices. And you'll see the concentration where we're strongest. But you will also see a footprint that looks like what we are now becoming a national company and just next week, I'm out there opening our -- sorry, next month, opening our new New Jersey office. So look, it's early in the morning for a chart with a load of 6-point font on it. But -- so I kind of half tempted to apologize for that but I won't because I think this is a representation that's really important about the work we've been doing to build this platform to become a top 10 provider in the United States. So every single one of those little labels there and those pink dots are on AtkinsRéalis client, where we have done what is some of the toughest part of our land and expand strategy to turn up to get to know those customers, to really build the relationship to get the confidence for them to put us on the tender list, to be shortlisted, to win, to deliver, to start creating local teams and local talent. And that is a client list that is enough to give us -- we don't need new clients to become a top 10 provider in the U.S. We just need to do what we do best, to continue to build great relationships and win work once they've got to know us and they've got to love us. And with the aspiration of being able to get to the same level that we've got of those 3 customers that are pulled out in larger font there, people like Florida DOT, one of the best customers in the United States, we're their #1 provider, providing a full range of services. In the federal side, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, another crucial customer getting more and more busy. And if you want to know more about climate, I can see through the window, somebody that says, climate resilience is our booth that has [ Izzy ] and Maria there who will tell you a lot more about that. That is a customer. So everything from preparation and insurance-related work, one of those horrible storms hit the southeast of the U.S. It's AtkinsRéalis people who are actually going out almost as first responders trying to support those communities, understand how they can help restore power, restore shelter and then build those communities back more resilient than before. That's the kind of work we do and some amazing work we do in the semiconductor. If you have never been to a semiconductor plant. It's an amazing place to go. We are really good at that sort of stuff. It's an area that's growing very fast. So we've got the customer base to become a top 10 provider. And all of this is supported by our ability now to do M&A. And as Ian said earlier, we're taking this very thoughtfully. There's a number of us in the company. We've got extensive experience, not only of doing those deals and finding those targets and winning them over and closing the deals but also crucially of integrating successfully and learning the lessons from when it didn't go so well and driving ultimately value and improved profitability out of those new partners to the company. We've got a very systematic approach. We're building up a team. We're starting small. But given our land and expand success, if we -- if you think about how quickly we've been able to grow by just having 1 or 2 people parachuting in, to be able to put 200 or 300 on the ground in areas where we're not literally strong. And of course, the good news is that our scale here or lack of scale works for us. There are so many companies in such a fragmented market that are complementary to what we do and the combination of our culture and our growth story and our strengthening brand means a lot of companies very interested. We're having some great conversations. We intend to do 2 or 3 deals in the next 12, 18 months. We're working very hard on it. We will not do a bad deal, but we think it can really help us to accelerate as well as the organic efforts that we're putting in place. So I wanted to close out by looking at a couple of examples of exactly how we do that land and expand strategy. And I'll start with New York, where I'll be next week, speaking to a bunch to clients with Ian in the mass transit agency running of the metros in New York and a few other things as well. Historically, not a client we've had much of a relationship with. And as part of our land and expand strategy, we've put some of our best people and transferred them into New York. We've hired some local people who understand that client better than we did and we started to win work with them, small work that we've delivered successfully. Most recently, we've won 2 $20 million contracts, one in the area of sort of station accessibility, the other in the area of train communications. In both cases, our U.K. team had delivered these kind of projects, very successful on multiple occasions. So what I say about Richard, he doesn't just walk, though [ talks a talk ] about collaboration. He actually has supported us strongly with his team to the extent even of offering up one of his best project directors to be the nominated Project Director for this team, and that helped us to win that project. Our pipeline with the MTA now measures hundreds of millions of dollars. In Miami-Dade where we haven't had a power presence, we're a strong local team with 60 years knowledge of how to deliver in my Miami-Dade. They knew our strategy. They spotted an opportunity for a power project. They brought in our national team, who in turn brought in great experts from Christine's team and Stéphanie's team, and we won an $80 million contract for the Miami-Dad waste-to-energy plant, one of the largest, highest tech waste-to-energy plant in the U.K. And now we're talking about a couple of others with a couple of other clients. And in the Mid-Atlantic, just won the DC Water program, again, a market leader, winning against all comers off the back of technology and partnering with capability and some of our local capability. And finally, and never last, the culture. I've talked, I guess, a bit subjectively about our culture in the last 5, 10 minutes, but I really want to give you some basis for why we believe that we're really winning the war on talent, and we feel this is a differentiator for us. We've had 1,100 people, 22% growth over the 2 years to the end of 2023, and we continue to do that. So we can attract at the most senior level and all the way through to the most junior level, really strong talent. We're really looking after those people. Our voluntary attrition, I went all the way back to 2016, where I ran out of data but our voluntary attrition rate, the rate at which we can hold on to our great people is now better than at any time that it has been if you exclude those kind of few months of the deepest part of the pandemic, and we continue to move to what is really an optimum position on that side of things. And on our employee survey score, our survey company that runs these kind of things nationally said that our engagement was the best that they've ever seen in the industry, and it's a full 15% better than the industry benchmark. And those, I think, are the facts behind why we believe we've got an edge on the culture. So just to close out with a few things I hope you'll take away. We've got an ambitious plan to become a top 10 provider in the U.S. We're executing that successfully. We see some opportunities in M&M too that are significant. These are strong markets with some real headwinds, and we think we're very well positioned for them. The land and expand strategy has been really working for us and now we're able to invest to really kickstart and build that scale and get well inside the top 10. And all of that off the base of a fantastic team, are up for this, love working for our company and are excited as I am about the journey forward. So thanks very much for your time. It's been really good to speak to you. To bring us home on the final leg of this around the world trip this morning, is the newest great member of our team, Christine, who will talk to you about EMEA. So thank you very much.

[Foreign Language]. How are we feeling? It's -- we're getting there. It's an exciting journey around the world, and I hope you can tell from all of our presentations, we're very excited to tell you about it. My name is Christine Healy and I'm the new kid on the block here at AtkinsRéalis. I joined the company just a few months ago. I've joined the company after a lengthy career in senior management in oil and gas where I have been responsible for M&A and strategy. I have led oil and gas operations in 12 countries. And I was the Global Head of Carbon Neutrality for a super major with the best track record of reducing emissions while improving profitability. And I am delighted to return home to my native Canada and join this amazing team. But enough about me because I really want to get to talking about EMEA, the Asia, Middle East, Australia, part of AtkinsRéalis. So as we go through what we're doing in EMEA, I hope you're going to take away here that we have a long history in this region -- in a rapidly growing region. And so now we are extremely well positioned to take advantage of that growth. We deliver innovative solutions to our clients across the region, and we have a long track record of doing so. And I'm going to give you some examples of where today we are providing pragmatic, practical, innovative solutions to help our clients solve problems. And the story across EMEA, I hope you're going to see, is that we build on strong local presence, local knowledge, local capability, and we combine that with the global expertise, and that honestly is what gives us the special sauce to succeed across EMEA. So let's get into it. You've seen this format of the slide already, and I thank my colleagues were doing such a good job of loading this up, makes it easy for me. So what we are in EMEA is we're a market leader in buildings and places, transportation, industrial solutions and energy transition. And we provide a wide range of technical services all across the value chain, as my colleagues have discussed. You can see we're a little over $1.1 billion in revenue. We have a strong backlog. We have a massive addressable market, $68 billion, which I would say is a bit on the conservative side as we stretch out in Asia. We have nearly 5,000 employees in the region, and these 5,000 employees are deeply committed to AtkinsRéalis, and they have a huge amount of pride in working for this company. And we're seeing great growth in EMEA, strong growth, strong performance, and we have huge numbers of opportunities in front of us in the coming years. So let's talk a bit more about what we're doing across the region. So if you look at the map here, you can see where we have our people positioned across the region, in the Middle East, in Asia and in Australia. And we have been strategic about where we are located. And in many of these offices, we have been there for decades, 30 years in some cases, nearly 50 years in other cases. These are regions we know well with people who are deeply connected to their local communities. But I want to zoom out for a minute and talk about some macro trends happening across the region because why are we even talking about EMEA. But the reality is that the growth rate coming towards us in this part of the world is tremendous. So as many of you know, Asia's GDP is expected to grow by more than 6% a year. In most of the Middle East, more than 4% a year. These GDP growth rates are key to the activities that our company is good at. And I will add as well that today, on a per capita basis, the country that is spending the most on infrastructure in the world is Saudi Arabia, and we're extremely well positioned in that market. So perhaps no surprise, but alongside the GDP growth also is coming population growth and population growth all across Asia is significant. More so than that, we see that with that population growth, people are moving into cities and this urbanization trend is huge. The United Nations predicts that by 2050, more than 80% of the globe's population will be living in cities. It's an enormous shift in human behavior. And for a company like ours that does all the things that make cities work, it's a tremendous opportunity. So we see that, that gives us opportunity for water, for roads, for rail, and critically, one of the third thing that I really focus on for the EMEA region, energy. People need energy with the growing population, with urban trends, we see that the demand for energy is rapidly increasing, and people want that energy to be reliable. They want it to be affordable. And if possible, they want it to be green. And this is a huge delivery for many countries now to try to understand how are they going to get energy to their people and how are they going to improve their grids in order to be ready for the future. So the demand is huge, and we see energy transition as a key driver in the region. We'll talk some more about that a little later. But I hope you're starting to see why I'm so excited about EMEA because we are well positioned to take advantage of these trends. We have the people, we have history, we have a solid brand, and we have the global expertise to be able to deploy to take advantage of this. So the opportunities are there, but at the same time, in EMEA, we're very focused on being great at the things where we deliver differentiated value. So let's talk a bit about that. In Asia, we have a more than 30-year history and our main focus over that time has been on transportation, and we have a growing industrials practice. In industrials, we work with our clients who are also seeing the opportunity in Asia, who are opening manufacturing facilities, who are deepening and growing in Asian markets, and we go right along with them to help them deliver their solutions. So we provide this end-to-end capability for project management when they're moving into a new country, when they're setting up new facilities, and that's in several key industrial markets. We see this as a rapidly growing part of our business. In the Middle East, we are the go-to firm for design of buildings, and I hope you will visit the booth outside where you can see some of the projects that we're doing in the Middle East and some of the projects that we have done in our 50-year history in the region. We have been delivering on projects in that region for 50 years. People know us. People know that we deliver excellence. And I'm going to tell you more about it because some of these projects are absolutely jaw-dropping. And in Australia, there is an enormous opportunity in front of us related to energy transition. So many of you know that Canada has one of the greenest grids in the world, that it's only -- it's less than 20% fossil. The flip is the case in Australia that, in fact, almost 80% of their grid is fossil. And the people of Australia are demanding that, that change. Now Australia has an ace up its sleeve because it has great undeveloped hydroelectric resource and the company I think in the world who is best positioned to help them deliver on developing that hydroelectric resource is AtkinsRéalis. So we're working very closely with Stephanie and her team and with our team on the ground in Australia to position ourselves to be taking advantage of this swing in Australia. We also, by the way, see that Australia has a very interesting and rapidly growing defense market where Richard's team brings a lot of expertise with the work they've done in the U.K., and we think that transfers beautifully over to the Australian market as well. So we see 2 huge opportunities for us in Australia, which brings us to then this is what we're looking at, but then how are we going to do it. And we do it really in 3 ways in EMEA. First of all, we deliver exceptional solutions. The things that we do are differentiated because they are truly excellent. We solve hard problems, and we solve them in practical ways. This end-to-end capability that my colleagues have been talking about is key because we know what it means to come up with a solution that works for the 30-year history of the asset. We know what that takes, and we deliver that day after day. We're diversifying and growing in our identified markets. Because we have this strong local presence, because we have local credibility and local knowledge, we are able to choose where we want to be, be selective about the opportunities that make the most difference for us and that match our skill set the best. We have an overwhelming number of opportunities in the Middle East that we actually do not take advantage of, that we select not to do those in favor of things where we know we deliver differentiated value, and we know we bring excellence. And of course, I hope you're going to see again and again that we leverage and deploy global expertise. We have some great people in AtkinsRéalis, and I will tell you the one thing that I know about engineers is that engineers love good work. And when the good work comes, they are motivated and driven by that and truly these teams deliver exceptional results. But now I really want to get into the good stuff because I want to talk about some of our projects. And like I say, out at the booth, you're going to hear even more about it. And I invite you to go talk with [ Parash and Debra], who can tell you even more about these projects, but I'm going to take what time I have left to tell you a bit about them. And first up is New Murabba and the Mukaab. So New Murabba is reimagining what the downtown of a major city is. It's in Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia, and it is truly exceptional. This will be a walkable 15-minute sustainable city. It will incorporate commerce and culture and green living, all in one reimagined downtown. And in the center of the downtown will be the iconic Mukaab, which means cube. And you might be able to tell why from the picture. So this enormous cube will be built in downtown and AtkinsRéalis, won an international design competition with this Mukaab concept, and it is truly exceptional. I'm going to brag a little bit. I can't help it because it's just so amazing. This structure is going to be, when it's complete, the largest built structure in the world. So this cube is the outside. Inside, there is a sphere, a dome and inside the dome, this enormous tower. So to give you an idea of the scale of this cube, 20 Empire State Buildings can fit inside this cube. It is truly massive. And inside, because of this structure that we're building inside the cube, it's a virtual reality, digital experience unlike anything we've seen in human history. And it is truly exceptional. I cannot do it justice when I explained it. So I invite you to really see the video where it comes to life. But our teams are doing exceptional work here for planning and project management and design and we're delivering master planning that is at the top of what industry can deliver. And fundamentally, the teams are delivering the future. This is a city unlike anything we have ever seen, and it will transform the way we think about cities in the world. This is all part of Vision 2030 for Saudi Arabia. Another project in Saudi Arabia is King Salman Park, also in Riyadh. This park is 4x larger than New York Central Park. We have just recently celebrated the opening of a tunnel that moves traffic underneath the park, so people can still move around the city, preserving the green space of the park. This creates an incredible living environment for the people of Riyadh. This beautiful park, the world's largest urban park, green cover. It has an impact, reduces temperature. It has parks and cultural monuments, and it's an absolutely spectacular location for the people of Riyadh. And we bring the project management for that project. And in fact, our digital capabilities have been key on this one. Our project management tools that we use were able to be deployed so we could ramp up extremely quickly and run the logistics for this project. And we've also deployed an award-winning site-wide digital tool that tracks all site activities to improve efficiency, but also improve safety. And so far, in fact, we have achieved more than 15 million work hours on this project within our scopes with 0 incident. This is technology in action. So I want to shift to something completely different. In Asia, you might be surprised to know that we run the logistics for the Singapore Grand Prix and AtkinsRéalis has been doing this for more than 10 years. For those of you who are F1 fans in the room, you know that the Singapore Grand Prix is a street race. So we have to change the streets into the track and when the race is over, we have to change it back again and we do. We coordinate more than 50 contracts. Everything from when you arrive with your ticket at the kiosk to when you want to get something to eat, to when you want to go to the restroom, to first aid response, to maintaining the track, to dealing with any events that happened during the race. All of that is coordinated by AtkinsRéalis teams. We're really proud of the work that we do on that. And honestly, it's a tremendous experience for all of the visitors who come to that event. And then finally, I want to discuss a new innovative agreement we are entering with a company called John Holland in Australia. For those of you who don't know, John Holland is a Tier 1 construction company in Australia, and they also see the tremendous opportunity in front of us with respect to energy transition. So we are entering an agreement with John Holland where we will provide them engineering services for these large-scale energy transition projects in Australia. And we're very excited to find a win-win, a win for John Holland because they get access to our global engineering capabilities, a win for us because we gain even deeper knowledge and access to the Australian market and fundamentally a win for Australia because they're going to get the best of both of us to deliver on projects in the country. So for me, I'm really pleased that we've been able to enter this agreement. Work is already starting. There will be more to come on this in the months and years to follow. We will work with John Holland on some things. This is one leg of our Australian strategy. Another part of our Australian strategy will have us bidding on our own project work separate from them, but these things tie us together in terms of building out a bigger Australian presence. And I would also point to it as an example that there are ways beyond M&A to deepen and strengthen in a region. So we're very excited, and it's a great example of how we're taking our local knowledge and capability and combining with our global expertise and delivering some great solutions. So I know I'm standing between us and the Q&A. So I'll just have a few last things to say. Hopefully, you can see from the presentation that we are driving growth across EMEA. We build on a strong brand, strong local presence, strategic positioning and the fact that we know these markets and they know us. We have a long track record of delivering innovative solutions. Some of the projects we're doing are at the leading edge of design in the world. And we're leveraging our global expertise combined with that local knowledge to solve customers' problems and deliver excellent results, and more importantly, profitable growth. So thank you all for the time. I think now Denis is coming back to lead our Q&A. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Christine. I will now ask Ian, Richard, Stephanie and Steve to join me and Christine on the stage for the first Q&A. I will ask you to keep your question relating to the presentation that we have done so far. We will have a second Q&A session later on. If you have questions for our CFO, CEO, our Nuclear President. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. So we'll start with the floor. Yes, Chris?

Chris Murray from ATB Capital Markets. Maybe my first question is more for Stephanie. You talked a little bit about margin profile in Canada, and it's one of the areas that I think we started looking at when we saw the segmented areas, maybe a little bit weaker and it was surprising to us. Can you maybe expand a little bit on the path towards getting to what I call normalized margins? And then we'll talk about maybe the 200 to 300 basis point improvement from there.

So as I mentioned, the pricing improvement is a journey. It's a journey that we started. So you will -- you should see improvement year after year, but it's a journey. So we are aiming to get to the same margin, but it's a journey. As I mentioned during my presentation, the backlog we have is already at a higher pricing. So we've been successful on winning project at a higher pricing of what we are currently delivering. So I hope I answered your question, but you should see step by step.

And this is one is more for Steve. You talked about maybe 2 to 3 acquisitions over the next 12 to 18 months. And we saw the -- we saw the map of how that looks. Can you -- I know you've talked about tuck-ins, but tuck-ins can take a lot of different formats. Can you maybe give us a little more color on the scale of what you're thinking, practice areas and how that dovetails into what you have now?

Yes. Thanks, Chris. So this is something that we're working through well, and we just thought perhaps even to be quicker than 12 months given some of the conversations we're having. But the sort of scale we're looking at is 300, 400 person business perhaps to start with maybe that will be the first 1 or 2, that sort of scale, I think, gives us the ability to move forward significantly, but allows us still to sort of build up our capability and in things like integration. Now, I think you just need to look at our math and see that areas like the Northeast, New Jersey and the Mid-Atlantic would be great places for us to look at. And markets like water and transit would be really good. From a capability perspective, I think we're really quite balanced already so that, I think, is good for us. And there are plenty of targets out there, as I think you know from our discussions last night. So that's a bit of a flavor. But I have to say, you can go to our strongest heartland of Florida and you could pick out a company there that operates in transportation where we could make a very strong case for addition there just because there is so much still to go at even our most strong heartlands. And that's why I say, I think we've got some really good opportunities and options here. And always culture and capability will be combined when we look at those things. So hopefully that answers the question.

Any other questions from the floor? Yes, Benoit?

Benoit Poirier from Desjardins. Just to pursue on the U.S. strategy through M&A. Could you talk -- there's been a lot of activity over the last few years, so you're not the only one looking at tapping the M&A in the U.S. Could you talk maybe about the key differentiators at AtkinsRéalis? And kind of how do you approach the M&A, you source the deal and why companies would love to join you as opposed to some other firms that are already...

It's a great question. We're perhaps to be the only people who haven't been doing it. So look, when we start talking to companies and they start get to know us, it is always about -- my experience is it's always about the cultural fit. That remains really superb and at the top of our list. As people get to know us, they look beyond our sort of outward capability into the people we've got and the way we do business. We share with them things like our ability to retain, attract, develop our people. That's a big attractor, I think, to people. Also the fact that people understand just how important they can be. We're not a serial acquirer. Some of our competitors have done over 100 acquisitions in the last few years. And there's a sense of some of those businesses going into a bit of a sausage machine. This is so important to us and those potential targets really get that, and they're excited. If you look at a company even at the scale of 300 or 400 people in New York, New Jersey, that is just a game changer for us, and we're almost reverting into them in that space, and they like that. And then we also have the constant cycle of [ PE ], people coming out of the [ PE ] cycle and saying, actually, I want something a bit different. So those are some of the things that I think are attracting people to us.

Question in the back there.

You put on the screen a map of the clients in the U.S. And you said, you don't need to win any new clients and you can grow with the existing, and you've been working on that land and expand strategy for a few years now. And I'm just wondering you also spoke about going to New York next week to meet with potential customers on the transit side. So I'm just wondering if you could give some insight into the evolution of those client relationships? How long it takes to get into a segment where you're not currently doing a lot of work, the lead times and just how that strategy has come to the current state and going forward as well?

Yes, that's -- it's a really good question. And that map would have looked very different 3 years ago with a lot less. I could have really expanded the font size on it 3 years ago. So a lot of those clients are new to us as we've gone into that land and expand strategy and then we've been working this for the last 3 years. So we're not at first base here, we're really moving forward. And the way I think about it is, it does take time. Relationships are really important. People want to understand that we get them as a customer is different to build highways in Washington state than it is in Florida. And you've got to know their way of doing things, you've got to build the relationship with them and the supply chain and partners. And it does take years for us to get there. And so that is why I think it's so important when we've laid those foundations and got to that point of we are now a trusted supplier. And this is in a market which has been constrained by resorts. So people are actively looking for new suppliers. One of the things I spoke to the D.C. Water Chairman, Chief Executive, when we were in D.C. 2 weeks ago about the kickoff of that great win. He said we want to make a real statement of bringing new suppliers, and this is not just a shop for -- I won't mention the 2 companies he said, but he said that the market thinks we only do business with these 2 companies. We want to show that we don't. We need that diversity. So it does take years, but we've got some good years behind us and the ability to invest will, I think, accelerate our progress.

Sorry, do you feel just on that, that customers want -- like you spoke about in D.C., that water customer wanting to work with more than those A and B suppliers. Do you feel like that's a trend across the board that you're seeing in the U.S. and other geographic areas? Or is it more related to that?

It's definitely a trend. And I think there is a sense of resource constraint right? And people are really surprised to see just how able we are in a resource-constrained industry to bring in the talent that we've been able to when others haven't been growing that sort of -- that fast. But also one of the things, and I should have probably talked more about our drive to improve our profitability, but we see the opportunity not only to improve our profitability through the economies of scale, but also by bringing resource from our GTC team that you'll meet outside. And the rate at which we're using GTC is 2.5x this year, what it was, for example, last year, something like that. So it's not only our ability to attract talent. So I think that is a big part of what customers see in us. They are new capability with the innovation, with the global knowledge that we've got, and they like it.

A question there in the back.

Yes. So Bobby Reynolds with Fidelity Canada. This question is about the U.K. and Ireland. Could I ask about your expectations for the growth over market there? You provided the industry CAGRs and then as a follow-up, as the mix shifts away from transportation, how does that impact the margins of that business, if at all?

Yes, sure. So I think the way to think about this is what -- as a company, what -- which markets are we -- which are those growth markets that we are exposed to? And I think the answer is pretty much all of them. The water, defense, et cetera, power and renewables. So we've got great exposure to the markets that have got real momentum. And then we've got markets like transportation, which in the short term are undoubtedly more challenged, but then you need to dive in and see in those markets. There's still tremendous spend like said about network rails to a $20 billion annual spend. So -- but they're not spending necessarily so much on new major capital programs. They're spending on O&M and renewables type work. And that's where our signaling business and the work we do in signaling is really helpful to us because we've got a great position in that area of the market. So we're able to maintain our momentum and the sort of margin performance that we've shared with you today.

Question from the back? .

Sabahat Khan, RBC. Maybe just sticking with the U.K. and Ireland market. The Atkins business seems like it's been quite public customer focused for some time. How does that evolve over the next few years given some of the commentary you just shared about the evolution of the end markets?

Yes. I think that's a fair observation. And we are -- we've got, as I said, amazing customer base in the public sector, which we wouldn't necessarily want to change. But I think we are in terms of the strategy that Ian talked about in our explore area, we are looking at the industrial market a little bit more closely to see if there's opportunities there, which there are undoubtedly. There's not such a strong trend in the U.K. of the onshoring of manufacturing of battery production that you might see at the moment in the U.S., but it will come in one shape or another. So that's a potential that we're looking at. Those are the markets like health where we have some good work, but we're going to take the sort of amazing capabilities we've got in Canada in health and use that to perhaps expand it in the explore area and health in the U.K., for example, 2 areas that we're thinking about at the moment.

And then just a quick follow-up. A lot of focus for M&A in the U.S. market, but what about maybe in markets outside like such as EMEA, maybe Australia? How big of a focus is that on the priority list to expand inorganically?

Yes. Thanks for the question. I'll take that. So certainly, the U.S. the land and expand strategy is the first priority, but if you remember the slide, optimize, accelerate, explore. Clearly, in the explore part of that, there are potential both end markets and geographies that M&A will help us accelerate in those spaces. So definitely not ruled out in the horizon that we're talking about today, '25, '27, but first priority is definitely the land and expand in the U.S.

Question?

Charles from Jarislowsky. Exciting times for Atkins, good to see. Ian, you've moved to a model that's now more regional with the linkage for the COO. I'm interested to know how on the compensation side of your management team, you tie in the different margin profiles with the common corporate goal of the improvement in margins. How does it all come together? And how is everybody aligned to this goal that you set there?

So all the execs you see here today, we are all [ renumerated ] on AtkinsRéalis. The people that report to the President here have a component which is specific to the region. So if you -- we've got business line managers or regional managers that report to the President. They'll have a component of the whole and they'll have a component of their specific business. And actually, if you go further down the organization, it actually gets more focused around what they actually do. But we as a team, and that's why you can hear in a lot of the responses today, we operate as a team. There's only one AtkinsRéalis. And the success of the company has to be as a whole. And that's why we renumerate ourselves as one. And by the way, I mean we've talked about this many times, and even the Board has said, do you want to do it a different way, we've always said, no. We want to stick in this together.

Follow-up question here.

Benoit Poirier from Desjardins. My question is for Christine. Obviously, you've talked about all the sizable growth opportunities in Middle East. AtkinsRéalis obviously has built a strong reputation over time, is well positioned, but it's not an easy region to deal with. So could you talk about how do you manage the risk? And second question, when we look at the margin profile for Asia, Middle East, Australia, you reported the best margin profile in Q1 close to 18% of EBIT margin. So could you share more details about the sustainability? And if you see even more margin improvement from the 18% and what are going to be the key drivers to improve overall?

Sure. Thanks very much. Benoit, there's a few things in there. So if I don't get all of it, remind me. Okay. So the first piece around managing the risk. So I think it's a good question, and it's a question we spend time on actually as an executive team to make sure that we have the right mix. And I think there's a couple of ways that we deal with that as we think about it as belts and suspenders. So first of all, the strong local teams, the importance of that cannot be overstated that these are people who are in the region and of the region, so they know what's happening in the region. And we have to make sure that we, as a company, are listening to that so that we're paying attention to what's happening on the ground. The other piece is that we have really strong processes and we make sure that, for instance, we are on top of our billing and our engagement with our clients so that we know that we have visibility as to what's happening, and we are really very disciplined on that throughout. And I would say the other thing that we're trying to do in EMEA is to build out the rest of EMEA to be the same strength, size or maybe even bigger than the Middle East because it starts to spread the risk over a larger geographic area. And I think when we put that together, combined with the great growth that's happening elsewhere in the company, then I think the risk becomes much more manageable. And in fact, I feel like it's extremely well controlled right now and I lose 0 sleep over it because I feel like we're just in a really good position managing that risk today. And then you asked me about the margin. I did remember. Okay. So on the margin side, it's really nice when you have clients who are paying for quality. And we deliver quality. So this is something that we're proud of. So I have no embarrassment to say that we deliver excellence in the Middle East, and we have clients who value that. I think we see opportunities for good margin work all across EMEA, and that's very much where we are focused. And in terms of margin enhancement and improvement, I think there's always room to improve. I think that Phil's team is doing a great job laying out for us good systematic ways we can dig into our own processes to make sure that we're getting the best value out of every contract that we have. That's a bit boring work, but honestly, it's really important work because it contributes right to the bottom line. So it's something that the teams are really focused on now. As we're trying to grow, we want to make sure that we're extremely disciplined through that growth and that we maintain or even expand the margin.

[indiscernible]

Michael Tupholme, TD Cowen. Questions for Stephanie. Just regarding the mix shift you alluded to in terms of doing more front-end work. Can you talk a little bit more about that process? How long do you expect that to take? What's involved? We've heard most of the M&A related discussion in the context of the U.S., but would that be a part of the driver of an opportunity there? And how does that affect the margin profile of Canada as you effect that mix shift?

My first is a [ shift ] that we started. I gave the example of the Calgary green line. So this -- we were successful in December 2022. So we are looking with, for example, Metrolinx to work more on client side. So this is a journey we start, but when you start that journey, you bid, but sometimes it takes time for the bid to come. So that is a journey that started. We announced -- we are -- we started architecture and master planning, so that is happening this year. So will it take a couple of years? Yes, it will take a couple of years. Are we going at M&A? Like Ian mentioned, priority is U.S., but we're always looking in Canada, and that would be a sector that we will want to consider because this is something we have a lot of experience. When I look at the mix in the U.K., look at the mix in Middle East, we have this opportunity in Canada that we've been going after, I would say, for the last 12 months, and we had already some success.

And on the margin side of things, is this an important driver, a key driver to margin improvement in Canada?

It's -- there's many drivers, like I mentioned, we feel we have opportunity to increase pricing on the mix we have. We have opportunity to leverage more the GTC because it's a journey we started only 2 years ago. But this is an opportunity also the margin when you're more front end, margin is a little bit better. So yes, it's an opportunity.

And maybe just one more here, perhaps for Ian. Just with respect to M&A, is -- it sounds like you've been building a pipeline for a period of time now. Is the focus on sole-sourced acquisitions? Or how likely would you be to get involved in a competitive process?

Well, both, frankly. I mean -- and we're already involved in both. And clearly, we've got to consider not just the strategic mix and how we're going to do, which we've talked about, we've got to consider the accretive nature of the deal that we're trying to do as well. And particularly, I think, at our entry level where we're starting to build up our capability and we're starting to kind of look in with a very fragmented market in the U.S. I think there are a number of targets that are already kind of in discussion with now, which may not be under a competitive basis, but I wouldn't rule it out.

Just going to take one more question. If we don't answer your question right away, we have another session. I'll let on. So just one more there in the back.

Frederic Bastien at Raymond James. Christine, I was just wondering if your service mix in the Middle East is as comprehensive as it might be in the U.K. or are there opportunities to further expand your advisory engineering or project management capabilities?

Thanks for the question. Due to the limitation of time, I wasn't able to talk about everything we're doing in the Middle East. But we do have -- while I spent most of my time focused on buildings and places. We do have an advisory component of our business. We do a lot of work in, I would say, other infrastructure, particularly water treatment, water management. And we have a broad array of clients who are in the private sector alongside of our public sector sphere. So I would say there's actually a broad mix of what's happening in the Middle East. I think some of the buildings and places projects sort of take most of the attention, but the other work, it doesn't make maybe the most pretty side when I talk about sort of sewers and water management. But it's important work, and it's work that we're proud of doing, and we have a long history of doing that. Transportation, airports, all of that is part of our legacy and history in the Middle East, and it's work that we continue to go after.

Great. So be mindful of the agenda. We will stop here. Again, if we did not answer your question yet, no worries. We'll have a second Q&A session after Jeff's presentation. But for now, let's take about 15 minutes break. So let's come back at 10:55 exactly. We'll restart at that time. So be back at 10:55. Thank you very much. [Break]

Thank you very much for being back in the room. Just 1 or 2 minutes late. That's pretty good. So we're going to continue now. And now it's -- I will invite Joe to come on the stage to talk about Nuclear. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Denis. Good morning, everyone. My name is Joe St. Julian and I'm the President of AtkinsRéalis Nuclear business. And I joined the company in March of 2022. So I've been here about 2.5 years. For those of you that don't know me, I've been in the industry for 32 years. And when I mean the industry, I'm talking about the design build industry and of that 32 years, most of that time has been spent on projects in the field. The last 8 years I've actually managed businesses, global businesses, but prior to that, I spent all my time on projects. Actually the design, the buyout, the build it, test it, put it into service and operate it for a customer and typically very large complicated energy projects. So my entire 32 years have been in the energy markets. Early in my career, I spent time in oil, gas, petrochemical and fossil power, but more recently, the last almost 20 years I've been in the nuclear industry. So enough about me. That's my background. I'm excited to talk to you about Nuclear today because it's a great time to be in nuclear. So let's jump in. So there are 4 things I want you to remember about my presentation today. Number one, we are entering a super cycle in nuclear. It's the best nuclear market in 40 years. And that market is being driven largely by 2 things. It's being driven by net zero. The 200 countries around the world that have made obligations and commitments to the Paris Accords to be net zero by 2050. The only way they can get that done is by a clean, reliable baseload energy and nuclear and hydro are the only 2 that can do it. So it's really driving demand for nuclear. The second thing is we've been building nuclear assets on the planet for 50, 60, 70 years. A lot of those assets are end of life, and it gives us a great opportunity for decommissioning as well. Second thing I want you to know, we own 1 of 6 large reactor technologies that are commercially available in the world today. 4 of those technologies are Western. So France owns 1. South Korea owns 1, the U.S. owns 1 and Canada owns 1. We do not own the intellectual property, but we have the exclusive rights to develop that technology, deploy it and sell it to customers around the world. The other 2 technologies, one is owned by ROSATOM, which is Russian and one is owned by CNNC, which is Chinese. So we're really competing against 4 Western technologies, and we own the commercial rights for the CANDU the Canadian technology. It's very important. The third is we have a strong and comprehensive set of capabilities across the entire nuclear life cycle. And I kind of think of it like this way I tried to explain it to people is there's really 2 -- kind of if you boil it down to its essence, there's 2 things you do in the nuclear business, you're either creating assets or your decommissioning end-of-life assets. and most nuclear companies only do one. I mean, it's so hard to do it. It's so hard to either build it or it's so hard to decommission it, they really focus on just one of those 2, we actually do both. And we're actually the only company I know that can actually do both. So the next thing I want to talk about is we have a demonstrated performance in this industry. We've been in a long time. We have performed well for our customers. So our reputation is strong. We have done projects that in the nuclear industry, everyone talks about nuclear projects always over running. And when I came here to Canada 2.5 years ago, I got involved in the life extension projects at both Bruce Power and Darlington -- OPG's Darlington site, a $26 billion program that started 11 years ago, 65% spent against that $26 billion. And we are ahead of schedule and on budget, unheard of in the nuclear industry. So Canada is showing and we are the leaders of those projects that you can actually build nuclear on time. All 3 of these things together lead to the most important thing, there is above-average market -- above-market growth opportunity in this business. It's a differentiated business. So it demands a higher premium, so the margins are strong, and the projects don't turn over. They turn over a 10-year period. So they're long projects. And so all of that together makes nuclear look really attractive. So I want to give you a snapshot of the business. But the best thing is to start with the takeaway. We are well positioned to drive growth with world-class CANDU technology and world-class nuclear services. If you look at how the business is set up today, I'm going to start in the upper right-hand corner. These are important statistics I want you to remember. There are 34 CANDU nuclear power stations that were built in what I call Wave 1 of the nuclear build-out. Wave1 is all nuclear power plants that have been built starting in the late 60s through today, there are 600 of them that have been built. Of those 34 CANDU nuclear power plants, 27 of them are still in operation. Of the 600 that were built, 450 are in operations. So there are 450 operating nuclear power plants on the planet today. Second thing I want to bring to your attention is we have 3,700 employees as of April 30. But earlier this week, I got a force report. We just went over 4,000. So we are growing by hundreds every week, because our growth is so strong in this market. Our talent is really spread in 4 principal geographies. We are in Canada, obviously, we are in the United States. We are in Europe, and we are in the Middle East. Our business mix today is about 40% -- 38% CANDU and 62% nuclear services. And by CANDU, I'm talking about everything we do for CANDU. So there are services that we provide associated CANDU, but we put that in the CANDU bucket. So 40% of our mix CANDU, everything else is 60% nuclear services. The last thing I'd bring to your attention is our backlog. So right now, we have about a $1.8 billion backlog, really approaching $1.9 billion. When I got here 2.5 years ago, we had a $900 million backlog, and it had been $900 million since 2017, hovered right around $900 million. So in 2 years, we're now at $1.9 billion and we have a number of really strong bookings that we're negotiating today that nothing is guaranteed, but we're expecting those things to book by the end of the year. Our backlog is definitely going to go up. So we have an extremely unique value proposition. It's highly differentiated from our competitors, right? The first thing is, again, CANDU. We are an OEM. And for those of you that are not familiar with these OEM turns, it's an original equipment manufacturer. And it essentially means you own the rights to a proprietary technology that no one else can develop nor they can they deploy nor can they sell to a customer. So we are one of 6 OEMs that can sell large reactor technologies to customers in the world. Number two, again, I talk about this global reputation as an industry leader for asset performance. I gave you an example about the life extension works at Darlington and at Bruce Power. The other thing I want to bring to your attention is these 27 operating nuclear power stations CANDU nuclear stations. If you look at and you benchmark across the 450 that are in service today, all 27 of ours are in the top quartile. And what I'm talking about is their ability to produce electricity continuously, we call it capacity factor. So we run at about a 95%, 96% capacity factor in the CANDU fleet. The rest of the world runs at 90%. That 6% is a huge difference. It sounds like a small amount, but when you stretch it over the megawatts produced by the asset life, it actually drives the cost of producing electricity way down. And in the top 10, we have 4 in the top 10. So it goes to show you the asset the workhorse of the nuclear fleet in the planet today. Again, we talked about broad and overlapping capabilities when we're talking about the new build side, how we have the ability to develop and deploy new technology. We can design and build the asset. We can test it. We can restore it. We can put into service and we can operate it for the long term. And once the asset has reached the end of life, we can actually decommission it decontaminate it, we can demolish it and we can deal with all the waste streams that come from it. That is the entire life cycle and that is what our business has today. There are high barriers to entry in this business, as we talked about earlier, high -- it's the most regulated industry in the world. You have to be qualified to actually get into it. There's a very detailed qualification process with the regulators and all of the things we do actually amplify the competitive advantages we have in this business because we've been in it for 50, 60 years already. So I want to talk a little bit about kind of the business in general. So there are 2 distinct businesses that we have. I'm going to talk about CANDU. And again, CANDU is -- we're a technology company. We sell a product. And with that product, we sell all the services in order to maximize the outlook of that product. On the other side of the business, Nuclear Services, we're selling an expertise, and that means selling work hours. So on the left-hand side, CANDU is a product on the right-hand side, nuclear services as work hours. And CANDU, there are really 2 things that we do. First is we support the operating fleet, again, to maximize the output of the fleet. That's all the maintenance and services to optimize the asset as it's in operation. The second and most important thing we do, and you'll see it here in a minute, is we do life extensions on those assets. So how do we take an asset that's end of life and actually extend its life so it gets another 30 years. Very important part of our business. The second part of CANDU in that product is how do we actually build new capacity in the world. So as we said, nuclear power is back. And we want to build new can-do plants. So we have a new build can do business. And right now today, the next generation of CANDU, we call the MONARK, there's a booth outside. I hope you spend some time at it, but we're going to talk more about it here in a minute. On the right-hand side, our service business is largely in the U.S. It's in the U.K. and it's in the Middle East. The first thing I want to talk about, again, is this waste management and decommissioning. Because it's nuclear, it's radioactive. And because it's radioactive, you just can't go and tear down a building. You have to decontaminate it, and you have to have the skills to do it. And you have to be able to process the waste because, again, it's radioactive and you have to understand how to get the waste from the asset location into safe storage and permanent disposition. We have all of those capabilities, and it's a big part of what we do in this business. The other thing I want to talk about is new builds and reactor support. Just like we do that for CANDU, we own the product for CANDU. We own -- I'm sorry, I want to make sure. The Canadian government owns the product, we own the rights, but we service that product and own all the service rights for it. We actually also service a number of other technologies. Even competing technologies. So the same way we service our CANDU fleet, we service these other technologies, big, small, fusion, propulsion, all of those things, and I'll talk more about that on another slide. So 2 businesses, that's how we think about it. So let's start with the life extensions. So life extension work is -- I'll tell you, this is the economic engine of our of our near future. The best part of our business, we're going to have the biggest growth is right here, CANDU life extension projects. And again, what this is, is if a new asset costs, say, $10 billion to $15 billion to produce 1,000 megawatts, and you have another -- you have an asset that's at end of life. I can spend 1/3 or 1/2 to get the same kind of output by simply extending the life of the current asset. That is what we're doing with the CANDU fleet today. And there are 27 of them in operation. And guess what? Most of them were built around 30 years ago. So they're all coming due for life extensions right now. We started the life extension program at Bruce and OPG Darlington site 10 years ago, but the balance of these assets are coming due to life extensions today. So it's giving us a great pipeline of near-term work that we're really good at. And I'm going to explain that right here. So there are 19 of these 27 operating units that are going to go through -- are either going through life extension today or will be going through life extension in the next few years. You'll see the blue bars on here, and those blue bars are things that we already have under contract. There are 6 units at Bruce Power and there are 4 units at Darlington, 10 units in total. The gray bars, there are 9 of those. These are units at Pickering. These are units at Qinshan, which is in China, and these are units at Wolsong, which is in South Korea. All of those units are coming due as well. We are actively negotiating most of this, right? So we haven't turned those bars blue yet, but we have an expectation that will go blue. And if you look at what a life extension is, it costs about anywhere from $2 billion to $4 billion to do a life extension on an existing asset versus spending $10 billion to $15 billion to build a new one. And of that $2 billion to $4 billion, the work that we do and the scope that we have is approximately 50%, right? So 50% of a $2 million to $4 million program, x19, what that means mathematically to us is a $15 billion pipeline over the next 10 years. And this is work that we've done, demonstrated and do very well. Now in terms of the revenue profile, you can kind of see it here. These life extensions take like 5 years from the time you develop it to the time you put the asset back into service, but the real work in the field is 36 months. And if you have multiple units, one right after the other, you start driving down the incremental cost and the time to actually do the work. But this is just a general profile, and you'll notice, ours is blue. And what's important about this is on top of the fact that we have this great pipeline, the engineering and procurement services that we do and the revenues associated with them are front-end loaded. So all of this work over the next 10 years, it's front-end loaded, and the profile is just like this, which is great for obviously a whole host of reasons, right? So I want to talk about kind of a specific example. One thing that we didn't talk about on that page is Cernavoda. So at the turn of the century, we built 2 nuclear power stations in Romania, Cernavoda of Romania. And those units, Unit 1 went online in 1998, and Unit 2 went online in 2007. So about 30 years ago, Unit 1 has to go offline in 2027. We are actively working on that. We've actually signed about $1 billion worth of contracts to do the life extension on Unit 1. So Romania has understood we want to life extend these 2 assets, because they produce 20% of our electricity today for the entire consumption of the country. In addition to that, we're going to be able to provide clean, reliable baseload energy to the Romanians and they want to build units 3 and 4 new builds. These will probably be the first new CANDUs built. They won't be MONARK's, but they will be, we call them C6s, but the first new units and the life extension at Unit 1 will lead to the new builds at Unit 3 and 4, and we're actively negotiating 3 and 4 today. So let's talk about the MONARK. This is the next evolution of CANDU technology. It kind of stands on the shoulders of all the technologies before it, and it is the cutting edge kind of accumulation of everything we've learned along the way. What makes it different than what we have today, it's a 4 gigawatt. And energy density is becoming more and more important as you have large reactors. So we're spending or investing about $50 million to $75 million a year for 3 years to bring this MONARK to the market. And what we say by bring it to the market is really to get it to the point where we can license it through a regulator and a customer can actually build it in the field. So is this a good investment? And we're saying absolutely 100%, right? So it's a good investment for a whole host of reasons. I talked about these 6 commercially available reactors. The other 5 are light water reactors and ours is a heavy water reactor. And what that means is the 5 light water reactors have to have enriched uranium and our reactor uses natural uranium. So why is this important? While it's hard to enrich uranium, you have to enrich it 5%. Now it's going to 19%, and it costs at least twice, if not 10x more for an enriched uranium fuel than it does for a natural uranium fuel. So fuel security is part of energy security. And everyone wants to have independence with their energy because energy security is part of national security. So it's really appealing to countries, "Hey, I can actually do -- I can have a 4 gigawatt nuclear power station that uses natural uranium, I'm helping with nonproliferation issues and I can control my own destiny, it's the best selling point of a CANDU. The second is we believe the levelized cost of electricity. I'm looking at Chris, because we had this discussion last night at dinner, the levelized cost of electricity for the CANDU is competitive, we believe it to be best-in-class. And what basically that means is what's the all-in cost. The CapEx, the OpEx to build the asset. And how many megawatt hours are they going to -- is that asset going to produce over its life. And so what's the cost to produce a megawatt all in. And how can I compare that not only to other competing technologies, but also compare it to gas, coal, renewables, other forms of kind of electricity generation. We are, we believe, the best in class, the lowest LCOE to be determined, but we are very competitive in our cost, which is going to drive the decisions. The other thing is because it's a heavy water reactor, we can put targets into the reactor, we can irradiate them and create life-saving medical isotopes as a byproduct producing electricity. No other reactor can do this. Medical isotopes are becoming a bigger and more important part of cancer treatment than they ever have been. And the CANDU is producing the most medical isotopes today in the world. So we're saying, buy a CANDU and you get this free medical isotope byproduct when you produce the electricity, no other reactor can say that. The footprint of the MONARK is small, so there's density and because of that MONARK was designed, you can actually fabricate and manufacture the equipment in country. You don't have to go to Korea, the U.S. or Japan, the big forging outfits to make huge big pressure reactor vessels and all of that. So all of these things make the MONARK very attractive. I could talk about it for hours. I'm getting the look like move on, so I'm going to move on. But we'll talk more about it in the at lunch. Okay. So this is the way we think about the new build market. We think we need 1,000 new reactors. Remember, there are 600 that were built, 450. We have to double the amount of electricity that's produced in the world today. At the same time, we have to replace 80% of that electricity that's produced by fossil fuel. That's 1,000 new nuclear reactors by 2050. And if those nuclear reactors cost $15 billion. They cost $10 billion to $15 billion per unit. And the last wave, we built 34 out of 600 roughly 5%, and we have a target to build 5% of the second wave. What I call the net-zero wave. And if you do the math, that's a $750 billion potential CANDU new build market. Now that doesn't happen tomorrow. It takes years to build, it takes 10 years to build a nuclear power station, but that's the size of the market. We actually have aspirations to build more than 5%, but you can see there's a really big opportunity. 5% would be 50 nuclear power stations. And by the way, 15% to 30% of that $15 billion is our money. It's our work, it's the stuff that we do. So $750 billion of new assets where we would take 15% to 30% of it. The last thing I want to say, and I know I need to hustle here, because I'm watching the clock, but -- it's not just the new build. The one thing you have to realize about a CANDU and this is really for any of the 6 people that sell these technologies. When you sell one of these, you're building a base to create value over time, reactor by reactor, because when we sell a CANDU, it takes 10 years to build it, then it operates for 30 years, and we do all the service work to optimize and service and keep that thing running at peak. And then it shuts down. We do a life extension for 3 years. It operates for another 30 years and then we demolish it and decontaminate it. We D&D it. That's an 85-year gift that keeps giving. So you sell one of them, you've got a kind of a guaranteed work stream pipeline to work off that asset for 85 years. It's very important. So I'm going to shift gears, and I'm going to start talking about the other part of our business, the nuclear service part of our business. And as I said, waste management and decommissioning primarily done in the U.S. and in the U.K. So in the U.S., where we do this right now, today, it's in the nuclear weapons complex. It's in the Department of Energy. So when the U.S. government started building its deterrence program. It created a lot of waste, Manhattan Project, Cold War and in the maintenance of that deterrence today. And we do a lot of work cleaning up that waste. So the government spends $8 billion a year dealing with the byproduct waste from its deterrence programs, and this is where we spend a lot of our time and these are difficult projects. It's not like a nuclear power plant. It's highly radioactive waste. In addition to that, the nuclear decommissioning authority, which is really the equivalent of the Department of Energy's cleanup business in the U.S., but it's in the U.K., they spend $3 billion -- GBP 3 billion a year, and we have been working there for decades. We will continue to leverage that work as we go forward. I am running a little bit long, so I'm going to be very quick about this example of a project that we're doing in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It's taking uranium-233 waste -- or it's actually was created during the Manhattan project and actually figuring out how to disposition it. It's highly hazardous. What we did is we recognize that you could extract through scientific method, Thorium-229 from it as you're processing this waste for disposition, that Thorium-229 is used for medical isotopes. And we sell that uranium-229 to TerraPower. TerraPower sells it to a finishing company that creates -- that makes 5,000 cancer treatments a year by the thorium we extract from this waste. As a result of this, we're getting rid of highly dangerous waste. At the same time, we're saving lives through medical isotope. The Department of Energy's Secretary has awarded this project 2 distinguish achievement awards in the last few years because of it. So this is really important work that we're doing as part of this nuclear services stuff we do. The other thing is, again, I said we service technology that's not just CANDU, CANDU is a worthy OEM, but 4 segments, large reactors, small reactors, fusion reactors and submarine propulsion reactors. So, we work very closely with Richard in the U.K., and we do a lot of the engineering at Hinkley Point C, at Sizewell C and EPR2. This is the European pressure reactor owned by the French. And they're building those assets through Europe today, and we do the engineering services on it, even though we are the OEM for CANDU. The other thing is we service the entire fleet of advanced gas reactors in the U.K. and the pressure water reactor, this one large pressure water reactor, those 8 owned by EDF, we do all of the services just like we do at CANDU. We do life extension work. We do all of the maintenance all of the engineering analysis for them. We are working with GE Hitachi here in Canada to bring the SMR to Darlington, and we're working with them at TVA in the U.S., same way. We support Rolls Royce, the SMR program that Rolls Royce has for the U.K. and actually, they're trying to sell it throughout Europe. We have 3 fusion projects going on. U.K. AEA, which is Atomic Energy Authority, the Princeton Propulsion Physics Laboratory, and we have been part of ITER since it started 20-plus years ago, ITER is International Thermal Nuclear Experimental Reactor in the South of France, it's fusion project. And then we actually work with Rolls Royce on their propulsion reactors for the purpose of submarines. Talent, extremely important to us, just like everyone mentioned today. I'm not going to spend a lot of time. We know that culture is what is -- what you have to have a great culture for people that want to come to work and stay working for you. In addition to that, we're finding that people want to work in nuclear. For the first time, right? For the first time since I've been in nuclear. We have 600 job openings in Canada, and we have 11,000 applicants. And you know where they're coming from, they're coming out of oil and gas, which is surprising, right? No one wants to be in the oil and gas business. Everyone wants to be in the clean energy business today. So we have a big challenge to get the resources we need, but we also have a really good pipeline as well. The AtkinsRéalis culture and the fact that nuclear is back. So I'm going to give you the key takeaways. I just want to recap and summarize the key takeaways. Super-cycle best market in 40 years. We own the rights to CANDU, 1 of 6 global technologies. We have a strong and comprehensive set of capabilities. And these 3 things together are going to give us above-market growth with strong margins on long-term projects. And with that, I'm going to introduce my friend, Phil Hoare, the COO.

So hello, everyone. I'm Philip Hoare, and I'm the Chief Operating Officer here at AtkinsRéalis. Now without any disrespect to any other COOs out there past or present. I am not like any other COO, right? So I've been in a position where I've worked for this company for my whole career over the last 30 years, I've got to know our organization by leading different parts of it and working on projects, big and small, in every single region of our organization. I know our people, I know our culture. And importantly, I know what great looks like. So I think I'm in a great position. And I have to say, I think the team have done a fantastic job this morning of talking about some of the great things that we are already doing to better connect this organization and to ensure that we continue to drive sustainable growth into the future as well as improving on our margins. So I'd very much like you to think about this role as being the glue that binds our organization together and that glue that will help us drive into the future. And fundamentally, the whole thing is about collaboration. And it's about how we work together as a team, how we work towards the set of common goals. So it was great to have the question about how we're incentivized earlier, because we're completely aligned as a team to drive this company forward and achieve the goals that we set out for you this morning. So I'm lucky, I've only got 3 key messages, and I could very much summarize these as being. It's all about growth. Sort of about making more money and driving those margins. And the third one is that it's all about using our global technology center that we believe is absolutely stand out in terms of the way that we work across this center to underpin both growth and margin improvement. I'm looking forward to telling you a little bit more about that in a moment. So what does my organization look like? Well, fundamentally, it's broken down into 2 parts. And the first part is all about better developing, connecting and deploying our resources around the world. It's about taking the very best of AtkinsRéalis to our customers wherever they are. And it's very much about making sure that we can land and expand, you heard Steve talk about that, and also to take things that we're really good at in one region, some of the great skills and strengths that we have in the U.K. business, for example, and using that to help us grow in other parts of the organization. Wherever that's the defense sector, and I'll mention that because no one's mentioned our defense booth so far that's out there. So you can learn about that from the team there. But you heard Stephanie talk about architecture and master planning and how we can actually use our capability and that position as one of the world's leading architects to help grow a new business in Canada that will help not only expand our wallet share with existing customers, but also help us drive up margins. The second part of my organization is all about enabling transformation growth and efficiency. And that's got various different components that are there to service our business to help our business be more successful. So whether that's from communications to our digital strategy to the way that we'll deploy AI for success in our business, those enablers are all about helping support that growth and margin improvement story. And the thing that I think is really key about this is that this isn't a new journey that we're on. We've been working on this for some time. And I think that whilst others in our sector might have been focusing on M&A, we focused on really becoming a great win work engine, a great organic growth story and really driving that collaboration across every part of our organization. So when you look at the growth that we achieved over the course of the last year, 18% organic growth, I think it's an amazing story. That's fundamentally underpinned by great teamwork across the whole of our company. So how are we going to move these things forward. So we're not complacent we really understand that in order to continue to drive growth and improve margins, we're gonna have to work really hard at it. And we're absolutely prepared to do that. And Ian has tasked me with the very specific role of ensuring that we win more work and that we drive those margins up. And -- but we're going to do that very systematic and data-led approach. So we've defined a set of internal KPIs that you can see on this particular slide, focus both on how we develop capability and how we get those enablers to really work well for our organization. And we're doing that through a very systematic program that's looking at every single corner of our business and at every level of our organization to make sure that we can guarantee that we'll deliver in line with the way that we have said we will. I fundamentally believe that by better connecting people, data and technology across our organization that we can achieve the goals that we've set out. So I know this is often a question about how have we driven the organic growth that we have within the organization. And for me, that really comes down to 3 key areas that set us apart. And it's been great. I think you have heard this resonate through the other presentations that you've heard this morning. But the first one of those is all about focus, all about focus. It's not just in the geographies that we operate in, but it's also in those fast-growing 8 end markets that we've really decided to tune in on. And I think what you've heard is -- by doing that, we've been able to build out some really great, strong, trusted, really long-term customer relationships. And I think that really helps us to underpin that. But it also gives us a great platform to sell other services into because they trust us. We've got those relationships built up over time. The second is taking a really systematic approach to the way that we win work. You've heard us talk about our key account programs, and we actually have a key account program that runs across the group, looking at our top 60 clients, and we've achieved tremendous growth over the course of the last couple of years by really lasering in on and looking at how we sell as much of our company and our capability as we can to those top 60 customers. And the thing for me that's really great about that is that it all through executive level sponsorship, each and every one of us that you've heard speak today is a part of that program, building out those relationships and helping unlock some opportunities for us as a company. And the third and probably arguably the most important of all the 3 is a differentiators that you've heard us talk about. That end-to-end service offer is absolutely key to the way that we drive growth in our organization. And you've heard some examples already, but we understand every single stage of the life cycle means that we can offer higher value and give confidence to our customers about our ability to perform and bring that service to them. So I know that this knowledge sets us apart. And I also know that it's helped us drive some very major program wins across the company over the last few years. Now as you've heard Joe say, the nuclear capability that we have in our organization is absolutely incredible. And this, of course, is a differentiator. But I'd like to say that nuclear is for everyone because actually, when we win a nuclear opportunity, our ability to land and expand other services around that has massive benefits for -- in a vast majority of our group. So you heard him talk about Hinkley Point C nuclear reactor in the U.K. We've done hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue, providing other services on that project, whether it's designing buildings or providing cost management so that we know the program is on track. These provide great land and expand opportunities as well as a huge opportunity that's presented by the nuclear renaissance . And finally, we really do thrive on complexity and helping our customers tackle some of their most significant challenges. Who would ever imagine you'd build a 400-meter cube in the middle of Riyadh, for example. So I think that our ability to combine the great capability across our business is second to none. And that is helping us build a massive track record, a great CV that gives other customers the opportunity to work with us. So I really feel that combining those 3 differentiators, our market -- with our market focus and our systematic approach to win work is something that sets us apart. And it's been part of our growth story recently. It's going to continue to be part of our growth story into the future. Another significant opportunity for us is really about leveraging our global scale. And you've heard us talk us about our positions in core markets around the world. And -- but actually, by building up some infrastructure that allows us to take a global view and perhaps expand on some of the U.K. programs that Richard talked about and taking a global look at that gives us new opportunities to grow. So taking that global view of opportunities, well-developed market plans, people responsible for doing that, sharing market-specific insights gives us great intelligence about where we should invest our time and our talent supporting our customers, bringing the best of our global capability to bear, but also supporting that with amazing strength on the ground really helps us build that capability together. And if I give you an example of that, I think we're world leading in the aviation market. We've worked on some of the most complex new build and operational improvements at airports around the world. And our customers building new airports really, really value that experience and want us, they call us up and ask us to come in and talk about how we'll help them develop new projects in their region. And then I think one of the things that absolutely sets us apart. And it's amazing to hear the pride in the voices of our team as we talk about our culture, our ability to attract and retain talent across the organization, that is company-wide. And I believe that, that sets us apart when you add in all of those other differentiators, we're in a great position to continue the growth story. But I always love examples, and I'm an engineer, so I quite like an equation as well. So I've got both things on this slide. The first is we are seeing really significant growth in new power generation, and obviously, the demand for electricity, which is going to continue to rise through to 2050. We are uniquely placed to do that. The fact that we have got decades of heritage in those types of projects here in Canada. The fact that we've delivered 22% of the power renewables projects around the world. The fact that we have a deep center of expertise in our Canadian business, coupled with amazing capability in our Global Technology Center in India. That really does allow us to unlock new market opportunities. And you heard Christine talk about the [ John Holland ] partnership. Well, that is all about bringing that global capability and that experience to Australia. And again, I think we're uniquely placed to be able to do that and drive growth as a consequence. So market-leading positions, great centers of expertise and our GTC, when those 3 things combined, they are really, really powerful potent opportunity for growth. Now we're already delivering on that promise. And I think one of the things that is key about my role is connecting people. And we're using this term collaboration corridors thinking about how do we connect different parts of our business to enable them to drive growth. And a couple of examples of that, taking our U.K. expertise, our digital investments that we've made and combining that with some great experience on the ground, allowed us to win a project for The Royal Commission of AlUla. And this is an amazing project. We've grown from nobody there to 300 staff in the course of 2 years. We're combining that region global capability that I've talked about. And what we're delivering is an amazing opportunity to master plan and develop a unique UNESCO World Heritage site. And so as we've said earlier, our Middle East booth has got a whole array of project. So please spend some time looking at what we're doing there. But now switching to something close to home in the Port of Prince Rupert. And I raised this one because the development of climate resilient infrastructure is something that is at the forefront of many of our customers' minds. And again, we have really great capability spread around the world to help customers do this. In this particular case, we use one of our digital tools, something called City Simulator to help analyze and predict what the climate impacts will be on this particular port and therefore, develop a new master plan for its development into the future. And if you want to see more about City Simulator, visit our resilience booth and where we have a map of Toronto, and you can see the impacts on Toronto over the course of the next 100 years, and it's a quite interesting story. So that I've given you some clarity around growth and why you can have confidence in our ability to continue the strong organic track record we've had of growth over the last couple of years. But let me talk now about my emphasis on improving margins and how we're going to drive that forward. So the first thing is that as a leadership team, we really recognize that we can extract greater value for our services, deliver more effectively across our projects and capitalize on the investments that we've made around the business. To drive a 200 to 300 basis point improvement in our margins over the course of the next 3 years. This, as I've said earlier, is all about taking a data-led approach, and we've developed a really robust map of the key value drivers that touch every region and every function within our organization. And we've designed out a program that I believe will have a significant positive impact on all of the various different aspects of our business. We've carried out this full analysis, and we've set a clear time-bound path forward for how we're going to deliver. Now our approach, there is no silver bullet to driving margin enhancement. It actually differs in each of our regions and in each of our functions. But there is a clear path forward in each one of them. And really, it combines 2 things. One is optimizing our portfolio. And the second is about operational excellence. So firstly, shifting our portfolio mix to include a greater proportion of higher-margin, lower-risk consultancy and project management services, supported by targeted robust pricing strategies will help us to lift gross margin. For example, the creation of the architecture and urban planning example that we gave in Canada will help us to lift gross margins in that space. And we see that already across our portfolio. A group-wide regionally shaped pricing strategy will also guide our key account managers to articulate the value that we bring to our customers as well as helping our bid teams to price according to value. We deliver about 20,000 projects a year, and we're able to analyze those projects to a great level of detail to give us insights on how to price more effectively moving forward. The second driver is all about operational excellence, and we've got to deliver our projects clearly to meet both their needs but also our commercial needs and outcomes. To do this, we've introduced the new purple number in our business to match our brand. Every time I say this, this is purple behind me, and it seems to change color. But we've to match the purple in our brand. And the purple number is all about looking at the comparison between the [ as-sold ] margin and the as-delivered margin in our business. And that gives us great insights into what improvements or steps you might need to take to avoid margin erosion on the projects that we're delivering. We're also beginning to use AI to look at that and give us those warning signs early so that we can take a particular action. We're standardizing our project management tools, we are upskilling our project managers, and we're providing data to our teams so they're better able to optimize utilization. In combination, these steps are going to improve the overall quality of our delivery whilst minimizing project margin leakage across the business. Now the final area that I'll highlight is all about our comprehensive review of overhead spend, both at a regional business level, but also with -- at a corporate level. Through refinements to our operating model, further leveraging and expanding the GTC as well as through technology efficiencies that we'll introduce, we intend to freeze our overhead at 2024 levels through to 2027. Now this is all part of a structured program. And I think this data-led approach, clear targets aligned to the values that I've described is something that we're focused on and at the heart of the program really granular performance analytics that have driven this customized margin improvement approach and will be used effectively to set targets for each part of our business over the course of the next 3 years, in effect, setting the budgets now that we will deliver against. And what we're doing is we're building this into every single aspect of our business through our monthly and quarterly reporting cycles, but also through individual performance targets and the way that we are looking at the organization. So for example, each of our presidents will have a personal objective to improve EBITDA to net revenue built into their performance plan. So absolutely aligned at every level about how we'll drive that. Now this is led by a small experienced project management office. We've built monitoring and reviews into everything that we do, and we'll provide regular feedback and updates to our business about how we're performing. Now we recognize that driving margin improvement, whilst at the same time, having aggressive organic growth plans in our business isn't easy. And -- but I really believe that the data-led approach that we're taking, the sort of science and analysis that we're putting behind this should give you confidence that we can achieve what we're setting out to do. But for me, the biggest thing of all on this is that it's a team game, and we are absolutely aligned as a team about driving the objectives that we have set out, and I believe that we can achieve that, and we're committed to seeing it succeed. Now look, I think the third thing I talked about, and I think it's a really important part of our growth and our margin improvement story is our global technology center. Now I know that you've heard others talking about their GTCs and offshoring design. I'm really proud to have been part of this story within the company since 2007, where we set up our first GTC of around 50 people in India. And we've really grown from strength and depth there. And there are 2 things to me about this. The first one is all about the maturity and the experience that we've learned and the second is all about how this service is fully integrated as part of everything we do. It's always been a position where I think we wanted to provide high-quality engineering services that are completely dedicated to supporting our business. We don't do any work in the local Indian market. This team is absolutely focused on driving the success of our organization. So today, I think we're in a great position, but over 4,500 staff working across multiple sites in India and a recently opened office in Cairo. Actually, this represents about 10% of our overall engineering talent in the business is in one of these offshore centers. And our vision for the GTC is that it's a complete mirror of our regional businesses completely embedded inside the teams that they're working within. And there are some great examples of that across the organization. I'll pick another nuclear example on Hinkley Point C. The height of design Hinkley Point C.We had 600 staff in India working on developing the design for that, supporting a project team of about 20 in the U.K. So that ability to provide additional capacity at a lower cost base is an absolute differentiator that we'll continue to build on. But we've also seen significant success in driving shared service support and elements of IT, finance, HR and legal are also supporting our business from that home in India. Now again, we've talked about it a lot this morning. It's all about people. And our ability to attract and retain talent in India is second to none. We've won the greatest employee to work for 4 times. I think it says 3 on the slide, but we've just found out this week, we've won it for a fourth time. And I think the ability to attract and retain in that space is challenging, but I think we are absolutely great at it. And it's been a core component of what we do. So our team actually led by [ Brad Galer ], our CEO for India, are out on one of the booths and love to tell you more, they're so passionate about the contribution that they make to the business. So let me leave you with my 3 takeaways. I think it's all about growth. It's about maintaining the great track record that we've created, leading on those fast -- fast-growing [ 80 markets ] and our commitment to deploy the best of our capability to our customers wherever they need it. We're going to achieve that alongside a robust data-led approach to improving our margins and we'll achieve that 200 to 300 basis point improvement by 2027. And all of this is underpinned by our market-leading amazing global technology center that will not only help grow, but it will help us drive that margin improvement into the future. The really key thing I'd like you to take away is that collaboration and teamwork are at the heart of everything that we are doing at AtkinsRéalis. And when we relaunched our brand back in September of last year, we said that together really does change everything. And I think fundamentally, that's the approach that we're taking as a business. So thank you very much for listening, and let me hand you over to Jeff, who will take you through the detail of the numbers.

So good morning. Good morning, everyone, and it's great to see everyone. What have changed from our last Investor Day where it was all virtual. So the chance to do in this room is really fantastic. I'm Jeff Bell. I'm the, and have been the Chief Financial Officer for AtkinsRéalis, for just over 4 years. Before that, I was the Chief Financial Officer for a FTSE 100 Energy and Supply Services business in the U.K. And before that, I spent the first half of my professional finance career here in the Greater Toronto area where I'm from. So always great to be back. Hopefully, the previous presentations that I have given you an insight into how we'll be delivering excellence and driving growth in the coming years. And I'd like to finish today by outlining how everything you've heard about our forward-looking strategy is reflected in our financial targets and our capital allocation priorities, and why we think that's a compelling investment thesis. Now listen, I'm always conscious of how these Investor Days go. You get multiple presentations, compelling discussions, pictures about the great work we're doing, the amazing projects, all the pictures that go with that. All my colleagues have talked about, all the boots we have out here for you to look at to get more detail. And by the time you get to me, it's about bar charts and numbers and line graphs, but don't worry. I know that's important, but my view is, we shouldn't have to settle for that just in the financial numbers. And therefore, I've really tried to up the razzle dazzle today. So you are going to see bar charts with leading edge compelling uses of the color purple and green. You are going to see innovative uses of shading. And if I do say so, some pretty mesmerizing font. So I just -- to be clear though, don't get distracted because there is a very compelling investment thesis here, but I'll try and kind of warn you of that as we go through. So let's -- with that, let's get into it. Four key messages here that I wanted to start you out with. First, as you heard from Ian earlier, our pivoting to growth strategy has been extremely successful in delivering growth in our engineering services and nuclear services businesses. Well in excess of our original expectation and combined with the derisking of our business has created significant shareholder value over the last few years. As a result, we have created not only the capability to continue to drive future growth, as you've heard from a lot of my colleagues, but also the balance sheet strength and disciplined capital framework to underpin our strategic goals for the next 3 years. We believe we can continue to deliver significant organic revenue growth while also delivering improved operating margins and cash flow generation. And our growing cash flow generation profile, driven by increased EBITDA in Engineering Services and Nuclear and the elimination of the LSTK cash flow usage will also allow us to drive additional shareholder value creation through selective inorganic investment, which you've heard in the first instance from Steve and Ian about and return capital to shareholders, thereby fully accessing all the elements of our capital allocation framework. So let me expand on each of those. As you can see on this slide, Services revenue has grown 26% in the first 2 years of our pivoting to growth strategy, well ahead of that original guidance. And with operating profit in the middle and backlog growth on the far right-hand side, you can see those also have been growing at similar levels. At the same time, we've enhanced operating margins within our target range while also delivering improving cash flow. Well, you can't see it on the slide, particularly in the second half of 2023, although we're not at our target level yet. And as you will have seen from our 2024 organic revenue guidance of 8% to 10% in Engineering Services and 15% to 20% in Nuclear, we believe our customer end market strategies and win work capabilities will continue to drive outperformance against those pivoting to growth revenue targets. And lastly, we also generated significant cash flow, as I said, in the back half of 2023, which is an initial proof point into the capabilities of our business to deliver consistent and growing cash flow in the future. I did want to talk briefly though, about another key element of our pivoting to growth strategy, which was to continue to derisk the business and in particularly the runoff of our LSTK projects. Both Eglinton and Trillium are physically complete with only final testing and commissioning, driver training and other professional services type activities remaining. The REM in Montreal continues to progress well and represents most of the remaining $300 million of backlog that we have, which will continue to decrease over the course of this year. At the same time, we remain committed to actively pursuing recoveries of costs related to the pandemic and other external factors that were incurred on these projects. And while the ultimate timing of recovery remains uncertain, we're committed to pursuing the monies we believe are owed to AtkinsRéalis under those contracts. I also wanted to talk about strengthening the balance sheet. That second key message. Our success in delivering on our pivoting to growth strategy has also resulted in a balance sheet leverage targets that we've achieved, as you heard from Ian earlier, a year early at the end of 2023, with net debt in our adjusted EBITDA range of 1.5 to 2x. And we expect this leverage level to be consistent with an investment-grade credit rating, a core objective of our capital allocation framework. And with our ability to generate positive operating cash flow going forward, we are targeting to be in the range of 1.2 to 2x net debt-to-EBITDA over the 2025 to 2027 period. So what does that mean in terms of -- if we've been successful in delivering our financial goals under the pivoting to growth strategy, how do we see the next 3 years? And in front of you on the slide is the framework that we're using to guide what we think can be significant value creation for AtkinsRéalis shareholders. We believe the delivery model we've developed creates a strong foundation and momentum to continue to drive value creation going forward, where we see organic growth, operating margin improvement and strong cash flow generation conversion, then supporting additional value creation opportunities through accretive M&A and returns to shareholders. Now let me take each of those in turn. Our revenue growth will be driven by Engineering Services and Nuclear, from $7.4 billion that you can see on the left-hand side of this slide in 2023 to over $10.5 billion by 2027. During this period, revenue from the LSTK projects will finish, and we will exit our Linxon joint venture, the effect of which is represented by that highly compelling purple bar there on the slide. Stay focused now. The growth in Engineering Services is driven by a combination of the high-quality, high-growth customer end markets we've chosen, Ian referenced those. That's the first green bar. And the end-to-end capabilities and strategic growth priorities that you heard from each of the presidents about, which is the second green bar. Our Nuclear growth driven, as Joe said, by the wave of CANDU refurbishment project opportunities and reactor support services as well as the continued global demand for our new build expertise and waste management capabilities in the U.K. and U.S. is forecast to result in a Nuclear business with $1.8 billion to $2 billion of annual revenue by 2027, up from approximately $1 billion in 2023. And as you also heard from Joe, we are uniquely positioned to benefit from the emerging nuclear supercycle. Furthermore, we see opportunity to deploy additional capital into acquisitions over this period in priority, in geographic and capability areas initially in the U.S., but ultimately, more broadly. And we see attractive potential opportunities in our pipeline there. And while we're not providing guidance on the amount, we believe this could deliver significant additional uplift in revenue by 2027 represented by that compelling shaded bar right at the top on the right-hand side. If I move now on to operating margins. As you heard from Philip, we have a clear plan to increase engineering services operating margins by 200 to 300 basis points in our plan period. This will be driven by optimizing pricing opportunities, particularly growing the higher-margin consultancy and advisory services as some of our presidents have discussed. Secondly, our investment in global capabilities is allowing us to increase win rates and utilization. Thirdly, overhead cost efficiencies will continue to be realized. So for instance, with the implementation of our upgraded enterprise resource program system, our ERP system, which is due to complete in 2025, ensuring that processes are standardized across the company and scale benefits are realized. And lastly, the long-standing capability in our global technology center ensures both access to the latest digital tools and techniques but also to a flexible and cost-efficient labor pool of highly qualified engineers. We have a real opportunity to increase the usage of this highly valuable capability, particularly in the U.S. and Canada. For our Nuclear business, the significant increase in revenue will also include an increased proportion of procurement services. Their low-risk nature attracts a slightly lower margin profile. And as a result, we would expect to deliver operating margins for Nuclear in the 12% to 14% EBIT-to-revenue range, a premium operating business reflective of its high barriers to entry and unique positioning, as Joe outlined. And finally, on cash flow. The significant improvement in operating cash flow we have forecasted for 2024 will be a foundation for '25 to '27. We expect to see growing free cash flow generated by higher EBITDA from the growing Engineering Services and Nuclear businesses, as I've said, and that elimination of the cash flow usage from our LSTK projects. Our investment back into the business, historically around $100 million per year of capital expenditure, is expected to increase by an additional $50 million to $75 million per year for the development of the CANDU MONARCH large nuclear reactor. The financial return opportunity we see for this investment is extremely attractive. With forecast rapid growth of the business requiring some investment in working capital and the additional monarch investment, we would expect to generate free cash flow of 80% to 90% of adjusted net income each year going forward. So moving to capital allocation. As you can see on the following slide, we will maintain a balanced approach to deploying the free cash flow. As previously mentioned, we anticipate keeping the balance sheet at a target leverage ratio of 1.2 to 2x net debt to adjusted EBITDA. We would expect not only to continue to invest organically in the business, including the MONARCH, as I've mentioned, but also to successfully execute on acquisition targets to accelerate our growth strategy. And we will continue to opportunistically return money to shareholders through share buybacks, as we've begun to do in 2024. And we will also revisit our long-term dividend policy during the '25 to '27 period. We also expect to continue to rationalize our portfolio of businesses, and Ian referenced this early in his presentation. Following a strategic review in 2023 of our Linxon joint venture, we announced earlier this year that we will look to find a buyer for our share of that business. One that can take advantage of the strong market demand for the electrical substation equipment that Linxon installs. The business itself has strong growth prospects but its commercial model no longer fits the Atkins real strategic direction. We also plan to continue to release capital from our portfolio of capital investments. In particular, with an intention to sell down our remaining stake in the Highway 407. The Highway 407 toll road is one of the premier toll road assets in the world with 74 years remaining on the concession in one of the fastest-growing demographic areas in North America. However, the financial stability and balance sheet strength that has provided AtkinsRéalis in the past, is less important as our business has shifted to a more stable and consistently cash flow generative services business. We will be actively pursuing opportunities to sell down our stake with the use of the proceeds being guided by our capital allocation framework. With respect to acquisitions, we've been developing our market presence and execution capability for a while, as you've heard, with a particular focus on the U.S. engineering services market, where we have prioritized our corporate development activities to date and now have a solid pipeline of opportunities. As you heard from Steve, our focus is to support the land-and-expand strategy, particularly in geographies where our presence is below our target level, like the East Coast in the Pacific Northwest. And also bolstering our capabilities in end markets where we have accelerating growth opportunities, like building in places, infrastructure, power and renewables, water. We have a rigorous screening framework in place to ensure not only strategic but capability and cultural fit. And we would expect acquisitions to have high returns on invested capital and be rapidly earnings and cash flow accretive. And I can say that the pipeline and the work that we've done so far has absolutely identified those characteristics and potential acquisitions for us. So let me summarize where we are, and the financial targets that we believe will drive significant value creation in our driving excellence -- sorry, delivering excellence, driving growth strategy over the next 3 years. Ian laid this out in his part of the presentation, but let me just quickly cover them again. We see in Engineering Services an ability to continue to grow organically year-over-year by greater than 8%, while delivering 200 to 300 basis points improvement in operating margin, and an adjusted EBITDA to net revenue of 17% to 18% by 2027. Our Nuclear business will grow to an annual $1.2 billion to $2 billion of revenue by 2027, while delivering premium operating margins of 12% to 14% of EBIT to revenue. Free cash flow will be converted at a rate of 80% to 90% of adjusted net income each year, and we will maintain a leverage ratio of 1 to 2x net debt to adjusted EBITDA. And we will selectively invest in acquisition opportunities to deliver further shareholder value. So to finish off, we've successfully delivered on our pivoting to growth strategy, which positions us with confidence to deliver on our new set of financial targets and capital allocation priorities, supported by strong capabilities, strategic growth initiatives, and industry tailwinds. And with that, I'll hand back to Ian.

Presentation, thank you. So I'm acutely aware, it's been a long morning. So the sum up is not going to be long. But you have heard from all the presidents, you've heard from Phil, from Jeff, from Bill, our Chair. And you've heard of how we will deliver against the targets that Jeff has just spoken through. And I hope those presentations, and particularly, the president's gave you that granularity that I know you're always looking for to try and understand the detail behind how we deliver our results and performance. But you've had a chance to meet that team. And I really think my team, individually, they're excellent. But I actually think together we are exceptional. And that's the difference in AtkinsRéalis. So why would you invest in AtkinsRéalis? Well, first, we've done what we said we would do. We've exceeded the targets we put out in 2021 in our last strategy. We've transformed the company to make it simple and focused in Engineering Services and Nuclear. We have differentiators that we've proved those differentiators can outgrow our peer set. And we positioned the business in fast-growing markets that are sustainable because of essential drivers to reach Net Zero, replace infrastructure and provide desperately needed infrastructure across the world. And we're entering a phase, now after our transformation and after all the work we've done, where we've got normalized free cash flow. And we'll enter that phase to add to our organic growth through M&A and returns to shareholders. So lastly, we are really confident that we're going to deliver against this new strategy. And thanks for all your time today and listening to us. We've got one more Q&A session coming now. So back to you, Denis.

Thank you very much, Ian. I would now ask all presenters to join me on the stage for the second Q&A session. I remind you for those in the room to use a mic for asking a question, and for those on the webcast, to use the messaging box to ask a question.

I'll go in the middle. Go ahead. Thank you.

Let's start from the room. Did you -- where do we go? Okay. Chris. Let's go with Chris.

All right. Chris Murray from ATB Capital Markets. So I guess my first question is maybe for Joe, and I don't know if anyone who wants to add to this one. So we're looking at moving revenue over the next, I guess, 3 years from about $1 billion to $1.2 billion. Earlier in your presentation, you made the comment about it's not going to be linear. So can you maybe give us some more color about how we should think about that revenue stack evolving over the next few years? Just is it all like back-end loaded? Or how it all comes together would be helpful.

No. Yes. Thanks, Chris. Great question. So I would say, in general, the way we're looking at it is kind of our present is life extension and reactor services. And it's not just life extensions it can do. It's also the life extensions going on, on other assets, right? So we're doing life extension work outside of our CANDU technology, but that's going to be kind of the biggest, fastest growing part of our business over the next 5 to 10 years. Right behind it, we're hoping that new builds kind of become our future. So if life extensions are our present, new builds will be our future. And we look to try and get a couple of new build orders in the next year or 2, like at Cernavoda. And then we actually look to having a MONARCH kind of under contract by kind of '27. And then once you have a MONARCH under contract, it will probably be a 2 to 4 pack and so on and so forth. At the same time, we have this base load of work in the waste management and decommissioning area of our businesses. And I would say that that's going to stay pretty constant, right? Until people really get serious about decommissioning these assets, that will stay pretty constant. So it's -- our business is lumpy. It's not -- it's a product business. So there are big -- kind of big contracts that come all at once. And then we -- our part of the business is all front-end loaded. So you got to consume it. And when I say consume, you got to do the work in 3 years, 3 to 4 years and then move on to the next one.

So we saw actually putting a CAGR out, which you will look at quarter-to-quarter, just wasn't going to be representative of the flow, but it's definitely not back-end loaded.

One more question?

Yes. So one more question on a different tack. This one maybe more for Ian or Jeff. So with the decision to formally sell 407 and move on from that makes sense. But one thing we haven't talked about today is the rest of the capital business. It attracts its own overheads. There's always been the discussion as you moved away from construction. What was the rationale behind keeping it? There's always a discussion about O&M, but O&M is now rolled into sort of the Canadian operation. Can you maybe talk about your thoughts around what's left to the capital business and maybe what happens with that? And is that another source of asset recycling down the road?

Well, for sure, I mean it's not part of the future. So we're not going to grow the capital part of our business. But the one thing we have been doing is actually recycling out of the capital business. But we need to get the assets into a state of normality before we do that. So if you take an asset that is coming online, such as the Trillium Railway in Ottawa, it's going to be a couple of years before we would recycle out of that. And we tend to recycle down to about 20% because we have the 25-year operation and maintenance contract. So Jeff, I don't know if you'd add anything to that.

No, I think that's -- I think you've kind of articulated that really well. We continue to sort of look at that, and we've obviously done some of that in the not-too-distant past like the John Hart power station, same sort of thing, well into operation. And we'll continue to look for opportunities to recycle capital where we can.

And for sure, the simplification of the business, once 407 is divested, you'll see the capital roll into the Canadian business.

Before I move to another question, let's go to the webcast, a couple of questions there. Maybe one for Joe and one for Jeff. So Joe, the outlook that we are putting out there comes to about 13% to 18% growth in revenue compared to a 15%-20% growth that we have to date. Is that being conservative? And for Jeff, you did discuss about the margin on nuclear business. Why would we expect it to be slightly lower than we have today? Maybe remind the listeners why is that.

Let me make a general comment and Joe can come in specifically. When we're looking at long-range growth targets, we obviously need to be prudent. It's very different than looking at annual growth target, because, clearly, the visibility of pipeline and the amount of secured work that we have. And this is not just Nuclear, it's ES and Nuclear. We can be very, very precise in an annual target. As you get further out there, obviously, the further in the distance it is, the more or less definite even though we understand the general trajectory of the market, the less definite it is. So we just need to be prudent. But Joe, how would you think about specifically the targets you've set?

Yes, this is -- so I don't know if I want to add much to that, to be honest. So I would say we always try not to be -- we try not to be conservative or aggressive. We try to be really right down the middle with our -- especially, this longer-term growth. If you had to say you got a bias towards one or the other and maybe it's a tad bit conservative, but right now, we feel pretty good that it's there and we can accomplish it. We don't want to get much further out on that limb, so.

By the way, the targets we put out for the Nuclear business are ambitious targets. Those growth [ are ] the best you'll see.

So -- and to the second question around Nuclear operating margins, it is very much a business mix piece. It's not about the competitive environment. As you heard from Joe, competitively, we are really well positioned. It's simply a bit of a mix between how much procurement services are coming in, in this period versus other types of tooling and engineering design work we're doing in some of our joint venture waste decommissioning work. So it's really just us tuning up our forecast for the next 3 years in line with the significant growth that Joe is going to deliver and what the business mix is of that.

Great. Let's go back to the floor. Maxim, go ahead.

Maxim, National Bank Financial. Two, I guess, questions, timing related. And maybe a question for Jeff and Philip, if it's possible. The fact that ERP system is going to be fully implemented by the end of 2025, how should we think about sort of the cadence of margin improvements because I presume you need the data to make kind of the right decisions. So wondering if you can provide a bit more color around that dynamic.

Sure. So I'll take a first -- the first one on that. So I've used the ERP system as an example. I wouldn't want to leave you with the impression that, that is kind of the only thing that's driving margin improvement even on the sort of cost side of our business. Simply a great example of the fact that as part of that process. And we already have some of that system in already, and we're already starting to see some of the cost improvements and standardization that come with that. We'll see more of that in '25. We'll clearly see even more of that in '26. But there are other initiatives that Phil was talking to that are also in train and aren't dependent on the ERP system in terms of realizing benefits.

But to be clear, we have the data.

We've got all the data we need to be able to make the right decisions in the business now. So we're expecting that margin improvement trajectory to happen over the course of the 3 years.

Step function, but relatively gradual?

Yes, I think so.

I think in the first instance, we think of it as fairly linear. But I think there's clearly an aspiration where possible to go faster earlier. So I think that's kind of how we'd hold it at the moment.

And then the second question, just to come back on the 407. So obviously, you said before 2027. But thinking about sort of the trigger, I guess, you assume the volume needs to come back sort of fully to pre-pandemic level. So is it fair to say like after 2025 as potential timing? Like I don't want to be too precise, but sort of thinking about it out loud.

You mean, like, next week at 10 a.m. or something. So I think the first thing I'd say, and as part of my comments, we will be actively pursuing that sale process and getting after that very much in the near term. It is clearly a unique asset. And therefore, that process may take some length of time. But therefore, our view is we've seen traffic levels come back. Not quite to pre-pandemic levels, but have largely recovered. It's in probably the fastest-growing demographic area in North America. It's got 74 years left on it, and it has demonstrated the ability to put through a pricing increase this year. So we think all the -- in a sense, all the kind of foundational pieces that you would need as a potential buyer of that asset exists today. So we'll be getting after that, and we'll see how long that takes.

Benoit?

Benoit Poirier from Desjardins. Jeff, you highlighted the compelling target for segmented EBITDA margin overall of 17% to 18% obviously, there's a few elements below the EBITDA line to derive net margin, net income especially with SG&A being an important part. Your target this year is [ 120 ], but we know that there are some rebranding costs. LTIPs, LSTK will exit, also Linxon. So could you help us to -- or what kind of assumptions should we be looking at in terms of SG&A by 2027 as you grow the business? And if you could provide some color for those who are looking closer to net margin, net income in order to have a better grasp on the free cash flow generation that you could do over the coming years.

Yes, sure, happy to do that. So let me take -- if I take the first question around corporate overhead costs. You're absolutely right, Benoit, we signaled higher this year for 2 reasons. Some was a bit of carryover branding costs from the very successful rebranding last year and also with a significantly higher share price some additional long-term incentive program costs that came with that. We would see over '25 to '27 that moving back to the kind of roughly $100 million-ish level that we've been more recently experiencing in that professional services and project management segment. And obviously, as we continue to exit LSTK, as we look to exit the Linxon joint venture, and indeed, as we successfully sell the Highway 407, we will also be looking to kind of drive cost improvement related to all of those sort of corporate overhead elements. I think as not necessarily for that, but because of the growth that we see -- that we laid out today in terms of increasing EBITDA, which should fall through to net income, and you would expect to see leverage from that, we would expect to see fairly healthy increases in net income percentages, in free cash flow yield percentages. I'm not guiding to specific numbers today. But clearly, that will increase, and we wouldn't expect it to increase healthily over that 3-year period.

Let's go back to the webcast. Well, in the room, you can still think about questions. A question for Joe. In support of your global major refurbishment programs as well as your anticipated growth in large new nuclear project over the next 10 years, where does your business unit need help externally or support to ensure successful delivery safely on time and on budget?

Yes, it's a great question. So I would say there's a couple of ways to answer this. The first, do we have enough resources in the business today to actually handle the volume increase we have in the business? So getting the right talent in the business. I think it's out there, but how do you get them in the business and get them onboarded in a way where they can be productive? I would say the other thing is really about building scale and building capacity and how do you do it in partnership? You got to do it organically and how do you do it in different kinds of partnerships. So we are talking about those kind of strategies today. The last thing I would say is, if you look at the kind of the whole thing, we don't intend to do direct hire construction, right? We will do construction management on a large asset, but we won't actually hire craft labor and manage craft labor in the field. So how we go about doing that becomes important, the external kind of support that we need on actual wrench turning, right, is something that we're really thinking hard about. And maybe the last thing I will say is a lot of the things we're trying to do, and I think it's not just us, everyone is trying to do it. Where the large kind of cost overruns manifest themselves in nuclear projects is in the field construction labor. And how do you take things out of the field? How do you take things off project? And how do you do things upstream in a fab shop or a controlled environment? And it's module construction but it's not pure module construction, it's kind of integration of skids and designs. And so this is something that we have a great supply chain that spooled up because of all the rebuilds that are going on today, but how do you actually maybe reorient that supply chain so that they can do modules, integrated modules. So those are the things that we're looking at to really get greater certainty of outcome when it comes to the actual signing a deal and getting it bounded and it's at cost and its schedule.

Sorry to do an add to that, Joe. And so I mean, one of the things that's been great for me over the last few months is really getting closer to the granular detail of our nuclear business and how we're delivering. And so we've already got hundreds of people in our GTC supporting Joe's business. When we look at how we're going to take Monarch from where it is today into reality, things like off-site construction and how we fabricate things to enable us to speed up construction. We're bringing in our project delivery capability to do that. And of course, we already supported by hundreds of people in Richard's business to drive that. So we'll also be using, I guess, our internal supply chain, if you like, to really help drive that program forward.

Any questions in the room? A couple of great question in the room.

Just one last one for me. So if we take the assumption that the 407 is sold and the share price is hovering around current levels, how would you prioritize the use of those proceeds?

Yes. I think as I was talking in the script, I think we see it as a chance of accessing all of our capital allocation framework, and we'd use that as a way to guide it. I think rather than kind of commenting hypothetically, I think we'd wait to see where we were at the particular point in time. But it feels to us that there's an opportunity to both invest in further growth in the business and return money to shareholders. But the relative weighting of that, I think we'd wait and see where we were at that particular point in time.

Question in the back?

It's Saba Khan from RBC. Just a question for Phil. I guess, when you kind of took over the role and looked at the opportunities across the business for some of the cost reduction of the SG&A improvement. What would you say across the list that you provided or maybe some of the easier lower-hanging fruit, faster versus things that might take out to 2027 to materialize?

Yes. So I mean, I think, as I said, there's no silver bullet, I don't think, to driving margin improvement. And actually, it varies from region to region. So you heard Stephanie talk about margin improvement story and the plan that we're building around that. And clearly, that is an area of focus for us and can have quite a significant impact in the -- over the next 1 to 2 years. As she said, it's a journey. So we're on that journey together. So -- but there are things, that I think -- there are elements of how we utilize our overhead and how we apply technology to some of the things that we're doing. A good example of that is that we're looking at win work at the moment and how do we introduce AI, clearly, human governed and controlled and managed, but using AI to actually improve and speed up our win work processes, which not only will either allow us to bid more and or make better use of the people that we have in the business and other client-facing activity. But actually, it could a significant cost out of our win work process. And so we're looking at all of those different aspects and applying that in a systematic way across the business.

Another question in the back?

Mona Nazir, CIBC Asset Management. I was just wondering, in regard to these GTCs, we've been seeing companies use this type of model inside your industry, outside your industry. And I'm just wondering if these teams located in India or other lower cost locations. Are they fairly siloed or are they all fairly integrated or collaborated with other teams and other geographies? And does it reduce turnaround time for projects just for the continuous workflow and time difference? And sorry, one last follow-up is, are clients asking when you're bidding on a project, where the work is being carried out?

I think it's yes to all of those points that you just said. So I mean, I think the first thing is maturity, right? So our GTC is completely integrated into our organization. So teams working alongside each other, integral part of the overall team. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference, if you like. And I think we've become very adept at moving people to work, but also work to people. And that maturity in our business allows us to really utilize the GTC, but they're fundamentally integrated into every single project team and where we work. In terms of the point around, does that allow us to do things quicker? Absolutely. And I gave the example of Hinkley Point. And there was a program that was under pressure and our ability to build and deploy 600 people onto that building's design element of the project really allowed the customer to hit their targets. I think the final point about -- actually, I've forgotten the final point. What was the final point?

Customers are asking.

Customers are asking. Yes. So basically, across -- it varies regionally, it varies and by customer type, it varies. But there are some of our customers are insistent that we use GTC as part of the delivery model because they want to get the cost advantage of doing that. And if you talk to outside we -- our customers come and visit us in India, and they regularly cycle through our operation, and they are an intrinsic part of how we build that delivery model. So different in different regions, but we've got a really strong customer focus around what we do.

And I would add a general -- sorry, I would add a general trend towards more acceptance and more customers asking us. So I think that's a trend we see across the business.

So what I was going to add is it was actually a really pleasant surprise to me when I joined the company at how smooth the interfaces are because that's always the question. When you're handing work off around the clock as you're talking about to get advantage of that sort of global time shift, how smooth are the interfaces. And I have to say the teams are so integrated and so connected that the interfaces are seamless, and it's really a source of value for us as a company.

Follow-up to that. So from my understanding, so for, if you're working on a project, is 10% of the employees working on that project based in these GTCs? Or can it flex up to like 30 or...

Why don't we give you a specific example, Hinkley. So I mean, Philip quoted the numbers earlier. So I think that was probably 90%. And it really is a horses for courses, a specific project by project number where it will depend on the degree of local client interface required, local client specification, but then -- and the degree to which we can use the GTC itself. So I think that's -- it really does depend. Then what I would say, just to add to the Hinkley Point C story, which I think is a great ones. I think that the project as it was at the time in terms of the time scales and the complexity was -- would have been undeliverable, done in a conventional way. And our GTC worked double shifts but also applies automation technology to that design, which brought -- which actually brought the program in early. So that was quite an amazing piece of work.

Yes. And if I could just quickly add, the more we're starting to become sort of connected and looking at things consistently, the more we're starting to look at certain types of projects and do the analysis of what in an ideal world, what would be the percentage. And we've just completed a piece of work where the number was 35%. But that now becomes a guideline for our bid teams and for our delivery team to say, look, we worked through this in some detail. You don't have to, here's the template.

All right. Just one more question on webcast before I go back to the floor. Joe, for you. Given the low win rate of decommissioning in the U.S. over the past few years, what gives you confident that this will change in the future?

Okay. So low win rate of decommissioning in general...

Decommissioning in projects.

Okay. Yes. So we have our U.S. business that has a relatively low win rate in the last few years, but the work that they were bidding on isn't -- wasn't necessarily decommissioning work. So let me talk about decommissioning first, and then I can talk about the U.S., I guess, because I'm not exactly sure what the question is saying. But decommissioning work in the U.S. right now, there are 112 nuclear reactors built in the kind of first wave that I talk about. 93 of them are still in service today. All of them are at end of life or getting close to end of life, although the U.S. is trying to extend it more and more. All of those things will have to go through D&D. And right now, the D&D that we do in the U.S. is largely tied to the kind of classified work, again, in the nuclear weapons complex. So the people that do that work, we don't talk about it because you really can't, are -- they will come out and do commercial, and that's going to be -- so it's going to -- I have confidence it's going to happen, and it's funded through the D&D funds and all of that. In terms of the win rate in the U.S., which is much broader than decommissioning, these are big, very large kind of 10-year contracts and multi-partnerships and -- do I have confidence it will change? Well, of course, I do. I'm an optimist. So we're looking at diversifying that business out of just EM, environmental management and doing other things with the capabilities they have. But we have confidence that business will grow. And it will grow through diversification.

But your numbers and your strategy and the targets that we put out is not dependent on decommission.

No. It's not.

Benoit?

So a question on the dividend policy. Jeff, you mentioned a few comments about the fact that you will be revisiting the dividend policy at one time. Any color about the or the milestones that you would like to see? Or is it related to the -- is it fair to say that M&A will come first, given your earlier comments and that should be more the focus rather than a dividend and buyback.

Yes. I think as you saw from my comments around capital allocation overall, we see significant opportunity from deploying capital against what is a fantastic demand opportunity and filling in capability in the U.S. and potentially more broadly, we see the opportunity to generate a significant amount of value. We also, not surprisingly, in terms of my comment around the investment thesis. We think there's an opportunity for us to drive significant value creation from here, and therefore, share buybacks and the ability to do that sort of opportunistically or at times programmatically, depending on where our cash position is. We think also forms a good leg of that stool. I think the other thing we wanted to recognize, though, is that our ongoing dividend is at a very de minimis level and that at some point in that '25 to '27 period, we'd revisit whether that is appropriate. And the other two uses are a better way to drive value creation or whether the potential to increase that dividend should be taken into account. At this point, I don't think we'd guide to a particular point in that 3-year period but is definitely something we will come back to.

Okay. And maybe just a quick follow-up. Last one for me, for Philip. We've talked about the GTC. You have a decent exposure versus some of your peers, 11% of your total workforce, but it's still low compared to some accounting firms, IT firms that are closer to 20%, 25%. You mentioned some targets for 2026, but longer terms, any desired level where you could bring the percentage with respect to the GTC longer term?

Yes. I mean, I think we haven't set any targets around that. And we have a really strong growth story though around it. And again, the booth will tell you about that. I think we're targeting 7,000 staff over the course of the next 2 to 3 years. And we believe that's in line with the growth trajectory that we need across the rest of the business. But I think it's just an incredibly important part of our growth story. And as we really continue to dive deeper into our margin improvement story, we'll look at every opportunity we can to use the GTC.

Any other question in the room? All right. Well, if there are no other questions, I want to thank everyone who joined us today via the webcast. We really appreciate your attendance and support. We would very appreciate receiving your feedback on today's event. And to do so, we have engaged Carbon Advisors. If you can spare a few minutes to share your opinions with them, it would be very appreciated. You will be receiving an e-mail from them shortly. If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or the Investor Relations team. You can find our contact information on our website. Have a good rest of the day, so we're going to end the webcast here. Thank you very much.

Thank you.