Bodycote plc (BOY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Bodycote Trading Update Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Wednesday, November 22, 2023. I would now like to turn the call over to Stephen Harris, Group Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. I'm sitting here with Ben Fidler.

Good morning.

Ben, obviously, is our CFO. Right. If we just take a pause a second to start here. What I'd like to do is -- it's become a situation in Bodycote that if you close your eyes, you can almost hear the baby stomp of this business as we march forward with what had become monotonous regularity. It may not be everybody's idea of excitement in that respect, but Bodycote is developed a habit of flowing forward irrespective of the weather. But before I put everybody to sleep, let's move on to some highlights in the trading update. Just to make the point at the beginning here, this update is in line with all of our expectations. The numbers themselves, I'm not going to read everything on the trading update, I'm just going to pick out some highlights. So firstly, we've delivered year-to-date revenues of GBP 677 million, that's up 10% versus the prior year. But if we do it at constant currency and strip out the energy-related surcharges, that's actually a year-to-date growth of 6%. Operating margins, they continue to move forward and progress forward as we were saying they would and they are doing so. They are expanding in line with our expectations. Just coming to the 4-month period only, we delivered GBP 257 million of revenue. That's 4% up year-on-year at constant currency on both the pre and post surcharge basis. Quickly turning to the divisional numbers. So the ADE revenues were GBP 116 million. That was an increase of 10%, but if you strip out the surcharges, it's 8% up. And then when we look at AGI revenues, the headlines look like it's down 1%. But actually, given that the surcharges are declining, its underlying business is up 1%. Just looking quickly at the Specialist Technologies. They again materially outperformed Classical Heat Treatment, so up 8% excluding surcharges versus 2% on the same basis in AGI and Classical Heat Treatment, excuse me. If we just go down to the market sectors, some key points there. Aerospace and Defence increased 13%, 10% excluding surcharges, and that is exactly the kind of growth we were expecting. Automotive, underlying growth 1%, excluding the impact of surcharges. So looking at GI, some people might be surprised, but the truth is that General Industrial, including energy, it was a growth of 3% if we take out the falling surcharges effect. And a lot of that is driven by Oil & Gas and Medical. And geographically, Western Europe performed in a more -- with more strength than North America. Just to restate, trading is in line with all of our expectations and the business is performing well. And what we're going to do now, if we could, is to take questions. Thank you, and we'll address your questions as you ask them.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of George Featherstone of Bank of America.

So firstly, just on General Industrial. I wonder if you could just help us a little bit with the different growth rates you're seeing by segment and perhaps put some numbers around what really the Oil & Gas growth rate was and the Medical growth as well because they look very strong. And then some of the declines you're seeing in the Tooling and Machinery and Electronics businesses, I just wonder if you could kind of frame that for us. And then just on the Tooling specifically, I think you said in the past, that's a good lead indicator for the Automotive business in the future. Is there any reason to think that won't be the case now?

George, can I just make a point here that your volume is quite low. I don't know whether it's our system or yours but we can hardly hear you, I'm afraid. Hopefully, I heard what you said. Just to cover the numbers, Ben will do that after I just make a point. The Tooling, just to reiterate, Tooling is a lead indicator when there is a sharp change in Tooling. One would expect Tooling to move up sharply ahead of an increase in Automotive car and light truck, particularly. And that uptick is typically 6 months in advance. Similarly, if there is going to be a downturn, you see a sharp downturn. A general trend that's relatively slow doesn't really give you any information because whether it's going up or down, that's just a general to and fro of the swing. So the indication is when people start buying Tooling en masse or stop buying en masse. With that, I'll hand over to Ben, and he can actually highlight some of the subsectors within General Industrial and illustrate where it's going.

Yes. Thanks, Stephen and George. So a little bit more detail on some of the subsector movements that we've seen. And all of these numbers I'm going to give you relate to the 4-month period and they are excluding surcharges. So as we said in the statement and as you rightly pointed out the question, Electronics was weak. That was sort of minus 10%, minus 12% in this 4-month period from a revenue perspective. Tooling was high single-digit declines. It was sort of minus 7%, minus 8% in terms of revenue declines that we saw in Tooling. Industrial Machinery, modestly negative, kind of minus 2% or so in terms of the revenues of that segment. Medical and Oil & Gas, as you rightly identified the question and as we flagged in the statement, were strong. Very robust growth still in Oil & Gas. Remember, in the first half there, we delivered around 40% growth in Oil & Gas. That's basically remained at that type of level, somewhere in the high 30% in this 4-month period. And Medical growth was around 15% to 20%. So if you put all those things into the mix, then hopefully that gives you a fuller picture, and you can see where the dynamics are within that General Industrial and Energy subsegment.

And just coming back to the Tooling point, again, this is 4 months of numbers. 7% within 4 months, there's no information in that. You need to have a longer period with a sharp situation. So you would expect those kind of movements in Tooling over this kind of period. So I don't think it's indicative of anything at this point either up or down. And if that answers your question.

It does.

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Douglas at Jefferies.

I've got the obligatory three questions, please. Are you able to expand a little bit on your comments from the statements on the progress you're making on EV penetration? I know we talked about it at the half year, and there was quite a lot of excitement about where you could go there. Is this additional to that? Is it new customers, new platforms? Just give us a bit of a feel for what you actually mean by that penetration comment. Second question is on market share in Classic Heat Treatment in aero. Is that a structural shift that you're seeing? Is it 1 or 2 people going bust and you're taking some share? Or is it -- anything else that we can kind of read into that? Because clearly, that's helpful news. And just on the last comment that you made on your script. You said that Europe was better than U.S. from a GI perspective. I kind of would have thought the other way around. So is there a higher exposure to maybe Medical and Oil & Gas in Europe that we should be aware of? Or is there something else happening there?

Andy, yes, okay. So if we turn to the Electric Vehicle discussion, what we're seeing is quite a large number of smaller orders on EVs. They don't in and of themselves move the needle in total, but they do tell you about programs that are starting up. We've won the order for it. It isn't a long-term contract or anything like that. It's just people have started placing business with us that they're part of electric vehicles or hybrids, that kind of work. And that's starting to pick up particularly in Europe, and that is where I made the point that I thought that would go first. Then we are right at the final knockings, one would hope, of signing some large contracts that are extended, and that is quite interesting, both in North America and in Europe. So it's a combination of there's a building momentum in small orders, and we've got some big orders which we touchwood, we expect to close fairly shortly. I hope that answers your question on that.

Yes. Is that anything to do with spare capacity or your technology or how they're doing things? What's resulting in that kind of shift?

Yes, sure. The big contracts are in Specialist Technology arena, that's low pressure carburizing particularly. The other thing that's happening is that -- so it is existing capacity, but more importantly, I think it's existing expertise. There are quite a lot of players that really don't want to dip their toe into the world of low-pressure carburizing, even though in theory they could do it, because basically, they don't want to go up the learning curve in such a short period of time. So it's both experience and capacity that's happening on the Specialist Technology under that. But we're also able to help customers out with the fact that we've got combined technologies. So some components within, for example, an EV transmission, actually too bulky, believe it or not, too heavy to do in effectively -- cost effectively in low-pressure carburizing. So they have to be done in a different form of carburizing, but we can do both. And what we're able to do and have done with quite a number of Tier 1s now is actually say, "Well, no, you don't want to do it that way, why don't you look at doing a combination of this plus that?" And be more specific to them. Whilst we don't write the specification for them, we do suggest to them and recommend a way of processing it, which might be different from their in-house idea. And that actually has got a lot of traction with the auto Tier 1s and primes that's coming to us to say, "Okay. You can do all of it then because you know what you're doing." So a lot of it is credibility, I think, plus the fact we've got Specialist Technology element and we've got the experience. So that's why. And it augurs well for the future. Can I move on to the Aerospace and Defence question?

You may.

So what's happening there is particularly in North American Classical Heat Treatment, particularly, the reason for that is a lot of the -- well, the big mover, of course, are narrow bodies and the narrow body engines, a lot of that comes out of North America. Those are the big numbers. And there is quite an extensive supply chain in North America and actually, indeed, in France for the cold sections on these narrow body engines. What's been happening is as the plane build rates ramping up, well flagged to everybody, the OEMs are basically releasing more capacity out to the supply chain. So more and more supply chain guys are actually switching on and coming up. They may not have been served by us in the past necessarily. We have persuaded them that we are the people to go to, we're the go-to guys here. And so they're putting the work our way. It's been a lot of hard work. But at the end of the day, you stick to it. And now the orders are coming through from customers that we haven't dealt with before, either because they were using somebody else in the third-party market or it was being done in-house. So that's where the share gains are coming from. It's both gain share from them doing it in-house, what they had previously done or the fact that we're getting it from other guys in the third-party market. If we...

Should that accelerate if we continue to see additional build rate growth? Or is it a one-off?

No, it's not a one-off. I mean, it's a process, isn't it? I'd love to see the fact you get share gains in aerospace in a year. That would be great. Unfortunately, the world I've been living does not like that. No, it's a long process. I mean, can you keep going forever? Well, clearly not. But it's certainly not at the end of its climb here. It's been a long time coming, particularly as -- if we go back to 2018 even, that was the sort of demise of the growth in the 737 MAX for a while, and now it's really coming strong. But if you want more color on that, you should talk to the expert which, of course, is Ben, and he can do that. But you should take that off-line, I think on that one, Andy. Just moving on to the strange phenomenon, one might think, of Europe being stronger in what we call General Industrial than North America, I think Ben can answer that better than I can.

Okay. Yes, happy to pick that one up. So the explanation is essentially driven by Oil & Gas and Energy. If you take Oil & Gas and Energy out of the mix, the underlying growth in the General Industrial subsectors was about the same in North America versus Western Europe, both were sort of modest declines in this 4-month period. The explanation is, therefore, Energy and Oil & Gas, which it's not so much that there is a greater proportional mix of Energy and Oil & Gas in North America GI for our business versus Western Europe, it's that the rate of growth was significantly higher in our Western European Oil & Gas and Energy-related businesses than it was in North America. And I guess, it's probably 2 principal reasons for that. Firstly is there's a lot of activity going on in subsea oil and gas work for us through our European HIP business and good outlook for continued volumes there. And also, our Surface Technologies business in the U.K., which is seeing a big increase in volumes and workload at the moment, driven by a number of sizable projects in export markets overseas that is driving that growth. So I would see that differential continuing, geographically at least, through the rest of this year.

Our next question comes from the line of Jonathan Hurn at Barclays.

Just a couple of questions or should I say a few questions for me, please. The first one was just on Civil Aerospace. I wonder if you could just kind of break out the split between OE and aftermarket in that business for you right now. And also, if you can just give us maybe a little bit of color on the respective growth rates between those 2 sort of subsegments that you're seeing?

Okay. We do these one at a time, Jonathan. Ben, do you want to opine on the aftermarket?

Yes. I mean, look, the first is a context set to say, from our business perspective it's extremely difficult to understand and see the differences between the 2 because our customers typically do not tell us whether this is an OE part or an aftermarket part. The reality is it's exactly the same component in most cases. In fact, in almost every single case, if we think about treating a Rolls-Royce turbine blade, a GE blade, for example, we don't know. We're ambivalent. We achieve the same pricing on both. So -- but the reality is if you stand back and you look at the macro data for the industry, what we see is what you see, which is both the OE and the aftermarket growing strongly with positive drivers continuing for both of those subsector areas, driven by, in the case of the aftermarket, ongoing higher growth in air traffic and flying hours, and in OE, ongoing stomp ever upwards in terms of OE build rates from the manufacturers. If you'd add to that, Stephen?

No, no. Go on, Jonathan.

The second question was just on Defence. I think I know I've got it wrong, but I think in the first half, it grew 5%, obviously, in that 4-month period, it grew 6%. Obviously, things are starting to pick up. Do you feel that you're going into a bit of an upward cycle for Defence right now?

Yes, we are, I think. It is a sad fact that if you use the equipment in conflict, that things tend to wear out and therefore you've got a much higher attrition rate, and that then leads to, for us, a greater amount of business. It's not so much any new contracts or anything. It's just we are being asked to provide work at an increasing rate on stuff that actually has been used and not necessarily destroyed but it's just they do wear out, and you have to replace the pieces. That's what's going on. And we are in an uptick in Defence. How long it will go for? I have no idea, but that's one of these things where it's taken a long time to get some momentum. It's now moving and we've got an upward trend on it.

Okay. That's very clear. And last one was just on sort of Specialist Technologies again, sort of kind of looking at the relative growth rate. So obviously, it slowed in that 4-month period versus the first half. Is that just down to auto? Or is there something else playing out there? So I think in the first half, it was plus 13% ex surcharges. I think obviously, in this period, it was plus 8%. So just trying to work out what's causing us slowing there. Was it a comp issue?

Yes. So it's a combination of all of those factors. There is a little bit of a year-over-year comps issue, you're absolutely right. As you will appreciate as well, if you look at the breakdown of our Specialist Technologies business, a significant part of our Specialist Technologies business is General Industrial-focused. Now -- so that is a factor that's fed into that reduced rate of growth, you're right, compared to the first half. We would still say that an 8% growth in our Specialist Technologies business is still very positive and very pleasing to see and still continues to grow well above the underlying market growth rates for a number of the underlying markets, particularly General Industrial and Automotive for Specialist Technologies, which is a trend and a phenomenon we would expect to see continuing and are confident it will continue.

Our next question comes from the line of Harry Philips at Peel Hunt.

A few from me, if I could. First of all, I'm afraid to just tick off the list. Emerging Markets, just obviously down 6% ex surcharges, and you obviously signed China and Eastern Europe, but maybe just a little more on that, please. The UAW, because obviously your 4 months would have had the full impact of October in there and just the sort of level of magnitude, if that's really a distortion or not. And then just finally, just where you sit on FX. Right now, the sort of debate from other companies through this reporting season has been it's sort of not so much the dollar, euro, but other currencies. And just wondering if you could give an update on that, please, Ben.

Let me take it from the top actually, Harry. Emerging Markets, so yes, what's that about? I think I've said this in the past, so I tend to repeat myself sometimes. Eastern Europe is a swing country for manufacturers. So the German OEs, they use Eastern Europe as their overflow partner, that's not for Bodycote, but that is themselves. So when there's a slowdown in auto, what will happen is that they'll move their work back to homeland to keep their Western European employees in full employment. So you see, when auto waxes and wanes, then you get Eastern Europe auto waxing and waning. And that's behind the movement in Eastern Europe, and it's primarily an automotive OE issue that's moving that work back into the sort of Western countries. But it equally -- well, as soon as that steadies, it will go back the other way. So it's a sort of a balancing area. For us, we're supplying locally. If the customers are moving their work back to Germany or France or wherever for a brief period, then our workload will go down somewhat. And we'll be doing work that's unrelated to that because there's quite a lot of work there. So that's the emerging marketing piece. The United Auto Workers, actually, it's not a huge distortion that's -- what was it, Ben, what was the amount?

We estimate it cost us about $600,000 worth of sales, so probably about 80 to 100 basis points of growth in our auto business in the 4-month period.

I lost you on the mic, do you want to do the...

Yes. Why don't I'd pick up and carry on with the FX point? Well, there's always a degree of tell me, Harry, where you think currency rates are going to be through November and December? Maybe your crystal ball is best than mine. But what we saw -- let's pull apart what we've seen when we sort of look year-to-date. So the first half, a number you saw with our interim results from a revenue perspective, currency was about a GBP 12 million benefit to revenues in the first half of the year. In this 4-month period, it's been around about a GBP 10 million headwind so far in the second half to our revenue growth. At the interim results, I stood up and said we thought it was going to be about GBP 15 million to GBP 20 million headwind in the second half. Now clearly, I was wrong because spot rates have moved. But you can see it has been a headwind so far. And if rates continue where they are at the moment, it's probably going to be somewhere towards the lower end of that full year estimate that I've talked about originally.

And our next question comes from the line of Dominic Convey at Numis.

Just two questions for me, if you may. Firstly, just interested, Stephen, in your assessment on Civil Aerospace supply chain challenges, specifically where you see the bottlenecks currently, how that might evolve into 2024. And I guess the real question for me is what confidence you have on those growth rates being maintained or even accelerating in 2024? And secondly, another sort of broader question. You've talked previously about the Bodycote proprietary PMI. I just want to get a little bit of a view on what's on the -- flashing on the dashboard now as we look into the early part of 2024.

Dominic, yes, thanks for that. Let's do the Bodycote proprietary PMI. I'm going to get sued for that if I don't stop using that. So the -- what's flashing on the dashboard, no flashing red, that's for sure. We've got sort of -- and the studies goes and signals from a number of the GI side. Interestingly, we don't have those signals as reds in auto. What we're actually -- we've seen in auto is a softening, but we don't appear to have that going on for too much longer. But it might do. I mean, don't forget, this is purely what -- we ask our customers what they're seeing. There's some indications that they could see an uptick in work in Q3 and Q4 -- Q4 this year, Q1 next year, I got that slightly wrong. But beyond that, I mean, their opinions, actually they don't know. And of course, it's just a theme. But the data that we have, lots of data shows it could, in fact, strengthen in the last quarter this year. But maybe it won't start until Q4 -- Q1 next year. But then who knows? So interestingly enough, not a flashing red at this point in time. The greens are very firmly in Specialist Technologies, in Aerospace and in Oil & Gas and in Classical Heat Treatment, in Aerospace, yes, they look good. So that's a sort of general tour from memory because I don't have it in front of me here, but that's what we were going through a couple of weeks ago with the guys. Then the supply chain challenges in Aerospace, which was your first question. I think we're seeing a general easing across the piece in terms of geographies in there. The initial part of the supply chain, which is the forgings and castings, rural forgings and castings, that starting to move up, and that was something that was constrained. And in fact, there are still some of the casters that -- the casting houses that are constrained because they can't get their lines running. So they have challenges at the final part of the line or the beginning part of line. But there's no material shortages as far as we can see in that. And the industry seems to have sorted itself out in the fact that they do have capacity. Where as you go back a couple of years, they didn't have the capacity to meet the demand. But now they've got the capacity. There's still some sort of headaches and toothaches they've got but it's coming. Other parts of the supply chain are just unblocking and unfreezing as they get their materials through and it's building a momentum. I can't see a bottleneck or pinch point at the moment because actually, most of the supply chain in terms of active players out there are expanding. And if there's a bottleneck in one, they can pick it up in one or the other. So there's enough robustness in the supply chain to actually compensate for nearly all of the intermediary supply chain players. There's some talk about specific material. They'd like to get more of it. But it's not actually -- from what we can see, and I might be speaking a different tune from some of the end users, I don't know -- not end users, but the OEMs, I can't say that. But from what we see, it's actually starting quite nicely to build and build. I don't see an immediate problem. Long answer to your question. Sorry about that, Dom, but I hope that helps.

And our next question comes from the line of Rory Smith at UBS.

It's Rory at UBS. I just had a sort of general question or broad question on Aerospace. I think I'm right in saying that Aerospace is where you have the largest proportion of Specialist Technology sales versus Classical Heat Treatment. So just on your comments that those market share gains in North America are around -- are in Classical Heat Treatment. What kind of margins do you think those are coming in at? And would you always take on that extra work from the supply chain, even if it was at lower margins than sort of the classical -- than the Specialist Technologies that you're doing there? And presumably, that's on things like structures. Is that right? If you don't necessarily know the difference between OE and AM on engines. So is that the right dynamic and just thinking about what Aerospace or ADE margins could look like going forward if that mix does change?

Okay, Rory. I'm not sure you're absolutely right there about -- we've got a lot of Specialist Technologies in Aerospace and the largest proportion. But the amount of Classical Heat Treatment is more than -- and Ben will check the numbers for me here, but is more than the Specialist Technologies element. So Classical Heat Treatment is a bigger, bigger item. And the one thing to understand on that, I think, generally is the incremental business is of much higher margin than the ongoing business. So if you had a business, just use a number, that had a 15% margin and you take on incremental business, it will be at a much higher margin from a drop-through basis, simply because your costs are already in play. So we're not looking at taking lower-margin business by any means. This is in a Classical Heat Treatment. Well, this is good business. It's not an issue. And I think that's the underlying thing to remember, is that you should see -- actually in almost all businesses that we've got, I think everything, the incremental business is -- the margins are much higher. So no, not a problem about taking low-margin business. And will it be sustainable and increasing the margins of that particular form part of the business? Yes, it should. As long as the underlying growth rate in Aerospace keeps going up, which our view is that in the foreseeable, it will do, you're going to get increasingly higher incremental business and therefore, higher margins. Where will they end up? That comes back to the generality. We've said many times where the Aerospace business should be going, and that's in the 20s, like a lot of the business actually. So not just 20% but higher. Then we don't see an issue. Relating to structures versus engines, I don't think I've got that kind of granularity for you, and I wouldn't personally try and take that as a read frankly. And I know that's a bit not clear, but is there anything else you want to dig into?

I think what I would just add to what you said, Stephen, maybe a little bit more color about some of that respective mix Aerospace within Classical, Aerospace within Specialist Technologies. It's not wildly different, actually, Rory, as Stephen said. It's modestly higher as a proportion of specialist but you're talking 4 or 5 percentage points difference. Aerospace is about 1/4 of our Classical Heat Treatment business and it's around about 29%, 30% of our Specialist Technologies business. So yes, there's a modest difference, but it's small.

Okay. That's clear. And just so I'm clear, those market share gains in Classical Heat Treatment in North America and Civil Aerospace, are they on long-term agreements? Or are they, well, short-term agreements?

It's mix, actually. I don't think we've got any sort of banner contracts that we'd stand up and shout from rooftops, we tend to do that anyway. But no, it's more a general beat of the business. But to remember, in Aerospace, it's the old adage, once you're on the print, you're on the print. It's very, very difficult to move the business particularly in aerospace. So we wouldn't expect to have that moving around. And the fact that it isn't on a long-term contract. Actually, for us, is good news. I mean, the last thing -- we don't like long-term agreements, I've said that many times. Because the reason someone comes up the long-term agreement isn't to guarantee its work necessarily from their standpoint, although we won't do that. It's so that they can keep our prices under their thumb. And what we'd like to do is to price according to inflation, obviously. And so long-term agreements don't necessarily guarantee the business for a period of time, but we don't tend to have minimum contracts -- minimum quantity contracts. What they do is constrain us in terms of what we can do, both in pricing and in service, and where we can put the business within our structure. It's all aimed at sort of nailing our feet to the floor with not very big pieces of business, in many cases. So the impact of long-term agreements in Classical Heat Treatment in Aerospace is not really something that one has to worry about. It's all pretty sticky because in Classical Heat Treatment, once you get something approved and on the spec, it's hard for customers to want to spend a lot more money getting somebody else up online.

[Operator Instructions] And the next question comes from the line of Stephan Klepp at HSBC.

Two questions, please. So I wanted to follow up on Automotive first. So you said that you might see an acceleration of demand probably in Q4 or in Q1. How does that basically, let's say, pan out with regards to lower volumes in ICE, slowing in ICE, EV coming on and then having a relatively high base because of the strong order books that produced a very strong trend in the first half 2023?

I'm not sure I can handle that one at this point.

I mean, look, on the second part of your ICE versus EV-related pace, I would say there is undoubtedly a trend that we all see and know, and you can see the stats, you can see it as you walk down the street in terms of that ICE to EV shift. It's progressive. It will continue. We're comfortable with our positioning in that. But if your question is around Q4, I don't think -- and it's not changing that rapidly that you're suddenly going to see some dramatic movements in the fourth quarter. Now some of the recent EV work that we have won, that we talked about at the interims, yes, that is starting to ramp up. The reality is the ramp-up there really is more through 2024 as you get through start of production. We're going through the preproduction approval processes there. That's all going well. But you're not going to see much of an impact there until we start to get through -- probably quite well through to 2024. But for the long term, very comfortable with our positioning on some of these new EV contracts. And as we talked earlier on this call and in the statement, we have got a good pipeline of further bids that are in very active discussions there, and we would expect to make good progress on.

Yes. No, I understand that. I was not about -- it was about Q4, don't worry. It's 2 months, that's fine. I was rather thinking as well in the grand scheme of things moving into next year and as well as the softening with the destocking that has taken place. But fair enough, I understand where you're coming from. Second question is free cash flow. Free cash flow was really strong in the first 4 months of the second half, and that is a Q4 question, if I may. What should we expect for the full year then? Should we expect that to continue and probably even pick up a little bit in the last 2 months, cash generation?

So yes, look, we have been -- I mean, the cash generation of the business, a long history of delivering good cash flow. Over the last few years, it's been a little bit below normal trend levels. This is about us returning now to normal trend levels as we continue to drive and focus ever more on receivables and just making sensible steps and decisions there. Yes, the type of cash flow that we've delivered in the first 4 months of the second half is not out of the ordinary. You can see the net debt position at the end of October, just under GBP 7 million. As you look forward to the year-end, remember, of course, there is the final dividend payment which is just under GBP 13 million but we would expect to deliver further good cash conversion through November and December, such that excluding the acquisition -- let's leave that to one side when we're talking about net debt. Excluding the acquisition, we would expect to be in a very modest net debt position at the year-end excluding the acquisition, and then obviously, as the acquisition proceeds on top of that -- I mean, sort of the acquisition cost on top of that.

And as there are currently no further questions on the line at this time, I'll hand the floor back to our speakers for the closing comments.

Thank you, Mark. So just to sum it up and restate, trading is in line with all of our expectations and the business is performing well. I mean, we're doing well here. So with that, if we don't get to speak to you beforehand, do have a good happy holidays when they come around, and we'll talk to you later.

Thank you. This now concludes the conference. Thank you all very much for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.