Capita plc (CPI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to Capita's Half Year Results Call. My name is Melissa, and I'll be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions] I now have the pleasure of welcoming our host, Jon Lewis, CEO; and Tim Weller, CFO. Jon, over to you.

Melissa, thank you, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to Capita's Half Year 2021 Financial Results Presentation. As usual, I draw your attention to the disclaimer on Slide 2. So we're pleased to report that we are making tangible progress on our transformation strategy and the priorities we set out at our full year results in March. In 2021, we are targeting our first year-on-year organic growth for 6 years. For the group as a whole, we maintained revenue in H1 with Q2 4.5% ahead of last year, and we have the order book and pipeline of opportunities to grow in the second half. New contract wins drove year-on-year growth in Government Services, People Solutions and Technology Solutions, these being offset by declines elsewhere, including the continued low levels of activity due to COVID in our travel and entertainment and enforcement business. The robust improvements in operating delivery we have seen over the last 2 years have also continued. These have combined to increase operating margins by 320 basis points year-on-year. And we have generated GBP 536 million from disposals year-to-date, including ESS and Axelos, 75% of the targeted GBP 700 million we communicated in March. Further disposals are now underway, and the remaining 25% of this disposal proceeds target will be delivered by the end of the first half '22, 6 months earlier than previously planned. We have extended our RCF out to August 2023 and have completed our triennial pension valuation. Liquidity remains strong and is more than sufficient to meet our debt repayment obligations in 2022. Earlier this week, we transitioned to our new operating model. We now have 2 core divisions, Capita Experience and Capita Public Services, and an expanded noncore division Capita Portfolio. The structure is both more client focused, operationally efficient and cost effective and will support sustainable revenue growth and cash generation. We will cover off these points in more detail later in the presentation. At this point, I would like to say thank you to all our 55,000 colleagues. The progress we have made has only been possible through their continued hard work, professionalism and commitment, and I'm honored and proud to work alongside them. Let me now hand over to Tim Weller, our new CFO, who joined us in May and who will take you through the first half financial performance. Tim?

Thanks, Jon, and good morning, everyone. It's great to be here. And as you recognize from Jon's introductory comments, this is a really good time to be joining Capita. The organizational simplicity and strategic logic of the new operational structure establishes a firm foundation as the business inflects to top line growth. Jon and the team have made huge progress in efficiency delivery, which is evident in our bottom line progression in the first half, with more to come in the future. And finally, some very important steps have been taken in the last few weeks to strengthen the balance sheet, which I'll go into in more detail in the next few slides. All this puts us firmly on track to deliver on our plans for 2021 and to generate sustainable free cash flow in 2022 and beyond. Now turning to Slide 5 for our financial highlights. As in previous presentations, we show our results on an adjusted basis, which excludes the impact of businesses exited and the trading results of Axelos, which has been shown as held-for-sale at the period end. Despite the ongoing impact of COVID-19, adjusted revenues maintained in line with the first half of last year, with PBT and EBITDA improvement, reflecting that revenue stability and ongoing efficiency delivery. Cash generated by operations reduced by 7% compared with the prior year, which as previously disclosed, benefited from GBP 77 million of advance receipts arising as a result of the COVID pandemic. Free cash flow increased by 12% as the reduction in adjusted cash generated by operations was more than offset by lower capital expenditure, interest and tax paid. And we delivered a step reduction in net debt in the half, principally reflecting the initial ESS disposal proceeds, partially offset by the expected one-off catch-up increase in pension deficit contributions. Turning now to revenue on Slide 6. Puts and takes led to the in-line revenue performance as shown in the chart. In-period revenue impact from contract losses halved year-on-year reflecting our sustained focus on retention and service delivery. The relatively small ongoing contract scope and volume reductions reflects 2020 pandemic-related work and other projects in customer management, which did not repeat in 2021. We've seen improvement in our transactional revenue, which in 2020 was particularly impacted by COVID-19 when the business experienced a negative impact of around GBP 80 million. This half, we saw the biggest recovery in Technology Solutions and People Solutions. The first half benefited from a number of notable wins, including the commencement of the Royal Navy training contract, and the Job Entry Targeted Support contract, which commenced in February. And these were combined with the annualized impact of the Defence Fire and Rescue contract and smaller wins within Customer Management and Software. We provide a view of revenue trends over the half. The slide shows the period-on-period progression in Q1 and Q2. As you can see, Q1 this year was down 4% on Q1 2020, which is largely unaffected by COVID-19, but Q2 saw an inflection to growth with revenues up 4.5%. We're particularly encouraged by the performance in this quarter as it derives mainly from the major contract wins I just outlined, rather than a bounce-back in our COVID-impacted business volumes. Moving on to our profit before tax bridge, as shown on Slide 7. There are a number of key drivers behind the substantial step-up in profits seen in the first half. Firstly, to ensure a like-for-like starting point, we've adjusted to the 2020 one-off totaling GBP 12 million, which included contract asset impairments recognized in Customer Management and an increase in contract provisions. The margin effect of revenue losses, scope and volume, transactional changes and contract wins come to a net GBP 4 million negative with the ramp-up made in Q2 from new wins not yet offsetting the impact of contract losses. Our successful transformation program continued to deliver substantial savings in the first half of 2021 with a GBP 79 million period-on-period benefit. In last year's interim results, we outlined the impact that the group's holiday pay accrual had on the first half of 2020. The impact of this is significantly unwound in 2021 as colleagues stepped up the usage of their holiday entitlement. Despite this, we still expect the phasing of leave accrual recognition to result in a weighting operating profit for the second half. Final block on the slide shows the period-on-period impact of the reinstatement of the employee bonus scheme this year, with GBP 25 million accrued at 30th of June compared with the release of 2019 GBP 15 million bonus accrual in the first half of 2020. Moving into the second half, we expect to see the rewards of the hard work by the team on cost transformation over the last few years with revenue growth and operating leverage driving the bottom line. Turning now to Slide 8, which reconciles our adjusted profit before tax measure with reported PBT. Business exits reflect the ESS and Irish Life and Pensions disposals, which generated GBP 240 million disposal profit and classification of Axelos as held-for-sale at 30th of June. Restructuring costs of around GBP 30 million was slightly lower than the comparative period. We expect strategic restructuring costs to increase in the second half with the implementation of the Future Capita structure which is effective from August. Overall, for the year, we're projecting restructuring costs of between GBP 75 million and GBP 90 million in what will be our last year substantial below-the-line restructuring investment. Litigation and claims include a GBP 5 million insurance received in respect to the previously recognized claim and a small move in provisions in respect of specific historical claims. In summary, the adjusting items added GBP 260 million to our adjusted PBT, bringing the overall year-on-year increase to GBP 290 million. On Slide 9, we provide the divisional revenue and operating profit performance and the organization structure which existed during the period. Today's announcement provides further detail on the financial performance and key achievements for each of the divisions operated in the first half. On Slide 10 we provide a pro forma analysis of first half revenues under the organization structure, which has just been put into effect. And later this year, we plan to provide full historical pro forma financials under the new divisional structure. As today's announcement makes clear, our 2 new client-focused core divisions are at different stages in their transformation journeys and are facing into markets that are recovering at different rates. The U.K. government market is strong, reflecting the 8.6% pro forma growth shown in Capita Public Service, whereas the private sector is less strong, and Capita Experience saw a 7.5% revenue decline in the first half. Nevertheless, as noted earlier, overall, we expect the group to return to revenue growth this year despite the ongoing impact of COVID-19, and we remain on track to deliver cost savings of GBP 50 million in 2022 with the simplification inherent in the new group structure. Turning now to the cash flow and net debt movement as summarized on Slide 11. Operating cash flow conversion has fallen from 176% to 121%, reflecting a reversal of the working capital benefit in the prior year of COVID-19-related advanced receipts, partially offset by advanced payments from a couple of our major customers this year. Whilst there's been a net cash flow benefit in the first half from working capital movements, we currently expect a material working capital outflow in the second half reflecting the unwind of the advanced customer payment I've just mentioned across the balance of the year, together with the natural expansion in working capital as we transition to revenue growth. Overall, we're expecting operating cash flow conversion for the full year to be between [ 55% ] and 75% in 2021 before reverting to a more normalized 80% to 90% into 2022 and beyond. Capital investments fell period-on-period, reflecting ongoing COVID-19 cash preservation measures and the completion in 2020 of a number of transformation projects. We expect a step-up in capital spend in the second half to somewhere between GBP 35 million and GBP 45 million as we move into the growth phase. There are a number of other cash flows during the first half of 2021, which impacted the overall movement in net debt. The largest obviously being the proceed received on the EFS disposal in February, offset by the expected one-off additional pension contributions. Additionally, we saw a small outflow in the first half from the reversal of the one-off VAT phasing benefit we received in 2020, and expect the bulk of the rest of the 2020 benefit to reverse in the second half. Overall, net debt reduced by GBP 183 million to GBP 894 million at the end of June. On Slide 12, we itemize the material cash flow headwinds the group is currently exposed to and show an estimate of how these are expected to develop in the second half of the year and 2022. One of the largest outflows in 2021 will be the repayment of deferred VAT under the government's COVID-19 support measures, which, as I just noted, would largely be repaid by the end of the year. As I explained earlier, there've been substantial catch-up pension deficit contributions in the first half. Following the agreement reached in June with the pension trustees in respect of the triennial valuation, we expect to make a further regular deficit contribution of around GBP 14 million in the second half, GBP 30 million in each of 2022 and 2023 and GBP 50 million a year from 2024 to 2026. Notwithstanding the step-up in restructuring costs expected in the second half of the year as we implement the new organization structure, moving into 2022, we expect restructuring costs to be materially lower and are not planning to be calling restructuring costs out separately as adjusting items beyond the current financial year. Overall, the material reduction in cash flow headwinds expected as we move into 2022 is one of the key factors which underpins the transition to sustainable free cash flow from that year onwards. On Slide 13, we set out the group's liquidity position and summarize some of the key steps taken recently to strengthen the group's balance sheet. As at 30th of June, we had substantial liquidity with net cash of GBP 242 million and a wholly undrawn revolver. Current GBP 452 million revolving credit facility expires on 31st of August 2022. And in June this year, we entered into a new RCF of GBP 300 million covering the period from August 2022 to August 2023, with a further extension to August 2024 contingent on a number of conditions as outlined in the half year results announcement. Last week, we received total proceeds of GBP 227 million in respect to the Axelos transaction and the contingent consideration from the ESS sale. In aggregate, we have now received around 75% of the GBP 700 million target for disposal proceeds that we set out in March. And given the process is underway, we remain confident that the balance will be delivered across the remainder of 2021 and the first half of 2022. In July, we repaid GBP 159 million of the U.S. private notes leaving some GBP 280 million of additional maturities between now and the end of 2022. The group's current strong liquidity position provides the financial resources to address the forthcoming maturities with headroom to spare even before the benefit of the expected further disposal proceeds I just talked about. We'll therefore be taking a measured approach to any potential refinancing and expect to be able to take our time to implement a longer-term debt solution at the appropriate moment. And finally, as set out on Slide 14 and returning to the comments I made at the start about this being a really good time to join Capita, we've delivered an encouraging first half financial performance with strong bottom line progression in line with our expectations. The revenue trends we've seen in the first half and the new operational structure create a platform for revenue growth in the second half. As a result of the various moving parts in cash flows, we expect net debt to be broadly flat across the remainder of the year before the benefit of any further disposals. Given the material reduction we expect in cash flow headwinds beyond this year, we are on track for sustainable free cash flow in 2022. And all of this is underpinned by the substantial progress made recently to strengthen the balance sheet with more to come from the ongoing disposal program. So with that, I hand back to Jon for the strategic update.

Thanks, Tim. At the heart of our strategy is our commitment to being a purpose-led responsible business, working to create a sustainable future for all of our stakeholders. This represents our license to operate in the markets we serve and in particular, ensures we are strongly aligned to the government's Social Value Act. Our purpose, Creating Better Outcomes, has also been a key driver of the needed cultural change that was required within the organization. From September, all U.K. government suppliers with contracts with annual values in excess of GBP 5 million will have to commit to being net-zero by 2050 through a published carbon reduction plan. This is something we have been working on for well over a year and have well-defined plans to achieve 3 milestones on our road to net-zero. We're committed to neutralizing our Scope 1 and 2 operational emissions by 2025; will add Scope 3 business travel by 2030; and finally by 2035 include our remaining Scope 3 emissions, taking us to net-zero. In February of this year, we achieved Science-based Target Initiative accreditation, which independently ensures our targets are robust and credible. We have continued to focus on the safety and well-being of our people through the pandemic and over 40,000 are currently working from home and many will continue to do so as we adopt our new ways of working hybrid model. And as I've stated previously, our purpose, We Create Better Outcomes, and what it stands for, is a foundational element of Capita being a sustainably successful company. As Tim stated, this set of results record the first tangible benefits from the investment in people, systems, products and client service delivery made over the last 3 years. These feed into a virtuous circle of sustainable growth in revenue, margins and cash. Our Net Promoter Score at plus 32 tells you that our investment in client service delivery is recognized, something that is fundamental to renewing and growing our business with existing clients. And we have much stronger relationships with our clients today. Trust and engagement have improved and we have clearer insights to their needs and the revenue opportunities these create. Our new, much more client-centric operating model will further improve that focus, enabling our client partners to bring more of Capita to their respective accounts. The impact of winning work on better commercial terms that create value for Capita and its shareholders is also now much more visible. The improved discipline on bids over the 3 years no longer served to offset cash leakage on historic contracts but is now beginning to drive margin growth. And finally, we are executing strongly on our new contracts, delivering on bid margins and creating further growth opportunities as a result. This is the virtuous circle we continue to perpetuate to create sustainable revenue and margin growth. I'm pleased with the first half sales performance. Previously, our priority had been to fix those contracts that had operational issues and unhappy clients. With that considerable [ hidden ] costs largely behind us, we're now able to bring more resources and energy to investing in our capabilities for long-term sustainable growth. And as Tim showed, we inflected into growth in Q2 ahead of any material COVID bounce-back from businesses such as travel and events and enforcement. We won just shy of GBP 2.6 billion of new business in the first half, 70% more than we did over the same period last year. GBP 925 million of this came from our Royal Navy Training contract. But even excluding that, we still increased total contract value by 9% year-on-year. Our investment in the professionalization of our sales organizations means we're also better at winning business. We had a 76% win rate in the first half, a 14-point increase on the prior year. And our strengthened sales performance is further evidenced by our strong in-year revenue growth, up 13% on last. And finally, we have further reduced revenue attrition associated with the loss of large scopes of work, such as that for local government last year, for Prudential and Marsh the year before. Our contract renewal rate remains high at 89%, itself an indicator of how well we are delivering for our clients today. These collectively are the building blocks from which we expect to grow revenue this year and into the future. As a result of the work we have won in the first half, the order book increased by a net GBP 0.8 billion, more than GBP 2 billion of pipeline opportunities moved onto the order book over that period. And in the last 12 months, we have increased our 2022 pipeline by over GBP 2 billion. Our sales data also shows that we are starting to realize the change in mix of work associated with our consult, transform, deliver engagement model. We're winning more strategically valuable and higher-margin consulting and transformational work, engagements where we can monetize our depth of understanding of clients' needs and the solutions to them. This change in mix is one of the core pillars of our margin enhancement strategy. And in future, we will share the percentages of work won in each category. Examples in Capita Public would be our consulting and transformational work for Network Rail or our work for the Joint Information Systems Committee. Capita Experience is continuing to expand scope beyond traditional call center delivery to more transformational work, collaborating with clients to implement digital solutions that drive superior customer outcomes while also, of course, reducing cost to serve. We're currently working with a major financial services client and a transportation sector client on bids that offer transformational services as well as just lower cost to deliver. Our focus on the professionalization of our sales function is also generating insights on who our highest growth potential clients are and the types of solutions we're most likely to sell to them. 98% of the total contract value sold in the first half was with our top 10 key clients. And importantly, GBP 1.6 billion of that, more than 60%, was from solutions we had not previously sold to them. In other words, we're doing a better job of increasing our share of spend and growing revenues from our top clients. Over GBP 2 billion of work was concentrated in 10 market offerings, these scalable, repeatable solutions include complex transformation as with the Department of Education, access to skills as with NHS, digital connectivity with Transport for London, and customer experience transformation and digital services for a major European telco as well as Tesco Mobile. And those same 10 market offerings, which have demonstrable market competitiveness, form 70% of the weighted pipeline for the rest of the year. Now as determined as we are to grow the top line, we will only do so on pipeline opportunities that have the right risk and margin profile. Our well-established government processes, including our contract review committees, ensure that we comprehend execution risks and bid appropriate margins for the work in our pipeline. As a result, average margin is now 11% since the start of the transformation, reflecting this disciplined approach. And on renewals, our average margin uplift on recent significant negotiations has been 6 percentage points higher than their historic performance. Our disciplined approach is further evidenced by the fact that we ultimately chose not to bid on almost GBP 400 million of pipeline opportunities in the first half as we didn't consider the risk-reward profile to be appropriate. The operational performance of our contract portfolio was again strong in the first half with contract delivery KPIs up a further 1% on H1 2020. Our contract delivery performance is now consistently in line with industry benchmarks. However, we are a long way from being complacent, and we have a number of areas, for example, our pensions administration business, where we can better serve customers and do so more efficiently. We're also delivering well on our major new contracts, in particular, Defence Fire and Rescue for the MOD and training for the Royal Navy, with operational and financial KPIs, in line with expectations. Delivering against the original bid plan is another foundational success factor. First, it speaks to a more mature, disciplined and lower-risk execution capability. And second, delighted clients to generate incremental growth opportunities. We have already won over GBP 80 million of incremental TCV on the Royal Navy training and Defence Fire and Rescue contracts since their start with further opportunities in the pipeline of over GBP 300 million, and we look forward to building on this trend. Now we have updated you at every set of results since 2018 on our problematic legacy contracts. These were costing us our reputation, client relationships, our time and most of all, our cash. This year, we will complete the resolution of the final 2: Electronic Monitoring and PCSE. Along with Army Recruitment and Mobilcom-Debitel, these 4 contracts have to date cost Capita GBP 230 million in lifetime cash. This compares to the planned GBP 280 million of cash contribution Capita expected at the time these contracts were signed between 2012 and 2015. This gap encapsulates why we have put such emphasis on bid discipline and contract execution. We're now 98% of the way through digesting the cost of these contracts and will be finished by the end of this year. And from next year, we expect the cash contribution to be positive. In the case of Army Recruitment and PCSE, we have now also won extensions with superior commercial terms. If we look at the 4 largest contracts won since the start of the transformation, representing GBP 1.9 billion of TCV through our more disciplined bidding and stronger operational control, our forecast for cash generation is slightly ahead of that expected when they were bid. We have made consistent progress on removing costs from the business over multiple years, and have delivered GBP 79 million in savings year-to-date. But historically, this has not been sufficient to protect margins after the impact of historic revenue decline. I see it as another important milestone for the transformation that in H1 the impact of the sustainable cost savings is positively impacting the bottom line. Day-to-day cost competitiveness will remain an evergreen part of our culture, and there remains more we can do. And through the remainder of '21 and into '22, we will see the next wave of efficiency benefits from simplifying our organization, and we remain on track to deliver GBP 50 million per annum in cost savings next year. Now earlier this week, we switched to our new operating model with its 2 core divisions; Capita Public Service is focused on serving the U.K. public sector, while Capita Experience is focused on customer experience solutions for the U.K., Irish, German and Swiss markets. Our core divisions have demonstrably competitive market offerings, and are strong players in their respective markets. And while both operate the same consult, transform and deliver business model, they will address their respective markets and client needs separately. Our third division, Capita Portfolio, houses our noncore operations and we will exit these businesses over the next couple of years. The new structure will have several benefits over the previous one. First, having industry verticals and their associated clients as the primary axis of our operating model will drive greater client focus and support improved revenue performance and accountability. Second, the simplified operating structure increases efficiency and presents further cost-out opportunities through a reduction in spans and layers. It also simplifies our P&L accountability. Third, lean overhead support sustainable cash generation. While the heavy lifting of the transformation period is now largely behind us, we're now able to maintain governance and oversight with a more normalized central cost base and more efficient shared services. Ahead of the full year results in early 2022, we will report in the new structure for the first time and we will also provide you with the full comparative financial information on a pro forma basis. Before then, let me give you some additional insight into each division, starting with Public Service. Capita Public Service is the market leader in providing business process services to the U.K. government across key Whitehall departments in the regions and to hundreds of local authorities. Through our public sector work, we're proud and privileged to serve millions of U.K. citizens, including many of society's most vulnerable and recognize the responsibility this brings. The legacy issues in some of our contracts, as I've already said, are now very much largely behind us, and we have a reputation for delivery. And this is a growing market, around 7% per annum according to the latest industry statistics, as government strives to deliver superior citizen services for less cost, increasingly leveraging digital technology to achieve this. We grew at 8.6% pro forma in the first half of this year. This is a direct result of our investment in fixing contracts, improving operational delivery and efficiency, standardizing core digital technology platforms and building an improved understanding of specific client needs. In particular, we're starting to see the benefit of being on many more government frameworks. And since 2020, we have won positions on 24 frameworks, giving us access to GBP 23 billion of governmental spend. And so far this year, we have won positions on framework contracts with the Department of Education, the Department of Work and Pensions and the Crown Commercial Service. And a further GBP 13 billion of frameworks remains in our pipeline to bid. From seeing declines in its revenue, order book and margins over many years, the outlook for Public Service is now robust, and we expect revenue and margins to continue their improved trajectory. A good example of where Capita Public Service can succeed is the Royal Navy training contract, where our approach has always been one of collaboration, both with the client and with our partners, to bring together the competencies in technology to deliver a modernized, technologically advanced and efficient training capability. Indeed, we have already won praise and recognition from the client for the seamless transition of service from the prior provider and the improved quality of service we are providing. Capita Experience brings together a number of our scalable solutions in customer management, people solutions and software. We are a significant player in the U.K., Ireland, Germany and Switzerland, focusing on serving our clients' customers across 5 main areas of expertise: financial services, telcos, transport, utilities and retail. With the increasing move to customer self-service, this, too, is a growing market, and our digital omnichannel platform, very importantly, our sector expertise and our efficient resource base means we can offer attractive transformation and delivery propositions. However, as Tim has already stated, Capita Experience is earlier in its transformation journey than our Public Service division. Revenue declined in the first half, and we expect that trend to persist for at least the rest of this year as the impact of recent losses with the likes of Debenhams and First Group take effect. However, we have a solid pipeline of opportunities and some notable recent wins for Tesco Mobile and a major European telco announced earlier this year, and we remain confident in our ability to grow this business. There's also a clear plan in place to improve profit and cash generation through our new operating model and through our reduced overheads in property. A good example of where we bring all this together is in our work for Southern Water. Domestic and business Southern Water customers engage with Capita for all aspects of their service from the reporting of leaks to bill printing and mailing to revenue collections. Such broad scopes of work creates significant opportunity for our full range of customer experience solutions, giving us the scope for greater transformational efficiency and customer service improvement. By partnering with the clients to establish great outcomes and providing our colleagues with the right digital and data support tools, we have been able to deliver significant improvements in operations and customer satisfaction as evidenced on this slide. Those businesses that did not fit into either Capita Experience or Public Service for strategic reasons have, of course, been put into Capita Portfolio, including the remaining assets of the Specialist Services division and off-the-shelf software assets. This division also includes the most COVID impacted parts of Capita, specifically our enforcement business and our corporate travel and events agency recently rebranded as Agiito. We are executing on our plan to dispose all of these businesses over the next couple of years. And to simplify both the day-to-day management and the sales processes, we have organized them into 7 logical bundles as outlined on this slide. In 2020, the assets now in the division recorded revenue of around GBP 550 million. In addition to the disposals we announced in March, which are ongoing, we're currently preparing further assets for disposal later this year or early next. The combined 2020 revenue for all the disposals currently underway was around GBP 200 million. We have already received 75% of the GBP 700 million of disposal proceeds we targeted in March. And as we mentioned earlier, we expect to meet this target in the first half of 2022. Thereafter, with timing, to some extent, depending on COVID recovery rate, we still have more than GBP 350 million of revenue to dispose of. So in summary, we have made tangible progress on our strategy and the priorities we set out in March. We can see the first signs of revenue growth and the benefits of operating leverage that follow, ahead of any COVID bounce-back. We have made material progress on the balance sheet through the significant disposal proceeds received and by extending the RCF. This means we already have the liquidity in place to meet upcoming debt maturities, while pressing ahead with an accelerated disposal program. We will therefore take, as Tim has said, a measured approach to any potential refinancing to ensure that the longer-term balance sheet solution is one that is best for the company. And with a simpler, more efficient, more client-focused operating model now in place, we look forward to driving sustainable growth and cash generation for the long term. Thank you. And with that, Melissa, we will open it up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Paul Sullivan of Barclays.

Firstly, on people, Jon, I mean, can you talk about how you're retaining and motivating the strategic hires you made at the very beginning of the process? And what do you think is sort of working and what's sort of still not working from a big-picture perspective? Secondly, just looking at sort of the profit expectations for next year, it looks like the market has taken sort of this year's profit expectations and just sort of thrown in the GBP 50 million equating to your additional savings. Is that still the right way to look at it, in your view, as it doesn't seem to give you much credit for underlying improvement of the core business? And then finally, on free cash flow. I think you've refined the definition there a little bit. But in terms of the bottom line, when we think of cash and net debt reduction before disposals, should we be looking at net debt reduction? Or should we be seeing net debt reduction before M&A in 2022?

Paul, thanks for those questions. I'll let Tim address the '22 PBIT of free cash flow definition. Let me start with people. Look, as I think you know, when we hired the leadership team to execute on this transformation, we were very, very transparent with regard to what that would entail and what it would take. And we put particular emphasis not just on ensuring we had people that had the competency to perform the work but that they would have the resilience and long-term commitment to stick with what we knew would be a multiyear transformation. And that has very much proven to be the case. We have an excellent executive leadership team in place today who are very committed to seeing the transformation of Capita. And obviously, results such as those which we have presented today give all of us faith and encouragement in our ability to do that. If we look more broadly across the organization, we are seeing some uptick in voluntary attrition, but I don't think that's unique to us. We're seeing an increase in attrition in some of our IT sectors, in particular, and that's broadly reflective of what's happening in the market overall. I think to your second question about what's working, I mean, first and foremost, we had to drive cultural change, as we said right at the outset. And our commitment to being purpose-led has arguably been the single biggest positive lever of change there. The culture at Capita has changed really quite dramatically over the course of the last 3 years. But I think also, I would suggest that our focus on delivering for our clients, being there for our clients, fixing problematic contracts, renewing reputations has been instrumental in creating a foundation for growth. And the fact that we have seen the renewal rates on contracts improve to the extent that they have, and the fact that we have seen a further marked reduction in the level of revenue attrition this year, I think, speaks to how well we are now serving our clients. With the move to the new operating model, we sort of put that on steroids. Having an industry vertical focus, having a client-centric focus, I think we give ourselves an opportunity to be even more focused on delighting our clients, which is an expression I use regularly, and ultimately as a result of that, realizing further growth opportunities. Tim?

Yes. On the '22 progression, the market may well be just factoring in the flow-through of the cost savings. And as you rightly say, we identified GBP 50 million of additional cost savings coming from the Future Capita structure. But I guess in terms of our strategic developments, clearly we are looking for revenue growth, and in particular, margin expansion from the richer mix of products and services we provide to our customers. And therefore we would have an aspiration that this is a profit progression driven by more than just the cost reduction program. And then in terms of free cash flow, to be clear, we haven't changed the definition of free cash flow. That remains the same. But what we are saying for 2022 is we should be measured by reported cash flow as opposed to adjusted cash flow. And the big adjustments that have been made in moving between reported and adjusted have been the reversal of pension deficit contributions and restructuring costs. So essentially, historically, adjusted free cash flow has always been better than reported free cash flow in respect to those 2 elements. So if you like, by moving from adjusted to reported and saying that that is the number in 2022 that will move into positive territory, we are giving ourselves a higher bar to cross. It is a more stretching target because of the add-back of the pension contributions and restructuring costs that have been made to date in moving from reported to adjusted. The target is going to be based on our reported results.

And so that points to net debt reduction next year before any more disposal proceeds. Is that the objective?

That would be logical because essentially the number I'm talking about is the cash flow available to repay debt.

Okay. That's very clear.

Thanks, Paul.

Our next question comes from David Brockton of Numis.

Can I ask 3 as well, please. Firstly, in respect of Capita Experience, how far away do you think we are before growth affects for that division? And to what extent is there still excess attrition, the [ player ] part? Second question is on the transactional business and the recovery that you haven't seen so far this year. To what extent are you expecting some of the GBP 80 million to recover over the near term? Or is the message today one that -- so the wins you've had and the progress you've made elsewhere sort of supporting that and actually further COVID recovery could be more upside? And then the final question, just related to that question around staff attrition. Just keen to understand to what extent you've seen any inflationary pressure to date through the business and how you're responding to it?

David, thanks for the question. So let's start with Capita Experience That is a business that we're still in the progress of improving the competitiveness of, both in terms of the solution we're able to take to market and our cost competitiveness. So we have a very clear set of plans we're executing upon to get that business on to a growth trajectory in the same way that we executed, of course, on our Capita Public Service business. I don't want to be drawn on a time frame within which we will inflect to growth again, but I am nevertheless encouraged by the pipeline of opportunities we have. [Technical Difficulty] So let's come back to David to your questions. We were talking about Capita Experience. So I don't want to be drawn on a time frame, but we have a healthy pipeline of opportunities there, as I mentioned. And we're demonstrably competitive. We're winning work in each of the geographies in which we operate. But there's more work yet to do on our overall competitiveness. And I think what also gives us encouragement there is the secular trend to customer self-serve as more of us move to the web for purchasing decisions. Clearly, that creates more demand for the sort of services we offer. I'll let Jim come back to the COVID businesses later on and in terms of the financial impact. But I would simply say that we are not betting either in the second half of this year or initially in our plans for the first half of next that our COVID-impacted businesses will come back to the revenue and PBIT performance that they delivered in 2019. Some might very well experience as a result of COVID structural change. Those markets may experience structural change, of course. And I'm thinking of our travel and events business in particular. In terms of staff attrition, I actually think I answered the question earlier on. We're not seeing attrition levels that are out with that that the industry, particularly in tech, is seeing in general. And with your -- the question with regards to salary inflation, we budgeted 3% for salary cost inflation this year, which we have implemented. But we also in the majority of our contracts have indexation for salary inflation built in. So it is a pass-on cost to our clients in many of the contracts we have. So we're less exposed to that than perhaps some are. Tim?

Yes. On the COVID-impacted businesses, in the first half, we've certainly seen a what I characterize as a small net negative. So there is some recovery in some of the more directly impacted businesses just in transactional volumes. But in terms of the kind of one-off work we saw in 2020, that has really disappeared and therefore we are still net negative. And that's still the case in Q2, as well clearly as Q1. Moving into the second half of the year, there are some, if you like, green shoots that we're seeing in terms of volume increases in July. But it will be pretty optimistic to expect us to be getting back to 2019 levels in terms of those transactional volumes across the remainder of the year. So certainly in terms of our own thinking, we are still expecting us to be trading at a level much lower than historically as a result of the ongoing impact of COVID.

And David, just to be very clear, our belief in our ability to grow through the second half is driven much more by the contract wins we already have on the order book and our in-year revenue performance year-to-date and, of course, the pipeline of opportunities we see. So we're not banking on COVID recovery to deliver the lion's share of the revenue growth in the second half of the year.

[Operator Instructions] While we wait for any further questions to come in, you do have a webcast question I'm going to read out. This is from Andrew Brooke for Tim. Can you talk about CapEx plans? Low spend in H1 ESP versus depreciation? What do you see as a sustainable level?

Yes, the CapEx in H1 was only GBP 22 million. And as I mentioned when talking to the slides, there was a significantly higher level of CapEx in the first half of last year. And the step-down between the 2 years was driven primarily by a number of transformation projects in 2020 including, for example, our CRM, customer management system, investment coming to an end. So to a degree, a lot of the transformation investment has stepped down. What I did point to in the second half of the year is an increase in CapEx and suggested that CapEx in H2 would be between GBP 35 million and GBP 45 million on top of the GBP 22 million spent in H1. And that reflects CapEx associated with the growth aspirations we've got in the business. Probably we're trying to model a sustainable CapEx number into the future. I certainly wouldn't want to double the first half CapEx number. I'd probably be inclined to double the second half CapEx numbers. In other words, we're expecting to revert to a more normalized level of CapEx in the second half of the year at between GBP 35 million and GBP 45 million for the half.

We do have a couple of questions that have come in on the phone line. Our first question comes from Christopher Bamberry of Peel Hunt.

Could you please elaborate on some of the larger opportunities in the pipeline and rebids for contracts coming up over the next 6 to 12 months?

Christopher, we'd be happy to do that. So let's take them division by division, starting with Capita Public Service. So we have a healthy pipeline of opportunities there. I mentioned earlier on in our prepared remarks, the framework opportunities that we will be bidding upon over the next year or so totaling about GBP 13 billion of governmental spend. But some of the other key ones would be a GBP 200 million TCV opportunity we have with the Department of Social Protection. We have a GBP 35 million opportunity with the Department for Education. We're looking at an opportunity around medical record digitalization with NHS England with a value of around GBP 105 million. A further extension to [ BTFC ] of GBP 91 million. And then the Department of Finance in Northern Ireland has an opportunity that we're progressing with a value of around GBP 70 million. That's in the remainder of this year. And Chris, if we look out to 2022, we have the renewal of the Department of Works and Pensions opportunity at GBP 750 million; Transport for London, GBP 300 million; Department of Works and Pensions contact center opportunity at GBP 200 million. And we hope to make an announcement shortly on our position on the framework for contact center, something we've not been on for a number of years, I have to add. And then we've got an opportunity with GFL for GBP 200 million and the Ministry of Defence for GBP 170 million. So an encouraging set of opportunities there. We turn to Experience. The big one in the remainder of this year is the renewal of BCTV licensing that's at GBP 400 million. We have a number of other opportunities with Royal London [indiscernible], ScottishPower, which are around the GBP 40 million, GBP 50 million, GBP 60 million range. Going into '22, one of the most significant opportunities is with Lloyds Banking Group with their connect partnership for GBP 165 million. We've got another opportunity with them of an equivalent value. The renewal of Telefonica, British Airways, around GBP 100 million. BG Group, around GBP 70 million. So those are examples of some of the more significant opportunities, a combination there of renewals, of course, and new scopes of work. I could add, Chris, that if we look at the unweighted pipeline of opportunities and the pipeline coverage, we have more than 100% weighted pipeline coverage for our targeted revenue in the second half of the year. And if we look at the unweighted pipeline in the 2 divisions, we have in Capita Public Services unweighted around GBP 9.8 billion of opportunities, and in Capita Experience about GBP 5.1 billion in unweighted opportunities.

[Operator Instructions] Our last question comes from Suhasini Varanasi of Goldman Sachs.

Just 1 for me, please. And from the medium term, I appreciate there's a lot of uncertainty for the near term, but it's very helpful to see the market growth rates that you've given for the 2 different divisions there. How do you think about the growth opportunities for you, the growth rate on average in the medium term that you expect to achieve? It would be in line with the market growth because of your position in the U.K.? Can you maybe outperform the market? Is that what you're targeting? And then on the profitability as well, how should we think about the profitability of those 2 divisions? I appreciate it's very early days. But anything on the target for the medium term would be helpful.

Suhasini, so let's talk to growth first and Tim will probably say something about profitability. Look, any self-respecting CEO is going to want to grow their business at least at the rate at which the markets we're serving are growing, and that's absolutely our ambition. And we outlined this morning third-party estimates of what we believe both the Capita Public Service market and the Capita Experience market will be growing at. And in fact, as you will have noticed in the first half of this year, we actually outgrew the market in Public Service. It's growing at about 6% to 7%, and we grew at 8.6% year-on-year. So that is very much our objective. And it's great to have the very substantial market share positions we do in the 2 divisional areas. We can build on that strong market share position to ensure, with the solutions we have, that we can sustain our growth over the long term. I'll let Tim say something about profit, but it is absolutely our intention at the Capital Markets Day, the timing of which we'll announce subsequently, to get into a lot more detail on the market opportunities by division, their growth rates and our propensity to achieve those.

I suppose the question around profitability probably goes back to Paul's question around the progression from '21 to '22 in terms of margin and going beyond '22. You've got a couple of effects around margin. Number one, quite naturally, is the operating leverage. So as revenue grows, and we continue to operate with the efficient support functions that are being created through the Future Capita reorganization, you're naturally going to get operating leverage driving bottom line progression and therefore margin improvement. Of course, the other point goes back to the richer mix of service offerings we're creating for our clients and all of which should expand operating margins in the 2 client-facing ongoing businesses. So both of those effects are what should lead us to a higher level of margin than the business is currently delivering.

Just a follow-up, if I may. I suppose what the market would be interested in understanding is, obviously, in public, the government services work, you're probably bidding on contract if they offer high single digits or low double-digit margins. And I understand that Experience businesses haven't inflected to growth yet, but we do have market data from other peers who are probably doing high single-digit, double-digit margins. So should we think about in the medium term that both the divisions can ultimately reach a double-digit EBIT margin level? Is that the way to think about it?

Well, I mean I think some of our competitors in that space clearly benefit from global scale. The Teleperformances of this world, in particular, of course. We just do not have their scale. And I think it's fair to say that they were well positioned because they were on the right framework contracts to leverage that scale for COVID, in particular. But whilst we might not be able to achieve their margins, we should be able to get very close to them once we have executed on what we talked about earlier on, which is the further improvement of our cost base and the further improvement of the digital offerings we offer the markets to grow that business. In fact -- so it's a combination of cost base and the value we deliver for the client that ultimately then creates the margin enhancement trajectory that we're aspiring to deliver. Is there any other questions?

As we don't have any further questions, I'm just going to hand back to Jon and Tim for any closing remarks.

I'd just like to thank everyone this morning for their interest in Capita. Thank you.