Compass Group PLC (CPG) Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Compass Group 2026 First Quarter Trading Update Conference Call, hosted by Dominic Blakemore, Group Chief Executive Officer. This call is being recorded [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Dominic Blakemore for his opening remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to our Q1 trading update. As usual, Petros is alongside me. We've had a strong start to the year, delivering organic revenue growth above 7%. Growth moderated as expected from the exceptional Q4 run rate, but the overall momentum remained very positive and strongly within our multiyear growth algorithm. Both regions and all sectors performed well with Sports & Leisure and Business & Industry, the fastest growing. For the fifth year running now, net new business remains in our 4% to 5% range, supported by sustained strong client retention of over 96%. Outsourcing trends remain robust with new business wins up 10% year-on-year to $4 billion, nearly half of which came from the B&I sector. We completed the acquisition of Vermaat in December and are now progressing with the integration. Together with synergies from the other acquisitions and operating leverage across the business, we're confident in delivering good margin progress this year. We've also announced our intention to change the currency of our share price from sterling to U.S. dollars from the 1st of April. Turning to guidance. Our expectations for 2026 are positive and unchanged. We anticipate underlying operating profit growth of around 10% on a constant currency basis, driven by organic revenue growth of around 7%, 2% profit growth from M&A and ongoing margin progression. Before I hand back over to the operator for Q&A, I'd like to address the trends we're seeing in AI across our business. B&I continues to be one of our fastest-growing sectors, both globally and in North America, supported by strong net new and positive volumes. Contract signings are very healthy with over half of the new wins coming from first-time outsourcing, driven in part by the continued expansion in the tech sector, where we have a very strong presence and are growing above double-digit. After spending 3 weeks meeting with around 40 current and prospective clients, one message came through loud and clear. AI is driving significant improvements in efficiency, productivity and growth, but capturing the opportunity requires new skills and evolving roles across organizations. It's also important to remember that 80% of our business is in sectors such as sports, defense, mining, manufacturing, education and health care, which are largely insulated from any AI risk and continue to offer us very strong pipelines and attractive first-time outsourcing opportunities. The remaining 20% of our portfolio is in white collar B&I, which spans tech, professional and financial services. And over 1/3 of this is related to tech, where we are benefiting from what's been described as the largest infrastructure build-out in human history. The other 2/3 includes professional and financial service clients where only a very small proportion is exposed to entry-level roles. The AI supply chain now spans energy generation, chip manufacturer, data centers, modeling and applications. And we already have a very strong exposure to all of these layers, where we see an acceleration in growth as this ecosystem continues to scale. And we're an active AI adopter ourselves, embedding AI across our operations to drive growth and productivity, particularly in sales execution and procurement. In summary, we're well positioned to benefit from the AI economy, both supporting our hyperscaling technology clients and by participating in the broader AI supply chain. Experience has also shown us that our business has proven extremely resilient through major cycles from the global financial crisis to COVID. And we've consistently adapted, emerged stronger and accelerated net new growth. With that, I'll now hand over to the operator so we can take your questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from Jamie Rollo of Morgan Stanley.

Two questions, please. First of all, just on the 4% net new, you've obviously outlined very good ARR and retention numbers. Could you perhaps just give us your confidence level that, that net new figure sort of accelerates through the year and how you see the quarterly cadence? And also maybe just looking into the years ahead, should we really be thinking more about a sort of 4% net new business rather than that 4% to 5% number? And then the other question, sort of high level, just on GLP-1 adoption. Are you seeing any impact on sort of portion sizes, any impact from sort of protein mix on revenue or margins? Anything to change your sort of like-for-like volume assumptions?

Thank you, Jamie, let me take those 2. I mean, first of all, I think take a step back, we're now -- this is the fifth year at which we've been delivering within the 4% to 5% range. And again, that is a very significant acceleration on the level of net new in this business pre-pandemic. That's largely because we're delivering consistently across the entire portfolio with good net new in both international and North America. We see every opportunity to sustain that over the years to come. We're very, very excited about the pipelines that we see for 1 to 3 years. But more importantly, the evolution of our subsectors and the opportunities that they generate for us. We're working very, very hard on opening up new subsectors for us where we don't currently compete, like defense in certain markets, like airline lounges outside of North America, like data centers across the globe. All of those expand our addressable market and give us more opportunity to both sustain that net new growth rate, but also accelerate. If I look into this year, we anticipate a similar level for the first half of this year, similar trends in Q2 to Q1. And yes, you're absolutely right with a record level of new business signings now at $4 billion. If we retain and sustain the levels of retention we've got, we would expect to see a modest acceleration into the second half in net new and for the full year. That gives us confidence going into next year. I think as we've always said, we will be within that range as best we can see. Perhaps in some years, it may be lower in some years, it may be higher. That's exactly what you've seen us deliver. Our ambition is to push above that range, right? And we will do everything we possibly can to improve our sales execution and expand our addressable market to do even better. We've had years when North America have been above 5%. We've had years when material markets for us have been above 5%. So our ambition and expectation is to build the pipelines and processes that can achieve that more broadly across all of our business. When it comes to GLP-1, to be honest, we're not seeing an impact at this point in time. Were we, too -- we think it's a positive for our business. Again, let's just remind ourselves that we can adapt our menus, our portion sizes, our offer. We can premiumize in a way that we can deliver to the consumer what that consumer wants. So we do believe that were there to be a different demand pattern, we could respond to that in a way that is positive for the business. Separately, we would say that we're seeing more protein enriched products within the Canteen vending business, and we think that's exciting because it gives us a broader range of SKUs to market to our consumers, more variety and potentially more opportunity.

And we'll now take our next question from Jaafar Mestari of BNP Paribas.

Two questions, please. Firstly, just so we're all on the same page, if you could give us a little bit more color on the very qualitative descriptions you've made of these KPIs for net new business. It sounds like it's 4% but we would love to hear the similar if there is one. Does that mean pricing is between 2.5% and 3%, and is net positive volumes? Does that mean 0 plus or between 0 and 1, please? That would be extremely helpful. And then related to net new business, we've seen good signings have continued to tick up. We've seen retention that you stated is unchanged. And so that would suggest if you start towards the lower end of the range, it's just the timing of those wins really. So maybe some more color on that. Is it broad-based? Were there are a couple of bigger contracts that explain why there's a temporary mismatch? And I'm sorry, that's 3 questions. But lastly, if I take your $4 billion of signings and 96% retention, that would suggest at some point, the net new deserves to be delivering is 4.7%. Is that something that is a good assumption for the end of '26, early '27? Or is there anything we should have in mind in terms of further timing discussions? I suppose there's also a slightly pedantic point about FX in your $4 billion, if part of that is international, et cetera. Can I do that math, the 4.7%?

Thank you, quite a lot to unpack there. Let me have a go in the round and then maybe hand over to Petros for some more detail. I mean what I first sort of urge you to do is not fixate on the quarterly trends. we can have one material contract opening, which can distort the trends from quarter-to-quarter. I think it's much more important to look at the trend over the year and over time. We delivered 4.5% last year. We've done that for 4 years consecutively, closer to 4% at the moment. The momentum between Q4 and Q1 is largely about a lower level of pricing resulting from a lower level of inflation, which I think we very much signaled in previous calls. The $4 billion of new business is a really exciting number. We've got a very exciting pipeline ahead of us. And yes, there are some quite chunky deals in that pipeline, right? And there were some chunky deals in the $4 billion. But of course, we've always had large deals in there as well as the more -- the smaller deals, which we see consistently across our smaller markets. It has to be a mix for us to sustain these levels. Yes, if you do the math, you would anticipate an acceleration as would we. Again, as I said earlier, if we sustain the levels of retention we're enjoying today, then that should be the case. And that would give us confidence going into the first half of next year and as a platform to build from with very exciting pipelines. So I think what's most important for us is we've set out the 4% to 5%. The 4% to 5% underpins the mid- to high single-digit organic growth. We've consistently been there. We see ourselves staying there and to build from here, and that underpins the model, which gets us to the double-digit earnings as it were. Petros, would you add?

I think Dominic referenced all the good points. The only thing I'm going to say, Jaafar, is on volume. We're seeing about 0.5 point positive contribution in Q1. We remain positive for the next quarters. Just to put this a bit in context, we are lapping a massive Q1 last year with a quite sign of return to office and a very dense calendar. We're driving -- we're seeing in the print about 0.5 point of contribution, which is higher than pre-COVID was nearly flat. And this gives us confidence that the volume will continue to contribute positively as we go.

And our next question comes from Leo Carrington of Citi.

Can I ask on 2 themes. Firstly, in terms of the growth in B&I, I appreciate that detail on AI. I wonder if it would be also helpful to elaborate on your exposure to prime or Grade A offices versus the out-of-town secondary offices. I'm just thinking about the relative durability of those as employment centers. And then secondly, on M&A, can you give some color on which regions and subsectors saw the M&A spend when excluding Vermaat, the $200 million? And then regarding the market itself, I appreciate we've got the sector deep dive on the mine. But can you outline what the post integration plans are for the business, please?

Sure. Leo, thank you for those questions. I don't have a specific breakdown in the split between our sort of prime city B&I clients and those which would be outside. And of course, the split we often see is that our B&I clients are largely city-based. And of course, our manufacturing data center and other such clients would be more suburban or remote for very obvious reasons. So I think we're talking about potentially different categories of clients. It's also why you would typically see brands like Restaurant Associates, Flik, Bon Appetit represented in major urban centers, but U.S. would be more in the manufacturing blue collar suburban locations. And we believe that there's a level of, again, resiliency in that model because of the different trends that we would see in the U.S and B&I central city locations. So hopefully, that gives you some color. I know it doesn't give you the exact quantified detail. Petros, do you want to answer on M&A in Vermaat?

Yes, $1.9 billion spend in quarter 1, $1.7 billion in Vermaat, $200 million is just bolt-on in field for vending and attending in the United States. We have been doing this for a long time. It does help on growth. It does help on the margin expansion as we go. We have a pipeline for the second half of the year in M&A as we discussed in the December call. When it comes to Vermaat, we closed in December. We are in the process of integrating the business within our portfolio. We cannot comment on how this integration is going. It's too early. Rather than we're very excited to welcome an excellent business and the management team within the Compass family.

And we'll now move on to our next question from Ivar Billfalk-Kelly of UBS.

I want to follow up on the AI exposure or nonexposure as the case may be. But within the business and industry division, what sort of contract structures do you actually have in place? And how would the financials actually evolve if you do see your clients have lower office attendance? And linked to that, are you actually making any changes to the contract structure that you're writing here to protect from lower volumes in the future? And secondly on -- a follow-up on Jamie's question about the GLP-1 drugs. What sort of proportion of your revenue mix actually come from add-ons like snacks, like chocolate bars and [ crisps ], which might actually be exposed if people are eating less food? And lastly, it's probably one-off in nature, but can you give us a sense of the potential opportunity from the Football World Cup that we're going to have this summer? Do you allow for anything within your guidance at the moment? And could there be upside?

Yes. Thank you, Ivar, for those 3. Yes, look, first of all, specifically with reference to AI and maybe giving a bit more color than I gave in the intro. Generally, we feel very positive about the opportunity that comes from AI within our portfolio. As I said, 20% of our business is white collar B&I, 7% of that 20% is with tech clients. In the last quarter, we grew 14% in that sector. There's a phenomenal opportunity to partner with the hyperscalers here. And if you do the math, that's contributing a point of group growth. And we've seen that growth both across net new and volume like-for-like. Just to give you one example, we talked about it before. We understand there are plans in place to see something like 6,000 data centers in the U.S. by 2030. That's the U.S. alone. That is both new construction and it's the scaling up of existing construction. When those facilities become scaled, we see an opportunity of around $4 million to $5 million per data center. In reality, that's created a new subsector for us, which could be anywhere between $10 billion and $20 billion, of which we have perhaps a 1% share today. That's a super opportunity, and I think a very real example of what's out there for us in this phase of expansion. And that's is without speaking to the level of expansion we're also seeing within that client base in their programming software and coding divisions, which is also very, very significant, both in the U.S. and within their operations overseas. So I think that speaks to the opportunity. When you talk to the risk, look, we would believe that what we described as entry-level roles, which I think those are the ones which have been categorized as being at most risk, at least in this space, would be no more than 10%, 15% of most of our 13% of white collar professional service, financial service, B&I. So again, the math would get you to 1%, 1.5% if half of that were at risk over a number of years. We feel it's largely insignificant and immaterial and manageable. I'd also point to the fact that everything I'm seeing right now is that we're seeing role replacement rather than displacement. Whenever I talk to the CEOs of our clients, we understand that new roles are being created around data integrity, data management, data compliance, the technology skills to be able to manage the LLMs and decide on the most appropriate models and the retraining of colleagues around how to use AI and deploy the outcomes. So I think there is a net positive there. I'd also point to some of the research would suggest that we could be in a phase of very significant net job creation over the years to come. All of that said, were it to present a risk, I think we learned a lot through the pandemic and working from home. We reorganized, restructured many of our contracts to protect us from any significant volume declines. We still have the basket of contracts we've always described, which 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 broadly as we reverted to that post pandemic, which gives us good shelter and mitigation against the potential risk. So we do feel should risk materialize, we're well placed to address it. We actually believe that there is more opportunity than risk for us in that space. Moving on to GLP-1 drugs. I don't have the exact breakdown of confectionery and soft drinks. Obviously, our core is providing food and beverage on the plate as it were, a culinary offer as opposed to a snacking and confectionery offer. We do have that in our Canteen vending business. And I would signal that it continues to be one of the fastest-growing sectors of our business, both from putting down additional sites, but also from the like-for-like volume growth within that. And I think part of that goes to the ability to put new products in to replace those products which may become off trend. People are still consuming. They're just consuming differently, and we have an ability to adjust and adapt to that. And then lastly, Football World Cup, we -- how this works is there are a number of stadium that we are presently in that will be used as venues for the World Cup. We will obviously get revenues associated with that. But typically, those stadium would have been used for concerts and other events during that period of time. So in the round, we believe that it's broadly neutral-ish. We are doing a few other things like fan zones, which will give us a bit of volume tailwind in that fourth quarter. I wouldn't call it out as being material. I think it will be a positive contributor for us.

And we'll now move on to our next question from Estelle Weingrod of JPMorgan.

I've got 2 questions. The first one, you touched upon the phasing of organic growth for the year. Anything to flag on margins in terms of perhaps just margin expansion year-on-year in H1 versus H2? And the second one, I mean with one of your close competitor hiring a lot more new sales in the U.S., is there anything you're seeing out there in terms of the competitive landscape?

Let me take the second one first, and then I'll hand over on margin to Petros, and he may also add to the second question, too. Look, I think it's important for us to say that we always grow our sales force every single year. We've always said that this is a virtuous circle of growth to be able to grow proportionately on bigger volumes, we need more sellers. And we're constantly adding -- we're also adding sellers to new subsectors and new opportunities like first-time outsourcing, like defense in North America. So we ourselves are constantly investing. It's not a new thing for us. It's just part of our model. I think that's very important to say. Secondly, no, we aren't seeing anything different competitively to be briefly honest. And in reality, and I think Petros may add some color to this. We don't earn most of our growth from the largest competitors. As we've said repeatedly, half of our growth is coming from first-time outsourcing. Of that balance of 50%, probably 2/3 of that comes from small local regional players. So actually, this industry isn't about a head-to-head or a 3-way fist fight as it were. It's a much more balanced growth story than perhaps the narrative allows. Petros?

Let me just take the margin question. Overall, we feel confident on margin progress for 2026 and beyond, and we discussed this back in December in previous calls. If you think about the 3 levers we have, core business margin expansion, we're making really good progress there within our MAP framework for performance when it comes to purchasing and productivity. Second thing is operating leverage. You have seen last year and the last couple of years, we're driving some good efficiencies there as we grow and continue to enjoy around 7% growth. And the third thing is the M&A acquisitions and the line of sight we have on synergies we delivered last year, which help on our profit performance as well as the opportunities we have for this year as we move forward. If you take the 3 components of margin expansion, we feel good about it. And overall, we view the implied margin expansion in our guidance as a floor for 2026.

[Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from Andre Juillard of Deutsche Bank.

Three questions, if I may. First one about health care and education. You didn't talk about this segment. Could you give us some more color about the evolution? Second question about pricing moderation. What do you mean exactly? Could you also give us some more granularity? And third question about leverage. So you confirm your target of leverage and the acquisition already done in the pipe. But could you consider to use your balance sheet to return some cash and try to serve on the opportunity of your stock level?

Andre. Let me hand those 3 over to Petros.

So when it goes down to health care and education, both sectors performed well within our 7.2% range. I know we talked in the past about the normal education. Actually, we see good trends there when it comes to our state. Remember, in education, we have a very tiered offer spanning consumers, visitors, faculty, all the populations we cater, and we see some really good performance there. The opportunity on first time outsourcing remains very significant in this sector. Remember, it's less penetrated. And in 2025, we mobilized a couple of very large institutions on the first-time outsourcing that gives us good credentials to keep up in this sector. Healthcare, I would say similar trends, good growth volumes, positive volume contribution. I know in the past, we talked a bit of -- if there were any concerns on the tightening spend in this sector. We're not seeing anything. We're not seeing anything either through patient feeding or employee feeding in our restaurants. Again, this sector represents a massive first-time outsourcing opportunity for us as we go forward. On pricing, just to remind everyone, the value for our clients is truly mitigating inflation before we discuss appropriate pricing. So if you think about our Q1 pricing is about 2.5%. The run rate market basket inflation is north of 3%, and we need to continue to do a great job for our clients as we go forward. If you compare to quarter 4 last year, call it is about 70 bps reduction on inflation. And this is what you see in the trajectory of our Q4 to Q1 print in organic, which is consistent to our expectations. On leverage, I think just to remind everyone, we completed Vermaat for 2026. We have a good pipeline of M&A, and we discussed about opportunities we have within GPO and other bolt-ons. We're going to go through 2026 to adjust the investments we have executed. And as we go to 2026 September, we'll see where we end up on the leverage ratio. And then we're going to have to balance our M&A pipeline and consider other options as we move forward, which we'll provide an update at that time.

If I may just add to the first answer on health care and education. I think you're seeing in our results very strong performances in B&I and Sports & Leisure. In B&I, in particular, I think that's where we benefited from our subsectorization approach. And then separately in Sports & Leisure, we've really focused on our Sports & Leisure offer outside of North America, where we've seen some very exciting growth. We can't do all things, but I think there's even more opportunity in health care and education. And I'm very focused on working with our operators and teams to see what more we can do there. So I think the current trajectory is good, but it could yet be better, and that's the pressure we're putting on ourselves.

And our next question comes from Simon LeChipre of Jefferies.

Yes. Two questions, please. First of all, on margin and the phasing, I'm not sure if I missed it, but any specific phasing between H1 and H2 this year? And secondly, on inflation and I mean, where you -- the inflation on your cost base is currently trending, please?

Simon, good morning. On margin, we will continue to make progress on half 1 versus last year and half 2 versus last year as we go, and this is consistent within our growth and P&L algorithm, and we're confident in this. On inflation, we do expect inflation to continue to moderate a bit as we go to Q3 and Q4. And again, it will depend on some of the forward-looking indicators, you look at some of the commodities, supply chain impacts. But in our guidance, actually, we have factored that's more moderation as we go.

Thank you. And we'll now take our next question from Kate Xiao of Bank of America.

I have 2 questions, a follow-up on earlier points. First, on the AI, I guess, new opportunities. Thanks for putting the numbers there. You mentioned that your current market share is 1%. That would be a lot lower than your market share in North America B&I, for example. Can you talk a little bit about why that's a bit lower now? And what are the efforts there to kind of increase market share? Are you developing new brands kind of to gain your fair share? And what is the maybe target market share you're looking at in the long term? And then just a follow-up on the FY guide of margin and kind of bottom line. Petros you said clearly, it's a floor. So are you potentially looking to revisit this at first half results?

Thank you, Kate, for those 2 questions. I'll take the first. Yes, look, I think we've seen the data center opportunity being different. And largely, that's because of the scale of this generation of data centers. And that's either because they're being newly built or they're being expanded from their footprint. That, therefore, gets them to a level of service requirement that becomes attractive for us and also attractive for the clients to outsource. I think the second thing to that is that these are our clients already within the more traditional offers that we would provide in their offices or large-scale centers in major urban areas. So we're talking to our own clients about opportunities that we can now serve that are sufficiently scaled for us to address. Typically, you need, I think, 3 core skills. You need some form of canteen and restaurant offer, you need a micro market vending offer and you need a level of support services. And we can package all of those together for those clients. So we're starting to see those come to market in bundles that when aggregated, they are attractive opportunities. We can provide services to those anywhere where they are developed across the U.S. and also in the major Western European countries. So we feel very well placed to exploit this. I think it's very much about it being effectively an emerging subsector as to why we have such a low market share. We have 20% or so share in most of what we do in the U.S. Why wouldn't we aspire to that? And I think it's an opportunity over time. But clearly, it's one that's going to be very much accelerated into the next several years.

Kate on the margin, I think we covered this. We're confident -- we had -- we have 3 months within the year. We're going to go through the first 6 months. We're going to see all the 3 levers I referenced before on how we're performing, and we reassess for half 1 where this leaves us for the full year expectation for the guidance, and we'll let you know in May.

I will now take the last question from Sabrina Blanc of Bernstein.

Just one question regarding the pipeline. Can you provide more color on in which areas you would like to develop? And notably, following the Vermaat acquisition in the Netherlands, do you see other opportunities to develop the sectorization in Europe?

Yes. So just to reground us $4 billion of new growth signings, around half of this is within B&I. B&I is the most outsourced sector. And having said this, we keep being surprised and keep delivering some great new signings in this sector. I think Sports & Leisure looks very strong. We launched nearly now 1.5 years ago internationally, our Levy franchise. We have won some very large accounts, and we have great prospects in all of our international regions. I think when you look at the construction of the pipeline and you think about health care and education, we truly have an opportunity within the first time outsourcing is less penetrated. It's a bit of a slow burn to unlock this opportunity, but we feel we have the sectorization, the expertise and the client credentials to unlock this over time. To your point on sectorization, if you think about North America, I think we are sectorized and fully sectorized across our portfolio, and this is what you see consistent growth for the last 10 to 15 years. If you move to international, the acquisitions we have made in Europe has sectorized us nearly on B&I. We think on Levy, it's an organic play for us as we go. And we may explore some opportunities in education and health care as we go. We feel with the portfolio we have today, we're well placed to capitalize these opportunities across our key sectors. I don't know if Dominic, you want to add on something?

Yes. I think that's a great answer, Petros. I'll just add on for Vermaat. Let's remind ourselves that Vermaat operators operates in Netherlands, France and Germany. So immediately, we effectively have a subsectorization opportunity in all of those markets. Separately, I see no reason why that offer can't be extended to other continental European countries. I think that will be about pace and timing to do that. I think what we've learned is that it's very hard to build brands organically within our own stable as it were. What comes from a great offer is the culture that comes with the leadership and the long-standing operation of that brand. And so I think we feel very privileged to have acquired Vermaat, and we think that the strategy to subsectorize should be very much based on acquisition rather than on development. And as Petros rightly said, we think we can play in somewhere like Sports & Leisure with our own very well-developed brand internationally and the brand standards that come with that. Hopefully, that's helpful, Sabrina. Thank you all very much and look forward to speaking with you.

Pardon the interruption, that was our last question. I will now hand it back to Dominic for closing remarks.

Thank you very much. Thank you all for joining us today and look forward to speaking to you again at the half year.

Thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.