Diploma PLC (DPLM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. Happy New Year to you all. Thank you very much for joining us. I'm delighted to be here with our newly promoted CFO, Wilson. Congratulations to him. A few words on our quarter 1 performance, and then we'll quickly get on to Q&A. We've made a great start to the year in quarter 1, double-digit organic growth and exciting acquisition momentum. Starting, first of all, with the organic side. As expected, we've had a strong quarter 1. volume-led organic growth of 14%, similar shape to what we saw towards the end of last year. Peerless remains strong. Controls have done very well with some solid end market exposures like aerospace, defense, energy. Windy City is doing well, particularly with data centers and digital antenna systems. Seals fairly consistent with what we were seeing at the end of last year. North American Seals doing well. Good progress in Europe and International Seals, U.K. still quite tough. And we're happy in a tougher environment, I would say, in Life Sciences and the health care space that Life Sciences is delivering at or around about our financial model. The margins are good and in line with what we would have expected. If I move on secondly to acquisitions. We're really pleased with the momentum in acquisitions. And as we know, they support our future organic growth at great returns. We've done another 4 in the quarter, spending around GBP 75 million at a roughly 7x multiple. And that makes 8 now in the last 2 quarters for about EUR 130 million of investment, and I expect those 8 to generate annualized profit of around about EUR 20 million. The majority of our M&A, as you know, is naturally gravitates towards the smaller bolt-on deals. And occasionally, we do a slightly bigger one. But we're very happy with the profile of the deals that we're seeing. The pipeline looks very good. But as always, we will maintain our discipline on M&A. Returns are very, very important to us. And so the deal flow, we would never expect to be linear. But the acquisition momentum feels really, really good. Finally, a few words on the full year outlook. Organic growth guidance is unchanged at 6%. As we said in November, we expect this year to be first half weighted. Margin guidance also unchanged at 22.5%. Obviously, revenue from acquisitions is up a little given what I've just said. And of course, if we were to do more, this would increase over time. So overall, we're feeling good about the year, good start, and we're feeling good about continuing our successful long-term track record of sustainable quality compounding. And with that, we'll hand over to questions.

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

Two relatively quick ones, both on the acquisitions. So as you say, last couple of quarters showing some increasing momentum in acquisitions, and I appreciate deals can be lumpy, but I'm wondering if there's anything driving that, that you would call out? Have you seen a change in the environment or improved availability of assets, et cetera? And perhaps you could comment on how the more near-term pipeline looks for as we head into Q2? And then secondly, of those businesses that you've acquired, could you comment on what kind of growth they're doing today and anywhere in particular that you feel there's a lot of upside to unlock in line with your playbook?

All right. I'll let Wilson say a few words on the specific acquisitions in a second. I mean, I suppose more generally, yes, we're very pleased with the way that the smaller deals are progressing. I think in some ways, when you get to the kind of the average size of a deal for us would be about GBP 20 million, GBP 25 million. And when you're in that kind of bracket, it tends to not really follow the kind of more macro M&A cycle. We've been working hard on the pipeline, obviously, as we always do, and we just happen to have seen a lot more coming to fruition over the last 6 months or so. As I said, we very, very occasionally do a bigger one, but we don't necessarily search for that, and we certainly don't need to do that. In actual fact, the profile of these smaller ones suits us very, very well. They quietly add to the diversity of the group. They add and accelerate our organic growth across different aspects of the business. They extend into various different end markets. And generally speaking, at the kind of multiples that we're buying them for, they drive great returns. So I'm very, very happy with that. The profile of the pipeline looks the same as it's kind of done for quite a while. I'm quite encouraged by it. I would expect and hope that we can continue to deliver some very good smaller deals. And who knows, maybe there is a slightly bigger one down the line, but we certainly don't search for that, and we certainly don't need that. At the rate we're going at the moment, I would expect that we'll be delivering M&A above our financial model, which is going to be great. So we feel good about it. The pipeline is in good shape. And hopefully, there will be a few more to come. Wilson?

Yes. Thanks Annelies. So yes, these businesses have been in the group for a relatively short period of time. But in that period of time, they're already tracking to plan. So very pleased with their performance so far. I guess the very recent ones, SWIFT and Spring in particular, are bolt-ons to Clarendon and SWIFT in particular, expands our footprint into European aerospace, which will then strategically benefit Peerless in the medium term to allow Peerless to come into Europe as well. And Spring, in particular, expands our end market growth in aerospace into the defense market, expanding into large customers such as BAE and Thales. HSA, one more to mention, Hydraulic Steels Australia. That gives us a strategic geographical expansion. It's basically a twin to the North American Seals aftermarket business, but it gives us expansion into the East Coast of Australia and also product expansion to the aftermarket seals for our Diploma Australia Seals business. Hopefully, that answers your question.

And we'll now take our next question from David Brockton of Deutsche Numis.

Two from me as well and actually partly related to the last question, but both around Civil Aerospace. Firstly, from an organic perspective, can you just touch on whether that sort of glide path of normalization that you envisage at some stage is starting to materialize or is materializing as you expect? And then from an acquisitive perspective, you touched on there in terms of what Swift can do. Am I right, therefore, I think it looks more like the Peerless business but in Europe, and therefore, the sort of the growth synergy is really going to come from a revenue synergy perspective there, please?

Yes. Okay. So I mean, I guess your first question organically, you're talking specifically about Peerless with... Yes. I mean it's just worth noting that we do have other businesses exposed to aerospace. But yes, with Peerless Look, I don't think anything has really changed from what we said in November. The performance of Peerless in the quarter has been really, really strong. So very pleased about that, perhaps not quite at the exceptional growth rates that it was in the second half, but still incredibly strong. The market dynamics haven't changed. We're working pretty hard on a number of different fronts. I mean we're just managing quite carefully the price volume dynamic in the spot business to make sure we're driving great volumes consistently. We've had some great contract wins over the last few months, which are really, really important to build the base of that business for the long term. And as I'll touch on in a second, the European bits, we're quite excited about. I'll come back to that. So as it stands, quarter 1 was kind of what we would have expected, still super strong and doing very well. And we absolutely continue to expect to land towards a steady good growth, good margin, half 2 forward type of performance. So nothing really changes from the Peerless perspective. I'll just flip on to the Swift. Yes, I mean, we're excited about the Swift acquisition. I mean I should just say before we move on to the kind of revenue synergies base, it's a good business in its own right. And so we're very, very happy to have it on board. It's a business we've been looking at for quite a few years and dancing with for a while. So we're very, very happy to have them on board. You're right in saying that in profile, it's a little bit more like Peerless than it is, say, like our Clarendon business in nature with the kind of fuselage fastening aspect. And while Peerless already does some business into Europe, there is opportunity to use Swift based in Toulouse to really accelerate what we hope will be a combination of Swift and Peerless into the Airbus supply chain. It would be -- I have to also mention though that this is quite an important opportunity for Clarendon as well. Clarendon will manage the Swift business, and they have significant opportunities in Europe as well. And Swift through their relationship network will help Clarendon on their side of the business as well. So a good business that gives us lots to spring off from.

And we'll now take our next question from William Blunt of Rothschild & Co Redburn.

Just the first one, please. In your prepared remarks, you mentioned that the environment in Life Sciences was perhaps sequentially a bit tougher. Please, could you maybe just give your thoughts on what's driving that and if there's any difference across your different geographies? And then my second question is just a quick follow-up on the M&A strategy more broadly. At the full year results, you called out some end markets, including water treatment and nuclear where your market share was currently quite small, but you're aiming to expand your presence going forward. Given that all 4 of the acquisitions so far this quarter have been within your more established end markets, is this something we should expect to see a larger focus on going forward? Or is that more of a medium-term sort of direction?

Okay. I'll take the last one first. I mean, can I just remind you, it's been 2 months since we spoke in November. So you're unlikely to have seen necessarily a significant steps on strategic execution in that 2-month period. You're right, of course, that the few acquisitions that we've done since then have been more in the more established end markets, I agree. I would just point out that I'm very, very happy with some of the organic progress we're making in those more, let's say, early-stage end markets. The nuclear side in our VSP businesses from a small base progressing very, very well. We just added some more resource into it, and we're pretty excited about what we can do with that. And we're making -- we've done quite a lot of business in water, water treatment and infrastructure in some of our international seals businesses, and we're starting to get into that now very early stages organically in North America as well. So some of these things will be organic, some will be inorganic. To the extent that they're inorganic, of course, timing can be tricky to manage. But I don't -- I think we feel just as excited as we did a couple of months when we spoke about it. So that's that point. Coming back to Life Sciences. Yes, I don't think -- I didn't mean to suggest that it was sequentially tougher. I suppose I think I highlighted or Mike Wilson might have even said it in November, we did highlight that the health care markets in general just have been quite hard. It's a scrap out there. And I think many people in the health care environment would probably, I hope, agree with that. We feel pleased, therefore, to be able to deliver mid-single-digit growth in that kind of environment. And as I said in November, we put a lot of work into developing the team, establishing more consolidated higher-performing distribution capability and most importantly, investing in our business development and cross-border efforts. And as a result of that, I think we're probably doing at least that, if not a little bit better than the broader market. My comments were really just to say, it does feel quite tough, but we're very happy to be hanging on to great single figure -- single -- mid-single-digit growth.

And just to add to that, you've seen that we've continued to invest in the Life Sciences sector, 2 of the last 8 acquisitions, Alfa and Electromed are actually in Life Science.

[Operator Instructions] And we will now move on to our next question from Virginia Montorsi of Bank of America.

I had just 2 quick ones. One would be, could you please disclose any -- or could you please give us any color on FX and how -- what you're seeing so far? And then the second one would be on defense. We've seen obviously European countries ramping up their defense budget since 2022 and most of the European Union countries are at the point where they're almost at a 2% of GDP to be spent in defense kind of NATO guidance, but we've also seen some of the countries going way above that. Could you maybe help us understand a little bit more where you see the opportunities in defense as well? I know we always talk about civil aerospace, but I just wanted to talk a little bit more on this side.

Yes. Thanks for that. I'll let Wilson answer on FX in a second. I'll just pick up on your second question on defense. Yes. I mean, thanks. You're absolutely right. We do get because of peers quite a lot of questions on aerospace. So it's a good question to ask about defense. And it's a great opportunity, as you alluded to in terms of the macro trends around defense is clearly good. We have well-established expertise in the defense sector, both in the U.K. and in Continental Europe. So we have a good base of understanding and business in it. And as we talked about in the previous question, it is one of the more established markets that we're willing to put a bit of investment behind as well. So over the course of the last few months, we have organically invested in a new facility in the Czech Republic. And that facility will help us to 1 or 2 of our businesses to penetrate into the Eastern European supply chain that feeds into much of the European defense market. So we've now established that facility. We've got the products we need in there and the management and business development down there. So we're hopeful that over the next year or 2, that's going to really kick on in terms of our contribution to defense. The other thing I'd say is we bought a business called Spring, which is one of the 4 we bought in the last quarter. U.K.-based. And I think Wilson mentioned it a little bit earlier, that's one of the businesses that serves into some of the big defense contractors like BAE, et cetera. So they bring with them quite a lot of additional expertise that we hope will help us to synergize and grow our defense revenues as well. Probably from a profile perspective, we've been more into air defense. But I think over time and with some of these organic and inorganic activities, we would hope to expand that into land as well. And therefore, we feel, particularly in the U.K. and Europe that we have lots of opportunity in defense.

So on FX, so translationally, we saw a minus 2% on the revenue line, offsetting the 2% acquisition growth in the quarter. But more importantly, transactionally, we've got a good hedging program in place. So in the quarter, there's nothing material to the group.

And we'll now take our next question from Colin Grant of Davy.

Congrats on an excellent first quarter. My question is really just concern the guidance. You've given guidance on 3 areas: the organic revenue growth for the full year, the impact of the acquisitions on your top line growth and also on margins. I just want to go through those, if I can. So if I just think about the phasing of organic growth, you're guiding 6% on a full year basis, but you've obviously just done 14% in Q1. That would suggest a step down in the organic growth rate in the remaining 3 quarters of the year to kind of 3 and a bit percent. Can you just kind of help us understand the phasing of how you see growth taking place across the remaining 3 quarters of the year? That would be the first area. The second question really is to do with the acquisition impact. I think you've just indicated an additional 1% growth expected on revenues from the deals you've announced in Q1. And you've also told us that you're buying businesses at 7x earnings, and you spent EUR 75 million on those deals in Q1. So that would suggest about EUR 15 million of upside on revenues. and about EUR 10 million on EBITDA, if I take the EUR 75 million and apply a 7x multiple, which would suggest a margin of 2/3, which sounds a bit too high. So I'm just wondering if you could kind of square off what's happening in terms of the impact of the acquisitions in terms of revenues and earnings on a full year basis. And the last question is just on your margins. So you're indicating margins are going to be flat at 22.5% at a group level in fiscal '26. And I'm just wondering if you can kind of run through why you see margins being flat given the strength of organic growth that you're generating and the accretion that looks like it's coming from the acquisitions.

Thank you for your question. I guess I'll answer them. So in terms of the organic growth. I mean, one quarter doesn't make a year. And look, I'm not going to guide by quarter, by sector, et cetera. What I would say is that we guided 7 weeks ago to a very strong quarter 1, and we have achieved a strong quarter 1. But more importantly, if you look at sort of the quarter 2, quarter 3, quarter 4 organic growth in the prior year, we will start to be lapping a double-digit growth in the prior quarter 2 and then 14% in H2 last year. So mathematically, we are going to start to see weaker comps. As I said, one quarter doesn't make a year, there's still a long way to go. So for now, we're happy with the 6% guidance for the full year. That's how we should think about it. In terms of the acquisition operating profit, remember that within the 2%, we've already included some of the acquisitions that were announced previously. And remember that the operating profit that we -- well, we're disclosing a nice number. And finally, with regards to margin, look, our businesses are trading in line with expectation. very strong across the group. But as I said in 7 weeks ago, along with that margin progression from operating leverage, we are going to be investing into end market growth, into people and organization structure into strengthening our assurance platform. So for now, again, I would say 22.5% is what we're happy with, and it's the way to think about it.

Maybe I can just add to that. I mean, look, at the end of the day, I know you've got a model. We're running a business and a crazy volatile world out there. It's been 1 quarter, right? So there's not really much point in getting into decimal places about quarters or margins or all that. The reality is we've had a very good quarter. Of course, we recognize why you're asking the question. Of course, we do. But the reality is it's 1 quarter, and there's a lot going on out there. So let's just see how we get on, and then we'll see how we get on and when we talk to you in May.

There are no further questions in queue. I will now hand it back to John for closing remarks.

Thank you very much for joining, and I look forward to speaking to you again in May.