Luceco plc (LUCE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Good morning, everybody, and thank you very much for coming here this morning to hear the results from Luceco for last year for 2023. The highlights. So revenue of GBP 209 million last year, GBP 206 million. Adjusted operating profit of GBP 24 million, last year it was GBP 22 million. I would say that was an okay year in a very difficult market. Although the top line actually grew by GBP 3 million, if you look through the overstocking, destocking, our sales actually fell by approximately 5%. There was a GBP 20 million overstocking in 2021, and there was a GBP 5 million destocking in 2022. So if you look through that, our sales actually declined. And we think they declined slightly less than the market. We think our markets were down about 6%. Our sales looking through destocking were down about 5%. But the headline number is that the revenue was actually up. Operating profit also up. Obviously, overheads increased a lot. We gave a significant salary increase at the start of last year. But our gross margin that started last year quite weak in the sort of mid-30s, ended the year much stronger up to 40% and is carried on at higher levels into this year. That is what basically drove the higher operating profit. Our cash flow performance was GBP 18 million, quite a lot less from the previous year, but the previous year, we were very overstocked. So we had a big working capital benefit. Last year was a much more normal year. We did actually spend GBP 2.5 million on a warehouse for Kingfisher. So we can add that back to the cash flow, which was therefore almost 10%, which is our sort of long-term target. And that left our balance sheet relatively on leverage at 0.6x. And adjusted EPS was flat. We had a higher tax rate than the previous year where our tax rate was extremely low and slightly more has an issue because the LTIP owned slightly less shares. And the dividend, we have increased slightly up to 4.8p. And with that, Will, I'll hand over to you.

Or maybe you can talk to the next slide.

Okay. I could do. Yes. So some of the other highlights. As I say, it was a difficult year for the market. However, we managed to grow our sales, mainly because of less destocking. However, some of our businesses actually performed very strongly, particularly LED lighting projects, high energy costs meant that some of our infrastructure businesses where we're doing LED retrofits actually had a very strong period. And as I say, the gross margin improved throughout the year. Also, another highlight was the growth of our EV business, where the sales were up by 44%. And despite the fact that the EV market as a whole has been weaker than forecast, we think this is an area where we can show significant growth in future years, and I'll talk quite a more about that later. I've talked about the cash flow. And over the last 4 years, our cash generation has been GBP 90 million, slightly more than 10% of our sales. That has allowed us to make acquisitions and we were very pleased in March to announce the acquisition of D-line for GBP 6.8 million. That's a highly complementary deal that we think will fit in very well with the rest of the group. And with that, Will, I will hand over to you.

Thank you, John, and good morning, everybody. Reviewing the income statement. Our revenue at GBP 209 million reflected a strong performance, especially in our hybrid channel, which delivered near 30% improvement to approximately GBP 50 million or now some 24% of total group sales. We mentioned at the half year that the second half offered an easier comparative, given the experience that we had at the end of 2022. This was particularly the case in the hybrid channel. Our LED lighting projects team continued to perform well. The high cost of energy is encouraging demand for energy-saving lighting projects. You will have seen that we took a small equity position in eEnergy plc, which is a growing customer for this LED project space. Housebuilding took a knock in 2023, it remains under 5% of our total revenue, so the market decline did not have a material impact on the group. Gross margin for the year was 39.4%, the same as delivered in the first half. Most key raw material costs have eased. With the exception of copper, which was relatively stable throughout much of 2023, it has though recently increased in price. Our Jiaxing production facility is delivering productivity improvements helped by having a better level of volume to work on. Currency gave us a headwind in 2023. We follow a policy to place forward cover, which naturally delays the consequences of currency movements. The RMB has been declining against sterling, and we are now seeing this benefit coming through our cost base. The currency tailwind we carry into 2024 is currently mitigating both the higher freight costs caused by the traffic diverting away from the Red Sea, and the recent increase in copper commodity prices. Overheads of GBP 58.3 million were up GBP 6 million on 2022. As John mentioned, the majority of the increase year-on-year attributable to the higher wage and salary costs implemented towards the end of 2022, together with the return to normal sales and marketing activities, which were constrained somewhat during the COVID period. Inflation has until quite recently been running at a higher level, especially in the U.K. And there is a consequent upward pressure on payrolls. Adjusted operating profit, as John mentioned, was GBP 24 million at the top end of the range we shared in our January trading update. Our tax rate has stepped up somewhat in 2023. We continue to take advantage of various government incentives. As we said earlier this year, there were some one-off benefits in the 2022 tax rate, which have not repeated. The increase in the tax rate to just over 18%, together with approximately GBP 200,000 increase in our finance charge led to earnings per share in line with that delivered in 2022 despite the increased profitability. Revenue bridge. This slide provides a bit more detail on the drivers of our revenue performance. The most significant change, as I mentioned, occurred in a hybrid space and within it, especially our wiring accessories, which recorded a marked increase compared to 2022. As we highlighted, partway through last year, retail suffered as the U.K. consumer turned away from residential DIY, because of the pressure from the increase in the cost of living and so reduced discretionary spending, although the post-pandemic destocking came to an end in the first half of 2023, the DIY market decline meant our retail channel did not show revenue progress over '22. Efforts over recent years to rebalance our revenue towards professionally installed products, particularly those installed in nonresidential settings, allowed us to mitigate the slowdown in DIY and benefit as high energy prices continue to somewhat demand for LED retrofitting. Professional projects again showed good progress in the year. It's difficult for us to be precise about the exposure we have to the new housebuilding sector, because we don't have perfect sight of who our wholesalers sell on to. We do, though, estimate that our overall exposure to new housebuilding is under GBP 10 million of sales. And so we didn't suffer overall as much as some from the slowdown in this sector in 2023. You will recall that we closed our German and French operations in 2022. Together, they delivered nearly GBP 3 million of revenue in the first half of that year, hence, the revenue reduction from acquisitions and closures that you can see in this slide. Now looking at the profit bridge. Pleasing to share the strong underlying operating profit improvement of nearly 16% over 2022. As I said, our Jiaxing facility got busier in '23. A higher proportion of wiring accessories are manufactured in-house, and so revenue growth in this segment improves utilization at Jiaxing. More on underlying progress on the next slide. But just touching on currency, which has been a headwind during '23, we spoke about this during the year as we could predict the impact of the forward contracts that we have in place. Our approach is to buy and sell forward currency and taper in layers that go out plus or minus some 12 months into the future. As rates move in our favor, as they have done over the last year, this approach delays the realization of the benefit. Without currency impact or on a constant currency basis, we would have been ahead of adjusted operating profit level by just over GBP 4 million or over 18% in '23 against the year before. The small effect of acquisitions and closures shown here reflects the removal of the German operation I meant earlier and the fact that Sync EV became a subsidiary in the first half of '22. Moving on to improving momentum in 2023. Looking more deeply into our P&L comparison back to '22 shows the progress in gross margin. It's pleasing to see our gross margins back into the 39% plus range delivered through raw material cost reduction, the improved freight market for much of '23, favorable product mix and efficiencies at the Jiaxing manufacturing facility now able to operate at more sensible volumes and so make better use of the automation equipment that has been installed there over the last few years. The scale of the improvement was tempered by the currency headwinds. The well-publicized shipping impact caused by the conflict in the Red Sea affecting us so far in 2024. To date, it's nowhere near the cost impact we saw from shipping during the pandemic. And so far, we have been able to mitigate it, as I mentioned earlier, through savings elsewhere. We do, though, of course, continue to watch this carefully. This gross margin improvement was in part countered by the effects of the increasing cost of living, especially in the U.K. and a return to more normal levels of variable pay. Together, these increased our payroll by just under GBP 4 million. We mentioned earlier last year that the median pay rise for the U.K. was GBP 7.5 million -- or 7.5% with the lower earners gaining over 10%. There has again been an increase in the national living wage in the U.K. Again, we have tapered our payroll increases. So those higher at the scale have received less of a percentage increase than the lowest paid. Luceco has historically enjoyed higher sales in H2 than H1. '23 showed a return to this more normal pattern after the exception to this in '22. Looking at the operating segments. There's 2 key features: wiring accessories performed well in '23, recovering from the low of '22, especially so in the second half and through the hybrid channel. You will recall that this channel is heavily represented in our FOB program where customers collect product from the ports in China. The second being the improvement in profitability within LED lighting following work on product cost. Revenue here reduced by some GBP 3 million from the closure of our German operation in '22, as I mentioned. And our Spanish operation also declined as we repositioned it to focus more on its growing retail opportunities and less so in the professional wholesale space. U.K. LED projects, there was a real success capitalizing on the continuing trend for LED retrofitting in nonresidential. Finishing up on the numbers. This slide summarizes our working capital, cash flow and debt performance. In short, we spent much of the time explaining the normalization in the first half of 2023 as the business returned to a balanced position post the customer destocking in '22. The second half cash flow improved markedly and beyond my expectations in part through the success of a focused program, ensuring our stock is well managed. The progress in inventory management has released some GBP 15 million of cash over the last 2 years. At the same time, our overdue debtors metric has not deteriorated. It is likely that our working capital will absorb some cash if market conditions improve and the DIY sector returns to growth. Our existing GBP 80 million bank facility, coupled with our covenant leverage ratio of just 0.6x, gives us capacity to explore more investment, both organic and through M&A. We've deployed some GBP 8.6 million, as John mentioned, of this capacity so far in 2024 through the bolt-on acquisition of D-line, which we completed at the end of February. And with that, I'll hand you back to John to talk through our business review and outlook.

Thank you, Will. So a bit more on the market. We track various different metrics. The quite a useful one is the Barclays Consumer Spending. So the green line in the top left. I mean it's a seasonal measure, but you can see, has been very weak. Generally, when you move house, that's when you spend money on a house. So housing transactions on the right-hand side have also been extremely weak. That has driven residential RMI at about minus 8. And overall, if you look at our markets in which we operate, as I said earlier, we think the market was down about minus 6. We were down less than that. If you look through the destockings, we point to small market share gains. But we would hope looking at housing transactions on the right have slightly improved. And I think the more recent data has been even stronger. And as and when interest rates come down and the housing market returns to something like normality, we would hope that home improvement stand would improve and the market will look quite a lot better. I mean new residential housing minus 17%. As Will said, that's a relatively small segment for us, but minus 17% is a pretty vicious number. There is a lag between housing transactions and an improvement in the RMI spend of maybe 6 months, something like that. So we would hope in the second half of this year and into next year, as interest rates come down, the market will significantly improve. But it has been quite tough, as you can see. Our strategy, harness power sustainably. Okay. Although I've spoken over many years, product development for us has been an extremely important driver of our growth, not being able to go to China for 3 years where most of this activity takes place was definitely a significant headwind for our business. So being able to get back to China and reengage with the factory on these processes has been hugely important. EV charging is an area where there's a lot of NPD happening, and we've done a lot of work also on the DW Windsor acquisition in integrating that with the group supply chain. And as you can see, that's had an extremely beneficial impact on the gross margin of that business. We hope that the NPD that we've got going on in home energy management systems, which is sort of connected to EV will be a future -- a very exciting project for the group. As we've spoken in the past, new regulations in our space have been driving an increase in the complexity and therefore, the cost of our products. And we also hope to benefit significantly from the transition to net zero and the general trend for electrification of the home. I mean, solar panels are going to be increasingly popular. And when you install those kind of new systems, all the sort of add-on bits and pieces that we can and we do supply. A little bit more about our acquisition on D-line. It's a similar playbook to acquisitions that we've done in the past. So there will be a significant supply chain benefit by utilizing our group expertise in the Far East and elsewhere. But there's also, in this case, a significant sales synergy. They have a sales team of 3. We have a sales team that are able to sell these products of about 40 people. So it's a product range that will fit extremely well with the rest of our business, and we are confident that we can improve the gross margin with the supply chain activity and also significantly improve the revenue by utilizing our sales resource on to their product range. And another reason why we like the business particularly is they have a warehousing facility in North America. You will recall that we exited North American operations in 2018, but we still have customers there. And we've been looking for a profitable way of having boots on the ground and a warehousing facility back in the U.S. and this acquisition gives us that. About 40% of D-line sales are actually in the U.S. Will mentioned that we invested in -- significant customer for us is actually the largest customer we have for LED lighting retrofits. As a result of that investment, we are able to grow our share of their wallet. And as the business grows, we think that will be a very good thing for us to have done. So low carbon product sales, we already have a lot of them, EV, obviously, LED lighting. But we hope to expand into this area and take advantage of the net climate goals, and we've got some exciting product development coming in this area. I also spoke earlier about the investment we've made in a new facility for Kingfisher Lighting. This is a business that we bought in 2017. And since then, it has grown significantly, both in terms of revenue and in terms of profit. So more on the net zero. Home energy management systems are a combination of EV chargers, solar and also batteries. And it's a system that allows you to make the most of your solar power, whether you're putting it in your car or into a residential battery. We don't plan to get into the whole in-store business, had everything downstream of that. We are planning on moving into including batteries. This is a natural add-on to our EV business, and we believe will be a huge market segment in the future. Capital allocation policy. This is just a repeat of what we've had at every results presentation really, I think, probably the last kind of 4 or 5 years. We've had a dividend of between 40% to 60%. This year, I think it was 43%. Our CapEx is up to 4% of revenue. I think last year, it was GBP 7 million, but that included the acquisition of the warehousing facility. Our business is highly cash generative. So M&A is a constant activity for us. We've done one deal this year. We would hope to do another deal before the end of this year. And if we can't do any of that, obviously, buybacks or special dividends could be on the agenda. Okay. Now to the outlook. As I said, our markets have been very weak. Housing transactions minus 20. But I think this is pretty close to the cycle bottom or the bottom of the cycle. There is a bit of a lag between transactions and RMI spend, but I would hope that towards the second half of this year and into next year, our markets will improve. Infrastructure has remained quite strong. I mean, ironically, inflation coming down is partly because of energy costs coming down, that actually is extremely beneficial for the larger part of our business, not so beneficial for the sort of LED retrofit side of our business. But overall, of course, is a benefit. We outperformed the market last year. We hope to outperform the market again. We believe the innovation of new products, particularly home energy management systems, which we'll be launching later on this year. We have a strong order book. Ironically, the situation in the Red Sea slightly increases our order book because FAB customers need to hold slightly more stock as a result of longer transit times. But that hasn't been that significant. As I said, our gross margin improved, particularly in the first half of last year, we started the year at sort of 35%. We ended first half of last year up to 40%, and that gross margin has continued to improve. We would doubtful think that operating margins, hopefully, will be stronger this year than they were next year. Uncertain macroeconomic environment, for sure, but I think compared to the uncertainty that we had this time last year or we might have spoken about in the autumn of 2022. I think the market is looking a lot more stable. And we, I think, should be very well positioned for the business to move on from here. And with that, I will hand over for any questions. Yes, Kevin.

Two questions, if I can, please. Firstly, just -- when you think about the sort of hybrid customers. So clearly, you performed well in that channel during 2023. I guess within that, typically, you're over-indexed to wiring accessories, within that channel. Obviously, that's helpful for the margin. Given the sort of backdrop you point to for the overall market, what's the sort of position of the hybrid retailers currently just vis-a-vis kind of the order book, the outlook, their ability to outperform what's been a challenging market? And secondly, just in terms of D-line, the deferred consideration is quite material relative to the initial sort of points to some quite strong potential there. What's that sort of mainly dependent on? Is that sort of reflecting the North American opportunity you pointed to? Or how should we be thinking about that?

Yes. Okay. Thank you. I mean hybrids. I mean they look like they did well. But actually, that's where the overstocking was mainly. So if you look through that, they did okay. Kingfisher's results were out yesterday, France was very weak. U.K. was okay. They announced that they were opening another 40 Screwfix stores. That's helpful for us. I can't really speak about our current trading. I mean, obviously, we can see how we're doing with them. I mean it's okay. I wouldn't -- it's nothing spectacular, but Screwfix has been an enormous customer from us and Toolstation is a growing customer for us. And I think as they take market share and they continue to take market share, and they've done it over many years, we are overweight in those guys against our general position in the market. So as they take share, therefore, we take share. That has been the case for a number of years, and I can see no reason why that would change. The deferred consideration on D-line is actually about one specific possible convo, one is no debt. It's about -- it was about 2. One is falling over. The other one is it's a large U.S. retailer. They thought they had a chance of gaining some significant listings within that retailer. Frankly, we weren't so sure. We did a deal whereby if they did, we would share some of the gross margin upside for, I think, a period of 2 to 3 years. I think it's unlikely to happen. But I hope to be proven wrong.

Yes. I think in the announcement, we talked about it, if it came off, it would be a bit transformational. So not really in the sort of base model that we went forward with, to be honest.

It's Ed Prest from Liberum. With regards to growth so far in 2024, has that been driven by same trends as last year? Or is there something new in there that wasn't included in '23?

Interesting. Well, there's less destocking. I mean there was some destocking, right? And actually, the destocking that occurred last year occurred at the beginning of the year because it was a carry on from the very dramatic destocking in 2022. So you would expect if there was an absence of destocking in the first half of this year, you would expect there to be some growth reflecting that. And as I mentioned, the Red Sea issue, slightly increases customers' nervousness and therefore, there might be a little bit of restocking or you could even call it a little bit of overstocking again. I think those 2 issues. But the LED business has continued to be strong. I can't really point to anything significant. I don't think the market has improved much, as you can see, I think actually, if anything, the market has continued to weaken. I can point to hopefully market share gains. The EV business has been strong, still. It continues to grow. We launched quite a lot of new product ranges. Opening up of China, that is a real thing, not having been able to go to China for 3 years, a business which is very reliant upon that for is product development, and that was a major issue. I think all those things kind of point to a slightly better outlook.

Are you able to remind what your market share in EVs is -- it was -- I've got 4.4.

I think 4.4 is probably about right. I'd like to think maybe it's now 5. I think it is increasing. Actually, we -- so the first thing we did -- well, one of the first things we did was to move the product out to our factory in China. That gave us a better cost position. We then re-engineered a product and sort of had a relaunch of a new version, sort of midway through last year. That product has been very well received. Currently, it's a very narrow product range there. It's only residential AC charging. We are going to launch in early autumn, some more sort of commercially based products. I mean, again, relatively low power, not the sort of stuff you get on the side of the motorway, but for more sort of commercial applications, car parks, schools, hospitals, hospitality, hotels, that kind of thing. And again, we have made those in our own factory in China. I think we have a very competitive position. So I think that hopefully will be something significant. But currently, in the residential space, I would say our market share is around 5%. Yes. I mean our aspiration, obviously, is to have a big -- have a higher market. And the business is growing. I mean, it's growing month-on-month. So I think using our route to market using our relationships with the electrical wholesale channel, and other activities we've got on -- in the marketing space and sort of direct-to-consumer, et cetera, which business did not have before. I think we can definitely increase our market share, and it is a major focus. Any other questions? Yes. Thank you. It's not a lot bad news if you don't ask a question by the way.

Now you'd be encouraged to come back next year if you don't ask a question.

Charlie.

It's Charlie Bullock, Stifel, here. So 2 or 3 I suppose, they're all sort of slightly related really. Just wondered the Kingfisher Lighting number you gave, sort of sales up 49%, I think, in 5 years. What are the main moving parts of that just so we can just understand that and think about prospects going forward? Secondly, do you track percentage of sales from new products, products developed in over the last 2 or 3 years, just to get an idea of what impact that has? And then thirdly, you talked about Energy Management in homes, just wondering whether that's a market you can address organically or you would need to acquire complementary businesses to serve those markets?

Okay. Thanks, Charlie. Kingfisher, I mean, general market share gains, but also particularly we moved into the sports business, the sports segment. So utilizing our own manufacturing in the Far East, we managed to develop a range of lighting, for example, football pitches. And I think actually in the last results, we did reference some sort of FA activity that we're involved in. But we also do other kind of sports facilities like tennis schools, et cetera. And that business has grown from nothing, this year will be somewhere like GBP 4 million to GBP 5 million reasonably high margin. So that's quite a lot of Kingfisher's growth. And the rail sector is a sector that we weren't really that strong before. We're doing quite a lot of HS too, not as much as we might hope to do. But I would particularly point to the sports sector. And we install that product as well often. So it's not just -- we're not just setting the light. We're actually setting the whole solution. We put the mass in the ground you put the lights on top, we design it. And it's quite technical because the light has got to be sort of uniform across the pitch, and it mustn't over spread into the counsel, it'll stay on the corner of the pitch. So it's a bit more technical than you would necessarily think and it's an area where we have become quite good and quite expert. New products, I mean there's new products and then there's new product variants. So there's lots of new product variants. We're doing all the time different types of wiring accessories with different finishes and different materials. I think we referenced GBP 13 million last year that's probably product variance. But yes, maybe in the next presentation, we'll put a bit more detail around actual new products, like a USB socket, which is something which has been big for us. Now you have a USB C socket, which is the new version of USB C. So that's a lot of new products. I would call it a new product. Others might say that's not a new product. It's just a sort of evolution of an existing product. So it kind of depends how you define it. But if you define it quite loosely, then I would say quite a lot, probably 30% every 2 years. But if you define it quite narrowly, actual real new products, which isn't value add to the existing products, it's probably quite alone there. Home energy management systems, batteries and stuff. I mean the acquisition that we did of the EV business is the segue into that because you've got a solar panel, you don't want to sell energy to the grid because you don't get anything for that. You want to put it in your car and/or put in a battery and/or put it in your hot water system and you need to control all of that energy flow in the most economic way. So we don't need to make an acquisition. We've already done that, so we can organically expand into this category and others in the EV space are also doing that. But I think it will be a very big market. Any other questions?

We have some questions from the webcast. The Adam Forsyth from Longspur Capital has a number of questions. His first is, is the growth in hybrid coming from trade or retail customers? Is there an element of channel switching from retail to hybrid? That's the first question.

Hybrid in our business actually means those customers who deal with the consumer and the trade, that's what we call hybrid. And the main customers in that segment for us, are Toolstation and Screwfix. They are both consumer-facing and also trade facing. That's why we call them hybrid. I think probably their online presence means they are probably picking up trade from the consumer. I mean Amazon for us is a highly growth is a business which has been growing strongly. There is an ongoing switch to people buy more of this kind of stuff online. But I also think that Screwfix are probably taking market share from the wholesalers as well. So I think they're probably taking market share from both. Yes.

The next question from Adam is given the strong margin improvement in LED lighting, are you seeing lower LED costs driven by lower material costs? Are new LED technologies like perovskite still a long way off?

Like what, sorry?

Perovskite.

Yes, look, LED costs have been continuing to come down, I mean not at the rate that they were before. I mean a panel light, we used to sell for GBP 60, we now sell it for GBP 8 or something, like a square 2x2 panel. They have come down a lot. That has slowed, but still costs are coming down. There's a lot of capacity in the Far East and the technology of the chips improves. So the heat is less, which means you need less infrastructure to hold heat and get it away from the product. But actually, I think I would point within our business, the lighting margin has improved actually because of mix more. It's a channel mix. So sort of more projects, more sophisticated sort of sports lighting like I talked about in the Kingfisher case and more sort of controls, basically more complicated, sophisticated products with a higher cost to serve, but also a higher gross margin. Whereas when we launched LED originally, I think 1/3 of our business was light bulbs, that became highly commoditized. We no longer sell light bulbs. We sell very few. We have moved into the high-margin project space. So that's really the reason that the overall margin has improved.

And another question from Adam. Cash conversion is not expected to be as strong going forward. Given working capital inflow was almost neutral. This suggests working capital cash outflows next year. Where do you expect to see this stock or payment terms?

So I guess we're hoping to return to a bit of growth at some stage. Clearly, as John mentioned, that will, in part, be affected by the wider economy. I guess lots of people are expecting some sort of interest rate reduction later in the year that might drive some change in behavior from consumers and from DIY discretionary spend. We're a distribution business. So we have to make sure that we've got the right type of stocks available to be able to respond to when that comes. So I guess it's sort of linked in a circle. We're hoping for some growth at some point from the market. And I would expect that we'll need to put some inventory in place in order to be able to make sure we satisfy that.

So -- I mean, yes, so net working capital is about 35% of revenue. So all other things being equal, a GBP 10 million increase in revenue is a GBP 3.5 million increase in net working capital. If the business doesn't grow, obviously, it will throw off more cash. And if it does grow, but I think there's a little bit more work we can do on stock. Although the Red Sea issue, of course, is not helpful because the transit time from China has gone up a lot. So we have a lot more stock in transit on the water in containers. So that is a headwind for the net working capital percentage, which may increase a little bit because of that. But improving systems, which one can always do, rationalizing the product range, which one can always do a bit of, but equally investing in all these new areas like EV and batteries, which are quite high value. So definitely, the business will consume more cash as it grows, I'm not giving you the numbers so you can do the math.

And the final question from Adam. What do you see the impact of last year's Kingfisher and the center for economics and research and business research report on labor shortages in electricians out to 2030?

Yes, that's interesting. I frankly, I don't know. I mean, I think one of the reasons that the market hasn't been as quite as badly hit as maybe some of the economic indicators would suggest it might have been is because the bottleneck was lack of trades people anyway. So it wasn't -- so we weren't the market -- so demand actually wasn't being fulfilled in the first place, if that makes sense. I don't know maybe the case now will take us back to the EU, and we'll be fine, let's see. I think it's a problem. I mean we do a lot on working with apprentices on training electricians trying to get that loyalty early on. And maybe we should be doing more. And I think the industry probably should do more in this case. I mean, actually, it's a good scale. It's a highly paid profession I mean why is there a shortage? And I think a lot of activity is going to happen in the solar space. A lot of activity is going to be happening in the heat pump space. A lot of activity is going to be happening on the whole sort of energy transition like we've discussed, and that is going to require more labor probably than is available in the market. But the market normally has a way of resolving these things and sometimes quicker than people think. So we'll see.

And the final question we have from the webcast before I hand back for any closing remarks is for Mark Simpson and excellent investing. Have you seen any progress on building manufacturing geographical diversity.

Well, we've definitely done a lot of work on it. I was in Vietnam yesterday. And we are doing a lot of work on it. I think we're going to probably start some light manufacturing in Mexico, where we have a very successful business now in Monterrey. And as our U.S. business grows, with D-line and with other brands, we think that Mexico will be a good place to start some light manufacturing. And then we're working with M&A outfits, looking at acquisition opportunities in Mexico, in India, in Malaysia, and in Vietnam. So we're pretty cognizant of the China risk and all the perceived China wishes seems to be getting lots of attention currently. And I think that we will do something. But the immediate news is that we are starting to do something ourselves from a greenfield perspective in Mexico. But we remain actively looking for acquisitions in other low-cost countries with manufacturing diversification. And we spoke about wanting to buy a business with a brand operating in its domestic market, which we can grow, but also use as a China Plus One strategy.

Thanks, John. Those are all the questions, unless there are any further questions in the room, I'll pass back to you for any closing remarks.

Well, do you want to make some closing remarks?

No other than to say thank you very much for attending and asking a range of wide and interesting questions. And I guess we're quite pleased with the performance that we put in, in 2023. We look forward to hopefully some improvements in the market in 2024 that we'll be able to talk to you about later in the year. Thank you very much.

Thank you.