Marlowe plc (MRL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, folks, and welcome to the Marlowe plc Capital Markets morning. I'm Kevin Quinn, Non-Executive Chairman of the group. I joined to chair the Board in early 2019 following a 13-year stint as CFO of Berendsen plc before our sale to Elis. When the Marlowe Board asked me to join as Independent Chairman, I saw not only an impressive and fast-paced track record of growth but also huge potential. Alex and the team wanted to build a FTSE 250-sized business in the coming years and have developed a compelling, clear strategy in highly attractive markets to achieve this. Now arguably, that ambition may seem a bit light now. I was confident that I'd be able to bring to bear my experience to the Board, joining Charles Skinner, Peter Gaze as non-execs, to support and challenge the execs as they prepared for their next growth phase. We're a small Board, experienced, close to the business and efficient, and that served us really well over the last 12 months. In the 2 short years since, the group has continued its strategy of compounding growth and has more than doubled in size, thanks to disciplined, consistent execution of the Marlowe model: strong organic growth, now around 7% underlying, and a significant number of value-adding acquisitions, which have been integrated into our platform, contributing to growing ROI. And part of the reason we decided to hold today's event was really to highlight to our investors the transformation in scope and scale but also quality of earnings that the group has undergone as we've entered new markets, build upon attractive service and software segments. The new divisional reporting structure, which Alex will outline today, will reflect this transformation and highlight our investment proposition. And alongside this, Alex will be outlining our forward strategy and some ambitious but achievable new financial and strategic goals, and we announced those to the market this morning. As a Board, we believe that the scale of the opportunity remains as strong as ever and in getting the right team in place with Alex to capture this. You'll also hear today from some of our leaders in the business, Phil, Rob, Bea, Gavin, Henry and Peter, who've a wealth of proven experience in their fields and are driving forward the agenda of growth through innovation, customer service and efficiency with our 2,500 employees. I'm thoroughly looking forward to hearing the team present the ambitious plans for the future and hearing how we plan to achieve these new goals. Our purpose as a group, helping U.K. organizations to be safe, healthy, efficient and compliant, is more important now than ever. And this mantra runs deep throughout Marlowe. It's a source of great satisfaction to the whole Marlowe team that alongside the growth and returns that we're able to generate for our shareholders, our group plays its part in making such a positive impact on businesses and, importantly, on their employee welfare. We support our clients across their essential governance, risk, safety, health, sustainability and compliance requirements. Today's event is scheduled to take a couple of hours during which there'll be the opportunity to ask questions, which will be answered at the end of the presentations. [Operator Instructions] And we look to address as many as we can. And without further ado, I'll hand over to Alex and the team.

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. I'm Alex Dacre, Chief Executive of the group, and it's great to have so many of our key shareholders in today's audience, many of whom have backed Marlowe since our formation as a cash shell when we completed our first deal back in April 2016, nearly 5 years ago. Since then, of course, our group has rapidly transformed into the U.K.'s leading provider of business-critical services, which assure safety and regulatory compliance. And we've grown from a business with revenues of less than GBP 20 million to one with around GBP 245 million, a run rate EBITDA of GBP 37 million and an enterprise value of around GBP 440 million. Next slide. Since 2016, our EPS has grown at over 30% year-on-year. If you had invested GBP 1 in Marlowe alongside our first fundraising, you have about GBP 10 today. And we've delivered these returns through our clear growth strategy in highly attractive and cash-generative, business-critical and regulated compliance sectors; disciplined M&A and integration programs compounding our strong organic growth; operational improvements and organic investments accelerating this growth and driving margin expansion, further enhancing returns; and our digital and software focus, which drives our model and it's key to the future. But more importantly, and this will become evident to investors today who are new to our story, you'll see the huge opportunity that we have to build a high-quality business of scale in the years ahead and the strong momentum that we have behind us. You'll hear about the quality of our business with 83% recurring revenues and the scope of our group across highly complementary sectors, many of which share the same channel to market, offering us a key competitive advantage. Next slide. You will hear how we create value through effective integration and subsequent operational improvements. And you'll see how the cash-generative nature of our sectors allows us to reinvest the strong cash flows that we now generate into organic growth, digital applications and software, alongside further bolt-on M&A, becoming an almost virtuous cycle. And crucially, we'll be outlining how we plan to achieve the targets that we announced this morning: GBP 500 million of revenue, GBP 100 million of EBITDA at a 20% EBITDA margin over the next 3 years. In short, we'll be outlining how Marlowe is a platform for our ambitious and fast-paced organic and acquisition-led growth in very attractive segments of the B2B business-critical service arena. Next slide. This morning, you'll hear from the people building our compliance platform. We're the market leader in health & safety, and we'll hear from Bea, who leads in this area, how we succeed in this market and how the Meridian SaaS platform, which has grown revenues by 25% in the past year, is so key to this proposition. Peter Bell, group CTO; and John Wills, one of our key software directors, will underline how much focus we invest in our digital platforms. Compliance software represents a key strand of our future strategy. We've made strong recent progress in this area with the Elogbooks and DeltaNet acquisitions coming on board. Phil Greenwood, who heads up our Water & Air business, will explain how his team have built a GBP 100 million revenue market leader in Water & Air hygiene. The business has been built from around GBP 5 million in 2016 through a series of acquisitions alongside strong organic growth. Phil will explain how his team has successfully integrated acquired businesses to form one cohesive division, in turn enhancing and accelerating growth, and how their structure now allows them to absorb further bolt-ons. And M&A is essential to the Marlowe model, and we're good at it. It'll be a key ingredient we use to achieve our ambitions. It's a core function of the group and one we drive with intensity. Henry, who heads up M&A, will take us through a prime example of this model in action with the success we've had in building what is the third-largest player in the fast-growing HR, employment law and safety market since our first deal in the sector about 18 months ago. This, of course, culminated in the GBP 59 million acquisition of Ellis Whittam in October. And then Gavin Snell, CEO of Ellis Whittam, will take us through the progress he's making integrating Law At Work and our plans for future growth in this market alongside areas such as EAP, eLearning and occupational health. Gavin has plans to triple the size of this platform business over the next 5 years. And it's the combination of all these activities that create so much more than the sum of the parts: a fast-growth, high-returns platform of technology-enabled services across the regulatory compliance market. And I hope this will become clear in this short animation. [Presentation]

So as you've seen, Marlowe is the leader in business-critical services and software which assure safety, efficiency and regulatory compliance. We're focused across sectors which are undergoing attractive secular, structural and noncyclical growth. And we're uniquely positioned to deliver a one-stop approach to our clients' health, safety and regulatory compliance needs. We deliver this proposition to around 40,000 clients across the U.K. We're a group employing about 2,500 people, roughly 2/3 of whom are specialists delivering our essential compliance services. They consist of health and safety advisers and auditors, fire safety technicians and risk assessors, employment lawyers, HR consultants, compliance software developers, occupational health clinicians and counselors and numerous water and air hygiene specialists. And we deliver these services alongside our software platforms, which are a fast-growing segment of our business now accounting for about 7% of group revenues. These platforms are used by about 700,000 users across our clients' operations. Our group now has revenues of GBP 245 million. So it meets the total addressable market of nearly GBP 7 billion, which we've got a clear strategy to consolidate. We now benefit from scale and we're a top 3 player across our markets with market-leading positions in 2. Yet our markets remain highly fragmented. EBITDA on a run rate basis is now around GBP 37 million, implying a divisional EBITDA margin of 16%, which we plan to expand to 20% in the next 3 years, as we'll outline. And the majority of our services are nondiscretionary and are underpinned by compliance and regulation and legislation. 83% of our revenues are recurring, and customers are typically locked into 3- or 5-year contracts, giving us great visibility of the future. Organic growth is running at around 7%, and we think we can build this further as we deepen our relationships with our clients, addressing more and more of their business-critical requirements and exploiting our pricing power. Next slide. We enter 2021 as a business where all of our services are vital to the well-being of our customers' operations. And invariably, they're governed by regulation. All of our markets are fragmented, offering significant scope for consolidation. They're all undergoing structural growth underpinned by increasing demand for our services. And since our formation, our group has really undergone a transformation in scope, in scale and quality of earnings, spanning right across the regulatory compliance arena. And with that scale and clarity of purpose, as we announced earlier this morning, we'll be reporting as 2 new divisions, which more accurately do justice to our investment proposition. And they distinguish between our largely remotely delivered consulting and software services and our predominantly field-based services and our digital proposition. The first, Governance, Risk and Compliance, which encompasses our consulting and software solutions across health and safety, employment law, HR, occupational health and eLearning. And the second, Testing, Inspection and Certification, which includes our fire, safety and security, water treatment and air hygiene and contractor compliance proposition. The majority of the compliance services that we deliver in the GRC division revolve around our clients' employees. And the majority of the services in TIC revolve around their business premises and their properties. We hope this new structure will help investors and the market to understand the key operational dynamics of Marlowe and how, whether by certifying that a fire safety system is operational, providing compliance advice on an employee dispute or perhaps delivering a risk management software tool like Meridian, both divisions are bound by the same mission of assuring business-critical compliance. It's no surprise then that about 25% of our revenues come from customers who take more than one Marlowe service, with that cross-sell activity often happening between GRC and TIC as well as within each division. Why? Because often, the customer is the same individual and has requirements for many of our services. In terms of the financial profiles of the 2 divisions, the margin in GRC is highly attractive at 25%. Our services are delivered largely as 3- or 5-year subscriptions with regular monthly payments or as a software license. We can expand this margin further through adding scale whilst maintaining the cost to manage or adding software licenses with low incremental costs to deliver these. And as we continue to cross-sell across the various GRC services we deliver, we can further reduce our cost to acquire new customers. TIC is, of course, where the group began and it's an essential part of the compliance offering for our customers. Our scale in this market is, in part, thanks to the passage of time and the numerous acquisitions conducted that we've integrated into our national platforms. And we've consistently delivered margin expansion within this division. We're achieving about 15% currently. Our TIC activities are typically field based. And as we continue to grow, the route density becomes more and more attractive. We look to enhance revenue per day per fee earner through effective management, scheduling technology and the benefits that our improved density leads to. Next slide. So across our new divisional structure, what are we doing? What services do we deliver? Well, at a broad level, we keep businesses running smoothly, safely, productively, efficiently and in compliance with regulations. As you can see from the table, all of the core services we currently provide have an underpinning regulation such as the Health and Safety at Work Act or the Employment Rights Act. And we can provide a full range of business-critical services from health and safety support, advice and risk assessments, advice on your employment law, HR, occupational health right through to services which protect the well-being of your staff and through to the training of your people in relevant compliance standards; testing and inspecting your water and air systems to ensure efficiency, ensure hygiene and compliance; or testing, inspecting and certifying your fire safety and security. And these services are delivered alongside our compliant software platforms, which our clients use to manage and monitor their compliance throughout their organizations. Our group works across all sectors without any client or sector concentration, from SMEs right through to large blue chips across the commercial, industrial, public sector, leisure and health care, education and property management sectors. And each year, we carry out 150,000 audits and risk assessments. We give over 600,000 pieces of formal expert advice. We conduct 1.5 million service visits. Our compliance and EHS software and eLearning platforms are used by over 700,000 client users and employees. And we test and inspect over 40 million assets in about 350,000 commercial premises. Our businesses operate as autonomous sector specialists, but they're all bound by our common channel to market. Typically, we're selling our services to health and safety, compliance, HR, facilities or property management professionals. And as a result, we closely understand what these individuals care about, and we're very much equipped with the tools to succeed in these markets. Customer relationship lengths in our group are long. On average, we keep clients for 12 years. If we deliver them a good service and we keep them compliant, they tend to be very loyal in return. Before Mark takes you through our financial track record, and I return to outline our future plans and goals, we're going to hear from Bea Shorrock, who heads up our health and safety market leader. William Martin joined the group at the end of 2018, and it's part of our GRC division. The business has grown significantly since then and successfully acquiring and integrating Quantum Compliance and accelerating the organic growth of our consultancy and SaaS business.

We're the leading technology-enabled safety consultancy, delivering compliance and assurance services as well as SaaS solutions throughout the U.K. Our prominent market brand is William Martin Compliance, and our main job is essentially to keep our clients safe and compliant by ensuring they meet their legal obligations with regards to their health and safety, people, property and the environment. We joined Marlowe in 2019 as their platform consultancy business. We have since enjoyed significant growth under their leadership, and we now form a core part of Marlowe's Governance, Risk and Compliance division. We're proud to be recognized as the U.K.'s leading multidisciplined consultancy. We provide a range of compliance and assurance services ranging from policies, procedures, risk assessments and audits through to more specialized consultancy services, as well as providing our market-leading software tool, Meridian. We benefit from having the U.K.'s largest team of technical experts with around 200 consultants nationwide. Our teams are highly skilled and qualified with an average of 15 years experience in their field, which really underpins our commitment to our technical excellence and quality assurance standards. We work across all sectors with a key focus on large corporate multisite organizations. The sector focus complements our sister company, Ellis Whittam, perfectly, with them focusing more on the SME and the mid-market organizations. The Marlowe Group benefits from safety revenues of around GBP 30 million. The majority of these are recurring annualized revenues, most of which are legally required and are secured through long-term, durable relationships. Software and technology are core to our offering, and our Meridian software provides clients with the ability to proactively manage, track and report on all of their risk and compliance needs. We operate in an attractive market. It has sizable opportunities with an approximate addressable market in excess of GBP 600 million a year. The market remains fragmented, and there are many good opportunities for select M&A. The market benefits from attractive structural growth that's driven by legal enforcement. This is underpinned by the Health and Safety at Work Act and the various regulations and codes made under this. This also gives us really good pricing power. Because of the regulatory nature of our services, the market isn't entirely price driven, which means we're able to achieve attractive and sustainable margins that are reflective of our market-leading position. The market is resilient. It's well insulated from wider economic impacts, and it's highly defensive by nature. COVID has been a real demonstration of this, which saw us working closely with our clients to tailor our service delivery, implement COVID-secure measures, allowing us to continue to deliver our essential services in a safe and secure manner. The barriers to entry are high. We benefit from the largest team of consultants in the U.K. with the ability to deliver end-to-end solutions across the group. This, coupled with our Meridian compliance software that has been developed for the last 15 years in-house, act as a brilliant barrier. It significantly enhances our service proposition, and it drives strong customer loyalty and creates stickiness as a result of the high switching costs involved. Our software margins become increasingly attractive as we sell more SaaS licenses. With our existing infrastructure in place, this presents a highly attractive route to drive margin. We are able to benefit from plenty of back office synergies that we can take advantage of as we grow through acquisition, and that will clearly benefit from existing operational leverage. And in addition to these financial synergies, there are also significant strategic synergies that we benefit from. This includes broader capabilities for our clients, opportunity to drive upsell and service expansion as well as deepening our client relationships. Increasingly, the group is becoming a one-stop shop for clients wanting to benefit from the convenience and efficiency that this model provides. We are seeing GRC and ESG progressively moving up our clients' corporate agendas. And increasingly, we're finding that clients are just not willing to compromise their compliance or take unnecessary risks in this area. This, in turn, continues to drive high demand for our services as well as benefiting from an audience with very senior stakeholders in our client organizations. Currently a major focus on technology and digitization, with the recent pandemic bringing this into sharp focus. The adoption of smart buildings, IoT and emerging technologies present significant opportunities that highly complement our digital strategy and product developments in this area. Thanks to Marlowe's investment and expertise, we've enjoyed successful growth with our business more than doubling in size within the last 2 years. This is through a combination of acquisition-led and organic growth as well as investment. Investment in our SaaS products and teams has allowed us to accelerate our product and technology road maps, delivering continued enhancements and innovations as well as investing in our long-term digital strategy. Our SaaS revenues have grown 25% this year and are highly attractive from a margin perspective as the cost of additional licenses remain low in comparison to the value we achieve. Our results are a testament to this. With our average client retention of 97%, this model is a key area that secures long-term, strong organic growth for us. Acquired businesses are migrated onto our operating systems and SaaS platforms, allowing us to benefit from efficiencies across our sales and support teams as well as enabling field integration, where we gained significant synergies from enhanced route densities and productivity gains. Marlowe provides a successful framework for existing management teams to access the support and investment required to realize and accelerate ambitious growth strategies. Working closely with Marlowe's M&A team to select and identify complementary bolt-on acquisitions saw us acquiring the second-largest player in our market, enabling us to benefit from the scale and synergies. Marlowe have invested significantly in our digital strategy and software product road maps. The entire group benefits from a similar channel to market and client base, which offers significant advantages, not least in the form of cross-selling. Having previously worked in private equity-owned organizations, I believe that Marlowe has all the advantages of the PE environment without the disadvantages. As an organization, we focus on long-term, sustainable growth strategies. And thanks to Marlowe's model and expertise, it allows them to add significant value whilst retaining the agility, autonomy and short lines of communication required to nurture that all-important entrepreneurial spirit and growth. We're actually currently working on some significant organic investments, including developing our contractor risk management software and services, with a real focus not only on safety but also helping our clients to source ethical, sustainable and compliant supply chains. Our collective expertise and software solutions will enable us to bring a unique proposition to the market, taking contract assurance from a prequalification stage through to site verification, assurance programs, using technology solutions to manage contractor risk as well as capturing performance and measurement criteria. We are also continuing to work on new compliance software features in Meridian, including a new module that will support our clients to comply with the new requirements coming into force as a result of the fire and building safety laws post Grenfell. Commitment to invest in our future digital strategy, we are looking at closer alignment of our existing software products, enhancing our solutions for focused market segments and continuing to develop our product road maps in line with our market and industry needs. Future innovations will focus towards smart buildings, property tech, IoT and ensuring that emerging and disruptive technologies form part of our technology agenda and road maps. Thank you very much for listening.

Good morning. As Alex has set out, Marlowe has transformed in both scope and scale since our formation, and this is very much demonstrated in the financial track record. Revenue over the period from FY '17 to FY '20 has grown rapidly, from GBP 47 million in FY '17 to GBP 185 million in FY '20. That's a compound rate of 58%. This reflects the impact of acquisitions but also an increasing rate of organic growth, which was up to 7% in FY '20. Reflecting the full year impact of recently acquired businesses, run rate revenues are now around GBP 245 million. Adjusted EBITDA has increased at a similar rate over the same period, from GBP 5 million in FY '17 to $22 million in FY '20. Again, reflecting the impact of all recently acquired businesses, run rate EBITDA is in the region of GBP 37 million and already in line with analysts' forecasts for the next financial year. With this trajectory, we are confident in achieving the revenue and EBITDA targets that we announced today. During this period, we've also demonstrated our ability to improve margins through the effective integration of acquired businesses, delivering economies of scale and leveraging our well-invested back office infrastructure. Over this period, divisional EBITDA margins increased to 13% in FY '20. And now, on a run rate basis, they're over 16%. We've seen further progress in the first half of FY '21 with a divisional EBITDA margin of close to 15%. And today, we're resetting our target to take our EBITDA margins to 20% over the next 3 years. Next slide, please. Adjusted EPS in FY '20 was 23.6p, having grown at a compound rate of 33% since FY '17 in spite of the dilutive impact of GBP 80 million of equity placings over the period. And we're now starting to see cash generation significantly accelerating. Our businesses benefit from good revenue visibility and well-managed working capital. We continue to see working capital as a percentage of revenue and debtor days decrease, and this is reflected in our operating cash conversion. Historically, we've seen operating cash conversion of around 83%, but this increased to 122% in the first half of the current financial year. And going forward, we're confident that this can be maintained north of 90% as a result of our excellent revenue characteristics and continued strong management of working capital. So now I'll hand back to Alex, who will take you through the markets in which we operate and our future plans.

Thanks, Mark. Our markets provide the platform for our future success. They're highly attractive. We're only about 5% or 6% of each of our markets, and they remain highly fragmented. They're growing at attractive rates of, on average, about 3% or 4% a year, so the growth opportunity is significant. The markets are defensive and resilient, and COVID, of course, has been a real-world test of this element of our strategy. The need for our services is on the rise, and much of what we do is nondiscretionary with high switching costs. And we're keeping our clients for longer and longer through broadening our service offering and delivering superior service levels. Next slide. ESG is becoming a key focus for our clients and our investors alike. And it's a key focus for us, too. And our group is closely aligned with many important ESG themes. This is both internally in the way that we conduct our business via initiatives to ensure employee safety and well-being, aspiring to become carbon neutral in our fleets and meeting rigorous environmental certification standards, or ensuring that we're investing in our people and looking to employ and train those from disadvantaged backgrounds. But more crucially, ESG runs throughout the services that we deliver. All of our activities are bound by the common purpose of protecting people and ensuring adherence to essential regulation, clearly aligning with UN Sustainable Development Goal 3, good health and well-being. For instance, this goal runs throughout our health and safety activities and throughout our occupational health counseling, which is focused on employee mental health. Our water treatment and hygiene activities help clients to ensure clean, safe and sustainable water and industrial wastewater, which supports the achievement of UN SDG 6, clean water and sanitation. Our remote building monitoring technology increases the efficiency and sustainability of thousands of properties, supporting SDG 11, sustainable cities. Or our HR and employment law or occupational health activities promote governance and decent work for all, the objective of SDG 8. Next slide. The relevance and importance of the markets that we occupy has never been in sharper focus, and Marlowe is well positioned to benefit from the ever-increasing needs of organizations for health, safety and compliance assurance services. We've got a significant opportunity to continue to consolidate these markets, which are all fragmented with literally hundreds of potential acquisition opportunities in each market. The markets are large. They're growing steadily at attractive rates. In the U.K., we've got about GBP 7 billion of addressable markets to go after. Our larger TIC markets of fire, safety and security, water and air, they're growing at about 2% or 3% a year. These activities account for about GBP 180 million of our revenues, and we're delivering growth of around 6% to 7%. The Health and safety market is growing at around 5%. We're achieving growth of 8%. The occupational health market is growing at 5%. This is a newer area for the group, and it's one that's showing much promise with very good growth rates in newly acquired businesses. Employment law and HR, well, this is our fastest growth service market at 7%. And you'll hear from Gavin a little later that we're able to achieve growth of 10%-plus in this market. Compliance software, this market is demonstrating growth of 10%, and it represents a smaller but fast-growing segment of the group and one, as you heard from Bea a little earlier, that we're achieving strong organic growth in. Our larger competitors tend to be U.S.- or European-owned multinationals, the likes of SGS, Bureau Veritas, Ecolab, Citation and Peninsula, Alcumus, Veolia, Chubb. In general, we're much more agile than these players, and we're able to win market share. And remember that every one of our markets is experiencing structural growth. Regulations and laws, such as the fire safety reform order, they're strict, they're ever-evolving. And enforcement bodies, such as the Health & Safety Executive, are applying increased scrutiny to organizations, which, in turn, leads to increased compliance obligations. And really, the risk of noncompliance significantly outweighs the costs of compliance. Insurance requirements continue to fuel the market. As the U.K. population grows and urbanizes, the built environment and the requirement for complex safety systems grows, too, such that the requirement for compliance also increases. And perhaps most importantly, public expectations around safety and well-being and increasing corporate ESG focus, coupled with brand and reputational concerns, ensure that health and safety continue to take a higher and higher place on the corporate agenda, and our clients' budgets in this area continue to grow. In short, we're providing services which are becoming more and more important in the eyes of our clients and the public. Next slide. Adjacent to our core markets is a wider compliance universe, offering plenty of further opportunity to deploy the Marlowe model successfully elsewhere. And we see significant strategic overlap between our services and those in markets such as sustainability, ISO certification, supply chain assurance. All of these would offer significant further scope for us to broaden our compliance platform. So where are we now? We've delivered on our 5-year strategy to build a market-leading compliance platform. We operate as GRC and TIC divisions across markets that offer long-term opportunity. We deliver comprehensive solutions to customers who require our services to mitigate risk, to enhance efficiency and ensure compliance. And whilst delivering on this strategy, we're accelerating organic growth and cross-sell, we're expanding our margins, we're executing fast-paced M&A and integration, delivering strong cash flows, and building out our leading digital proposition. Next slide. Over the next 3 years, our strategy is focused on 4 main areas. The first is deepen. We plan to deepen our presence in existing markets both organically and through further M&A. Each of our markets offers significant scope for consolidation. And in broad terms, we can see a path to doubling the size of each of our businesses. Our organic growth will continue to accelerate as we enhance service, add capabilities and cross-sell. This means ensuring that we meet our customers' demands for the full range of fire safety services, the full range of employment law services, the full range of compliance software tools while simultaneously increasing our market share through targeted, accretive bolt-ons. The next element is broaden. Then we plan to continue broadening our coverage of the compliance and business-critical services landscape, entering new markets and adding new service capabilities. Examples of this can include areas within the food safety consulting, ISO certification, supply chain assurance markets or perhaps another business-critical recurring service. We share a similar channel to market to these sectors, and we know they could fit the Marlowe model very well. And we've begun early work on exploring opportunities to identify select international acquisition opportunities in areas that we have significant expertise, particularly in the U.S. and Europe with their very similar regulatory backdrop. And the third element of the strategy is strengthen. This is the element of the strategy we're hearing about from executives today, ensuring that we're building best-in-class businesses, driving organic growth whilst expanding our margins. This is about securing the foundations of Marlowe as a cohesive platform, ensuring that we add significant value across our divisions. And the final element of the strategy is digital. We plan to significantly expand our compliance and EHS software proposition. The digital opportunities are huge. We're in the unique position of being able to leverage our service expertise into our digital tools. We're also able to acquire software businesses and add value to them from day 1 with access to our customer base, compliance expertise and the integration opportunities with complementary software tools in the group. Next slide. So how does this strategy create shareholder value over the next 3 years? What financial returns can we deliver? Well, over the next 3 years, we expect to maintain organic growth at 7% or above through best-in-class service, sales and cross-selling. Through continuing the M&A strategy, deepening and broadening, we expect to add an additional circa GBP 200 million of revenue from acquisition and effective integration across both service and software business lines whilst maintaining our return on invested capital via M&A of at least 15%. A large portion of this M&A growth will be delivered from the cash that we generate and the debt capacity that we now have as a group. We plan to keep leverage on average below 2x, and we'll supplement these resources with selective equity raises where required. And we expect to achieve at least a 20% EBITDA margin through effective integration, leveraging our back office infrastructure and the scale economy such as postcode density and further improvements in productivity and efficiency whilst harnessing the potential that software and technology presents. Next slide. And this will deliver by 2024 a GBP 500 million revenue business, delivering a GBP 100 million EBITDA at 20% margin, strong operating cash conversion of 90% or higher, at least 10% of our revenues will come from software, and we'll have leading positions in each of our U.K. markets and we'll have demonstrated progress with our international strategy. And we'll be the leading player for organizations of all shapes and sizes to partner with across their business-critical requirements. Technology is becoming a key competitive differentiator for our group, and we're really at the forefront of the digitalization of our markets. We see a long-term opportunity to transform compliance markets with greater adoption of software and digital applications. Compliance software represents a fast-growing portion of group revenues. It will be key to future growth. It will be a key enabler, both organically and through further targeted acquisitions, with significant growth planned across the EHS, GRC and business-critical compliance software markets. This is consistent with our strategy to be our clients' one-stop shop solution across service and software for all things compliance. Our software applications are often delivered alongside our services. We might deliver health and safety consultancy alongside software as a bundled solution. In this sense, our software businesses are focused very much on achieving the same goals as the service businesses, helping our clients to achieve their objectives by managing compliance with regulations and policies, implementing governance frameworks. And our SaaS platforms, Meridian, Elogbooks and DeltaNet, essential to our clients' health and safety and their risk and performance management strategies. One of the key value adds is that our software is developed by developers who are able to collaborate very closely with industry experts, people who live and breathe these areas. It's developed by practitioners with huge end market expertise. And of course, our software investment attributes are highly attractive, and we're benefiting from excellent client retention and reliance, subscription revenues, a very scalable model with low incremental cost and low working capital requirements. I'm now going to pass over to Peter and John, who will give you some insights into our digital offering, particularly Elogbooks, which joined the group in June. And they'll also provide some thoughts on our future digital strategy.

I'm the Chief Technology officer of Marlowe. And so please, John, tell me about Elogbooks. What is it as a product?

Elogbooks is an Internet-based SaaS software product. It's designed for people that own, manage, work in the book environment to keep track of what they're doing and ultimately to demonstrate visibility on the performance of those activities. And we have a help desk that chases those activities up, make sure that people do what they're supposed to be doing. We're used by 8 out of the 10 largest real estate advisers in the U.K. Something like 10,000 people are logging into the product every week. At any given point in time, 300 people are using the software product.

And can you explain to me how Elogbooks brings value to our customers?

Elogbooks adds value in many different ways. We've produced an amount of visibility -- granular visibility over things that are going on in a building that people didn't have in the past. And that in itself has created a level of accountability. That means that when things need to be done, we can guarantee they get done. That's had a knock-on effect of making buildings more compliant, making people feel safer that the things that need to be done are being done. But more than that, I think it allows everyone in the chain to be as effective and efficient as possible. And it's giving you the ability to improve the quality of the work that's being done.

So Marlowe has a really interesting business model, which actually has both a consultancy side and a software product side. Can you explain to me how having the consultancy services as part of the same group helps Elogbooks?

For me as a product director, it's particularly exciting because it means that we get to test the new things that we're making internally. We've got entire companies and divisions of people in the business that will become or can become de facto users of our product. That means that we are improving things within the group for Marlowe as well as being able to test up the -- and invent stuff that we can take and sell elsewhere. So where we're developing are what we call service provider related or service-related products like the one we supply to our own help desk or the potential 1,200 service providers that use our system. We're going to be able to grow those within the company with people that are using them on a day-to-day basis. And for me as a product manager, that's really useful and an exciting opportunity.

So obviously, Elogbooks has recently been acquired by Marlowe. What benefits does that acquisition bring to Elogbooks as a product and to your customers?

It's exciting for us, especially now being a part of the same group as William Martin and Meridian. We've worked with them for as long as we've existed through one of our major clients. There are ways that we can join up the products and -- that we are working on at the moment that will make a real difference to users at the end for exactly the same reasons that people like Elogbooks at the moment, better compliance, better efficiency. And it's also enabling us to get more traction and momentum on some of the more innovative and disruptive things that we want to do in the future. One of the products and things that we're working on with Meridian at the moment is around contractor accreditation. Obviously, we are able to give an entirely new dimension to the accreditation platform because of the live performance data that we're getting about suppliers.

And last but not least, AI is obviously very interesting, lots of applications being developed. How do you see AI being used within Elogbooks moving forward?

I'm really keen to lean on your experience and expertise in AI. We've identified a few areas where we think it would be really useful. We have a product called 4D, fantastic. You can be anywhere in the world and you can know instantly whether your boiler's failing. We can effectively utilize our products and our help desk to make sure that our contractor is already there before you've realized it's failing. Between Meridian and Elogbooks, we have very similar requirements for documents that are being uploaded, certificates, a gas safety certificate, for example, on a boiler. If we can use machine learning and computer vision to recognize those documents, to pull the date that the thing was done, we can pretty much guarantee a level of compliance that we weren't able to do before and produce an efficiency for our users. So ticking all the boxes for the reasons people use our products in the first place. How do you see bringing the technologies in the different parts of Marlowe together as one?

Really interesting question. I really see a huge opportunity in being able to bring these different products together. They're obviously doing different things within our core market, but there are some exciting opportunities. So if we take the example of Meridian and Elogbooks, you can see a world in which Meridian go on site, they do an inspection, they identify an issue. That automatically becomes a job that goes into Elogbooks and is then pursued through Elogbooks and rectified. But equally, a consultant goes to site, they do an inspection, they don't find an issue. Today already, that job can be then pushed through to Elogbooks and followed through in Elogbooks. However, we can start to expand that. So for instance, the consultant can go to site to do the safety inspection. They can actually look at the maintenance records that are in Elogbooks and get a history of what's happened on that particular item and be able to take that account while still doing the safety inspection. My grand vision is that as we grow the software portfolio, we actually provide a standardized way that we can bring all of these products together using something like an information bus.

And what about innovation? Do you see there's a standard way of doing it or improving the way that we're doing it across the group?

So I'm really keen on building on the great work that's been done in innovation already by sort of bringing together new approaches to innovation, very much developing a standard methodology about how we drive innovation in the group, using that across the group and using that to explore both leading-edge, new products, taking us into new areas in our core markets but also using that as a way to identify how we can have new modules that we slot into the existing products. So that really a two-pronged attack to innovation.

And where else do you see yourself being able to bring value to the group?

So the other area that I see myself being able to bring a lot of value to the group is in the whole area of mergers and acquisitions. Marlowe is clearly a company that does a lot of work in that area. We want to now expand, particularly in the software area, so I would -- I'm really excited about working with the mergers and acquisition teams to identify software companies that are in our core market around compliance, regulation and risk management and bringing those into the group. I come from a background where a lot of the acquisitions are done. I've got a lot of experience in acquiring software companies before. I'd really like to apply that experience and help Marlowe through that to grow our software portfolio.

The Marlowe model for creating shareholder value is now well established: acquire, enhance, accelerate, integrate and then collaborate. This is our model for effective acquisition: operational and technology enhancements, accelerated organic growth and bolt-on acquisitions and a well-oiled model to integrate businesses into our national infrastructure; extract synergies and then utilize scale efficiencies. And then finally, the opportunity to collaborate with a group of like-minded businesses and support each other's growth. The playbook of operational improvements that we implement to enhance acquired businesses is now well rehearsed. We've highlighted 2 examples of this. On the left-hand side, you can see how our route density has progressed in water over a 2-year period. In Sussex, which is a good example of the change that we've seen throughout the country, we now have significantly enlarged customer base with customer sites in close proximity to one another. During this 2-year period, we've seen a reduction in fee earner mileage of 25%. This means that we're effectively utilizing our increased route density, and we're scheduling our service visits such that we spend less time traveling and can generate more revenue and be more productive whilst delivering faster, more reactive service to our clients. In fire safety, on the right-hand side, through the implementation of our operating platform and scheduling software, we've seen a 13% year-over-year improvement in revenue per fee earner. We're sending the most appropriate specialist to each service visit and improving their efficiency. We're about to hear from Phil Greenwood with a clear example of the Marlowe model in action. He'll explain how we entered the water and air hygiene market in 2016 through the acquisition of a small, GBP 5 million revenue business in an attractive and regulated market and one in which we saw very significant opportunity for consolidation. Fast forward 5 years and following the significant Suez and Clearwater deals in 2018 and '19 alongside 14 other bolt-on acquisitions, compounding our consistent organic growth, our Water & Air compliance business now generates run rate revenue of over GBP 100 million, and it's really got the broader service capabilities and coverage in the U.K.

What does the transformation journey look like that we've been on? Well, within a 4-year time line, we have grown the business from GBP 5 million of annual turnover, so organically and with bolt-on acquisitions, to be a GBP 100 million a year turnover, market-leading business. We have deployed a clear industry-leading acquisitions transformation team and strategy that gives us a long-term approach that has generated multimillion pounds in synergies by the removal of duplicate overhead costs, removal of duplicate infrastructure costs and the alignment of procurement models. Following that, wee then turned the businesses around to deliver double-digit EBITDA margin returns. So we've done this with a clear focus on functional streams. So we have clear focus around people who sell, people who service and people who support. And we call this our pillars structure. Through this structure, we're able to double down on account management responsibility. We drive best-in-class sales performance with our deployed global CRM system. And then we move on to enable best-in-class route density and operational effectiveness. We do this with technology. So we have a single technology platform that controls our resources on a nationwide basis. We automate the processing of our laboratory samples, which means that a vastly reduced back office support network is needed. And lastly, with our [ WOW ] program, we promote best-in-class efficiency but also safety out in the field on a nationwide basis. So as a result of this transformation journey that we've been on, what does our business look like? With 75% of our revenues come from long-term recurring nondiscretionary business with long-term customer relationships, we have organic growth rates of 7%, and we're closing in on a target of 10%. We enjoy 16% EBITDA, and we're driving on a target of 20% over the next 3 years. We've got a large global blue-chip customer base. We have full U.K. coverage, and we've got an efficient business platform that we developed out to our transformation model, ready to scale at low cost relative to the revenues that we're bringing in. Our integration approach is around 4 very clear steps. So we enhance, we accelerate, we integrate and we collaborate. The enhance stage is all about identifying clear and immediate opportunities for improvement and operational stability. Way before the sale goes through, the integration and transformation team have been working on a plan for the business. We deploy a very, very clear model around our pillar structure, and it gives people visibility in businesses that we acquire, that you either sell it, you service it or you support it. This not only shows where people sit, it enables accelerated growth, and it reduces duplication. At this stage, we also put a huge amount of focus on the customer. We often reduce attrition from double-digit levels to less than 5%, and we're able to do this with a clear focus around account management roles and responsibilities. As well as this, we also start to deploy single systems and single processes for HR, operations, CRM. And we standardize the ways of working for efficiency as well as in the field moving through to control route density to get better returns from our field force. Ultimately, from a cultural point of view at this stage, it's about establishing credibility. Organizations that join the group know that we pride ourselves on striving for 5%, 10%, and 20%. We will have less than 5% customer attrition. We're striving for 10% organic growth and we're going to take the business to 20% EBITDA within the next 3 years. Establishing this credibility early on in the enhance phase means that we gain the trust of people, and we're able to start that journey for transformation. So moving through to the accelerate stage. This is all about identifying bespoke opportunities unique to the individual businesses that we acquire. So it was a great example, with the Suez water hygiene treatment and chemical blending business that we acquired in 2018, we'd identified that there was a real opportunity to increase the chemical production within that business. We also identified that there was an opportunity for a [ estate ] rationalization. We removed GBP 250,000 worth of annual costs from the business in [ estates ], and we reinvested that back into the chemical blending facilities. As a result of the investments that we made in the accelerate stage, in the 2 years proceeding the sale -- the acquisition, we grew the revenues of the business by 45%. We also made sure that we've invested in the business that could scale to deliver GBP 10 million a year of production of chemical revenues. So moving on to the integrate stage, and this is now all about bringing about efficiencies and building out on our national infrastructure. So a fantastic example of the integrate stage is the work that we did with Clearwater in 2019. Within a very short space of time of acquiring the business, we've switched GBP 1 million worth of chemical production that was going through a competitor internally to [ WTS ]. And this was all made possible by the work that we've done previously with what was a [ Suez ] business, invested in the chemical production facilities to be able to cater for our growth. Combined with that is property rationalization. As part of the integrate journey, we have taken out over 24 properties from the group infrastructure, and this is on our journey from GBP 5 million to GBP 100 million. So as we grow, we reduce with no risk of the business, our property infrastructure. In addition to this, we are constantly seeking to remove duplicate costs around IT, systems and making best use of the available group systems to promote field efficiency and back-office efficiency. Moving into the collaborate stage, we now have an efficient, well-performing business unit, and this is all about making use of the group resources, so strong cross-sales opportunities. In some cases, we have examples of cross-sales that amounted to contracts or a series of contracts worth GBP 1 million in annual value, particularly in the large international data center and food and beverage markets, and we encourage as much of this behavior between business units that once upon a time were competing, which are now performing as one. And this clear structure, this aligned management approach and the pillars approach to sell it, service it and support it has delivered to us a business that's able to scale at considerable revenue growth without scaling the back-office costs anywhere near that level. What does an integration case study actually look like? In 2019, we had the opportunity to purchase the #2 player to WCS in the marketplace, Clearwater, and we approached the transformation in 4 phases. Phase 1, which is essentially the first 30 days, were all about being visible in the business, being present on day 1. And as part of that first phase, with the exiting of some of the senior management and back-office costs, we removed over GBP 750,000 of annual costs within the first 30 days. Moving on then into the second phase, which is days 30 to 90, this was really about doubling down on the efforts to drive cost out of the business. We've made some further decisions around the number of properties within the portfolio. And we managed to exit a further GBP 500,000 worth of annual costs from the business. As well as that, we installed some new purchasing controls, which gave us better rates and better terms from existing WCS Group suppliers. We removed duplicate IT systems. And crucially, during this phase, we switched GBP 1 million worth of chemical procurement spend, which was going to a competitor, internally to WCS Group's own chemical production facility. So moving on to Phase 3, which was the 90 to 180 days. Once we got control of the compliance levels and reduce that down -- to reduce the compliance levels to acceptable WCS standards, we started then to replace subcontractor resource with our own more reliable, more cost effective, in-house providers. We commenced investment in the IT systems that we had identified as being part of our future platform road map nationwide. And we also identified further cost savings. Crucially, contract attrition rates during this time have halved from over 10% attrition down towards 5% through the focus that we put on improved account management. As we moved on to Phase 4, which is the 180 to 360 days, we really had a new organization with a new structure that was fully embedded and starting to flourish. We returned the business contracts to growth. Overall, during the whole period, we've removed GBP 3 million worth of cost from the business, and that's about 28% of the cost base. We have full utilization of the WCS Group nationwide infrastructure, and we'd returned the business back to double-digit EBITDA returns. So as a company-provided environmental services, sustainability is exceptionally important to us. We've committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and we're already on the journey to that. We've switched our electricity supply to carbon-neutral renewable. We run an integrated management system to ISO 14001. We're already an IIP silver status in parts of our business, and by the end of 2021, we expect the entire business to be IIP gold. We aim for 10% of our hires to come from either nontraditional or disadvantaged backgrounds outside of the water industry, and with the help of this wonderful training academy that I'm in today, we retrain those individuals and enable them to support our nationwide business. We signed up in 2020 to the COVID-19 Business Pledge and amongst the many initiatives that we delivered during this time, we enabled our own employees to use company vehicles at no cost to them to deliver food parcels to the vulnerable in society. So how are we poised for future growth? Because of our clear, strong and successful approach to business integration and transformation, we're structured well in a heavily fragmented market. There are 221 organizations that have revenues between GBP 1 million to GBP 5 million annual turnover, and because of the strong structure that we've got within our organization, we're able to acquire and integrate those businesses into WCS Group, whilst removing significant overhead costs from them. Our integration and transformation model ensures that the larger we become, the more profitable we become. Our technology means that we've got the most efficient route-based density platform within the industry, able to service customers throughout the U.K. Our profitable growth, combined with operational efficiency, will move our business from 16% EBITDA to 20% EBITDA within the next 3 years. And more recently, our acquisition journey has continued with WPL, a profitable GBP 9 million a year turnover wastewater business based on the South Coast.

Growth from acquisition has been core to Marlowe's strategy from day 1. Since 2016, we have become the leading investor in U.K. safety and compliance markets, investing approximately GBP 230 million across 45 acquisitions. We identify sectors which fit our strategy as a one-stop shop across regulatory compliance and business-critical services. And those that demonstrate characteristics, we believe, lend themselves to a successful consolidation. Fragmented markets with a significant population of privately owned mid-sized businesses, attractive margins and economies from scale, sharing a channel to market with our own. The scale of the acquisitive growth opportunity within our existing markets is vast. To put some data around that, we estimate we have only a 5% share of our current markets. As you can see from the charts on the right-hand side, we represent a relatively small portion of our key markets, all of which are highly fragmented. Across all our existing service markets, we actively track around 3,000 prospective acquisition targets. But strategically, how do we think about acquisitions in 2021? Our M&A activity is split between delivering on this significant roll-up opportunity in our existing markets and identifying complementary adjacent markets in which to apply our acquisition model and build leading businesses of scale, both enhancing the group's one-stop shop compliance proposition and expanding our capacity for further organic and inorganic growth. Bolt-on acquisitions, executing the roll-up strategy and customer contracts, scale, network density and additional capabilities to our existing business units, these are available at attractive multiples, compounded by our ability to swiftly extract further value through integration. For a typical bolt-on deal, I'd expect to achieve valuations of 4 to 6x, targeting a minimum return often of 20%. More strategic acquisitions broaden our group's coverage of the compliance universe as a platform for growth in a new market and by adding new complementary capabilities in our existing markets. In a platform, we look for a dynamic management team, scalable infrastructure and a route to accelerating growth through further M&A. For a business of this sort of scale and quality, we would aim to achieve a valuation of below 10x. On average, we are achieving valuations of about 6 to 7x, and on a synergized basis, this will come down by approximately a turn of EBITDA. We have refined and industrialized our M&A process over the last 5 years. Our 6-strong M&A and corporate development team is responsible for the full cycle of our M&A, from strategy and new markets to origination, execution and integration support. We are highly proficient in-sourcing off-market opportunities. Of our 45 deals, only 8 have been bought through a competitive process. Our team's commercial knowledge, built up from extensive experience dealing in our markets, allows us to efficiently assess the opportunities we engage with. We have a robust diligence process with sufficient in-house expertise to limit reliance on external providers. We are able to structure deals to suit different situations and consider complex carve-outs that most buyers wouldn't be set up to efficiently transact on. Bolt-on deals will typically be primarily cash with a small contingent element linked to the seller fulfilling a number of integration deliverables. Often, we find longer earn-outs get in the way of effective integration. We sometimes use Marlowe equity or structure profit-linked earnouts in larger deals to align the interest of management with our shareholders. We work in close collaboration with divisional management when assessing attractiveness, estimating synergies and with the group integration resource to build up detailed post-acquisition plans. So we have developed an efficient M&A engine, allowing us to capitalize on the clear opportunity to build businesses of scale in the fragmented markets we occupy. We are set up to pursue both large transformational opportunities alongside smaller or more complex bolt-ons that other acquirers are not equipped to deal with, leading to more attractive pricing and enhanced returns. Our large fragmented markets, coupled with our origination model, results in a steady stream of deals at attractive valuations, which we can filter to focus on the most appealing. As a result of our acquisition activity in our markets, we have developed a center of gravity, a preferred bidder status, attracting inbound traffic from business owners who like the Marlowe model and are interested in coming on board. This reputation as a quality acquirer has led to success, unlocking off-market transactions with not-for-sale targets. Effective pipeline management allows for a sequence program of regular M&A, ensuring integration bandwidth across each division. And of course, the more sectors and platforms in our group, the more deals we can be integrating concurrently, allowing us to maintain our pace of growth. Establishing our leading position in safety and employment law compliance over the past 12 months is a great example of the Marlowe M&A model, propelling us to #3 in an attractive complementary new service market. We identify the market as compatible and strategically complementary to our health and safety consulting business, given the decision-maker responsible for procuring health and safety is often responsible for procuring employment law and HR support, particularly in the SME segment of the markets. The market is fundamentally attractive with features that support a consolidation strategy, a specialist service essential to well-run and compliant organizations, generating recurring revenues from a fixed-fee subscription charging model in a highly fragmented market. The market is growing at about 8% a year. We acquired Law at Work in December 2019 as a foundation in the market with a strategy to broaden the businesses' capabilities and drive further scale through M&A. Extending the capabilities of our businesses through M&A starts with the end customer and works backwards. We identify related services which can be bundled and sold through the same channel to market. Since acquiring Law at Work, we have added occupational health, employee assistance services and eLearning capabilities, to create a holistic proposition covering workforce safety, well-being and compliance. We have added scale in core employment law and occupational health disciplines through earnings-enhancing bolt-ons at attractive multiples, acquiring presynergies, approximately GBP 2 million of EBITDA for about 4x. Having established a robust presence in the market with a compelling customer proposition, we went on to engineer the step change acquisition of Ellis Whittam earlier this year, elevating this division to a clear #3 in the market. The combination of Ellis Whittam and Law at Work alongside our occupational health and eLearning activities gives us a strong proposition as a one-stop shop for workforce-related compliance services. Gavin, the Chief Executive of Ellis Whittam, will now talk you through his plans to build his business.

My name is Gavin Snell, Chief Executive of Ellis Whittam. I've been with Ellis Whittam for 4 years, leading through a private equity cycle that started back in September of 2016. Through the last 6 months, entered a process whereby we met a number of potential investors, including private equity investors, such as KKR and others, trade competitor, potential investors, and ultimately, Marlowe. I think it's fair to say that Marlowe was the chosen home for not only us as the management team, but also our investors in the private equity world. The acquisition capability within Marlowe was impressive, and we've already seen the arrival of an eLearning platform to support our strategic plans and future investments, particularly technology investments. Ellis Whittam is set to be the flagship brand within Marlowe's Governance, Risk and Compliance division. The new division within Marlowe will generate approximately GBP 30 million worth of revenues, generate very strong profits. Between us, we have something like 40,000 U.K. employers that we support today. Those employers are over 48 different vertical sectors, none of which dominate more than 5% of our revenues and margins. And therefore, we're able to build a really strong, sustainable model, where some sectors may be more exposed to different economic climates. That much is evidenced through the COVID-19 period, where our businesses have been able to grow strongly, both at revenue and profit level. The market in which we operate is an GBP 850 million estimated market. Roughly 60% of that market is not yet served by us or any of our competitors. At this point, we are the third largest player in the market, but with the combined effect of our integration, continued organic growth and ongoing acquisitions, we believe that we'll be able to make really strong penetration to that market. So we're really excited about the opportunity to be able to present more value to both existing clients as well as new clients. We help clients deal with some of the most sensitive issues, those being concerning their employees and safety in the workplace. There are compliance obligations on employers, but it is also the case that employees demand that employers are very wise to their obligations around the workplace and on fair treatment when it comes to employee relation issues. So our support extends to providing advice, to technology and software, to insurance that supports the advice as well as a range of value-add services, both on the client sites as well as remotely. We offer a core service whereby named advisers are available to clients to support them with everything from drafting of employment contracts, through to the handling of employee relation issues, health and safety software that's made available through 24/7 access. In order to explain a little about our services, it might help to use a practical example. One of the U.K.'s largest food manufacturers was concerned about the safety culture that existed across some 30 manufacturing sites and depots. We were commissioned in order to help them across a whole range of different activities. All employees across this food manufacturer now use our eLearning platform to help remind them of their policies and procedures, but also the compliance obligations. We provide training to managers and staff to ensure that they understand the risks, but also how to mitigate those risks. Across 30 sites, there are some 100 users of our health and safety software platform, which they use to ensure that they complete checklist every day of safety checks, items such as forklift trucks, assembly line units and the like. And our auditors and inspectors make regular visits to sites in order to ensure that these policies and procedures are followed. That food manufacturer now is delighted with the level of safety adherence and the safety culture that they've been able to create. Our market is estimated to be worth over GBP 850 million. More than that, that market is growing, estimated to be in the range of 8% to 10% per annum. The reasons for that are multiple. Employee claims are at a record level and still set to increase further with the number of employment tribunals rising at roughly 30% to 40% per annum for each of the last 3 years. Insurance is costing more for those employers that are not able to demonstrate strong safety in the workplace. And regulators are becoming more energetic, more focused on sectors and organizations that are not able to demonstrate strong safety practices. Health and safety expectations from a corporate and a public perspective are increasing, and employees are expecting employers to take on the responsibility of maintaining a fair, safe treatment as well as a safe workplace. There is plenty of white space to address. And at Ellis Whittam, we've focused very much on the unserved market. And in particular, larger employers that employ 150,000 to 5,000 employees. In that market, we are typically working with HR teams, health and safety teams as opposed to the micro segment of the market where we're working with the business owner. Our proposition tends to displace legacy law firm relationships and to supplement the efforts of HR teams and health and safety teams. We take a very clear market positioning. We are higher-priced, higher quality, offering personalized named advice with the addition of online resources such as HR software, eLearning and health and safety software. Our proposition is centered on the belief that our personalized service and stronger online resources provide the employer with stronger protection against employee claims, safety regulations and other obligations. So Ellis Whittam creates the ability for employers to be able to manage all of the activities relating to employees in the workplace and safety in the workplace. Ellis Whittam works with HR teams, health and safety teams, operations teams in those organizations with a range of support from on-site audits and inspections, to software, to training and remote support. Ellis Whittam has a strong business model with key characteristics. Recurring revenues with over 90% of our clients being on fixed-term average full year term contracts. Strong cash conversion running at over 100%. Together with the newly merged Law at Work, we will be able to scale our business to double it over the next 3 years and to achieve a 3x quantum over the next 5 years. We've been able to demonstrate our relevance and value through difficult lockdown periods. Revenues have grown order of guidance 10% with strong underlying profit growth as well. In the process of deciding who Ellis Whittam would be sold to, it was unanimously the case that Marlowe was the preferred choice. It gave us significant ability to invest in our future, to be able to complete acquisitions that could allow us to grow and create even stronger platform, to displace current third-party costs and equally, to be able to build additional services for our clients, such as occupational health, eLearning and the like. We operate in a valuable high-growth market in which Peninsula and Citation secure the largest market share. Our competitive advantage is set to grow under Marlowe ownership. Examples of that would be the inclusion of health and safety partners within the Marlowe Group set to displace current third party costs, the potential acquisition of HR software and the eLearning acquisition made prior to Christmas in the form of DeltaNet. Ellis Whittam currently employs some 60 qualified employment lawyers, that's 10x as many qualified employment lawyers than the largest competitor in our marketplace. Our current focus is on integrating Ellis Whittam with Law at Work. We're really excited at the opportunities this creates and over the next 6 to 12 months, expect to be able to achieve emerging of the management teams, of the core systems that underpin our services and to extend our services to our nominated clients. With Marlowe's sponsorship, we'll be able to extend that platform across other parts of the Marlowe Group, including the occupational health and employee assistance provision, along with eLearning platforms, potential acquisition of an HR software partner and working with William Martin to replace our current health and safety software. We think that there are a range of opportunities to build synergies between Ellis Whittam and Law at Work. In our service efficiency, we think that the deployment of a whole new case management platform across our legal and HR advisory teams will deliver strong efficiency gains. Our sales and marketing platforms will be able to generate stronger levels of leads, and our field sales teams will be able to convert more new business as well as renewals through this. We will be taking the opportunity to go-to-market with wider and stronger service range, namely occupational health, employee assistance, eLearning platforms and, in time, HR software and health and safety software. Finally, we will be able to deliver stronger margin growth by displacing current third-party arrangements such as HR software, eLearning and health and safety software. All of those integration programs will be achieved through the next calendar year. We expect to continue with strong organic growth through the next financial year driven by leveraging of the digital marketing platform that's in place through sales force, by extending and combining our field sales teams, by building strong digital selling platforms, by increasing service delivery efficiencies through the deployment of a whole new case management platform and, as I mentioned before, displacing current third-party arrangements with Marlowe-owned assets. The conversion and integration of more acquisitions will allow us to extend the range of services that we make available to our target audience. So we look forward to reporting on the successful completion of those acquisitions and subsequent integration. We have a resource program management office, and we're really excited about bringing those businesses on so that we're able to fuel further growth, add more value to our proposition and report strong success through the 2021 period. Thanks for listening.

So you've seen how we have a clear strategy and resilient business-critical services in software sectors where legislation underpins high levels of recurring revenue. Compounding our growth through targeted M&A continues to be key to our strategy to build significant further scale. You've seen how we have a very large opportunity across a GBP 7 billion U.K. core market to expand into and that our model for growth is focused on consolidating these markets, and it's well rehearsed. We've demonstrated success year in, year out with expanded margins, accelerated growth and increased cash generation. And crucially, you've seen how the businesses benefit from being part of Marlowe, connected to the common theme of compliance and strengthened and enhanced within our infrastructure. And looking to the future, you've seen a path to doubling revenues to around GBP 500 million, achieving a 20% EBITDA margin, delivering GBP 100 million of EBITDA and 90% plus operating cash conversion. So thank you for listening, and in a few minutes' time, we'll be answering the questions that have been coming in. Please submit any final questions now over the next few minutes. Whilst these are submitted and we get ready, we're going to leave you with Rob Flinn, MD of our Fire Safety & Security business. Fire was the market that Marlowe cut its teeth in, and it remains a key focus. Our GBP 85 million revenue business continues to build scale and take market share. Thank you for listening.

Well, good morning. My name is Rob Flinn, I'm the CEO of Marlowe fire and security group, a business that forms part of Marlowe plc's testing, inspection and certification division. It was the first market that Marlowe plc entered and is still one of the group's key focus areas today. Our business has revenues of around GBP 85 million consists of the number of fast-growing fire and security businesses, which we're combining to create a U.K. market leader through M&A and organic investment. We provide services to thousands of customers across the U.K. from SMEs to blue-chip customers, ensuring the property and people are safe, secure, and most importantly, compliant with stringent safety regulations. We operate right across the U.K., offering a one-stop approach to customers for all their fire and security requirements from initial risk assessment and fire consultancy, new system design, install, emergency response and planned maintenance right through to the provision of intruder detection systems, CCTV, asset tracking and alarm monitoring. The market benefits from many attractive characteristics and long-term growth drivers. Firstly, regulations and insurance requirements, such as the regulatory reform order, meaning that much of what we do is nondiscretionary spend, resulting in high degrees of recurring revenues. There are significant barriers to entry in the marketplace. Successful operators in our markets need national coverage, scale and sophisticated operational platforms. The services we provide are operationally complex, providing attractive margins that can be expanded through scale efficiencies. High-profile tragic incidents like Grenfell, unfortunately, are really focusing the government and employers' minds on fire safety. The importance of ESG across the U.K. business sector is also making our clients aware or more aware of their obligations to ensure the safety and security of their staff. More recently, COVID is underlying the resilience of our market as well. Despite national lockdowns, our business has been relatively buoyant with customers focusing even more on security and safety of buildings and the welfare of their people. Technology continues to advance, of course, with IoT, artificial intelligence and connected devices are also fueling our market in a big way. We've delivered consistent year-over-year growth in the past 5 years of around 30% to 40%, incorporating the high single-digit organic growth, significantly outpacing the growth in the market. We're achieving this through investing in technology to achieve superior customer service levels. Our customers demand real-time information on their compliance and our digital platform provides this to them. Improved sales management, CRM and marketing across traditional and digital channels has also helped our growth. In addition, the very broad capabilities we're able to offer as a group, provides the opportunity to deliver our customers a vast range of services under one roof. The more services we provide to a single customer, the more our relationship becomes stronger and deeper and they see us as a partner rather than a supplier. While M&A is, of course, key to the corporate DNA of Marlowe plc, and we're settled really to succeed in a big way, it's key to our compounding growth strategy. My team worked very closely with the M&A team to identify strategic targets, carrying out due diligence and preparing detailed integration plans. Once businesses join the group, we implement our integration strategy and sales and operational improvement plan, which consists of bringing the business into our own operating platform, identifying cost synergies, such as merging back-office functions, maybe consolidating regional offices and exploring potential procurement savings. Implementing our sales management and marketing processes helps drive organic growth and implementing our own technology is then key to enhancing efficiencies and improving compliance for our customers. Finally, we integrate the service operational delivery to realize the route density improvements and it really improved customer service levels as a result. We benefit from significant integration resource, who were experts in driving change programs and implementing our own operating model. Expanding operating margins is key to our strategy, and we've demonstrated this year after year. We have the opportunity to go much further as well because the market offers so many economies of scale. Route density is, of course, a significant driver of our margin success. The larger we become, the more customers we secure in close proximity, the more fee earners we employ, the more we increase efficiency. And therefore, it maximizes revenue. Across Marlowe, we benefit from a very well invested and scalable back-office. So the organic drop-through that we can now achieve starts to become really attractive. We focus on contract profitability in a big way. And look to optimize pricing and leverage their pricing power that we're now developing. Each division in the group has a high degree of autonomy with a decentralized operating structure. That means responsibility and accountability go hand-in-hand in each business. This means that we can focus on building market-leading businesses, but enjoy the benefits of being part of Marlowe plc, such as being part of a dynamic and entrepreneurial positive environment with access to growth capital and with a long-term outlook, financial governance, M&A expertise and integration support but also technology expertise. And of course, the opportunities to collaborate across the group to drive cross-sales given that we share the same route to market. Marlowe is rapidly becoming an employer of choice in the industry. It's a successful environment with a positive culture and one that our employees enjoy and thrive in.