Mitie Group plc (MTO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

A big welcome to everyone to Mitie's headquarters here in The Shard. Thanks for joining us this morning, in person or online, for our preliminary results presentation for the year ended March 2024, FY '24, as we refer to it. I was just thinking back, it's my eighth annual results presentation now for Mitie. As this covers says, FY '24 has been another strong year of delivery for Mitie, and we're starting our new facilities transformation 3-year plan with some good momentum. So just to summarize some of the key facts, to start with. FY '24 has been our third successive year of record performance and completes the final year of our last 3-year plan. Our financial performance has been strong, 11% year-on-year revenue growth, 30% year-on-year operating profit growth and 29% year-on-year earnings per share growth. Our leading indicators are also encouraging, a 44% increase in wins and renewals in the year to GBP 6.2 billion total contract value. Our order book was up 18% to GBP 11.4 billion total contract value. And our pipeline of those in-flight tenders grew 27% to GBP 18.6 billion total contract value. Engagement indicators are also at record levels. Customer Net Promoter Score was plus 60, up 18 points. And that's a world-class level in B2B scores. It's the biggest year-on-year increase we've ever seen, reflective of our service delivery. Employee engagement also reached a new high, up 6 percentage points to 63% of our colleagues describing themselves as fully engaged, with 40,000 colleagues now taking part. And colleague attrition fell by 1/3 to a low of 13%. And it's this balanced scorecard that underpins our capital allocation strategy, gives us the confidence to continue to invest in our business model and to increase returns to shareholders. M&A spend was GBP 66 million. That's 3x more than we spent in the previous year, and we completed 7 acquisitions. We returned GBP 114 million to shareholders. And subject to shareholder approval at the next month's AGM, the Board is proposing a final dividend of 3p per share, taking the full year dividend to 4p per share. And that's a 38% increase year-on-year and an increase in the payout ratio to 33%. So that's the big picture. Now over to Simon for more detail behind the results and then I'll talk about the progress of our new strategy.

Thanks, Phil. Good morning, everybody. Let's start with the headline numbers. As Phil said, we've reported a strong set of results for FY '24. Revenue is up 11.2% to GBP 4.5 billion driven by organic growth of 7.1%. Operating profits improved by 29.7% to GBP 210.2 million underpinned by another positive performance from our margin enhancement initiatives. Margins increased by 70 basis points to 4.7%, and EPS is up 29.5% to 12.3p a share boosted by the revenue growth, higher margins and share buybacks. As Phil said, the Board has proposed a final dividend of 3p a share, taking the total dividend to 4p, which is up 37.9% on FY '23. And finally, we've had a free cash inflow of GBP 158 million with average daily net debt of GBP 161 million. So moving on to cover the performance in more detail, and turning firstly to revenue. All divisions have contributed positively to the 11.2% growth in the year. Business Services grew by 5.4% to GBP 1.5 billion as a result of strong growth in retail crime protection work as well as pricing and acquisitions. These upsides more than offset the headwind from completion of the high-margin, short-term COVID and Afghan relocations contracts. Technical Services revenue grew by 14.9% to GBP 1.3 billion underpinned by projects growth, revenue from new accounts and acquisitions. CG&D improved by 13.3% to GBP 938 million, reflecting the continued growth in projects work, the Landmarc consolidation and pricing. And finally, Communities grew by 14.9% to GBP 757 million from increased work in Care & Custody and again, pricing. My next slide shows the key drivers of the revenue growth in the year, with the first block being the reduction in revenue of GBP 81 million for the completion of the COVID and Afghan relocations contracts. Next, we show GBP 194 million of growth from wins and losses, projects growth and incremental growth on existing contracts. Revenue from wins and losses is broadly neutral and the driver of the increase in this block is, therefore, GBP 189 million of incremental organic projects revenue. Pricing accounts for GBP 177 million of additional revenue. And when we combine these 3 blocks, total organic growth for the year is 7.1%. Finally, acquisitions contributed 4.1 percentage points of growth in FY '24. This block includes the acquisitions we've made in the last 18 months, including RHI, GBE and JCA, as well as the Landmarc step acquisition, which added GBP 42.6 million worth of revenue for the year. Moving on to operating profit, which has increased by 29.7% to GBP 210.2 million, with all divisions making a positive contribution. Business Services grew by 5.1% to GBP 97 million, with increased retail crime work and margin enhancement initiatives more than offsetting the headwind from the completion of the high-margin public sector contracts, which I'll touch on shortly. In Technical Services, profit increased by 29.9% to GBP 44.3 million, with margin enhancement initiatives, projects growth and acquisitions more than offsetting the headwinds from cost inflation. Like Technical Services, CG&D profit grew significantly in FY '24, up 34.4% to GBP 80.4 million. This increase was driven by the project's growth as well as margin enhancement initiatives. And CG&D also benefited from higher profits at Landmarc due to the improved margins and consolidation. Communities profit improved by 24.5% to GBP 39.1 million as a result of the higher revenue in Care & Custody, improvement on our loss-making PFI contract and margin enhancement initiatives. And finally, the reduction in corporate costs contributed GBP 4.9 million to the improved profit with savings coming from a range of initiatives across all of the head office functions. Next, we show the drivers of the profit improvement on a bridge, with the first block being the GBP 15.6 million reduction in contribution from the Afghan relocation and COVID contracts. Margins on these contracts were particularly high, compensating for the risks involved in standing them up and potentially winding them down at short notice. Next is a GBP 19.9 million improvement from projects, net wins and other trading where projects growth and higher profits from existing contracts more than offset the cost of our ongoing technology investments. This block includes GBP 13.5 million of incremental projects profit at a higher-than-average margin. We delivered GBP 40.3 million of incremental profit from margin enhancement initiatives this year, with the largest component being the TOM program, which generated GBP 27.9 million worth of savings. As a reminder, the TOM program includes the outsourcing of finance, HR and IT, as well as the consolidation of properties and help desks. The balance of the savings came from Interserve synergies, the Coupa rollout and the operational excellence programs. Next, we show the net hit of GBP 6.2 million to the bottom line from inflation, which I'll come back to shortly, and finally, the GBP 9.7 million of inorganic profit from acquisitions. This final block includes GBP 5 million of profit from the Landmarc consolidation offset by GBP 3 million of costs from G2 Energy, which we acquired from the liquidator without any order book or revenue. The GBP 48 million increase in profit to GBP 210 million was a key driver of the 29.5% improvement in EPS in FY '24. EPS also benefited from lower finance costs, where we're seeing the benefit of the 10-year debt that we locked in at 2.9% as well as the closure of the invoice discounting facility and higher returns on cash deposits. Corporation tax of GBP 37.9 million reflects an effective tax rate of 18.9%, with the increase in the headline rate of corporation tax offset by the recognition of tax losses that we acquired with Interserve. The share buyback program resulted in a 66 million reduction in the weighted average number of shares, contributing 6 percentage points to the overall 29.5% increase in EPS. Turning now to inflation, and starting with the impact in the year. CPI has been falling in FY '24, and labor markets remain competitive. But we continue to attract a good supply of resources, and our attrition rates have significantly improved. These factors have helped us to limit the impact of inflation on our cost base to GBP 183 million, reflecting a 7% increase in both wages and materials compared to FY '23. In terms of pricing, our contractual protections and customer relationships again enabled us to pass on the majority of the cost increase to our customers, resulting in only a GBP 6 million reduction in profit, significantly better than we forecast at the start of the year. Looking ahead to FY '25, based on the OBR forecasts, we expect CPI to fall towards 2% but we expect wage inflation to remain at around 5%. CPI is one of our contractual protections against inflation, so if it does remain below wage inflation, then we'll see the bottom line hit to the P&L increase to around GBP 10 million to GBP 15 million in FY '25. Turning now to cash. We generated a free cash inflow of GBP 157.6 million in the year, with the key driver being the operating profit of GBP 210.2 million. Other items was the GBP 37.6 million outflow of cash and was largely made up of the cost of delivering our margin enhancement initiatives as well as acquisition-related costs. The acquisition costs included a noncash accrual of GBP 9.5 million relating to potential future earn-out payments for acquired businesses. Next, we have a cash outflow from working capital of GBP 4.3 million, which is the net effect of continued growth in projects offset by process improvements. These improvements included the rollout of the Coupa system, rationalization of the supplier base and alignment of our VAT groups, which collectively resulted in a one-off improvement of around GBP 25 million. CapEx, leases, interest and tax was GBP 72.5 million and GBP 9.8 million lower cash outflow than in FY '23. And together, these movements resulted in the free cash inflow of GBP 157.6 million. Our capital allocation actions account for GBP 148.7 million of cash outflow, which I'll come back to shortly, and lease liabilities increased by circa GBP 45 million as we expanded our EV fleet and extended the average duration of our leases. Finally, at the bottom of the page, we see the overall increase in net debt of GBP 36.7 million. This increase results in a closing net debt of GBP 81 million and an average daily net debt of GBP 161 million, with the average leverage ratio of 0.6x remaining below our targeted range. Debtor days are consistent with FY '23, and creditor days have increased as we rationalize our supplier base through Coupa and move them on to standard payment terms. ROIC was 26.4% in FY '24, and net assets increased to GBP 474 million after distributing GBP 114 million of dividends, share buybacks and market purchases for employee share schemes. Our strong balance sheet and ongoing free cash flow generation underpins our capital allocation decisions. In FY '24, we've increased our dividend payout ratio to 33%, proposing a total dividend of 4p a share. We've spent GBP 20 million purchasing shares in the market for incentive schemes and completed GBP 66 million of acquisitions in high-growth sectors. And finally, we've acquired 58 million shares for GBP 50 million through our ongoing share buyback program. Since we started the program in FY '23, we've acquired 134 million shares at an average price of 81p. Looking ahead to the next 3 years, the dividend will stay within our targeted 30% to 40% payout range. We'll continue to purchase shares for all employee share schemes, and the acquisition spend will flex to the opportunities identified in any given year. Finally, we'll continue to return excess cash to shareholders through buybacks with an expectation that our leverage will increase to between 0.75x and 1.5x EBITDA. Our capital allocation policy was a key element of the guidance we gave at the Capital Markets event in October, as were the financial targets that we show on the left-hand side of this slide, where we said we'd reach GBP 5.6 billion of revenue by FY '27 at a margin of at least 5%. As a result of this higher margin, we said EPS growth would outpace revenue growth over the period. And by FY '27, we're forecasting GBP 150 million a year of free cash inflow. We've taken a positive step forward in FY '24, with revenue growth of 11.2% and margin growth of 70 basis points accelerating our progress towards the FY '27 targets. We expect to continue to make good progress in FY '25, although our journey to FY '27 won't be linear. Revenue growth will be in the high single digits boosted by some large contracts already won in Q1 as well as good momentum in the projects business and growth from acquisitions. Margins will benefit from our margin enhancement initiatives and projects growth, but we'll face headwinds from cost inflation, higher-margin contracts lost in FY '24 and mobilization costs. And as Phil will explain shortly, we're continuing to make a significant investment in both our tech platform and our sales capability. As a result, we expect margins in FY '25 to remain consistent with FY '24. EPS in FY '25 will be impacted by an increase in our effective tax rate to 25% as the Interserve tax losses are now fully utilized, as well as higher finance costs as our leverage increases. And completing the FY '25 guidance, we expect free cash flow to be lower than FY '24 as the projects business grows, consuming working capital, both tax and lease payments increase, and we incur mobilization costs for some large contracts. However, we still expect to generate free cash flow of more than GBP 100 million and ROIC will remain well above our 20% target. And on that note, I'll hand you back to Phil.

Okay. Thank you, Simon. So I think in summary, as Simon said, we've made good progress in FY '24, and we're on track for FY '25. So now I want to turn to our facilities transformation strategy, which we unveiled at our Capital Markets event last October, it was now. So you'll recall our summary slide where we said the world of facilities management is changing with new needs emerging, taking our industry from facilities management to technology-led, data-rich facilities transformation, transforming the built environment, transforming the lived experience and transforming insights and decision-making for our clients. Meeting these new needs is at the heart of our new strategy, to deliver growth in key accounts, growth in projects upsell, and growth through infill M&A. And it's a strategy with clear financial targets and our customary capital allocation disciplines, as Simon outlined. So what's been going on since we launched our facilities transformation vision last October? Well, firstly, and encouragingly, we're seeing demand for facilities transformation accelerating across each of our service lines. Due firstly to regulatory changes, over 8% of the commercial real estate in the U.K. does not meet minimum energy efficiency standards. Our clients' ambitions for renewable energy is growing as is a greater burden of reporting. Martyn's Law, the protect duty bill, shifting responsibility to our clients to ensure public safety will be one of the biggest pieces of legislation to impact the security sector for decades. And fire and security regs for the use of chemicals are also tightening. The biggest behavioral changes in decades of driving facilities transformation, hybrid working is now the norm. Employees expect a modern, collaborative, safe and healthy working environment. Facilities transformation is also accelerating because our customers need to improve productivity, extending asset life cycles, upgrading only when cost efficient to do so. And the need to manage retail crime cost in the U.K., retail is over GBP 3 billion a year these days, is also accelerating facilities transformation, as is the need to flex and automate cleaning. And finally, certain sectors have their own unique facilities transformation agendas already announced in defense, in power, in retail and data centers and in the NHS. So in summary, these are the long-term structural growth drivers for Mitie, and they won't, in our view, be affected by any change in government. So 8 months on from launching our vision, we're now beginning to execute our detailed plans, and we carry good momentum into FY '25. Key accounts have performed well, more Amazon Fulfillment Centers; a new contract for the British Army in Germany, which went live on the 1st of June; increased scope at Landmarc; and extensions at GSK, DWP and JLL. New marquee wins where FM and project spend could be over GBP 30 million per annum included financial services group, Phoenix; Aena, Spain's national airport operator; and since the year-end, we've won some further really good marquee names, including EY, Halfords, Aldi and Lidl. Of course, projects, is also a key contributor to our facilities transformation strategy. And our revenue here grew 37% last year. Data center fit-outs for Kao, solar PV installations at NATS across the David Lloyd estate, power upgrades and battery connections for the National Grid, and increased branch security for Lloyds Bank for many retailers. These are just to name a few of the projects we did last year. And we're particularly pleased with our infill M&A and the high-end engineering capabilities of JCA and sophisticated security capabilities of RHI and GBE, which we're now offering to our wider clients. So we're now poised to accelerate growth. Our ambition over the next 3 years is simple, to grow faster than the wider FM market and to extend our market share leadership through, firstly, key accounts growth. We've invested in a new sales team structure with new incentives and new leadership, with more consistent bidding processes, working more closely with marketing to develop bespoke sector and customer-driven sales strategies. We're extending our account-based marketing approach to target new individual clients. Adding just 2 new marquee IFM accounts per year over the next 3 years could add some GBP 200 million to GBP 300 million of revenue. We're also investing heavily in our CRM functionality and growing out our business development capabilities. Mitie has a strong bidding capability, and we now strive to be a more sophisticated business relationship developer. We're targeting growing our pipeline by 30% over the next 3 years. We're putting more resources into renewals. I mentioned we had a record year of wins and renewals in FY '24, but we still lost the DEFRA contract on price and Rolls-Royce to a global bid. These were long-standing relationships. So this was a fairly painful experience for us which, as Simon said, hits our FY '25 earnings number. So we've taken on some key learnings. SAMs, our strategic account managers, are a key growth driver for Mitie. Last year, we grew our top accounts by 11%. But we have to invest more in talent, training and incentives, so that the in-contract teams take more ownership of both innovation during the contract life and retention at the end of the contract. Secondly, we'll accelerate growth through projects upsell, building out, firstly, our consultant design capabilities, for example, helping our customers develop their carbon reduction strategies or redesigning their working environments. This is higher-margin work and will help push our overall projects margin above 9%. We're launching a project Center of Excellence in Birmingham, supporting our 2,500 projects professionals, applying consistent construction design and management standards with common BIM and PMO tools. We expect our projects business to be over GBP 1.5 billion per annum by FY '27, converting more of our current GBP 3.3 billion project pipeline and capturing greater margin by delivering more of the work ourselves. I see Mark Caskey nodding there. So obviously, he's clear on what his targets are going to be. Finally, on M&A, we'll accelerate growth through infill M&A with a focus on deepening our engineering, our decarbonization and our fire and security capabilities. We have a healthy pipeline of opportunities for M&A, with a couple of transactions now nearing completion. And whilst 9% of our business is in the U.K., we do aim to grow our Spanish business. It's a GBP 12.6 billion FM market in a growing economy with consolidation opportunities. Having doubled revenue in the last 3-year plan, we believe we can double it again over the next 3-year plan. Taken together, these are the specific investments and interventions, which underpin our high single-digit growth ambitions. Our second priority is to leverage our scale to secure a cost-to-serve advantage and to drive margins above 5%. As we said at the Capital Markets event, with over 60,000 colleagues in the U.K., we are the clear market leader, and it is the largest and most dynamic FM market in Europe. We're #1 in each of our chosen core service lines. And although we've delivered significant margin enhancement initiatives already, as Simon showed, new technologies such as AI, new IT systems to deliver more straight-through processing, and new productivity analytics, all offer new savings opportunities. Looking at our in-contract cost structures, we still find different parts of the business doing similar things in different ways. And I expect to see more consistency in self-delivery of work, sharing resources across our accounts and greater productivity improvements. We have more to do on route density planning across our mobile workforces. We've separate public and private sector mobile engineers because of different vetting requirements with a separate mobile fire and security team and a separate mobile water team. Through standardizing our workflow deployment systems and investing in cross training, we expect to see time to travel to the job to fall and time on site to increase, and that will drive major savings. We'll complete the rollout of our digital supplier platform, Coupa, which has been incredibly successful for us already, to drive procurement efficiencies in tech services. That's the division with our biggest demand on the supply chain, and they're not using Coupa right now, as also we'll be rolling out Coupa in our new acquisitions. Repetitive admin work and even some engineering design work is now being offshored, and that will continue. And although colleague attrition has fallen to record-low levels, we still have to recruit and train some 9,000 colleagues annually. That's a significant cost burden on our business model as is absenteeism. So taken together, and this is before the headwinds on investments that Simon mentioned, I see our major contracts increasing the gross margins whilst overhead as a percent of revenue falls through operational leverage. And that's exactly what happened in last year's numbers. This virtuous widening of the jaws as it were gives us a clear path to a margin that should exceed our 5% target. So let me turn now to our favorite drawing, the Mitie-verse. Our next strategic imperative is data-driven intelligence. In the parlance of PropTech world, Mitie is becoming an aggregator of workflow and workflow data in the built environment. But what does this really mean? And what does it really look like? The technology foundation layer is where all our core technology platforms come together, where our core workforce and workflow data is held. Our data layer is our data lake, overlaid with functionality of gen AI, cloud-based systems and now Microsoft Fabric. Our data is a unique asset for Mitie. Millions of data points from our customers providing insight on how their built environment is performing. These insights then drive our facilities transformation product layer, enriching our service line capabilities across intelligent engineering maintenance, intelligent projects, intelligent security, intelligent cleaning and hygiene. So let me just give you a quick whistle-stop tour of the product layers we've built since the Capital Markets event, starting with intelligent engineering maintenance. We hold extensive histories on individual assets and asset classes across many customer estates. By developing a diagnostic dashboard, applying AI and machine learning to our data, we can now predict and prevent asset failures, carry out remote fixes, reducing the numbers of those engineer visits, driving down costs, improving productivity. And as we benchmark asset and estate performance for individual customers across their peer groups, we believe that we can help them make more informed decisions about their own capital spend. Intelligent projects captures Mitie's deep skills in renewable energy and, backed by data, develops pathways to net zero for our customers reporting Scopes 1, 2 and 3 data in real time. And that's something Mitie already has today. Benchmark in emissions, pinpointing the project upgrades for our clients that Mitie's team can then deliver. Intelligent projects also lift the growing burden of carbon reporting and disclosures for our customers. Intelligent security pioneers of the development of security resources in response to risk and threat intelligence. Pulling vast incident and shrink data using AI analytics, we can identify patterns and trends that predict threats for our customers, responding by deploying resources where and when they're needed, stopping incidents from happening, minimizing the cost of theft and improving employee and public safety, and providing the police with data-rich case files to secure convictions. Finally, intelligent cleaning and hygiene. Flexing service to meet demand, taking footfall analysis, square footage data, near-field communication tags, shift patterns, AI ensures resources are targeted on the specific areas within a building that needs the most attention, responding to spillage incidents that pose an HSE risk, optimizing replenishment of consumables, again, reducing costs. So this is the Mitie Verse in action now. And if you do have time at the end of the presentation to grab a coffee and head into the tech hub around the corner there, see the intelligent technology team at work. We've got [ Ninja ], we've got Dan there and [ Caroline ], who can show you a little bit more about what we do with live data with our clients today. So if data-driven intelligence, if you like, are the brains behind our facilities transformation strategy, our heart is being recognized as the industry leader in facilities transformation. Maintaining the best-in-class ESG ratings, the largest EV fleet, the first company in our sector to deliver net zero, leading in social value with the largest apprenticeship scheme in our industry, launching a new engineering graduate scheme, a first from Mitie, putting people on the first rung of the ladder of work, that's what makes a difference across the country, improving our line management skills with a new academy, supporting and caring for our frontline colleagues and making sure that everyone has an opportunity to be rewarded more for doing a job well done. You don't get great employee engagement scores and win U.K. top employer 6 years in a row by luck, you get it by supporting our frontline colleagues day in, day out. And you don't achieve an NPS of plus 60 or BP or Diageo to be B2B Marketeer of the Year by chance, you get it by attracting some of the best people in the industry. And you gain governance leadership by putting a new SOC line, risks and control frameworks a year ahead of U.K. regulations. How we run the business, being proud of the impact we have on society, this is our greater purpose and what makes us really tick at Mitie. And that's why getting external recognition for what we're doing is an absolute key part of our strategy. Finally, we've put in place bespoke development plans and new incentive scheme for each exec team member to deliver this new 3-year plan. Building a better-run business does require investment, but these are the investments which will make Mitie an even more successful company and a company to be proud of. So in summary, our new facilities transformation plan for FY '25 to FY '27 is now fully underway. We're moving from strategy to execution. And we're making investments, investments in sales and marketing, in acquiring new skills through M&A, investing in cost efficiencies, in data and intelligent products and in management capabilities. And it's these investments that will deliver our new 3-year plan targets: number one, by accelerating growth through key accounts, growth projects and infill M&A to drive high single-digit revenue; number two, by building a cost-to-serve advantage, delivering a group margin beyond our 5% target supported by the continued delivery of cost savings and increasing margins from our projects division; number three, by investing in data-driven intelligence; and number four, through investing in management leadership. Taken together for our shareholders, this 3-year plan means a free cash flow of GBP 150 million by FY '27, returns of invested capital in excess of 20% despite the uptick in M&A and despite the higher corporation taxes that we now face, a progressive dividend and a proactive return of surplus capital to shareholders via buybacks, and showing we keep leverage within and not below, which is where we've currently been, within our desired range of 0.75 to 1.5x EBITDA. As I said at the start, our facilities management strategy has begun. It's stretching, and I hope exciting, in equal measure. It's one that we believe will once again deliver for our shareholders. With that, I look forward to updating you on our progress during FY '25, and let's turn it over now to Q&A. We need some mics and some names. Hello, Sam.

It's Sam Dindol from Stifel. Three questions from me, please. Firstly, obviously, 8 months on from the CMD and you're trading very well. How's your conviction on any of your medium-term targets changed at all in terms of maybe slightly more positive than it was 8 months ago? Secondly, on projects, obviously, very strong growth there. Is there any sort of insight into where that's coming from? And is the margin on those projects as you would have anticipated at that 9% mark? And then finally, on M&A, appreciate a couple of deals is close to completion, but any comment on the wider pipeline and competition from PE or whoever in the industry?

Competition?

Competition for deals and perhaps if there's any change in the dynamics there?

Yes. Okay. Well, let me take the targets, and you chip in a little bit, Simon. Then Mark, maybe grab a mic. Mark Caskey can talk a little bit about projects and what we're on with. And then the M&A pipeline, I'll touch on it a bit. Pete, maybe you could chip in as well a little bit. But look, I think it's too early to change the targets at the moment. And what you're sort of saying is around our conviction. I think our conviction, we were very confident at what we've already laid out. But8 months on, for us, it's too early to be updating any sort of targets. We've got to see inflation. As Simon said, we don't know how that's going to quite play out right now, but of course, demand for labor, that labor increases in terms of demands from sort of unions are higher than the inflation adjusters, our inflators. So we're going to see that play out. We're still going to deliver some of the margin enhancement initiatives that we've laid out for the future. So it's too early to tell. And I think as we said FY '25, because we're investing and we had the hit from the loss of those two contracts, and we've got some further inflation risk, it's too early to sort of say how it's going to play out. Would you agree?

Yes. I totally agree. And we're not coming off any of our FY '27 targets, Sam. And as I said in my piece, we see FY '25 as a year of progression towards those FY '25 targets. . I'll just start to pick up on projects, and then we can see if Mark has got anything to add. So we're not up to 9% margins yet on projects. We said we'd get there by FY '27. But we have seen the growth in projects in FY '24, at higher margins than the rest of the group, so we're pleased with that. And we expect that as we continue to build our capabilities through acquisitions over the course of the next couple of years that we'll get to that 9% by FY '27.

Mark, on general lease.

Thanks, Simon. So Sam, in terms of where we've seen a lot of demand coming through, I think it's probably three areas. First is around decarbonization. Our clients are wanting to decarbonize their real estate portfolios. And we're seeing an increased amount of, I guess, revenue opportunity in that space. Secondly is in terms of improving working environments, commune-worthy space. Clients are often looking at how can we modernize the places of work. And then lastly, and just generally, in terms of modernizing assets across our client portfolios and whether that's in terms of data centers, hospitals, retail facilities, manufacturing facilities. So for example, one of our clients won a new production opportunity. And we sat alongside them over a 4-month project to actually expand their production capability. So there's some real positive revenue drivers coming through. And I think the other point on margin enhancement is, through acquisition, we can self-deliver more. And by definition, we can actually self-deliver at a higher margin capture that may be the old way we actually delivered some of our project works.

And then finally on M&A, we have a couple of things that sort of seems to take longer than we think. I mean there is a PE sort of bid out there. And of course, if you're starting to see interest rates fall, perhaps we'll become more aggressive. So we see this as quite an opportunity at this moment to sort of push on, and we'd like to be closing more deals in this year. And as you know, I mean the last time we did a deal and announced it, it was November last year. And as you get to the end of a 3-year target, it's quite hard to get returns in the last year of a 3-year plan. So we really want to get off to a fast start in this year. There's some quite interesting opportunities. I think we've got to be prepared to pay up. I think we've been pretty good at bottom fishing. But I think we've got to be targeting what we want to add, where we want to add real scale, and we should have the synergies above what a PE bid can pull put together. Pete, how are we getting along with all our deals?

So just a couple of things. We appointed a new head of M&A last year who's been brought in to help us identify opportunities consistent with our strategy, particularly in the decarbonization space. And what we're trying to do is identify opportunities that are not yet up for sale. Our clear preference is to do deals on a bilateral basis rather than on a fully competitive basis. And if we can do that, then that obviously avoids the risk of being in a competitive pressure with PE who are potentially prepared to pay more than we are. The other thing is clearly demonstrating that for owner managers, Mitie is the right place for them to bring their business to. And the success of the companies that we have acquired over the last few years, we think, is a clear testament to that. And we have a very strong culture with our gazelles and we think more people will find that attractive going forward.

It's a really good point, that about of the owners. If you look at Rock Power, it's more than doubled their revenue in the last year, Custom Solar's more than doubled their revenue. JCA have got some huge orders coming through. And our GBE, Jason, I think, are doing pretty well as well. So there's a really good point about they're the best advocates for us in terms of coming to Mitie and then helping you grow your business more. So thank you for those questions.

Alex from Liberum. A couple of questions from me, if I may. Firstly, I think maybe just picking up on the M&A theme, you mentioned that there's a consolidation opportunity in Spain. Clearly, most or all your acquisitions so far have been in the U.K., is that something that you'd explore to kind of invest in that territory? And the second question is just on the pipeline, obviously, very, very strong growth there to about GBP 19 billion. I just wanted to clarify, does that include framework agreements? And if it does, are you estimating your share of the framework? Or is that the framework as a whole?

Okay. So we have made an acquisition in Spain. We bought a security company, and it's doing really well. And we were over there couple of months ago because it's been confined to operating in the Azores and is now in Madrid, so there's a lot of regulation around licenses. We are actually looking at another security company that is in Catalonia because they have a separate set of licenses. So we have done deals in Spain already. And one of the deals, Peter is working on, there is another one in security. We want to try and build Spain out from what is essentially a cleaning offer into an FM offer, and that's the whole point. The other thing, frameworks, yes, your question is a good one. So for example, there are significant prison operator frameworks. So we put the whole of the framework into the pipeline. Because we don't know. It's just we know it's live, we know it's going to come up, and we know how much it is. And it goes into the pipeline. We're not making any indication of our expected success, although you'll have seen that we won Millsike. Alice, do you want to have a quick word about Millsike? We're very excited about that because that's a 10-year -- and just the other thing about you look at the order book, a 3-year deal has 1/3 of the weighting of a 10-year deal, and a lot of these government contracts are becoming longer. And I think the government's recognizing that if you really are going to work with a partner to transform an estate, a 3-year contract is long enough. And so that's a new trend, which I probably should have picked up. We were with our biggest client, DIO recently, defense infrastructure, and they're looking to think about now how can we extend the length of contracts. And the Landmarc contract, which we won, retained, was a longer contract again. So I think that's the trend we're seeing a little bit more of. Alice?

Millsike is a brand-new prison. It will be completely carbon-free, so a good investment in the government and in the future of that industry. We're very proud to be a part of it. It will be a very large site. And as Phil said, it will be long term. It's a really good example of where Mitie has put its faith in and invested in growth in an industry over a relatively long period of time, with the first new entrant into British prisons for a number of decades. It's a relatively small market. So the trust that's been placed in us to run that very extensive new facility, I think, is a real marker for our ability to demonstrate that we are willing to stay in the game and demonstrate what we're capable of doing. And we're looking forward to mobilizing that right at the end of this financial year.

I think it's a good point. Finally, on the frameworks because there's a lot more framework where we're getting on to. In the past, we wouldn't have had the credibilities or credentials to be on the capital frameworks. So there's some big capital frameworks now that we're on, and again, that provides a flow of opportunities. And as we say, you've got to be in it to win it. So as long as it's there, we're going to have to a go at it.

Tom from Investec. Yes, just picking up on Sam's question on sort of the project piece, a GBP 19 billion market and potentially higher margin moving forward. Long run, I guess, where do you think that can get to in terms of percentage of group revenue? Just trying to get an idea as to what the split might look like beyond the end of FY '27?

Net margin, is that what you're asking?

It's revenue.

Percentage of revenue, just in terms of what it could be as a percentage of the overall group? And then just on those 2 contracts that you sort of picked up on before, I think it was DEFRA and Rolls-Royce. Can you just give us a bit more color as to why those 2 contracts were sort of a bit away from you? Any more sort of detail on that would be helpful.

Okay. Why don't you pick up project, Simon, and I'll pick up the DEFRA and the Rolls-Royce.

Sure. Thanks, Tom. So the guidance that we gave at the Capital Markets Day was that we expected our projects business to get to about GBP 1.5 billion by FY '27. And that would be, therefore, out of the GBP 5.6 billion revenue base by that point. And as I said in response to one of the previous questions, we're standing by. We're confident in the targets that we set out for FY '27, so we're not changing that.

I mean I don't want to sort of overemphasize because we've won a lot more than we've lost, as it were, but DEFRA is obviously a government contract. And so you have to be on the game around price and you have to be on the game around the way you bid. And this is one of the changes that we've made, we have put in a new sales team for government bidding. Because on playback we felt there was a lot more that could have been brought into that bid that was not brought into the bid. And the reason for that is, without going into a lot of detail, it was the ex-Interserve sales team. And in that time, Mitie is a much bigger animal. And there wasn't a reach out as much as we would like to have seen into the Mitie mothership. And so one of the changes around sales is to ensure we've got one head of sales that's overviewing all of them. And we've consolidated sales teams. So our sales team and the central government defense team, they're all in the government sales team, they're all under one and under our most successful sales leader who's come from the business services side. So that would have been the point there. And the other point I was making, you can't just win a contract and just sit on it for 5 years and then rebid it. You've got to be innovating throughout to make it harder for a new entrant to come in. If you bid it based on how you bid it 5 years ago, you're going to miss it. And that was a real learning for us. The interesting thing is we're still doing work for DEFRA. I mean we do project work for them. We're doing all their EV work. So that's an interesting thought, isn't it? And that's the same point about Rolls-Royce. Rolls-Royce is completely different because Rolls-Royce bid on a global basis. CEO is ex-BP. BP had a global provider, JLL. The procurement team of Rolls-Royce is in Chicago. JLL is based in Chicago. So close relationships in North America and went global, and we couldn't do that. But again, the interesting thing there is that we're still doing the security there. We're doing the higher-end smart maintenance. We're doing the landscaping and we're doing the waste. And we're also doing projects. We've done about GBP 20 million of projects, and we're carrying on, doing the project. So we're still an approved provider of projects. So they're not all as bad as you think. And we've got to keep building those relationships. And it goes to my last point as well, to tangent Simon, the project offer of Mitie is unique in our industry. You've got FM providers, but they don't look the same way with the same eye to upgrade facilities. And I had lunch yesterday with a new client, I won't say who it is, and they're in a building that's been 20 years old. And we've just got the FM, and they're talking to us now about office fit-out. And that's the key. We won the FM, but we're doing the project work. We're doing the solar work. And that's unique to us, the sell-through of projects. After Scotland and Northern Ireland, that was a basic maintenance contract for military estate in Scotland, Northern Ireland, which is the smallest piece of the pie that we got as a new entrant. That's a GBP 30 million base contract. We did GBP 90 million of projects last year. So that is what's driving our growth. It's not FM, it's facilities transformation. Was the question about that?

I think, which is GBP 1.5 billion out of GBP 5.6 billion by FY '27.

Chris?

Christopher Bamberry, Peel Hunt. I've got three questions, please. You mentioned that apart on changing the sales structure, you'd also change incentives. So a little bit of flavor on that would be helpful.

Sorry, say it again, Chris.

You mentioned you changed some of the sales incentives. Just a little bit more on what you've done there would be helpful. . Secondly, could you give us a flavor of the areas or the activities, which have the greatest opportunities within the pipeline? And finally, under the 3-year plan, you're targeting about GBP 15 million per annum of savings through the margin enhancement initiatives. Your thoughts on this year? And I'm guessing that most of that is going to come from the TOM, but are there other areas where you're going to have benefit savings as well this year?

Yes, I mean, look, on incentives, on incentives, that was slightly selfish in a way, that the individual got the money and we want to try and broaden it, so more people have skin in the game. And that was the point about the SAMs. The SAMs, the strategic account managers, need to be involved in sales. And it's interesting, and I'm not going to tell you what it is, but one of our very large clients, we've just renewed for until 2030, and that sale was actually driven by the SAM because the SAM was all over the client. And so we've got to get the SAMs much more engaged in sales. I think we put more money in, Jason, haven't we, overall? And you are the sales commission guru here. But what I would say, in regards to your second question, the best pipeline we've got is in business services, in Jason's team. And we've got a big retail pipeline. We have some big cleaning opportunities. And if I'm being frank, our finished pipeline is in tech services, okay? So we've got to use the skills that have been applied for a period of time, building relationships with non-clients for 2 to 3 years, in the knowledge that when they do come up, we're not strangers to them. And Kevin Tyrrell now is running all the sales. He's put into new incentives to that as well.

Yes, I think what we've done, we've invested in the sector lead position as well to really start to identify the target rest of the market for us to really highlight what are the big game-changers for us in terms of contracts, and we started to see some good early signs of that. And following on that theme that we're a sales-led organization, they have as much responsibility and accountability in building the pipeline to make it far more easier for the sales team to deliver a compelling bid. And you alluded earlier, Phil, that the primary responsibility of a SAM is to win, grow and retain that account. So I think the fact that we brought the sales teams and the sector lead teams together and shared, I guess, the benefit and the commission parts from the sales team to the overall operational team and sales team has really started to help drive that growth through.

It's interesting, when you look at the targeted addressable market, we have some really strong sectors. We're really starting to get into the sectors. And that's why I was talking about sector-led strategies and sector-led products. So the product you sell to a hospital, it might be cleaning, but it's sold as a different product for, let's say, an Amazon. So you're trying to drive sector. And we find, as we really start to dig into the data analytics. We've got some really strong sectors, but some of the sectors we haven't really gotten after yet. So that's part of the target. But for the next 12 months, until we really get the pipeline going in tech services, we're probably going to over-index on more wins out of business services secure. So security and cleaning, we have a very strong offer.

Shall I pick up on the GBP 15 million per year of savings? So to answer your question, Chris, yes, we said GBP 15 million per year in the Capital Markets event. We might do a little bit better than that in FY '25. As you know from our numbers in FY '24, we've done better than we expected in FY '24. And that's through the range of activities that we outlined, so offshoring and outsourcing, IT, finance and HR, consolidating property and then driving savings from a third-party perspective through the implementation of Coupa and then through all of our operational excellence savings. My expectation as we look ahead to FY '25 is that the TOM program, to your point, will continue, and we'll continue to see some savings coming out from that next year. We'll shift the balance a little bit, as we said we would do at the Capital Markets event, towards in-contract savings rather than the sort of more overhead focus that we've had within the TOM. And that will be driven partly by the tech investment that Phil outlined in the presentation before, so we'll become more efficient, we'll have better data and we'll be able to drive savings out of that. But we'll also continue to focus on third-party savings. We've still got around 9,000 suppliers across the group. So there's still opportunity to go after there to drive further savings.

And if you got a minute, go and have a look at the intelligent cleaning in the hub. If you take a client, if you've got multiple sites, we know which is the most productive, how much has been cleaned per square foot by parts of, I'd say, the building, the loos versus the corridors versus the whatever and then how it compares to different sites and why. So you're getting some really interesting data. And that's one of our technologies. The other piece of it, if you look at Coupa, tech services is probably half of our procurement slate, maybe a little bit less. And that's not on Coupa, yet, okay? But everything else has gone on Coupa. And we just put Germany. It only came on at the 1st of June. We got Coupa. It's a really good system. And that point about the structural working capital savings is this, it's not by not paying our suppliers. The old game was you didn't pay your suppliers a week after the year-end. We don't do any of that now. We pay when it's due. But what we are finding is that some subcontractors were sending us invoices predated. So a week, it already had a week on it before it landed on our desk. So we were paying earlier than we needed to. When it's delivered, that's when it gets the stamp on it and we pay it 60 days later. Now the other thing we had for the SMEs, the small, medium enterprise, and voluntary, we pay 30 days. But actually, we found we were paying a load. We're quite large subcontractors on 30 days, well, we didn't need to. So it's that level of data and accuracy we've got that really drive savings. And I think when we get a grip of tech services, and it's fair to say tech services, to get any supplier from anywhere to do anything, it's got to be a lot more rigorous. Anything else? Last one, we've gone an hour. Ms. [ Keane ] is not here today. Okay. Yes, last one here.

Mark Howson, Dowgate. I was going to ask, it's so close to election, any discussions with labor in terms of in-sourcing and stuff like that? It's the first question for government contracts. Are they still seeing that sort of staying sensible? And also any contracts you got caught up in hiatus ahead of the election?

Good question. I mean we have gone on the whole labor policies and all of the different points about a lot of stuff. I mean I spent a bit of time as many CEOs have done just talking to them and getting to know them. Ed Miliband, I used to live in his shadow. He used to be the Energy Minister. When I ran British Gas, I knew him well. When he was leading the Labor Party, he was 42, he is now 52. He's got a bit more experience and sees a lot of sort of work. Well, he doesn't work, he reads and reads. He's been, and I'm not making a political point at all, quite sensible in the understanding of the need to invest in infrastructure and create jobs. And so when I ran British Gas, the GMB and us, we were really close because we were always trying to create good jobs and good training schemes. And so things like the apprentice levy, we give half our apprentice levy back to treasury. And if you ask the people who designed it, they'll tell you privately it was designed that way, so you couldn't spend it. The only people who spend the apprentice levy are consultants. Why is that? Because you can put something through an NBA on the apprentice levy, but there are so many hoops and hurdles to get a technician on an apprentice levy. We want to convert a lot of our gas engineers who are skilled to do solar fitting. It's only a 3-month training. They've got to be on the apprentice levy for 12 months, so they just can't. There are so many rules. So lately I think I've had a quite sensible approach to that. We've got a sensible approach, in my view, to things like zero-hour contracts. We don't have anybody on zero-hour contracts. They've got a sensible approach to fair pay. I mean, the problems we have on low pay are all in government contracts. We lost a small contract in Whitehall Security because we bid it at London living wage. Funnily enough, it was awarded a minimum wage, the lowest pay you can get, and they are first impression you'll get as you go into a major government department. So I think there's some positives in there. This is my other chart, which is quite light. There's a whole Rwanda thing. I think the lines are drawn on that. This actually is a chart around returns generally from the U.K., and it's on the website. But as you can see, returns have been falling a lot. And as you might do with Rwanda, this is before Rwanda, and I think they were actually thinking they've got to do something about more returns. It might not be to Rwanda, but more returns. So even that may not change a lot. And I think the content we had with labor is about -- people talk about outsourcing, but we don't think of ourselves as outsourcing. We're experts in engineering. We're experts in how to deploy cleaning efficiently. We've got great scale, and we're experts in security risk management. That's it. I mean if you want that, and you're a hospital, you've got a problem if you kind of try and become an expert suddenly in that stuff. So I'm not convinced it will be a major change. The only thing we've seen, to your second point, was that a couple of bids are in flight at the moment that will get potentially delayed. Most of those are the ones we've already got, so it doesn't bother us in some ways. But there's a couple of big ones that probably got pushed back a bit, but nothing material. Okay. I feel like you need coffee. There'll be coffee at the back. And there's a team there. If you do want to have a look at what we're up to, I recommend it, it's quite interesting. Thank you for listening.

Thank you.