Restore plc (RST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Great. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Restore plc's 2023 results presentation. Our last cons were our Capital Markets event in November, which I guess is 4 months ago. That was fairly numbers light, not least because Dan had only recently joined as our CFO. And so, today, we will have an opportunity to talk more about the numbers within the business. So I will top and tail. So I will start off with the overview, hand over to Dan, and then I'll conclude with some words on the outlook. Great. So in fact, not -- some of this page -- not a lot has changed since November. So the key priorities really remain the same as they were now. What we're very keen to do is focus on operating margin across our individual business units and across the group. To me strong operating margins reflects the quality of the business, and also, once good operating margins are established, it becomes a great platform to move on to further growth. Clearly, the importance of cash generation. This should be a key feature of our businesses given the strength of their market positions and the fact that they're very well invested. And I think in the current markets cash generation is something which everybody likes to see. So we're also focusing on that. And the third area, it's rather dramatic phrasing, the business units have unleashed their potential. We have 5 related businesses, all of which have every opportunity to prove that they are high margin, cash generative and have got growth potential. So that's really been -- that remains the priorities of the business. You've probably heard these messages from Restore many times. We need to utilize the strengths of our business. We are a market leader. So we are -- in 3 of our businesses we're comfortably the market leader. And the 2 where we're not the market leader, we're effective -- we are -- there's really 2 main players in both of those markets. Clearly, an element of our business which is very important is that our revenues are recurring and they've very strongly contracted. This is obviously most apparent in Records Management and also in Datashred. But increasingly we're working to achieve that both in Digital and also in our Technology businesses. We also have -- there are no obvious disruptors in our markets and all of our services will continue to be required at similar levels for the foreseeable future. So all of this contributes to what should be high operating margins across the group. I've set, I suppose, a stretch goal that across the business we should be able to achieve operating margins of 20% over a certain period of time. And actually, over the last decade, Restore has historically delivered margins across the group in excess -- around or in excess of 20%. So that's the target. And we're also -- what our services are all about? It's about compliance, security, reliability, service delivery, and these are things which are particularly valued by blue-chip customers and increasingly government customers. So this is absolutely what our business is about and what we want to focus on. And also, when you have those conditions, price becomes an element, but not the key element. Since last September you'll be aware there have been structural changes. Jamie Hopkins has moved up to be our Chair. I came in as CEO in September, and Dan joined us November as CFO. We've changed the management in 2 of our 5 business units. And the -- as part of giving more responsibility back to the operations, most of our central departments have been disbanded or rationalized. So the management style is very much what I think is the best way to run these businesses on a decentralized basis, let and -- reduce excess demand for information from our operations. I don't want to spend all day asking all of our operations what are they doing, what are their numbers so that I can make a decision for them. What I need is short lines of communication, everybody to understand what they're being asked to do and what I would call an eyes-on, hands-off policy. We have extremely good financial systems within the business. Dan and I can see what's going on. We can understand what's going on. We can let people take -- have power and responsibility for their operations, but we can also step in when we feel that things are not going in the right direction. And we enjoy doing that. Most people -- it's quite enjoyable when you sort of go, "I don't think they quite got that right," and then talk to them about why we don't think that's the case. So short lines of communication. Don't have the swingeing charges, where the business units sort of go, "Well, there's head office coming in again, whacking me with that. It is going to hit my budget when they start doing that." None of those. And also, I think that we are comfortable with making acquisitions, but haven't been an acquisition-led business. That is not what we're about over the next 18 months. So that's the overview. Let me hand over to Dan.

Thank you, Charles, and good morning, everyone. So I should say when I last met all these good people was day 4. Yesterday, I completed month 4, no card or anything. But I feel like I got my feet under the desk a lot more now. So I'm going to talk to you about 3 things. One, I'll start with a summary of the financials, give you an overview. 2, I'll take you through the primary statements and adjusted items. And then, thirdly, I'll round off with some modeling assumptions for next year and the capital allocation framework. So in summary and overview, solid revenues for the year, broadly flat with last year and a strong performance in Records Management supported by price rises, and strong growth in Harrow Green, our relocations business. Weaker performances in Technology, as we talked about, partly because of the depressed ITAD market. Also, weak performance in Digital, and that was nonrepeat contracts and less bulk scanning. And paper pricing in Datashred was depressed. And all of these -- and that's trailed at the half year by Jamie. Adjusted operating profit of GBP 44.3 million, so down 15%, declined 15% from last year, driven by those 3 headwinds I just mentioned. And then adjusted profit before tax of GBP 30.3 million, that's less the finance costs. Statutory loss of GBP 29 million, primarily because of the impairments, the noncash impairments on Datashred, which was at the half year, and also a couple of smaller bits in the second half. Final dividend of GBP 0.0335. So full year dividend of GBP 0.052 giving cover of 3.3x, which is the same as last year, just with a rebase profit. And then net debt GBP 97.8 million, down -- reduced by 6%. And good cash conversion, 100% -- 110% cash conversion. And leverage of 1.9. So revenues. This split of revenues by nature, this hopefully is familiar to you from the half year, the donuts, as we refer to them, the half year that Jamie presented. And what it shows is a high degree of recurring revenues and really the quality -- I think I mentioned this at the Capital Markets event, the quality of the revenues shine through here. The numbers for the full year are reasonably consistent with the half year, so pretty much unchanged. So a high degree of recurrence, particularly in the Digital Information Management segment, which, of course, has got the Records Management business in it. And bridging revenue from 2022 to 2023, we've got a bit of a sandwich here. Records Management strong performance, as I mentioned, and that's mainly driven by pricing. And then we've got the headwinds that the business faced during 2023. So Digital, Technology and Shred -- Datashred, in particular, depressed paper pricing, which drops straight through to the profit, which we'll talk about in a second. And then finishing off with a good performance from Harrow Green. That included the delivery of a large pharmaceutical company into Cambridge during the year. So that was a strong performance from Harrow Green. So that ended up full year revenues of GBP 277.1 million. Then just looking at profit, so this is adjusted profit before tax. Pretty much a similar story. So good performance in Records Management, and that pricing dropped into profits. And then that was largely canceled out through headwinds on cost inflation. So people and property, they are our 2 biggest costs. We had inflation on both of those, and also a little bit on energy cost, electricity in particular. And then as I said, the paper price dropped through. Just as a reminder, GBP 10 difference on paper price. Given we've got 50,000 tonnes of paper reduces profit or changes profit by GBP 0.5 million. So that dropped straight through on to profit. And of course, finishing up, we've got interest. The bank rate was higher in 2023 than it was in '22, which dropped GBP 3.7 million of profit. So rounded the year with GBP 30.3 million adjusted profit before tax. So a little bit of detail on our 2 divisions, just starting off with Digital Information Management. So this is Records Management and Digital, those 2 businesses. Good performance Records Management. So that's 70% of the income. They were up 9% on revenue. Softening of the bulk scanning in Digital, combined with a strong comparative in 2020. We had the Scottish census in Digital, so a strong nonrecurring comparative. So that combined to give a 16% decline on Digital revenue. And then adjusted profit margins, operating margins reflect those lower profits in Digital following the strong 2022. Records Management broadly flat year-on-year with pricing offsetting inflation. So Secure Life Science Services -- or Lifecycle Services, so the other division. So we've got 3 businesses in there: Technology, Datashred and Harrow Green. As I said, the ITAD, IT destruction sector was depressed last year, reduced hardware investment by the customers. That was a market factor. Datashred did well on service income, but offset by the decline in paper pricing. And as I said, a strong growth in Harrow Green, which was helped by that Life Science contract I mentioned into -- moving into Cambridge. So touching on cash. Strong free cash generation, 110% conversion. This continues to be a good quality of Restore and we'll enjoy in the future. Finance costs, GBP 12.8 million of those. Most of that is the interest on the facilities we have, so GBP 7.5 million. And we've also got some finance lease costs in there as well. So net debt reduction down to GBP 97.8 million and closing leverage of 1.9. And I'll come back to talk about leverage and our preferred range later on. So at the end of the year we had GBP 97 million of the RCF, the revolving credit facility, drawn, and we have the GBP 25 million U.S. private placement. And out of that, the U.S. private placement is fixed rate and GBP 25 million of the RCF is hedged. And moving on to the balance sheet. As we said at the half year, the noncash impairment of Datashred on the goodwill is one of the big movements in that, as we talked about at the half year, it's a change in the cost of capital and also the [Audio Gap]. So reduced cash balance year-on-year I'd like to point out. So about GBP 30 million 2022, December '22, down to almost GBP 23 million at the year-end. And we'll continue to work on that. I'll come back to that when I'll talk about the capital allocation and the guidance. But overall, strong balance sheet, key ratio is consistent with prior period. So adjusting items. And I'd like to just talk through a little bit of the detail, but also highlight what's cash and what's noncash. And the reason I want to do that is a lot of it is noncash. So largely as expected and trailed, hopefully, no surprises here. The biggest is the asset impairment. That's of course, noncash. Datashred is the biggest part of that, so GBP 32.5 million. And then we also had a site closure in Digital and a business exit in Technology. We then had some noncash costs on property, and this is in relation to the portfolio of property that we've got. We did a review -- and I'll touch back on -- touch on this again later of our portfolio -- particularly in Records Management and looked again at what properties we wanted to be in the long term. And then a couple of cash costs, restructuring redundancy. So there's some group restructuring and then there's also management changes. And then, finally, we have the IT restructuring program, GBP 1.6 million of that, which is a consolidation of finance systems. So just in summary, a high proportion, a vast majority of noncash in adjusted items. So just looking forward a little bit. I trailed this at the Capital Markets event, and this is a build on what I think I said in my 2 or 3 minutes I had then. So we'll work top to bottom, so targeting investments with the emphasis on organic growth, so not inorganic, an emphasis on organic growth. We'll work to pay down the debt. And we've got quite a few of the bankers in the room. But we'll pay down that debt during the year, keeping leverage in the range of 1.5 to 2x EBITDA, so at 1.9 at the end of the year. Maintain the dividends, increasing relative to our profit, but at a measured and sustainable rates. And then, lastly, a limited share purchase, but mainly to satisfy the employee incentive schemes. So then we've done some good housekeeping since the year-end in the last couple of months. We canceled GBP 75 million of the RCF. So it was GBP 200 million at the year-end and it's now today GBP 125 million. And that's because we paid for the privilege of having facility we wouldn't use. So we're trying to help with the finance costs. We extended out the RCF another year through to the end of April 2027. And we also entered into a GBP 10 million facility with Barclays, and that's to help us work cash down. So previous year-end cash was about GBP 30 million. This year end it's GBP 23 million. We're going to be working harder on that to reduce it down to about GBP 10 million if we can. The overdraft isn't really on a day-to-day basis, but it's just to make sure we've got working capital looked after. So good housekeeping I would describe that as. And then something for your models to help in 2024, touching on the 3 areas. So on income statement, we'll continue to see inflationary cost headwinds. So National Living Wage, National Minimum Wage up 10%. And that affects about 45% of our workforce. So that will come through during the year. And we've also got business rates, which will impact our property costs. So similar to last year, we'll have some inflation headwinds on people and property. Finance costs we're assuming a flat Bank of England base rate of 5.25% over the year. But hopefully, we'll get some tailwinds from rationalized borrowing facilities and as we work through the debt and reduce excess cash on hand. We think the -- moving on to cash flow. We think the high cash conversion rate will continue. So at least 80% in 2024. There'll be some incremental CapEx, probably between GBP 8 million and GBP 10 million. Almost all of that is Records Management as part of our property strategy, particularly on 2 properties. We'll pay down the debt, we'll stay in the leverage range of 1.5 to 2x EBITDA. And as I said on the previous pages, we'll maintain the dividends. And just on adjusting items, so there'll be some residual restructuring and that's essentially as we work towards the margin targets that Charles touched on. We're finishing off the IT project. So it's probably about GBP 0.5 million of that as we work through that by the half year. And then just lastly on property. So we've just signed a new lease on a Records Management facility, about 100,000 square foot in Markham Vale, so that's East Midlands. That's 1.4 million boxes, so it's a big warehouse. We'll be moving into that over the next 12 months or so, decanting at least 2 properties into that. And that's essentially a rent arbitrage plan. So we're going to incur some costs on double running and logistics costs of moving the boxes. Anticipated payback under 2 years, hopefully less than that. That's part of the strategy, and we'll be coming back to you in the future. So we'll do that one this year in 2024. We'll probably do another one if we can in '25 and '26. So expect to see more of that. I think that's it from me. Charles, back to you.

Thanks, Dan. It's been Dan's first role as a CFO for plc, but I've been very lucky to be delivered of the finished article already. It's been great fun working with Dan, and I think together we're really on top of things. Anyway. So I'm going to talk about the business outlook and the group outlook. So we know that this business is very heavily underpinned by its recurring revenues. That's particularly true of the Records Management business. And I think we've done a good -- very recently, we've done a good job particularly on pricing across the group, but particularly in Records Management, where probably real prices hadn't increased for about 20, 25 years. So when I say real, I mean you could store a box for the same price today as you could in 2000. So over the years, we've made significant cost savings for our customers, but weren't really prepared for -- we hadn't really thought through what inflation does to our business, particularly in terms of our people, which, as Dan noted, were very much -- we have quite a lot of people towards the lower paid end of the scale in terms of national living wage. So the impact of inflation particularly on property and people has been quite high. And we've now got to a point, I think, where certainly in Records Management the pricing has began -- is now reflecting what our real costs are. And we found it -- and our customers have understood that's what we need to do. So moving the pricing up actually across the business, but particularly in Records Management is helpful for our margins, as we needed it to be. The ITAD market basically in 2020, 2020 -- particularly 2020, everybody sort of went, "We've got the wrong IT structure," got all the stuff out. And in '21, they did that. So the impact of that was globally new IT sales have been pretty hopeless for the last 2 years. And obviously, the impact of that is people aren't giving us their old equipment. So the volumes have been very low. But what we've seen is actually it's beginning to pick up in terms of the tailwind for that business. There are other very exciting things going on in that business broadly around working with our blue-chip customers, government, but also doing a lot more, what we call, Lifecycle work, which is where you supply a service to people. From the moment they receive their laptops, we'll load them up, we'll monitor them during the course of their lifetime, and then we'll take them back at the end. And we view this as a very strong -- it's called the channel. So you're dealing with the -- your customers quite often the value-added resellers. But the end customer will -- can be -- we have a particularly big government contract at the moment, which has started kicking off. So we're excited about that business. And they've got a tailwind in terms of people are beginning to buy IT, which means they're beginning to send us good quality, so 3- or 4-year-old kit. So across both of our divisions we've changed the sales strategy really to make sure that we're focusing on these high-quality customers and higher-margin activities. So we've -- if you take a business like Technology, without being disrespectable to some of the stuff we were doing, we were in the rag and bone market. This is not what we're about. What we're about is charging really good prices to people who value our reliability, security, all the rest of that. And similarly, in the -- in our digital business, where we have these fantastic sort of digital mail rooms, we do a lot of work for government agencies, we do -- we're also in -- we've been in the bulk scanning market, which we will remain in. But you don't want to be -- but that's not really where the money is and where the excitement is. You need to provide that facility. But we actually more interested in the high-quality, high-margin work, which is what we're focusing on. I think we've been successful in cost optimization and rationalization across the group. Dan has referred to Markham Vale, our new -- and the impact of that is very interesting. We're coming out of 2 of our oldest sites, which are legacy sites, the original Restore site. And those have just become too expensive. And where we are in our cycle, it's very attractive to be able to say, "Okay, those leases are falling in" -- or we've decided to get out of those." And our storage costs will drop very, very dramatically by moving out of legacy sites, which tend to be inefficient and expensive. I think that Dan referred to a sort of 2-year payback. But also the long-term situation in rationalizing property along those lines is very, very exciting. You'll also find there are other advantages, that, if you're an independent, you've only got one building, these sort of -- this cost rationalization is not available to you. And probably our main competitor is settled, has got the sites they're going to get, they're not going to change. And you will find that their sites will be more expensive than we're moving to over the coming years. So that's all very good. There's a few things. Paper pricing in Datashred, as Dan referred to, for every GBP 10 on the paper price, we lose -- the impact on us is GBP 0.5 million. So if you look at 2022 when the price averaged GBP 230 and you look at today's price of GBP 140, that's quite a swing historically. So if you imagine, that's GBP 4.5 million of profit. And that's something which we're aware of. And the paper price today is about GBP 145. We've budgeted for the full year at about GBP 180. Will it come up? Will it not? That's something we can't do an awful lot about. And we've also seen softness in the bulk scanning market, particularly on NHS contracts and slower commercial moves. I don't know whether it's because we're leading up to an election. Harrow Green has got some great work on the books, but it keeps on moving to the right. And particularly, a couple of big jobs will happen in '25 rather than '24. What I'd highlight about these things is these are all short term. Apart from in Digital, where I think -- where we will engage in some self-help, the other 2 businesses we can't do too much about that. However, were the price of paper to stay very low, the market will change to the effect that charges will go up to reflect the fact that that's a lower paper price. So I'm really comfortable with our position in Datashred. But if -- were the paper price to be stuck at GBP 140, which will be really weird bearing in mind that it's been GBP 175 pretty consistently on average for 7 or 8 years. Were that price to stay low, we would be winners, because over time the charges will -- the service charges will reflect the fact that people aren't making any money selling paper. So that's something we can't do something about. Short-term, this year, would it be nice if the paper price was GBP 220 and we were delivered with several million pounds a bunch, yes, it would be great. But we're not expecting that. But we're not worried about those things at all. Similarly, with Harrow Green, really good business. Some of the stuff has moved forward. So I'm not -- I'm really not short term. That's what business is like. You get the odd headwind. These headwinds are around. It doesn't worry me. I'm comfortable with our forecast for this year, and I'm very comfortable with the longer term. I won't go into the business cases, although I probably touched on them, of the business case for Restore and also for the growth areas. But in the appendices, there is the extract from the report and accounts, which will explain more about those particular things. So nearly finished. So the group outlook. We're trading in line despite some of those headwinds. We think we're going to improve -- increase the margins in all of our business units this year, probably apart from Harrow Green, who had a very good year in '23. Some of these bigger jobs disappearing into '25 doesn't help much. So -- but in Harrow Green, we've got a lot more longer-term initiatives than we used to have, particularly in the Life Sciences sector, where we've now built -- we have our first orders for our biobank in Cambridge. Our site in Oxford, again, with Life Sciences is beginning to trade. We're very optimistic about that. And actually, apparently, we might put a biobank in Oxford as well. Details on what a biobank is to follow -- I didn't know what it was. But now I do and I like them. So trading is fine. We really like our market position and recurring revenues. This is a really strong business, great profitability, strong cash generation. Even in a very difficult year like 2023, we still reduced the debt. I like to say the current focus is very much on improving operating margins and the sort of [ fairy ] goal, which everybody is aware of internally, that we're trying to get to 20% operating margins across the business. It is a stretch goal. But actually, in the -- between -- in between sort of 2010, 2020, that's what we were doing. And I've just checked the numbers to make sure that wasn't unfair. In 2018 and 2019, as a group, our operating margins were above 20%. And actually, you would say, "Well, Records Management, that's a pretty good business." Actually, it's -- Records Management is still 44% of our revenues today as it was 5 years ago. So we're not asking an awful lot of our BUs, of our business units to get us as a group to 20%. And yes, it's -- don't put it in your models, but that's definitely where I would be pleased for us -- what I would be pleased for us -- that's what success looks like to me. Well, there are other things, but that's a particular thing which I would view as a success. As we've said, investments restricted in the short term to margin-enhancing activities. So there's a 20-plus percent hurdle rate on things. Certainly, that doesn't preclude us from doing things like the property rationalization, where the returns are fantastic and the long-term future of the business is greatly strengthened by them. Certainly, I've got a few small acquisitions on my desk, which we know how to do them. If we can get these sort of returns, fine, we're very happy to do them, but we're not out there pursuing what's a new leg or let's buy the European -- the biggest European competitor. None of that stuff for the moment. Once we've established these decent operating margins, we will have a really good platform for growth that would give us time to get there, and we will do that. And then as Dan has referred to, cash generation is going to be good. Net debt, leverage, finance costs will come down. This is -- like there are 1 or 2 bankers in the room, as Dan referred to. This is a very leverage-friendly business. And I personally -- looking at things like weighted average cost of capital, not that anybody seems to really be able to work that out. You know that this business can carry some debt and should carry some debt. We're very comfortable with that. So I would be -- personally wouldn't be -- would not want us to have leverage of less than 1.5x because debt is cheaper than equity, as we know. So anyway, thanks, everybody. I think I'm roughly on time, which is a surprise because normally I waffle on. And if there are any questions, Dan and I can take them. Thanks very much.

Front row.

It's Calum Battersby from Berenberg. I'll go with the questions one at a time, if that's all right. I mean the obvious one, 20% operating margin. Can you give us any sense of the route to get there? So how much would come from a market recovery in the sectors that are currently more depressed? How much comes from cost coming out of the business? Would there need to be any kind of change in divisional mix as you see it? Any more color there would be really helpful.

Yes. The key lever to get to that is for our -- Records Management we know is going to be comfortably above 20%. Harrow Green is a capital-light business. I hope one day they might get to 15%, particularly with a focus on Life Sciences. And -- but that's a big ask in a business like that which is so labor-intensive. So really, it's the other 3 divisions. And what we need is for those to show they're capable of delivering 15% operating margins. And within those businesses, I think we're doing all the right things to get there. Certainly, there's been a lot of cost cutting. So there's been a change of focus in the sales. We're looking at higher-margin activities across all 3 businesses. So if I took Datashred, a good business, strong recurring revenues. We've rationalized a lot of central costs there already. We're looking at different business streams, particularly around shredding other materials, which we have done in the past and seem to be slightly forgotten about. We're looking at buying paper. We're looking at -- so waste paper rather than shredding things. There's a lot of initiatives there. And obviously, it would be a breeze if the paper price shot up for that business to achieve 15%. But we're not relying on that. So that's -- so I'm comfortable that we can drive that one towards 15%. Technology, who knows what the margin should be in that business. I'm very confident that what we're doing there in terms of focusing on high-quality customers and government and also focusing on -- we've currently switched the sales force. We now have for each of the big value-added resellers -- so that's your Softcats, your CDWs. But those people -- we have a sales relationship one-to-one with those people. They want the services that we can give. I'm very -- I think I'm confident that Technology can get there. And with Digital, yes, as we're having surplus capacity hanging around for big bulk scanning projects, that's not an easy way to get high margins. There are other ways to get there. So that's broadly what it looks like. And all those 3 divisions have been charged with showing that they can plausibly get to 15% operating margins. And I think all of them have accepted the challenge and have got ideas of how they're going to do it.

Got it. Very clear. And I suppose a follow-up then. The kind of other route could be disposals of underperforming areas of the business. Clearly, kind of the ambition is to improve all the operations. But what would have to happen for you to look to sell one of the segments or kind of smaller parts of any of the businesses? Is that part of the current thinking? Is that -- eventually if a business that can't get to 15% margins, that would be what you'd look to do?

We would consider that. I would not -- we used to be very keen on cross-selling across the business with all the sales teams meeting regularly. What we found is that basically the divisional MDs and their sales directors absolutely see the benefits of the fact that this division is running the mailroom for HMRC, that division is storing their boxes, this division wants a shredding contract. So we've moved this pharmaceuticals business, and then they want other of our services. So they are pretty coherent. Second point being, okay, so they performed poorly. That is not the time to bang them out. Who is going to buy it? What sort of value are you going to get? So I'm -- were it the case that we -- that in a couple of years' time we were looking at a business that was still producing single-digit margins, then there's probably a better home for it. But I hope that's not the outcome, but very happy to do that. Clearly, I would like -- I think there are benefits of being a group, but that is less important to me than achieving operating margins which I think are appropriate. So if somebody is going to drag that -- if some business is going to drag that down, I'd probably be pretty brutal.

Got it. And then last one for me. You talked to the price increases that you now think are kind of covering inflation pressures in Records Management. What's been the customer reaction to those? Has there been any pickup in churn or kind of box destructions? What's been the response?

There's been very -- people understand what our costs are doing. It's -- I mean, I'm sort of ambivalent. When we heard in the budget that, whenever it was announced, that the national -- the minimum wage was significantly increased, a lot of my divisions -- well, some of our divisions they thought we've misbudgeted because we thought it was going to be a 6% increase. And actually, it's a 10% increase. I don't really mind that because one can go to one's customers and say, "You know that we're a blue-collar business." I'm afraid -- this is reality. So in my ideal world, all of our people will be paid GBP 15 an hour. That would be great as long as nobody is cheating -- none of our competitors are cheating. So I think I -- we have had very little pushback because people understand that we are doing that. We are good on cost. We pass on quite a lot to the customers. But you can't expect us to sit through this period of inflation and not put up the rates. And I think we were slow across the business putting up the rates. And our customers sort of go, "Yes, okay, this time. Yes, we get it." So we have had very little pushback on pricing. But probably for most of our businesses, we've sort of aligned ourselves to a point where CPI is fine. We're not playing catch-up anymore, which is a good place to be. But conversely, we do have some areas which we are underpriced and we've been pretty ruthless at going -- I mean, some of our -- in a particular division for our smaller customers, we put up their prices by 20% blanket and had virtually no pushback. So it's about having the science to be able to say -- why aren't we making enough money on that? Put the prices up, see what happens. Put the prices up, nobody complained, fantastic. Actually, that's quite a bit of help towards achieving 15% margins in that business.

Tom from Investec. I've got a couple. Just on the property rationalization. Could you perhaps give us a bit of color on the sort of long-run expected margin enhancement that you might look to drive as a result of that once that's all complete? And then just on the outlook slide for'24, of those caveats that you sort of touched on, which, if any, are sort of causing you the most concern with respect to attaining consensus numbers for '24?

Why don't I take the second question while I remember it, and then why doesn't Dan deal with the property rationalization. Probably in the short -- in the very short term, it is a real pain for us to be selling paper at GBP 140 a tonne and it will take a while till we can adjust the service charges. And so probably we budgeted for a price of GBP 180. So there's -- look, I'm pretty sure the paper price will move up. But there's a sort of GBP 2 million hole in the short term there, which we'll be okay with that. But that's probably in the very short term, something which is whack in the chops, which we can't do anything about. But in the medium term, with all of those businesses, I'm wholly unfazed by what I consider to be the quirks of the market at a certain time. We will be smarter on understanding that we can't rely on very big bulk scanning contracts to come in. So there's self-help to be able to do there. The paper prices, as I say, over time the market will readjust, and we're a really strong player in that space. Harrow Green is a star operator. If some of our customers are going, "Actually, we're not going to move this year, it will be next year," that doesn't faze me. So probably it's a very short-term thing is the paper prices are pain for us. It's a pain for that division because they're doing all the right things. And it would be nice for them to just get a -- even at the GBP 160 I would be -- I would feel better still. So that's probably in the very short term. In the medium term, i.e. next year, none of those things faze me at all.

So just on the property, Tom. It's a bit of an art. So you've got to try and align the expiry of some leases with the kind of number of boxes and where to move them into. Markham Vale, for instance, we want to fill it up with over 1 million boxes. That's probably a year, maybe 18 months' worth of work just to shift the boxes. But once you've done that, annualized between GBP 1 million and GBP 2 million savings on that, which is why I said that sort of payback. It depends how many of the smaller ones we can close. But we've got visibility now of at least GBP 1 million, GBP 1.5 million, hopefully, too. If you think about that per -- we can do 3 consolidations over the next handful of years, in that sort of ballpark.

I would also highlight in that, that it gives us a particular competitive advantage to be moving out of your legacy buildings now, which are far -- which for us are far too expensive. Our major competitor can't really do that because they've done all of this work before. And that I look at some of those sites and go, "Blimey, I wouldn't want to be paying the rent on that these days," which might -- I remember we were at one stage renting space in Belvedere at GBP 3 a square foot, which is unbelievable. But now that space is GBP 25 -- it's certainly GBP 20 a square foot. So our ability to flex -- and I would also highlight there are some quite interesting independents who've got a single site. They cannot move to cheaper -- it would be a hell of -- probably they own the freehold anyway. So in terms of our long-term competitive position, this really strengthens us. We will be the lowest cost producer. And I think we've got the highest level of service and we're closest to our customers. So I think the future of Records Management is really robust.

James Wood from Canaccord. One on the B2G pipeline, I guess. Some big contracts announced last year from BBC, HMRC and Land Registry. Any more kind of sizable kind of bids out there that we could kind of see to come -- starting to come through?

Yes. But yes, we're pretty active. Certainly, I think with government, it's interesting the same old names come round and round for the different developed divisions, they're pitching for. And it's very interesting, something like HMRC. We seem to be in pole position for several elements with them. We always have to be a bit careful as to what I was able to say at the moment. But we are a very natural partner for government in quite a lot of our businesses. Often the struggle of dealing with government is to get them to understand what they're getting. It's a bit like bulk scanning for the NHS. It is such a no-brainer that patients' record should be scanned, but the budgets all of a sudden disappear for no reason because actually the government of the day said, "Let's focus on maternity." And then all the scanning disappears for 2 years. But things like that, the sort of services we provide are absolutely logical for government to firstly to outsource. And secondly, to understand what value looks like. So I'm really excited about this space.

Okay. And then second question, I guess, the flip side to Tom's question on what's worrying on the outlook. I guess, where do you see the greatest scope for outperformance in the business this year?

I think the Technology business, so 2021, I don't think we disclosed how much money it made, but let's say it had 20% operating margins as for example. And I see that as having huge scope. Now we focused on the -- now we're -- now we know what we're trying to achieve in that space. And I'm very clear exactly what we're trying to achieve, which is twofold. One is to focus on our blue-chip customers, our government, the people who understand that what they're getting is -- will enable everybody to sleep really well. And secondly, what we call the channel, which is the tin sellers, the computer centers, although they do have an in-house facility to do this, but your Softcat's, people like that, when they sell equipment to the end user, they really need our services to do all the stuff around looking after the kit over that period. So the biggest swing and we're sort of finding our way there, but that's where you can get a really chunky swing coming through. Yes.

In relation to the target investments, can you give us an indication of like what sort of -- how big they will be. I know the first 18 months, you say they're going to be quite small in that obviously just given the size of revenues that those business you're looking at, at the moment and what areas?

There are -- I've been -- the demographics of some of our businesses like trading are such that people have been trying to sell those businesses for a long time. They had the wrong price in mind. Certainly, 5, 10 years ago, they all sought their business were 3x revenues. And that reality is beginning to strike and also with the low paper price when about 25% of our revenues come from paper sales, some of these people, 75% of their sales come from paper. And these are sort of million crude here, a couple of million crude there and we have a pretty experienced team and it's been my bread butter for 25 years sort of small bolt-on acquisitions like that. So I think it's unlikely we're going to pay more than GBP 10 million for something, but if the right opportunity came along. And it's -- to be honest, it's some of these deals, it's almost instead of having a sales team, you buy the business and the returns tend to be pretty easy in those. So I don't expect us to do it. I'm not looking at things for much more than GBP 10 million. But those little sort of 3 million or 4 million add-ons, which you know you're going to get a 30% return on immediately. Those are the sort of things. Do we have any more questions in the room? Do we have any online questions, which anybody would like to ask?

We will now take questions from the phone lines. [Operator Instructions] We have the first question from Christopher Bamberry of Peel Hunt.

Just a couple of questions, if I may. Looking at the 3 businesses, which faced challenges last year, which do you see is the most difficult to get to a 15% margin. Secondly, where are you in terms of managing the bulk scanning capacity at digital -- those 2 things.

I think that both of those are quite sensitive questions. And to be honest, in terms of getting those 3 businesses to 15%, I think possibly the toughest in the short term might be Datashred because if the paper price stays where it is, it will take a while before the service charges reflect what the trading industry needs to be paid for its services. So I would say that is probably the one structurally, which it might -- I like this business a lot, but it might take a while because if the paper price stays low, we need to increase our service charges. It suits us compared to our competitors. So it would long-term be really good news for us. But in the short term, I think that could do it. I think in terms of -- we are continually looking at ways to drive up our margins towards 15%. And clearly, we need to get -- we need to -- where we have overcapacity, we need to address that. I'm not prepared to say more than that at the moment.

Sorry, one follow-up question. You disclosed that Technology delivered a 20% margin in '21. What are the factors that could prevent it from getting back there over the medium term? What's changed or and that sort of thing?

I think it would -- what it would be if the expected increase in IT spend was reversed. And the main reason why if IT sales globally remained flat for a lot longer, one of the impact is that the equipment, which we get gets older. And at the moment, we haven't got the right mechanisms in place to -- if somebody is giving us poor quality kit, it's difficult for us to make the sort of money out of it that we need to. So that would have that would -- that would make give Technology a bit of a challenge. But I think what -- it's very odd that in such a long-established business, the market is so fragmented and the financial models, the business models are very different. And so for example, a lot of our competitors won't charge the customer very much or at all, they will -- what the kit that they get at the end of the day to sell is their award. This is a not a good business model and we have some of that type of business. And it's up to us to move that business model towards charging people as we do services for them like picking equipment up like wiping it, like processing it. So those are the 2 things there. One is what happens if nobody buys any IT equipment still, which all of our customers are telling us they are going to buy IT equipment. So we're okay. And then the second thing is the business model, which some of our competitors operate in technologies seems really, really word way to go, and we're going to have to lead on making sure on how that market organizes itself. But I think we're in a really good space in that business and have a pretty unique offering for blue-chips and government.

Your next question comes from James Tetley of Equity Development.

I've actually submitted these by sort of online as well, so hopefully they don't get sort of repeated in a minute. But I've got 3 questions, if that's okay. The first one is at the Capital Markets Day, I think you said that the acquisitions made by the previous management team, you were broadly happy with kind of one notable exception. I just wanted to check if that was still the case, several months on but actually the M&A strategy of the previous management that you're pretty happy what you've inherited from them. Secondly, again, on previous management, I'm afraid, but they led quite prominently with our investor messaging on ESG targets with some sort of, quite ambitious targets. And I just wondered, now you've had a chance to review those well of the particular change in strategy or approach there? And then finally, on the kind of 20% target -- margin target again following up on that. Presumably, you see that as achievable with paper being a bit of a swing factor, but presumably 20% achievable with paper pricing back in that kind of historic trend you talked about 175 million, 180 million, that kind of range.

Great. Why don't I address the margin question and talk about historic acquisitions and Dan can comment on the -- where we are on the ESG targets. Yes, I mean -- if it would be very helpful for us in terms of our stretch goal of achieving 20% overall margins if the paper price bounced dramatically. I don't really want to get there that way. I would like to -- I would work on the basis of that on the basis that there's the paper price. And it was very interesting. It was very settled between 2017, 2018, 2019. It's sort of moving around with COVID. And I'm hoping that it will go back to be settled. So yes, I don't really want the paper price to shoot up. Much rather, it was stable and that we could say, okay, on the back of 175 got a tonne, can we make 15% out of this business, which I think I'm pretty sure we can. In terms of -- I noted there was one poor acquisition -- made over the 4 or 5 years that I was here. Yes, definitely, that was one poor acquisition. There was one of -- it was particularly one which I would call unnecessary, which -- and I don't think that's -- I think I'm almost more irritated by an unnecessary acquisition than a poor one. Don't buy things which take you into a space which looks as though it might be relevant, but it doesn't really fit. So I probably identified one as unnecessary. But overall, it's not -- I'm not sitting here complaining that there was a whole load of -- I'm complaining there was a load of money chucked away, but not particularly chucked away on acquisitions.

Yes.

Dan, do you want me to take the ESG or you have to take...

No, I'll take the ESG -- I'll take the ESG. So I'd encourage you to have a look at the account actually which we published this morning. It's got what I think is a very good ESG section in it. I would say that. So what we said last year was net zero by 2035. Over the last 12 months, we've looked very hard in trying to get our arms around what Scope 3 is. And having done that, we've realized it's actually pretty hard to influence Scope 3 in sufficient time to get there by 2035. And I think we're not alone in realizing that. So what we're now saying is Scope 1 and 2 by 2035, Scope 3 by 2050. And we are really starting to operationalize those -- the levers we need to pull. So if you look at what's in our control, fleet is within our control within Scope 1. Now there is some technological issues around moving some of our larger vehicles to BEVs, for instance, but we're starting now to embed that into our actions. And I think when we'll come back to you in a year's time, we'll have more concrete actions that we're taking. Scope 2 -- electricity, for instance, is one of our big elements in there. We'll be net zero on electricity by the end of this year. So I'm confident now we're starting to get our arms around it properly. But having looked at Scope 3, that's the one where we move back to 2050. I focused on the -- because I'm guessing that's where most of your question is. But hopefully, that...

James, thanks very much. And thanks, everybody, for questions. And look -- very happy at other times to...