Restore plc (RST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Great. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Restore plc's Presentation on the First Half of 2024. I'll give an overview, and then I'll hand over to Dan, who will talk about the numbers, and then I'll return to summarize at the end. Pleased to report that our expectations for the group's full year performance remain unchanged, unchanged, which we're pleased with. There's been some slightly tricky markets, and we've undertaken a lot of change. So we're very comfortable that we're in line. The positives, we're very pleased with Records Management. We were slow in increasing prices historically. We had a decent price rise this year, which is stuck. We're very keen on cost in that business. We're not chasing volume for the sake of lower price -- lower prices, and we can see appreciable increase in operating margin there, which we hope is an -- and expect to be an ongoing trend in that key division of ours. We're also very pleased with Datashred, Actually, the performance is down year-on-year, but I'll talk briefly in the next section about paper prices, but the underlying performance given stable paper prices has been excellent. I'm also very pleased to announce that yesterday, we signed GBP 70 million, so it's about GBP 12 million a year, 6-year contract win with the DWP, Department of Work and Pensions for our digital division or what is currently our digital division. This is a major contract for us. It's with a customer. We're doing a lot of work with elsewhere across the group. But I'm also keen to note that there are several other significant contracts in our digitization business, which seemed to be coming our way. As I mentioned at the start, it hasn't been a particularly easy period. We've seen -- and that's the slowest market in office moves and for our Harrow Green division, whose revenue has gone significantly reduced year-on-year. We think this is -- this was across the entire industry. And personally, I feel it reflected a lack of activity in the general economy as people fail to make decisions ahead of the election. So the market has been quiet. So that's been a difficult period for them, but we're very comfortable with the quality of our team there. And when the market picks up, we'll be in fine shape. There are structural changes, which I'll touch, which I think are prevalent in that space, which I'll touch on when I come to the summary. As I noted earlier, the average paper price affects Datashred's profitability. H -- the comparable period last year, the average price of paper was GBP 220 a tonne. That's -- and this -- in this period is GBP 155 a tonne. The impact of that, when you're shifting 25,000 tonnes is about GBP 1.7 million of revenue, which drops straight down to the bottom line. So that's something which we've been able to cope with just as we've been able to cope with the reduced revenue at Harrow Green. I think counter -- offsetting the significant win we had in digital with DWP, but we have lost a long-term government agency contract in digital. This actually surprised us. We've done a very good job on that contract for a long time. It tends to highlight the issues one has when one's undertaking work, which is off-site that this is a fairly -- this can happen that you take on a big contract. First 5 years, the customer saves an awful lot of money, second 5 years, and it all goes pretty well. And at that point, it becomes quite a commoditized service that you're offering. So it's a risk of -- a very small proportion of our business across the group is off-site. But it's a reminder, when I've always been very keen on avoiding businesses where people can be tutored, and that's a very fairly classic example of it. We were rather blindsided by that, but I'm very pleased to note that overall, our -- that is counterbalanced by the DWP win and several others. That's a lot of opportunity in the business. As I say, we've -- the operating margins in Records Management, which is the key driver of our profitability. There will be further increases. We've -- we're rationalizing our property. We've always been able to drive down costs in this business. What we failed to do historically is to actually achieve price rises. Where we are now is with quite a lot of -- the majority of our contracts on CPI or RPI related that as we save on cost, that will come through to us rather than being shared with the -- rather than being historically handed over to the customer, which has had an impact on our margins in that business. We're going to be lucky with the paper price going forward. It's now at GBP 190 a tonne. It's -- and it's -- the paper price tends to move in a slowly -- well, it's been quite a sharp cycle, but we view that as being underpinning the second half, and that on its own would mean -- I won't do the math for you, you can do that, but it means that we've got GBP 1 million of extra profit in Datashred in the second half compared to the first half. I'm also really pleased to report that we've spent a lot of time on our technology business, which has had operational issues. It's been positioned in the wrong way. It's required quite a lot of hack-out. And taking out of -- moving out of our low value, what I'd call the rag and bone business has been undertaken. We've had a major overhaul of management, major overhaul of operations. And I think one swallow doesn't make a summer, but we're increasingly pleased with that business. So continuing on the overview, what have we achieved? I'm really pleased that over the last 9 months, we've got to the operating model, which I like, the small head office, very short lines of communication, easy decision-making, people who are fired out feel responsible, who understand their businesses intimately, and they feel that they're on it. There's definitely a sense to me that all of our divisions are just beginning to hum a bit. Head office cost has been dramatically reduced, and there have been some very low-hanging fruit. Obviously, sorry, the brilliance of our Finance Director has enabled us to make some appreciable savings in our interest costs and finance costs. Again, as I've spoken about, the change of focus on to price and costs in Records Management is driving up operating margins and group profitability. I've touched on technology. We're really focused on this blue-chip ITAD market and then also the Lifecycle Sciences. Lifecycle Services in large part, ITAD, but the channel to market and how you deal with customers is very different. Something at our Cannock site, which was a rag and bone operation has now been switched. It's been losing money significantly for a long period of time and has continued to lose money as we switch it, but we have hopes for that site now, which will be a real sort of turning point in our business, reflecting how technology is doing very well. And we see really big opportunities in this Lifecycle space. We've -- our largest customer has given us another chunk of work in the second half on top of what they've been giving us already. Datashred, it's now -- we're looking at growth in that space. It's a well-managed business, a very confident team. There's a major opportunity there for us to gain market share and also to provide additional products to our clients in that space in addition to shredding just paper. Harrow Green, it's been a tough market, but we've done a lot. Our biobank is now open in Cambridge and has actually will fill up quite quickly. Our Oxford site, which we opened this year, we thought would be a drag on profitability, actually, we think it's going to contribute this year. Very much a shift in this business towards added value. And also, I think it's going to benefit from the fact that when people are -- we've got a reasonable heritage base, and it's clear across the U.K. that a lot of museums, galleries, et cetera, have got far more stuff than they can possibly store themselves. And historically, we've put that into our Records Management business. Actually, the customers in that space are really more concerned about moving the stuff around and actually storing it. So this will sit better within Harrow Green and give -- and also it will be an important part of their business rather than a nice thing to have for Records Management. Dan will talk about leverage and our strong ongoing cash generation. There is probably, I think the last change of significance, which we want to make to the business, we've just embarked upon. Our digital business bought EDM a while back. We've seen very little -- very limited integration of that business with our existing digital business. And actually, we are comfortably the #1 in our digital activities, but we haven't really seen the benefits of being #1 in that in scanning or digitization and #2 or 1 of the 2 market leaders in Records Management. We haven't really generated the benefits of that, which we should. So we announced recently that we are going to reduce our digitization sites to 2 primary sites based in Wolverhampton. We will have smaller sites in Manchester and in Scotland, both of which are shared with Records Management. So we will have moved from 10 processing sites to effectively 2 plus 2 smaller ones where we were. So a year ago, there were 10 of those. Now we've got 2 major facilities and 2 smaller ones. This will reduce excess capacity. It will enable us to do more volume on individual sites. When you have a single site, the margins tend -- the operating margins are better. And also, we don't feel the pressure to chase high volume bulk scanning business just to keep the machines full. The -- but the other point is we've -- that Records Management is now going to -- digital will be integrated into Records Management, and that division will be called Restore Information Management Service or Records Management -- Records Information Management. The rationale is that we have considerable demand from our customers for integrated services. Broadly, it's quite often you have a customer who's going well, what do I do? I've got all these boxes, but I need access to some of the stuff much quicker. And we're sort of going, well, we can store your boxes or we can get a rather lot to digitize them for you. And actually, fun enough, unlike the consultant sitting higher up the chain and taking people on their digitization journey, we really know what's happening and the solution might be to say, look, actually, those boxes aren't going to go anywhere, but you've got to keep them forever. These boxes, if I was you, I get on and scan them. And do you want to keep us -- to keep them afterwards. So the customers want us to have integrated services in that space. It also -- we found that -- and certainly, when I found going around some of the branches, I was coming across Records Management sites where there was somebody with a whole lot of boxes who was trying to scan them on a tiny scanner because the customer wanted to have 6 or 8 boxes scanned, which is quite a big job actually. And so with both divisions providing similar services, so we can sort that out. And it will significantly improve our operational efficiency and profitability. There will be one senior leadership team for that business, which will -- which means that there will be a deduping of roles. Transport savings will be significant. We have a very slick -- Records Management has a very slick transport operation on some scale, which will easily be able to take on the transport required in digital. The -- having consolidated these -- the 2 sites into Wolverhampton, we've also got shared sites in Manchester and Livingston in Scotland. And the financial impact we are estimating annual savings in that business of GBP 3 million a year. We expect that to be quite a hit over the next 6 months or so, which will come in at about GBP 3 million, most of which we hope to take this year. Brilliant. So that's my overview. Let me hand on to Dan.

Thank you, Charles. Good morning, everyone. It's good to see what are now familiar faces. So thanks for coming in so early. Right, 3 sections. I'll just start with a summary. I'll give you a broad overview. Then I'll unpack the detail a little bit. And then lastly, I will touch on adjusting items, which covers guidance a little bit for the second half. So just on the summary, solid revenues of GBP 139.4 million. That's flat year-on-year. Good performance in RM, as Charles mentioned, driven by inflation linked to price rises, and stable box numbers. So box number is [ 22.5 million ] at the end of June. That's exactly the same as it was in the end of December. So no change in that 6 months. Technology, we're starting to see green shoots. I know many of you look at the Gartner reports and we're starting to see that in our pipeline as well. But on the flip side, as Charles covered less one-off contracts in digital. We've got the paper price down, which half-on-half is a headwind. But as Charles mentioned, will become a tailwind in the second half and the slower market in Harrow Green. So that translates to an operating profit of GBP 23.6 million, margin of just under 17%. So moving in the right direction, and that's effectively driven by the RM price rises and cost management, not only in the head office, but also across all the businesses as well. Adjusted PBT, GBP 16.3 million, so up 8%. That's a little bit less than the operating margin increase, and that's because of the headwind we've got in interest rates, although covered largely by some good treasury management, as Charles mentioned. So adjusting items, GBP 7.7 million for the first half, so down quite a bit on previous year, and that's because last year had a large data shared impairment of GBP 32.5 million. So we haven't got any impairments this half. Interim dividend of 2p, so that's essentially increased in line with the profits and cover exactly the same at 3.3x. Net debt down to GBP 93.5 million at the half year, continued good cash conversion, 84%. And we've paid down -- many of our banking friends who are in the room, but we've paid down GBP 17 million of the credit facility in the first half. So it's down [ GBP 80 million ] now. So that brings leverage down to 1.7x, down from 1.9x at the year-end. So just unpacking the detail a little bit, moving left to right, strong performance in RM. So that's essentially -- most of that is the price rises coming through. Then we've got the headwinds in digital, so less one-off costs in particular, NHS. Signs of improvement in technology. The Datashred, this is as a net number, so you've got [ 1.7 ] flowing against us on paper, but you've got actually, as Charles mentioned, some good underlying activity progress in Datashred and then Harrow Green, the softness coming through on revenue. And then turning to profit. So much the same story, but net progress of 8% increase. So we've got the pricing coming through on Records Management. Inflation coming against as a headwind. Most of our costs are people and property. So we've got GBP 2.5 million of headwind on those. You have seen the minimum wage increase, which is quite significant in April, and many of our people are paid close to the minimum wage. So that does impact us. Lower paper pricing, Charles went a little bit off script and gave away my numbers, but GBP 65 a tonne difference half-on-half. So that translates to GBP 1.7 million. But then we've got cost savings in the business and Harrow Green. So net finance charge is GBP 0.2 million, but I thought it might just be worth pulling that out a little bit. So we've got the interest rate headwinds, so about a 1% increase on base rate half-on-half, but then what we've done to help with that is we've paid down the revolving credit facility, as I said. Part of that is used in trading cash flows. But we've also reduced the excess cash on hand. So at the full year, we had about GBP 23 million on hand. We've got that down to about GBP 10 million. Thanks to some of our friends in the room. We've got an overdraft now, which we can use as a safety net. I'd like to get that cash balance as close to 0 as I can, but we're making progress in that direction, which is good. And then we also canceled GBP 75 million of the credit facility. So it's standing at GBP 125 million now. And that's because we were paying facility fees that we were never going to use in that period. So that's ended up pretty much mitigating most of the headwind on interest rates. And then our 2 donut slides. First on the Digital Information Management. So this is Records Management and Digital. So we'll continue to do this reporting for the rest of this year. So for the second half, we may look to integrate into one into next year. So the 2 bits in here, Records Management storage revenues that you see the donut on the right-hand side, the dark green is the storage, that's 71% of the business unit income. So that comes straight through its revenue. And then in digital, softening because of the less bulk contracts, particularly NHS. But it's RM that's driving the margin progression in that division. And then Secure Lifecycle Services, not quite as rosy a picture in the first half. But we are now starting to see improvement in ITAD. Datashred was a headwind, will become a tailwind for the second half. And Harrow Green, as Charles mentioned, a slow market, possibly because of the election year. So cash flow. I appreciate there are a lot of numbers on the page, but the headlines are continued cash -- strong cash conversion, so 84%. I think we'd like to say or we have said is we want to like to keep it above 80%, and we'll continue to do so. A little bit of outflow on working capital on creditors, and that's because the balance sheet was a little bit squeezed, and we're trying to normalize that now. Leverage down as mentioned. Leverage and interest cover well within the covenant levels. So that will cover the threshold. So no worries about that. Just one thing to point out for your models, and I think most of you have got it already. We had a capital allocation framework at the full year and we talked about potentially buying some shares. That will be to satisfy the option schemes that we've got. We have done that. So we've bought now 1 million shares at an average price of GBP 2.60. So that's GBP 2.6 million will be [ outflowed ] in the full year. GBP 0.8 million of that was just before the end of June, and the rest of the balance, GBP 1.8 million was in early July. And there's a last slide for me just on adjusting items. So GBP 7.7 million, as I said, for the first half. If you exclude the amortization on the acquired intangibles, which is noncash, you've got GBP 1.6 million. That's split between 3 categories: restructuring and redundancy, so GBP 0.7 million there. That's a little bit of drip over from last year on the rightsizing of the stuff we've done at group, but it's also the start of the digital work. And as Charles mentioned, the bulk of that GBP 3 million will be in this year, probably the second half. We've also got the start of the property consolidation. So we talked about this at the full year. We talked about the Markham Vale, the new Records Management box or shared up the [ M1 ]. So we started to move into that. So we've got some costs in connection with that. And that will continue probably ramp up a little bit in the second half. And then lastly, we've got the tail end of the IT reorganization costs. This was a finance project, so a new finance system. We stopped that early. The project is now complete. Harrow Green is the last business to go live. They went live in June. So that's done now. So very little of that left to come in the second half. And that's it from me. I'll hand back to Charles for the summary. Thank you.

Thanks, Dan. He gets through the stuff pretty quick. I'm sure there will be opportunities to ask him more detailed questions, but I hope everybody is -- anyway, you've got me again. So looking at the business outlook, I think that one of the glorious things about this business is how stable, how strong we are in recurring revenues. Obviously, in this area, Records Management is the sort of big daddy, where there are very few businesses I've come across in my life, which have gotten such strongly recurring revenues. But actually, the other businesses, digital, if you look at our mailrooms, our hosting services, our exam contracts, there's an awful lot of that business, which we know is steady and stable. So it's a pretty predictable business in its own way. There's more we can do on that. And then with shredding, yes, people say, well, the paper price moves around. And we have our projected visits this year, they don't move much. The average contract is for 9 years. We've done well winning new business there, but it's an incredibly steady and stable business, shred. And as I've said, I think there are opportunities there. Similarly, moving our -- I might change the name of this division, let's call it, IT recycling for the moment, what's known as technology. The Lifecycle type activity, which we're doing much more of is much more predictable. You know which big customers you've got, how many assets you're going to track for them. And similarly, where you have, what we call, high-quality direct customers, tends to be blue-chip. They are much more predictable. They know -- you know which big accountancy firm is planning to refresh its kit in the coming years. So there's quite a lot of stability there. And I think Harrow Green is our business, which starts the year without a huge order book and has been unlucky this year with quite a few jobs being postponed. But we have a reasonable handle on what's happening there. We do have a lot of business as usual in that business. But we have a lot of stability here derived from the recurring revenues across the group and really the ongoing thing is for us to optimize the performance of those businesses. I've banged on enough about the Records Management division and how it can continue to increase its operating margin. Again, a large -- and that is underpinned by the fact that as we rationalize our property portfolio, we can continue to -- at which given our number of sites and the fact that we will be having a trip to our new space in our 100,000 square foot site in Chesterfield, property consolidation is really helpful for us in terms of rationalizing our property costs and therefore driving operating margin. The costs in that business are steady. Prices are moving up, and we spend a lot of time continually squeezing the costs in Records Management. We are very confident that by integrating Records Management and digital, the combined operating margins of those businesses will increase. There will be cost savings. And there's -- we will be continuing to focus more on recurring revenues in our digitization activities, which tends to involve a lot of IT, setting up systems correctly. And then the margins are easier to achieve than they are on standard bulk scanning work. So that new division, we're very comfortable with Secure Lifecycle Services, again, whatever that means. The technology, we've repositioned this business. It's been slightly painful, but we know what the 2 areas we're interested. And we're interested in Lifecycle, which is taking assets from the beginning to the end for very big customers and high-end IT asset disposable -- IT asset disposal. We've really had a gritty approach to improving the operations there. There's much done. There's quite a lot still to do. But we think that there are real opportunities in this business. And I'm looking -- we're putting a new IT system into that business because at the moment, we've got all our stuff, we can't track our kit across the entire business. That's always a slightly scary moment. But once that's in and working effectively, the impact on the efficiency in that business will be very significant. And also, we've got a following wind in that business. Dan referred to it, but the cycle which was introduced by COVID is playing its way out, and it's evident across the world that IT hardware sales are increasing, and that has a direct impact on the volumes going through this business. Datashred, we've spoken about trading is improving, paper prices moving up. We've got -- this is -- it's still a fragmented market, and we are a strong player in this space. It doesn't make sense how fragmented it is. We are optimistic that whilst the market itself is not going to expand, it's -- there's signs that it's hit the bottom and there's just a bit more activity than there was. But we see this as an area where we can really do quite well. Harrow Green, as I touched on earlier, it was a funny old year. And I think just people -- we just haven't been making decisions. I've seen stuff on London office property, et cetera. And very bizarrely, whether it was almost immediately after the election result was announced, that we saw a whole lot of people signing contracts and things getting busier. So that's quite -- again, you can't read too much into it. But certainly, July is, we've been sort of slightly bold over with how busy we've been compared to how it's been in the first half. There is -- I think we acknowledge that the days of sort of several huge office moves to 5,000 people. There's just are and less of those going to be around. And I think also, if you look at the structure of a lot of office space, it's less -- much less fiddly than it used to be in terms of people are hot desking. It's a simpler layout. People aren't lugging boardroom tables around in the way that they were. So we've addressed the cost base on that. We think there's going to be a lot of public sector relocations going on. There's a lot of inefficiency. I think the Chancellor has spoken about how -- about some things in there. We've seen a lot of public sector activity. We expect to see more of that. We still have several banks accounting firms, which we have as business as usual, spending over GBP 1 million a year with us every year. So -- and I think where we are with life sciences, hopefully, increasingly with the heritage work, it's never going to be a very high-margin business, but it fits so well with the rest of our activities. And it's so preeminent in its space, but it comfortably wins businesses at higher rates than its competitors. So looking at the group outlook, Dan, I, Restore team, the divisional MDs are so confident that this -- that the sort of medium-term goal of 20% adjusted operating margins, we're still -- we still think we're very much up for that. We think it will be helped by the digital integration. We think technology and shred will both do better. So we are confident -- we're not confident. We are certainly not moving away from that medium-term goal. We have as stressed, it's the same old story. Well, you used to hear it from me, and now you've been hearing for the last year. We've got leading market positions, recurring revenues. They underpin profitability and cash generation. Cash generation, Dan has said, and we expect to reduce net debt leverage finance costs, all those ratios in a good way. And the -- I think this is -- in the current year, we expect adjusted operating margins that adjusted is technical rather than fiddling around with them, with the exception of Harrow Green to increase, Records Management is very visible. Digital, we expect those to pick up, but we think there's scope for an awful lot more. Technology is bouncing. Datashred has got opportunities and the uplift of the paper price. Yes, our goal is driving up operating in -- our short-term goal has been driving up operating margins. And with the exception of Harrow Green, we've had this tough time, we're pretty comfortable that the operating margins will increase in all our other activities. I think overall, where I'm really pleased, and I think we've just got there. I think we've got the right people, in the right mindset, in the right place and in the right structure. Broadly, businesses like ours are about the people, it's by getting the right people wanting to do what they want to do. They know what they're doing, and I'm really pleased that we've got to that point. So our expectations for the full -- group's full year performance remain unchanged. And I'll just drop in that we are planning for analysts and significant shareholders, we're planning a visit to our shredding site in South Kirkby, which is quite close to our new Records Management facility in Chesterfield, and we'll line it up for October. So we might even hire a share -- a bank to move everybody around between the 2 as well. Great. Well, that's where we are. Thanks to Dan's brevity with -- rather than my waffle -- we're just about on time. And I think it's -- I'll sit down and we'll take questions. Great. Thanks.

Tom Callan from Investec. I've got 3, please, if that's okay. Just firstly, on that destruction rate in the records business. What does that mean, if anything, for activity levels in Datashred? And also, can you just sort of put a bit of context around it in terms of utilization rates? On the digital business, you talked about sort of moving into 2 primary sites in Wolverhampton taking capacity out of the business. What does that mean in terms of your ability to, say, fulfill contracts that may land in the future that require an increase in processing capacity? Are you still able to service that sort of ad-hoc project work as it comes in? And then finally, just on the DWP contract, you said that, that was signed yesterday. Just trying to get an idea on time line on that in terms of when it was initially sort of in the pipe, i.e., was this a sort of conservative government contract? Or was it something that you've only just recently started to negotiate? Just trying to get an idea on the landscape and what that looks like for further contracts under the new administration.

Great. Dan has been dealing with the detail of the DWP contract, so I'll leave that to him. It's -- we've seen more paper being destroyed in RM than we were budgeting for. That's helpful for Datashred, but it doesn't really move the dial. So out of the 10,000 tonnes, which we would have expected to see from our RM going into Datashred, there might be an extra 5% or 8%, but it's not of any real. It's helpful. And there's obviously a bit of an internal discussion about the internal rates, which they get paid for the paper, but that's all fine. We like people to want to focus on their own P&Ls and being sensible about sharing with the rest of the group. Higher destructions, it's -- we're seeing higher destructions in the private sector. It tends to be at a time when business is quite slow that people start going over -- do we need that stuff? We -- it's not a concern. It's quite helpful for us to have a fairly stable estate, to be honest. I remember when we were growing pretty fast, you'll spend your entire time worrying about running out of space, whereas if you want to manage things really effectively. It's not unhelpful to have a fairly stable number of boxes. It doesn't worry us as I think we picked up. We're seeing more public sectors generating more paper. The private sector is net-net, generating less. And it doesn't -- I don't think there's a worrying sign that we're going to have huge purges coming along the line. It just doesn't happen. So we're very happy with that stability. In terms of the digital capacity, if you were to see our main Wolverhampton site, there are about 250 desks and 90 people working on them at the moment. We will have, both with the Manchester site, the Livingston site, we also have a site in Ireland, which is pops up to do the Irish exams. We are comfortable that there is no contract, which we wouldn't -- out there, which we wouldn't be able to service. What it is, is it's when you've got lots of small bureaus dotted around the country, all of whom sort of need more work. That's not a good model for our type of business. Dan, tell us about the DWP contract.

Yes. Thank you, Charles. So thanks, Tom, for the question. So, yes, DWP, a little bit longer than 4 weeks. So we've put the tendering end of January. It got delayed a little bit because of the election that may have delayed the final decision, but I think we were notified about 10 days or so ago and then signed the contract last night. So yes, it was a 6-month, 7-month process. And it comes in, in theory 1st of January next year. That will be the earliest. It may drag a little bit because the decision was delayed, but it's going to be first half next year, not this.

Yes. I think what I'd add, which I forgot to say was that the large contract, which we've lost will continue throughout the rest of this year. And there's a possibility given the nature of that contract that it may run into a bit of next year as well. Chris?

Chris Bamberry, Peel Hunt. Just a couple of areas, please. On the technology business, is that the kind of refocusing now in place between the 2 activities? What's the split between recycling and management across the Lifecycle? And how are you progressing with the management across Lifecycle out with your main customer CDW, are you getting other people interested in starting to sign up? And then a couple of -- and then just a quick question on DWP, really just any feedback from customers, why you won and who are you up against?

Great. Again, I'll leave the DWP stuff to Dan. Yes, it hasn't been to refocus the business. It's really been about coming out of random low-quality equipment, and that was predominantly being undertaken at our Cannock business, which even when it was busy, was losing money. So that has been repurposed to -- so moving from picking up basically the -- at our Cardington site, which is where we're doing our IT Lifecycle. So it's really been about focusing Cardington, which is probably our biggest site followed by Runcorn. It's been about saying, okay, Cardington, we're just doing Lifecycle. That means there's a surplus coming out of Cardington, which is now being processed at Cannock. So we've effectively got 3 sites, Runcorn, Birmingham and Cannock, where we're doing channel -- sorry, when we're doing direct stuff, but just for decent quality customers. And then at Cardington, we're focused on the Lifecycle business. And so the Lifecycle business is probably up to 1/3 of our total. I can check that later, Chris, but it's about 1/3 of the business now, and we expect that to increase. It's our perception of the Lifecycle customers is that they are short of adequate processing capability that -- and the intimations we've had from the value-added resellers is, is your house in order? When -- let us know when it is, and then we will be happy to give you volumes. And it's been encouraging that our biggest customer has given us more work. That's slightly, and that's -- we have a very good sales team now in that business and the sales team are going. You've got a bit of that terrible matrix between sales and ops where sales are going. If you're any good, we'd be able to sell them more than ops are going. And actually ops are not going, we'll just sell more. Ops are going, okay, we'll get our act together. And when we've got our act together, then you can -- then you can be more -- you can pump more stuff through. But there's real opportunity. And as I say, I don't like the name of that division, but I probably know I can't work out to change it, too. But there's real opportunity there. And it's taken us a while to get it right, and it was a model. But if we can get it right, it's interesting. A few investors have asked Dan and me, what should the operating margins be in that business? To which the answer is, I don't really know. Certainly much higher than we're achieving at the moment. But it's a good space. And it's always struck me as amazing that, that market is -- most enterprises have got computers. What are they doing with them? And the idea that it's still fragmented and different operating systems is just astounding, and perhaps we can steal a march on the market.

So on DWP -- thanks for the question, Chris. So why -- I think 2 parts of the question, why did we win and who we're up against? Why did we win? I don't know exactly how the scoring system worked on the public sector contract, but we do know DWP well. So we do all of their IT recycling for them. That's the largest channel customer. We have their boxes already. So I think we've got 200,000, 300,000 boxes for DWP. So they know us well. And if you look across other government departments, HMRC, we have the mailroom for HMRC in our village wayside in Wolverhampton. HMRC really are very pleased with that. So to the extent they asked them, I don't know if they did, but I'm sure that would have been a positive. Who we're up against? I'm not sure we're going to name the specific people, but all the big companies, one of the global companies that are out there were in the mix and some small ones as well.

James Bayliss from Berenberg. Two questions, if I may, predominantly centered around capital allocation. On the first one, just beyond the short-term comments in the release, if we think about the balance of leasehold and freehold going forward on the likes of record management, just looking at your balance sheet capacity, land costs and where you need your footprint to be over the medium-term, just wondered if you had any thoughts there. And then the second question, if we think about leverage now coming down to 1.7x middle of the range, most of the operational improvements being well underway. And then trying to square that with comments around fragmentation and the likes of the technology and Datashred market, are we still kind of envisaging and stealing the march to use your words being an organic led process at the moment? Or should we be starting to think about the specter of M&A in those spaces?

Let me comment first. On the freehold-leasehold thing, is it a question as to whether we'd start buying more freeholds?

Yes.

Yes. We're a capital-light model. If we want it to be a business or a property company with a bit of business activity on the side, that's not what we're about. If somebody gives us GBP 1, we're trying to get them 15p back, not 6p back. So there have been things like, for example, Sittingbourne, which we bought, which we're now building out on, which because the customers, the BBC, they insisted that we had the freehold there. So the -- I think we have 5 freeholds across the business, including our mine in Monkton Farleigh. It's not -- that there are occasional opportunities to do something better, but we are a capital-light model. If you give Dan and me GBP 1, we're trying to get you 15p plus, we're not trying to get you 6p. So, yes. So we won't be spending the surplus cash on turning ourselves into a property company. But yes, I understand the gist of it. And then on the leverage point, yes, it's -- we've got quite a lot of cash outflows this year, building Sittingbourne quite a lot moving the boxes and fitting out Markham Vale. We've also now got -- going to have some more one-off costs related to the restructuring of Digital and Records Management. So the gearing will -- the debt will come down, but not as rapidly as it would if we weren't undertaking those activities. It will be difficult for us to spend all of the cash we generate in digital. I think that it's a fragmented market. We know how to roll businesses up into that. So we would -- I would hope to try and find a few deals to be done there. Technology really, it's -- when you buy a technology business, you're really buying relationships and you're buying a skill set on the floor. So unlike digital or boxes where you're buying contracts, that's really easy and steady. So I'm slightly wary of technology acquisitions. I think that's more of an organic play, whereas I think Datashred will be more of an acquisition play. And I think probably looking forward, looking more holistically at the business, if we can achieve the sort of things we think we can achieve operationally in the business, then we clearly have a question about where do we find growth? And that's always at the back of my mind that we're not in the right place to start going out there at the moment. But if we can build the sort of powerful machine, which we think we can get, then we would clearly want to pick up momentum, but we won't be there for another year. Dan, anything to add to that?

No.

James? Sorry. Sorry, Andy, I didn't see you.

All right. Andy Smith, Panmure Liberum. Yes, 2 questions. Just one on the paper price that they're now -- you're saying you're getting a tailwind. What are the factors behind the volatility in the paper price? And what gives you confidence that you've got a tailwind there? And then secondly, just on the debt, can you just give us the proportions between fixed and floating?

Great. Thanks, Andy. I'll take the first one, and Dan will talk about debt. The thing one needs to understand about the paper price is that the mills need sort of high-quality sorted office waste. They need it to make tissue paper, et cetera. So the -- and it was interesting that when during COVID, everything sort of slightly ground to halt, nobody quite knew what was happening. And then it became clear that there was -- the volumes of paper being collected were lower. And so the mills kind of got squeezed, and there was enough stuff around. You've also got this -- one thing to talk about Somali, not Somali pirates in the main shipping routes. The point at which freight rates dropped sufficiently that it makes sense to ship good quality paper to China. There is a point where that happens. And that -- it's not huge, but it's -- it increases demand by 20% in a broadly quite finite market. So at that point, there's a squeeze that comes on. And what -- so we saw this squeeze and then we saw that the mills are sort of sorted out their supply, there wasn't the need for stuff to be shipped to China and then it sort of came up -- then it came down very, very sharply. And so really what we've been doing about it is get really close to the mills. We're the biggest -- we're a very big supplier in the market, make friends with the mills, don't sort of -- don't have a thing where they screw us when there's a surplus and we screw them when there's a deficit. And I think we've done a lot of work. And actually, I've been very pleased. We've got a very skilled operation in shredding, where we've been achieving above-market rates because of our relationships with the mills, and it's about behaving in a friendly way with them. So we can -- there is a bit of self-help that can go on here. I expect things to stabilize now. I think when nobody was sure about the volumes of sorted office waste that was around, then sort of shooting around a bit, but I think now what we're seeing in terms of the volumes that we're collecting, they're sort of stabilizing. So everybody knows how much that is around, and that should lead to a bit of stabilization in the price. As I've said in the past, we have a very good operation here. It is painful for our group P&L when the paper price is low, but it's not nearly as painful for us as it is for other -- of our competitors in that market. And in the event that we did see the paper price go down again, actually, I think it creates an opportunity for us to consolidate the market.

Your contracts on -- are they on a contracting level in terms of pricing or are you taking...

No, there is kind of spot rate, and that moves around every week, which we track. But what we're trying to do is just build the relationships so that we take the edge off that and it may give us an opportunity in the future to do a sort of cap and collar deal with a couple of big mills. Sorry, Dan, yes.

Thanks for the question, Andy. So we've got 2 portions of our debt. We've got a U.S. private placement, there's [ GBP 25 million ], the numbers in the accounts, but I think that's about [ 6-point something percent ] that's fixed. And then the other element is the revolving credit facility. So GBP 80 million drawn at the period end. We did have some hedges on that. They've all finished at the end of June. So at the moment, that's floating linked to -- sorry. I think the thing tomorrow isn't there, who knows what will happen then, but general market seems to be moving in that direction. So that's all floating.

Great. James? And also, James, for our listeners, James has produced a research note on the business, which is available to the general public.

Yes. Thanks, Charles. It's James Tetley, Equity Development. So a couple of questions on Harrow Green. You said that you think it's a bit cyclical, a bit structural probably in terms of the performance in the first half, but that July was good. Just to understand, is that you were busy moving a lot of desks in July or you're getting visibility over the balance of the year in terms of your customers' plans? And then secondly, on Harrow Green, you've got a couple of niches now in Life Sciences, and you talked about heritage as well. It would be helpful to understand how significant they could become to that division?

Yes. Thanks, James. We track -- we have daily figures in all of our divisions and which are on the screen in our head office, but we discourage analysts from staring at it for too long. The unit count has been remarkable in Harrow Green this month. It's been the split. And quite often, the summer can be a good time for the removal business, particularly with schools, universities and things. So we had a lot of work pushed back this year. In fact, one has gone into '26 now. So there is a perception amongst our team that the business -- there seems to be more demand appearing. We've got some bigger jobs, as I say, which are coming out later on this year, which we didn't have early this year like the Slate Museum in Wales, a big university job in Manchester. We're still doing a lot of work for BT. So yes, we can -- there's definitely a better feel around it, but it's not as though I can say the order book is now burgeoning. In terms of -- we see -- it's interesting, we moved -- the primary move in this sector was a very big pharma in Cambridge. We've got 2 more big pharma moves coming up. And we are clearly the people of choice for this. We, fun enough, know what a biobank is. There's also opportunities for us and building more of them in other parts of the country. So we see that as -- it's not going to account -- the farmer is running at over 10% of Harrow Green's business, but not significantly above that. And heritage has been -- it's a difficult one because it's you're primarily dealing with the public sector and the public sector hasn't got enough money, but they are stuck. So -- and -- but what you find is it's a different type of storage to what -- broadly what happens if it comes in for 2 years or 3 years and then it goes out again. And what we're working on with senior members of the museum community is saying how are we going to help you with this big problem you've got? And people like the Science Museum Group have come up with their own solution, which goes back to us taking them around our operation. It's probably about 5% of the business now. It will be more when we get the -- when we get -- when we transfer all of the Records Management heritage into that. It will -- the combined, they will never -- the bulk of our business will continue to be moving government departments, banks, trading floors, universities, et cetera. Great. Thanks, James. Thanks very much.

It's Sam Dindol from Stifel. A couple of questions from me, please. First, on the 20% margin target. I appreciate you've done a lot operationally in the last 9 months. Given the businesses reaction to those initiatives, has that changed your confidence in the attainability of that margin?

It's -- there were more -- where am I very pleased with Datashred with a decent paper price, we should be getting there. Records Management has always been fine. But the higher we can get those, the less we need out of them. I think with digital being merged into Records Management, and there -- and rationalizing their production facilities, I think we're fairly -- we feel pretty good about that, particularly on the back of winning some of these big contracts. We just need to bottom out the profitability on every single piece of work that we're doing there, which we haven't done to my satisfaction as yet. So I'm pretty confident there. Technology is -- if you look at the complexity of what we're doing there and how important it is to our clients, this doesn't strike me as a single-digit margin business. It really can't be. People really need our certification. They really need to know that everything is being disposed of. They need our skill set to reduce the landfill to virtually nothing. It's the sort of -- if you want to be a rag and bone man, you can probably -- you probably ship stuff off to typically against Africa or the subcontinent. You can probably have a sort of kind of trading business, which you're doing okay at a single-digit margins. That's not our kind of space. And I think our customers do recognize that. So it's -- we haven't got anywhere near it yet. But I think Dan and my feeling is it's got all the sort of hallmarks, the type of business we really like, and we like high-margin businesses because it shows that you're doing something good.

And secondly, once you've done all these initiatives and got to the 20% margin, how much variability do you think there will be in the margin through the cycle? And I appreciate a lot of the business is recurring, but do you still think they'll be a little bit on the edges?

Records Management is all -- it doesn't matter whether there's COVID. It doesn't matter whether the economy is booming. It doesn't matter whether we are bust. So -- and that's a really key driver. You have -- you've got very good visibility in shred. So -- but for the move, the shifting paper price, you've got good visibility there. Again, things like mailrooms don't go away in a downturn. Things like hosting don't go away in a downturn. Technology, the IT recycling, it's curious. There didn't use to be a cycle there. The cycle was because everybody is at different stages of whereas COVID introduced a cycle there. And so there is an element -- there's a full cycle going on there. Generally, people check out their IT on every 3 years or 4 years. They just checked it all out at the same time in 2020. So yes, I'm -- we're trying to build a really, really high quality, high margin, recurring great thing, and it was just the last bit, which we're very keen to hack on within due course of looking at the growth opportunities. Thanks, Sam. Chris, again. If we got -- just in case, is there anybody desperate online to ask a question? No. Okay. There you go, Chris.

Just a couple of follow-ups on digital. You said you quite hadn't bottomed the profitability of repeat business to your satisfaction. If you could just elaborate on that? And secondly, given the decline in bulk scanning, how significant a proportion of that division now?

Just let's pick up the second point first. What -- I think you might have a misconception here. Just repeat the second question -- the second part.

With the reduction in bulk scanning as part of digital, how significant proportion is it of the digital business overall? I guess, I mean, it must have gone -- it's gone down clearly quite a lot.

Yes, we still have the capacity to do as much about scanning as we did in the past. We think there will be a lot of opportunity there. I mean, it's to me, there's -- historically, there's been a lot of NHS work in this space. And there is arguments as to whether certain people need to scan all of their records. So -- but I don't see bulk scanning going backwards because we've reduced -- because we've got fewer sites, we've got plenty of capacity out there competing, but it were competing for the sort of work that we want. Is that helpful on the second point? Yes, I think if I look at, it sort of goes back to our acquisition of EDM, which had a bit of integration between it. They were at it right. They had integration between their Records Management operation and their scanning operation. And for some reason we sort of broke that apart and say all the boxes went off. And so there was -- we have a very big IT spend in that business. And if you look at the component parts, it surprises me that some of the operating margins are not higher. And it's been slightly difficult to unpick our IT costs to work out what are attributable to what sort of work and what type of customer. And that's really part of what would the part of the integration activity is to really look at whatever -- to try and get to the bottom of why are the margins we're achieving not as high as they should be, given the nature of the work. So yes, there is work to be done there. And it's a sort of work which our team, Dan and I, we like this stuff, which we've been doing a lot of in an IT recycling of going where are we making our money, et cetera. And we're beginning to bottom that out in technology. We've got a pretty good idea in digital, but that needs to be refined and it's a sort of thing which as I like doing, Dan likes doing it, but sadly, the others like doing it as well and they're better at it. So -- but they -- but we're getting stuck into that stuff. Great. I think that's some -- I'm looking around the room, just [ Nick ] sort of going, yes, I'll do. So thanks to -- so I'm very pleased to see so many faces here today. And also, I hope people are listening online. Thanks very much. That's the presentation for Restore's H1 2024. We look forward to announcing our results in March -- full year results in March '25. Thanks very much, everybody.