RS Group plc ($RS1)

So good morning, everybody. Welcome to the RS Group Preliminary Results Presentation for the year ended 31st of March 2026, which was a year for us of good progress and building momentum. Thanks for joining us here today at the Teneo offices, and thank you for your continuing interest in RS. Our presentation should take about 30 minutes today, and we'll leave some time at the end for questions, but we'll try and make sure everybody gets away by no later than 10:00. The presentation materials are already available on our website. There are some hard copies in the room and a recording of this presentation and the Q&A will be available on that website later today. But before we start, we always begin our meetings at RS with a health and safety moment. So, there are no planned fire drills today. The fire exit is through the door on my right. Don't take the lift, take the stairs to the left of the list and assemble outside the building. At RS, we also start each of our meetings with a values moment. And I'd just like to take this opportunity to call out that as one team delivering brilliantly, doing the right thing and making every day better, recognizing the efforts of our RS colleagues across the world who, for the last two weeks have taken part in an Active for Change Challenge. And in two weeks, they've actually walked 36,000 miles between them, which is the equivalent of going around the world 1.5x. And that's all to raise funds for our new social impact partner, SolarAid, that delivers clean and safe solar lights and power to over 150,000 people living in rural communities without the access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. So, they've been around the world 1.5x. Goodness knows how many times they'll get around the world by the time they finish their challenge. So, on to the meat of the presentation this morning. I'm going to start by summarizing that good progress and building momentum that I referred to earlier. Kate is then going to run through our financials that were in line or slightly ahead of expectations, and she'll also take us through what's driving them, both at group and regional level. I'll then remind you of the multiyear journey that we're on, share with you in a bit more detail where we are and on that journey and the progress that we're seeing and also where our major initiatives are going to be for 2027 as we continue to improve RS and to deliver on the significant value creation opportunity here. And then I'll conclude with how a couple of years of this disciplined execution is increasing our confidence in our ability to deliver against those medium-term financial targets and sustainable returns that we shared with you over the last year or so. So, to that good year of more disciplined strategic execution and strong operational discipline. In challenging markets, as you'll hear from Kate in a minute, we delivered a resilient financial performance that was in line with or marginally ahead of expectations. Volumes were slightly down, but revenue was flat through good pricing discipline, which also led to improved gross margins and costs were well controlled. And as a result, operating margins were maintained. We're 2 years into this multiyear value acceleration plan, and we continue to make strategic and operational investments in the business that are already beginning to deliver. As you can see from the slide, our growth drivers of RS PRO and our solutions and services grew well ahead of the rest of the group. And even in digital, where we did see a small decline in the year, this was in part due to some of the short-term disruption arising from the enhancements and the technology upgrades that we're making to improve our customer experience and digital is already back in growth. Our internal and external data tells us that we're continuing to outperform in most of our markets and in most of our component categories. And we saw sequential improvement, both in sentiment and performance across the year, particularly in Q3 and Q4, and this is despite the quite challenging macro environment and the difficult market environment that that's creating. We acquired BPX in March for an acquisition consideration of up to about GBP 30 million. And we've also got a good M&A pipeline, but excellent cash generation and a very strong balance sheet means that we've got more than sufficient financing capacity at this point in the cycle to execute both our organic investment program and to enhance it with value-creative acquisitions. So, in line with our disciplined approach to capital structure and allocation, we will, therefore, be returning an additional GBP 100 million back to shareholders by way of a buyback program, which we started this morning. And therefore, we enter the next financial year with attractive and building momentum, notwithstanding the quite challenging macro environment that remains out there. So, we set out our multiyear plan about 2 years ago, and there's still a lot to do at RS, but our great people have embraced the change journey that we're on, and I'm really pleased with the progress that we've made. You'll recognize the diagram on the left-hand side of this slide, highlighting where we're making strategic investments and in the 5 areas. And later in the presentation, I'll share with you a bit more detail of what those investments actually are. I'll also explain the colored banding, and I'll talk to where the focus of our investment will be in FY '27. The Gantt chart on the right is the summary of the plan we're executing, which hasn't really changed since we launched it. It shows at a high level where we're investing and importantly, where we expect those investments to start delivering. And I know it's a bit of an eye chart, but when you get your rulers out and dig into it, what it should show you is that after a lot of foundational investment, particularly in customers, experience, product and supply chain. In FY '27, we're now moving into activation phase, and we're already beginning to see some of the benefits of the investments that we've made over the last couple of years. You'll also have seen these charts before. And as we've highlighted, PMI data, which is the gray bars on the chart on the left, typically lagged by 3 to 6 months is a pretty good indicator of whether RS has a headwind or a tailwind for its revenue growth, which is the red line on that chart. And despite that tough and volatile macro that we've referred to, the chart shows actually PMI data has been surprisingly stable over the last year. and has actually started to move in an upward trajectory and even got into expansion territory in the last quarter of fiscal '26. And given our 3- to 6-month lag, our revenue is doing broadly what it should against that background. On the right-hand side of the chart, we've set out the regional PMI data, which Kate will discuss and allude to in a minute, but that is supporting the growth that we've seen in North America and in APAC throughout the year, which particularly accelerated into the second half when EMEA also returned to growth. And with that PMI improvement now extending over a couple of quarters, whilst there's still a lot of uncertainty out there, it does feel like we have a bit of a [zephyr] or maybe even a tailwind going into '27. So, as you know, our high service industrial MRO distribution markets are large. They're complex. They're multifaceted, and it's quite difficult to get independent share data. So, in order to determine how we're performing against our markets, we use lots of imperfect data sources to triangulate our relative performance. And we've highlighted a couple of those on this slide. On the left-hand side of the chart, in our digital channel, we monitor Google traffic for relevant search terms in our product category areas. And you can see it broken down in that chart on the left by product categories. And as you can see, across all four major drivers of our revenue, we are performing significantly better than the market as defined by search frequency on Google. And on channel shares across EMEA and Americas, where we can get data from our suppliers on the right-hand side of the slide, in looking at our relative performance to our suppliers' channel share data, we continue to gain or hold share in categories that make up over 90% of our revenue and are only losing share in categories that make up less than 7% of our revenue, all of which is indicative to us that our differentiated proposition and the strategic investments that we're making are continuing to drive share gain. And so with that quick drop through the highlights of the year and what's been going on in our markets, let me pass you over to Kate, who will take you through the numbers and the drivers behind them.

Thank you, Simon, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to echo what Simon has said. We have made considerable progress over the 2 years as we execute our strategic plan. And although the market environment remains uncertain with recent events in the Middle East, RS Group is in a much better place today. There's plenty of evidence to support this in the numbers we've reported. And in the second half of the year, the group showed good revenue momentum, demonstrated strong discipline in pricing, cost and working capital and investment choices. Revenue decreased by 1% compared with last year on a reported basis. Our like-for-like decline is flat after excluding the impact of a weaker dollar, reduced trading days and 1 month of revenue from BPX, our recent acquisition. Group revenue growth improved in the second half of the year with EMEA returning to growth and continued growth in APAC and North America. I'll go through a revenue bridge slide on the next page or so. Our gross margin improved in the second half of the year through ongoing price discipline and active inventory management. Reduced revenue volumes and increased organic investment was offset by reduced interest charges such that adjusted profit before tax reduced by low single digits. Our reported operating profit includes two large offsetting items, which are exceptional in nature, an GBP 11 million positive settlement of a legal dispute relating to our purchase of the Synovos business and a GBP 15 million write-off of old and unused code, which had previously been capitalized. Cash flow conversion was strong at 109% with continued good working capital management and return on capital employed was stable at 15%. The business continues to demonstrate strong cash generation characteristics. We remain committed to our progressive dividend and will increase the final dividend by 2% to 14.2p per share, taking the full year to 22.9p per share, and our balance sheet is now at the bottom of our target net debt-to-EBITDA range of 1x to 2x. Given this and consistent with our capital allocation policy, we have commenced GBP 100 million share buyback over a 12-month period. Our M&A pipeline remains strong, and we continue to pursue inorganic opportunities, which would accelerate our strategy. Let's turn to look at revenue in a bit more detail. And as already mentioned, like-for-like revenue is flat year-on-year after excluding impacts of FX and working days. However, when I look at like-for-like daily average growth, price is up around 2% and volumes are down about 2.5%, and we see a very similar shape in EMEA and Americas. Volume trends also improved through the second half of the year. We've welcomed BPX into the business on the 1 of March. And to give you a little bit more color on revenue performance, average order value was up from 263 to 276, improving across all customer segments and outpacing price movements, whilst the number of orders was down, specifically in the smaller key and standard customers who mostly purchase infrequently and through our web channel. Moving on to that, the digital revenue, which accounts for about 60% of our roup revenues decreased by 1% on a like-for-like basis, which is largely as a result of this web demand, which declined in softer markets and short-term H1 impact. At a product level, the more resilient categories of facilities and maintenance and mechanical and fluid power grew 2% and 8%, respectively. Automation and Control and electrification, our largest product category, was down 2%. Demand for Semis and Passives continued to be weak with end markets remaining challenging. RS PRO continued to outpace other categories, growing by 5% in year and increasing revenue share by almost 100 basis points to 14.4%. We continue to demonstrate discipline in our cost management whilst ensuring we have the appropriate skills and tools to deliver our strategy. Our adjusted operating cost base includes the strategic uplift in organic project investment and restructuring and integration costs. Reported operating costs were flat year-on-year and remained stable at 35% of revenue. Our ongoing run cost base, excluding one-offs, increased by 2%. We continue to build back our employee incentives and inflation increased costs by GBP 29 million. These cost increases were in part offset by GBP 17 million restructuring and integration benefits. What is not visible in these bridges, though, is how we're absorbing the investments in key skills and the migration of software payment models to Software-as-a-Service. Our total efficiency savings over the last 3 years now total GBP 55 million, and we have increased our organic OpEx investment in the year by GBP 4 million to the lower end of our guidance range, which was GBP 35 million to GBP 45 million. We benefited from a GBP 5 million one-off gain, largely driven by the GBP 3 million profit on the disposal of Distrelec's Nordics and Baltics business. The cost to deliver the restructuring and integration savings in year was GBP 9 million. So, wrapping it all up in operating profit margin, the underlying operating margin, excluding the choice to increase organic investment OpEx was flat through the year. And you can see on the chart that revenue inflation offset cost inflation very neatly. Gross margin was positive, offset against volume reductions. And so on a net basis, reduced operating margins by 90 basis points. This was mitigated by our cost reduction program and lower restructuring and integration costs in financial year '26 versus the previous year. So, let's focus a bit on the regions and specifically on EMEA. The key messages here to share with you. We had revenue momentum in H2 in all our markets. PMI indicators moved into expansion territory. However, these are indicators, and we tend to have a 3- to 6-month lag in our performance versus markets in industrial production recovery. The U.K. has shifted to growth. France continues to outperform and the DACH region was mostly impacted by Germany, where broader market context remained challenging. Our strategic focus areas are outperforming the markets, notably corporate customers, services and solutions and RS PRO. NPS did take a dip in H1 and is recovering. But given it's a rolling 12-month measure, it does take a little while for this to fully reflect in the numbers. We are pleased with the integration of Distrelec into the business, which is almost complete. Our business case targeted EUR 30 million of margin and cost synergies on a euro basis. And so far, we've delivered EUR 41 million on an annualized basis with a bit more to come. Switching to Americas. Again, a couple of key points to pull out. US&C growth accelerated through the second half. Off-line sales showed good momentum as the customer relationship management tools and targeted supplier strategy are actively deployed. Gross margins in the U.S. improved off the back of pricing and better inventory management and provisioning. I also said at the half year that we were seeing some delays in Mexico in customers committing to large capital projects and that while the order book was robust, large projects have been shifting to the right off the back of the trade arrangement that hadn't been fully agreed with the U.S., Canada and Mexico. And we still see that impact in the second half while we wait for that resolution. But we also have a mechanistic decrease in revenue in Mexico because of the significant strengthening of the peso versus the dollar. Most of our sales in Mexico and our inventory purchases are dollar priced and they are then converted into Peso, which is the reporting country currency. And this accounted for about half of the 21% revenue decline that you see in H2. It has an equivalent offset in cost of sales. So, from a gross profit, gross margin perspective, it was flat in Mexico. And finally, there's a positive story to tell in APAC, where our subregions are all in growth in both price and volume and showing positive sales momentum. Gross margins are holding and good cost management means we see evidence of positive drop-through in our operating profit year-on-year. So, let's move on to cash, where our continued focus delivered cash flow conversion at 109%, broadly similar to last year and well in excess of our target of over 80%. Adjusted free cash flow was down GBP 12 million, primarily reflecting lower adjusting operating profit. Our working capital was well managed with key metrics showing inventory purchasing discipline and stability in receivables and payables. We would expect cash conversion percentages to reduce in more buoyant market conditions in order to support volume growth while maintaining working capital discipline, and that will be a pleasant problem to contend with. We slightly increased our CapEx investment in the year, notably on the build-out of our new Italy and Ireland warehouses, and our business remains well invested with the CapEx to depreciation ratio at 1.3x. Net debt decreased to GBP 329 million and is now equivalent to 1x net debt to EBITDA. So, on our capital allocation policy, this cash-generative business model, strong balance sheet and the debt facility headroom does provide us with plenty of capacity for continued organic investment and selective M&A as well as returning capital back to shareholders in the form of both dividends and share buybacks as we've announced today. There is no change to our previously communicated capital allocation policy. Finally for me, just to give a little bit of help, a few guidance points with next year's modeling. So, we are not signaling a change in gross margins from full year '25 to '26, albeit there may be some movement between gross margin and variable costs depending on what happens with freight movements in the year. Specifically on operating costs, you'll recall on Slide 11, I took you through our ongoing cost base in full year '26 to GBP 981 million. That excludes our one-off benefits and in-year restructuring and integration costs. So, with that as your starting point, things to take into account for '27. The cost inflation is likely to continue at around 3%. Variable costs, don't forget those for those who are modeling volume increases in revenue are about 6% of revenues. Our organic OpEx investment is likely to increase towards the top of the stated range of GBP 35 million to GBP 45 million as we increase our spend on process harmonization and technology, and we expect to continue at that rate for a few years. The continued rebalancing of employee incentives, including the change to the RSU and our choice to make our people, shareholders in the business will increase employee incentives by around GBP 5 million to GBP 10 million. Net integration and cost efficiencies are around GBP 10 million, and we are also making additional cost savings to absorb the investments required in capability, for example, data analytics, security, pricing as well as the continued transition to the Software-as-a-Service pricing model that many of our technology partners deploy. We will ultimately reduce our technology CapEx spend. We expect around GBP 10 million to GBP 15 million of integration and restructuring costs to enable some of these efficiencies and CapEx to remain at around GBP 50 million. I'll now hand you back to Simon.

Thanks, Kate. So, as touched on at the beginning of the presentation, here's the Infamous RS wheel. This is where we have started a program in 2024 to enhance and accelerate our sustainable growth to improve the efficiency of our business and to deliver much better operating leverage from RS over time and particularly as end markets move into recovery. We're investing in 5 areas: Customers, Customer experience, Products and suppliers, Solutions and Operational excellence, which is all underpinned by improving capability and our great people. In the next few slides, I'm going to take you through a bit more of the detail of what we've invested in so far, where I see us beginning to realize some benefits from that investment and where we're going to continue to invest in '27. And the pie chart on the left-hand side of the page sets out the investments and where we made them in 2026. The dark red coloring represents the strategic OpEx investment. The light red is strategic CapEx and the purple is investment in our physical infrastructure. And as you can see, a good chunk of that investment was foundational and focused on front-end systems, data and processes to enhance our customer capture, to improve our share of wallet and to drive better experience for them, and I will talk more about that in the next couple of slides. As we move into '27, whilst we'll be activating a lot of these investments, the major additional investment we'll be doing is more around operational excellence as we position ourselves well for enhanced drop-through of future growth in the years to come. Now let's go through each of these areas in a bit more detail. I'm particularly encouraged by the progress we've made in unifying our customer data and platforms to allow us to better target high potential value customers and drive share of wallet growth with them through more personalized experiences and at an optimized cost to serve. Last year, we finished and completed our global customer data platform and rolled out a common CRM across our digital and EMEA high-touch channels, giving us a unified behavior-led view of customers and of their potential. And as we deploy these insights, early results are encouraging with improving conversion rates, stronger sales conversion, pipeline conversion and a 6% like-for-like revenue increase across our high-touch corporate customers. We'll continue to build on this momentum through '26, '27 as we optimize and increase the automation of data flows across our customer-facing platforms and channels. And we'll also start integrating all our data and tools with our CRM, which will allow us to drive an increasingly automated and efficient deployment of our sales and marketing resources to target those high potential value customers with a more personalized and efficient sales, service and support engagement. And all of this is targeted at allowing us to continue to grow market share and to capture more of our customers' wallet. The design and development and upgrade of our digitally enabled omnichannel customer experience is now largely complete and most of the foundational investments to enable it have been made. This year, we completed the rollout of our AI-enabled web search and began integrating it with our existing digital commerce platform. And we've seen significant increases, as Kate alluded to, in our add-to-cart rate and a meaningful increase in our basket to order conversion. We also completed the development of and launched an upgraded digital commerce platform based on Adobe in America in the first half of the year, which is now beginning to deliver improved functionality, greater personalization and much richer data capture, particularly as we tune it with our global digital data and experience capability. We're continuing to enhance this digital commerce platform, which will ultimately replace the existing platform we have across the group, and it's already in testing phase in EMEA. We also finished the rollout across EMEA and APAC of the final phase of our delivery to promise solution, which, after the expected decline in NPS on preliminary implementation, which you heard about from Kate, has led to significant improvements in H2 and also drove a 4% uplift in average order value. And combined with stronger search and a new basket and checkout experience, we're seeing meaningful gains in findability and conversion. And our focus in '27 is to start the phased rollout of our upgraded digital engine in Europe while scaling and tuning our experiences to support enhanced retention and again, greater wallet capture. Our product management solution moved into activation phase this year and is significantly accelerating the pace at which we can bring new products to market. We can now list in excess of 50,000 new products a month and now have also a nonstocked capability, which we've launched with more than 185,000 products available for customer-only order. In addition to listing more complete line cards for suppliers, this also allows us and provides data for us to test demand and make better informed new product inventory decisions. Our enhanced product management capability extends to our own label business, RS PRO, where we launched an additional 10,000 new products, more than 45% -- up more than 45% this year. And it's part of the reason that part of the reason that RS PRO delivered a record year, and we continue to see good opportunity for further Pro growth over time. We're continuing to invest in pricing tools and capability, particularly in North America, which has strengthened our ability to navigate trade uncertainty and inflation effectively. And by combining strong capability and execution with AI-enabled pricing tools, we were able to deliver 3x more targeted price actions than we did in the prior year, which improves our alignment to both our cost and market dynamics and supports both our customers and suppliers. And as we go into '27, we'll continue to tune our product management system to further optimize global stocking decisions and build on our American-based database margin optimization capability, automating it and integrating it before rolling it out across the rest of the group over the next couple of years. All of which will improve inventory management and greater pricing agility. We continue to enhance and scale our solutions offer, which is delivering 6% like-for-like growth this year and now represents over 25% of group revenue. Digital procurement remains a key driver with e-procurement growing 9% like-for-like, and this allows us also to build much deeper and stickier relationships with our higher potential value customers. Our RS Integrated Supply business delivered a strong year as we further improved our in-house tech platform, RS SYNC, which is with AI-enabled product identification and an expanded curated marketplace for our customers. And this supports those large customers with multisite facilities that are seeking to optimize their total indirect procurement, costs by outsourcing processes and acquisitions and drives total MRO cost efficiency. In '27, we'll be upgrading and launching enhanced purchasing manager solution that enables SMEs to have greater control and oversight over their indirect procurement across the site as well as continuing to enhance and build our e-proc system into our broader technical base -- technology base. And we'll also finish the rollout of our improved integrated supply solution to all of our integrated supply customers, which drives those deeper relationships that are important for share gain. There's a lot going on at RS. And we should not forget we continue to invest and optimize our physical distribution network as well as our process and technology estate. In '26, as you've heard from Kate, we completed the exit from our Distrelec warehouse in the Netherlands and made significant progress in the build of upgraded facilities in Italy and Ireland. And this will include the installation of a state-of-the-art robotic automation system in Italy, which will become the standard for all of our regional distribution centers going forward. We're continuing to simplify our technology estate. To date, we've taken out more than 100 applications, and we see further opportunities for consolidation and harmonization as we continue to drive process and operational excellence. And this will allow our business to absorb the increased licensing costs that we see as a shift of a -- as a result of our shift from an organic development model to a Software-as-a-Service technology approach. We optimized our flow through our distribution network. We've removed non-value-added touch, and we've reduced the number of times we handle a product, which has resulted in a 50% increase in our supply chain efficiency ratio and a much improved cost to serve. And as we enter '27, we'll commence operations in Italy and complete Ireland and our U.K. warehouse management systems upgrade. And importantly, we'll start to prepare in earnest for the upgrade of our enterprise resource planning system, scrubbing the data, completing the process design and mapping current and future state with the first country market rollout anticipated in calendar '28. All of which allows us to access the next phase of process harmonization, automation and that improved operating leverage that we referred to. Value creative M&A remains an important addition to our organic growth strategy in the year, as you've heard from Kate, we broadly completed the integration of Distrelec. Trident is going well, and we also acquired BPX. As we enter '27, we've got a decent pipeline of further opportunity. But as you've heard from Kate, after 2 years of positive underlying progress, a clear plan and an understanding of what we will be investing organically and what that will deliver, we have more than sufficient financing capacity to execute our organic investment program and continue with these bolt-ons. So, in line with our disciplined approach to capital structure and allocation, we've announced this GBP 100 million buyback this morning. So,with that quick drop through of what's going on here, I hope we've given you a feel for why we're pleased with both performance and strategic progress. And as we go into FY '27, whilst there is still a lot of uncertainty out there, we've demonstrated resilience. We are seeing stable to improving sentiment, sequential increase in growth and most of our major markets are performing as they should. We've got a differentiated proposition that's allowing us to continue to gain share across most categories. There is a lot going on here, but the significant strategic investments that we've made to accelerate growth, improve efficiency and drive better operating leverage are all on track. And more importantly, they are beginning to deliver, and I'm comfortable that the level and pace of change at RS and our people's capacity to execute our value acceleration plan is all in hand and proceeding as anticipated. We continue to deploy capital in a disciplined way through organic investments, M&A, dividend and where it's surplus, returning capital to shareholders. So, whilst being alert to volatile macro and geopolitical conditions, we are keeping focused on the things that we can control. on activating those investments that we've already made on continuing to drive operating leverage through global collaboration, cooperation and process harmonization and maintaining capital discipline whilst pursuing value-accretive external opportunities. And all of this gives me and the Board increasing confidence that our medium-term financial targets, growing revenues at twice the market, achieving mid-teens operating margins, strong cash conversion and returns on invested capital aren't just credible, they're achievable and will deliver sustainable value for all stakeholders over time. So, thank you for listening. We'll now be happy to take any questions. If you could raise your hands, state the name and the institution that you represent and then ask your questions, we will answer them as best we can. We also have people online, and they can make -- they will submit their questions online and somebody will ask them for us.

It's Tom Callan from Investec. I've got 3, please. Firstly, just on average order values, strong year-on-year ahead of inflation at the group level. Just so I'm clear, was this growth mainly price or volume led and was there any disparity between the regions? On Services & Solutions, continue to outperform. How important is the continued scaling of e-procurement and integrated supply to sort of achieving your medium-term margin ambitions? And then just on the pipeline that you alluded to, Simon, in terms of M&A, are there any obvious strategic or operational gaps that you're looking to fill here?

Thanks, Tom. Average order value is up mainly price, a little bit of volume depending on where you are, a little bit of more lines per order, but generally, it's price and a little bit volume. No real difference, I think, across any of the regions, Kate?

I would say average order value is outpacing price, but we are seeing a number of orders going down, so supportive of what Simon said. But the -- across all regions, it's all very similar. So, the degree of improvement is the same EMEA, Americas, APAC. So, if you take 263 to 276 and apply that kind of differential across each region, it's very similar.

I think if you look at it rather than on a regional basis, if you look at the touch versus non-touch customers, the growth is in -- the growth in both volume and price is in the touch customers. The average order value is a bit lower in standard transactional come to the web type customers. On how important is services and integrated supply to margin development, it's a piece of it. But our ability to achieve mid-teens operating margins is not dependent on RS IS or our services business, it's actually dependent a little bit on volume. And then in terms of M&A pipeline, we've got a good M&A pipeline, and I think we continue to monitor all sorts of opportunities out there. And if we think that there's a reasonable chance of us on a risk-adjusted basis, creating value from them, we've got plenty of capacity to do that, but there's nothing immediately that I'm sitting here thinking we must do this, and we should tell you about it before we do it.

It's David Brockton from Deutsche Numis. Can I ask two as well, please? Firstly, it's great to see improving momentum coming back into the business. Can you give any insight into how that trended through Q3 and Q4? And if you can't do that, can you give a view as to what the exit rate was just to help understand the magnitude of that momentum. And I appreciate you're lapping a weak comp as you enter the year? And then the second question relates to electronics and specifically Semis and Passives. I appreciate you've acknowledged that you're losing share in that category. But we are in the midst of one of the strongest sort of semi-cycles for quite some time. And I want to know if you're seeing that strength come through in the business and why you think you're losing share there and what plans you have to turn it around?

Thanks, David. Do you want to do Q3, Q4 exit rates and I'll do electronics.

Yes. So I mean, we did see improvement Q3 to Q4. So, group Q3 was 0.6% negative. Q4 was 0.3% negative. Good progression in EMEA, which went from negative to positive Q3 to Q4, continued growth in APAC really, the change was Americas, and that's largely to do with Mexico and quite specifically as well around that dollar-denominated dynamic as well that is probably worth adjusting for.

So, I sort of referred to [zephyr] rather than tailwinds. I mean it's feeling better. But we're conscious that there's a macro world out there. So, we're definitely feeling better -- on electronics, I think as we've spoken to you in the past, there was a period where we went into probably greater depth in electronics than our customer set was -- traditional customer set was really interested in, and that's been unwinding over the last couple of years. Electronics is a super important category for us, but it's for our MRO users, not for production level buyers of electronics. I think your reference about Semis and Passives is absolutely true. There is good driving demand going on at the moment in Semis and Passives, but it's mainly in Semis, it's not Passives, and it's mainly driven by data and AI. And for our MRO customers, that's not a big demand need right now. So, whilst we do carry a lot of NVIDIA, Arduino type product, we're selling it into R&D labs and things like that, where the demand level is relatively low. So, we would expect as the Semis particularly Semi side of electronics continues to move into a slight supply-constrained environment. We will see that growth, but we will underperform those people that are supplying into mainstream production because of our target on those MRO customers.

Andrew Nussey from Peel Hunt. Again, another couple of questions. First of all, on RS PRO, how many more products do you think you can put on to the platform? And then do you have any sort of updated thoughts on what regional penetration might be over the medium term? And once you've tried RS PRO, do you tend to stick with it, is the first area of questions. And then secondly, you mentioned there's a lot going on at RS, particularly in terms of moving into the back end. If we subscribe to the view where we start to see volume and mix improve, just your confidence that you can continue to meet your customer expectations as that ramps up?

Thanks, Andrew. Both really good questions, all really good questions, just to be clear. On RS PRO, Look, I think RS PRO is always a balance between ensuring that we're carrying the right products for our strategic suppliers and then supporting that strategic supplier content with some of our own label business. So, we're not limited by the pace at which we can take on new RS PRO products other than we've got to source them. It's more about making sure we're balancing those strategic supplier and those strategic products with our own RS PRO offering. Once you bought Pro, you tend to stick with it for a certain range of products. And so it does create some customer stickiness -- but we're far from complete on our RS PRO journey. And RS PRO by proportion of sales is largest in Europe, and we see good building growth in Asia Pacific and strong growth in America, but off an extremely low base. And as you know, we've now got a slightly different approach to Pro America, which is to think about what our customers want, what our key strategic suppliers are and what RS PRO products better suit that American customer. So, there's a long way to go for Pro. There's still more to do in Europe, a lot more to do in Asia and a huge amount more to do in America, but it will take time.

The share in RS PRO grew in all regions.

Yes. And then, yes, there is a lot going on, Andrew, across RS, but I'm comfortable with the capacity of the organization to deal with it. hopefully, it won't -- you won't have missed the fact that a lot of the stuff we've been focusing in this down cycle is improving the front end of our business. So, being able to target the right customers with a better service and a better delivery. And I'm comfortable that those investments are going to pay off as we continue to support the customer into what feels like a bit of a recovery. And the organization is finally beginning to be able to breathe a bit, which is good and maintain that customer focus. Yes, I think we're in a good place.

James Rose from Barclays. I'll go for three, please, if I can. Firstly, on Mexico, given the visibility you may have there and sort of where the peso is currently, do you still expect that to be a material drag over the first half of '27? Secondly, the gross margin increases throughout the year, could you sort of unpick and explain what's driving that particularly? And then thirdly, the guide for sort of core inflation, OpEx inflation is about 3%. I think that's pretty similar to what we had in the prior year. Is there any sign that that's starting to tick up already within the business if we just think across fuel, freight and energy and what are the potential sort of offsets you've got if that happens?

Thanks, James. I'll let Kate deal with her favorite subject of Mexico and the peso and gross margins. And I will -- let me just touch on OpEx inflation. So, we're guiding to 3%. We are seeing more than that in some cost areas, freight, fuel, things like that. But we are -- we do see and have the ability to pass that on in terms of pricing. So, it's a good working assumption as this -- the impact of this macro Middle East thing plays through, it will become much clearer which elements of our cost base move in what way. What we have shown is our ability to pass that on in terms of pricing. That helps a little bit with that gross margin discussion with that OpEx guidance discussion.

So, on Mexico, so let's just separate two things that are going on in Mexico. So, if we focus on the mechanistic dynamic around the revenue and the COGS base. So, dollar denominated in peso, the dollar significantly weakened versus the peso, particularly in the second half. So, that mechanistic calculation of revenue in dollars into peso and then into pound was a small upside in H2 and then quite a big downside in H1 and a big downside in H2. Using spot rates going forward, then I'd expect that, that will be similar, but who knows. Last year, it was up and then down. So, let's see how it is. But if I look at spot rates, then yes, that will continue to be a drag. If we then look at the underlying what's going on, which is really around those capital projects, we really kind of saw the delays of that kick in and around Q2 of last year. So, I think comparators-wise, Q1 probably will still be a little bit tricky, and then we'll get into sort of a better comparator set from Q2 onwards. And then cross fingers that the trade agreement gets resolved, the order book that we have really converts at the pace that it used to, and we'll see that coming through. But it kind of depends on what happens with that trade agreement.

I think the important thing in Mexico, James, is though that these projects aren't going away, then moving to the right. So, without losing them. It's just the capital investment decision is being deferred until the trade arrangements with North America, I think, are finally in place. And frankly, there is some underlying issues in Mexican stability that need to be resolved as well.

And then just looking at gross margin. So, probably -- I mean, not much to say about APAC, but if I just differentiate a little bit in EMEA and Americas. So, good underlying gross margin improvement in EMEA, net of discount. So, feeling pretty comfortable around that. From an Americas perspective, there was some inventory management in particular, that gave us a bit of a bump in H2 favorable that I don't expect to continue into next year, which is why net-net, I guide to a sort of a flat position from '25, '26 into '27.

It's William Blunt with Rothschild & Co. My first question is just on the 6% growth that you saw from the corporate customers. That marks quite an acceleration, I think, in the second half versus the first half of the year. Was there any regional disparity between that recovery? And then maybe do you think you could give a split or some color around the split between how much of that was increasing share from existing accounts versus winning new corporate accounts? And then my second question is just on managing operating costs going forward. I think previously, you talked to I think some natural attrition, lower your headcount rates across the group. Is that still the strategy going forward? Now you're seeing maybe a bit more momentum improving?

Thanks, William. That 6% corporate growth is a bit of an acceleration. It's a mix of new customers and increased share, and it's mainly in Europe and a little bit in Asia Pacific. In North America, we don't have as many of those large corporate customers today. It's a more automation and control and SME-focused business, although over time, I'm sure that will evolve. Do you want to do op costs?

Yes. So, I mean on op costs, I mean, we seek to do this as efficiently as we possibly can. And the change in cost is both third-party and labor costs. And as you see, we've been spending a bit of money on both integration and restructuring charges through the year. And we'll continue to do that where we think it's the right thing to do. Part of that, William, as well is about kind of changing sometimes our emphasis on skill sets. So, reducing some things that we don't think we need as much of and increasing some skills that we think we need more of. So, there's a bit of redistribution there. I think on natural attrition, I think like many companies, we're seeing our voluntary attrition, if anything, go down. So, perhaps not giving us as much of ability of fix as we had before. And so that, again, is a driver behind us being alert to the potential need to do more on the restructuring base.

But I think, William, that it's important that we understand that we're always actively managing our cost base to reflect the environment we see without damaging the business going into a potential recovery and up cycle. So, we're playing that balance all the time. I think it is fair to say we're also investing not just in hiring external capability, but upskilling our own people. So, quite a lot of investment last year was in supporting our leaders and our people in upskilling them because the world we're entering is quite a different world from the one that they've historically dealt with. And a lot of that process optimization and harmonization that we're talking about will have a big automation piece in it. So, there will be an active management of the cost base going forward, but also an upskilling of our capability and our people. Any online? What's the online question? On the phone, we have a question.

We have a question from Zach Alcuti.

Just two questions, please. Firstly, on Germany, you noted that it remained more challenging there. Just are you seeing more recently any green shoots there that you would call out or any more generally optimism in the market given the stimulus? And then secondly, just on the cash conversion, that was one of the standout metrics today. Could you unpack that performance a little bit? And maybe were there any one-offs we should be aware of there?

Great. Thanks. I'll take the German question, and then Kate will talk to cash. Germany continues to be challenging, although after 2 years of a challenging environment in Germany, the lapping comparators are definitely getting easier. Look, I think there is some signs of sentiment improvement in Germany, but the automotive industry, which supports a lot of German industry and indeed Italian industry remains quite challenged. I think we have started to see the odd green day, week or month in Germany. But again, that's as much from weaker lapping comparators as it is from a fundamental recovery in German industrial production. And I think we will lag a little bit of that industrial stimulus because a lot of it will go into aerospace and defense, and it will go into new production rather than maintenance, repair and overhaul, which is what we support. But we are softly optimistic that Germany will not be as bad this year as it was last year. Whether it shifts into growth or not, we'll see during the course of the year, but we're pretty confident that we continue to outperform in Germany, notwithstanding it's a difficult market for most people. The interesting thing is we are seeing some recovery in Italy and a lot of the smaller industrial manufacturers in Italy are supplying into broader German industry. So, if that's a bit of a lead indicator, there may be a bit of hope there, too, if that helps. Cash conversion?

Yes. I mean I think from a cash conversion, I mean, no significant funnies there. I mean, I think we had a large amount of cash come in from that legal dispute, but we adjust for that out. So, cash conversion doesn't include that. The real dynamic around that is what you'd expect to see in an environment where volumes are coming down a bit as you would expect really tight inventory control and that inventory converting into cash whilst you maintain your metrics. So, your turns, your days payables outstanding, your days sales outstanding. So, I think what you see in the numbers is good discipline around the metrics and the release of inventory sold into the market. And that's what's driving the cash conversion to be north of 100%. As I said, in an environment where we have more buoyant markets or volume growth, then it is very likely that we would increase our investment in inventory and whilst holding our metrics, there'd be more of a working capital investment, which may drop that cash conversion below 100%. And that would be a very lovely problem to be actively managing.

And I think the key that people should also take away here is that active management of the business now extends not just to revenue to gross margin to operating cost and to operating margin, it also extends to cash flow. So, there is an increased and regular drumbeat that Kate and the team have introduced, which is driving a much greater focus on cash in a positive way. And I do think you're seeing the benefits of that in the cash conversion again that you saw this year. So, that looks like it from questions on the phone or online or in the room. Thanks very much for attending, and have an enjoyable day.