Saga plc (SAGA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
April 10, 2025
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Operator
operatorGood morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Saga plc Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] And before we begin, as usual, we would just like to submit the following poll. And if you could give that your kind attention. I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from Saga plc. Mike, good morning, sir.
Michael Hazell
executiveThanks, Jake. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Saga's results for the year ended 31st of January 2025. I'm going to take you through some slides that we took the city through yesterday. It will be an abbreviated set of slides. So I'd encourage you to have a look at the full materials that are available on our website. But in the meantime, hopefully, you've got a good summary today. I'm joined today by Mark Watkins, our Group CFO. So let's get on with the presentation. So this has been a transformational year for Saga. We've delivered strong financial performance, but we've also taken significant strategic actions to fundamentally change the shape of our business. As a result, we're in a better position than we've been for many years, delivering long-term and sustainable growth. We've reported growth in underlying profit ahead of our previous guidance and continued net debt reduction and strong cash flow generation. Our Travel businesses, comprising cruise and holidays, have had another outstanding year with more and more customers choosing to take their holiday with Saga. We've completed our strategic review, outlined our plans and delivered on those plans. The result is a go-forward group that comprises a lower risk insurance business now set for growth, a highly successful and fast-growing Travel business and a personal finance business with significant growth potential ahead of it. This is a strong position to end the year in, a position further strengthened by our new long-term financing arrangements, which provides certainty for the next six years. In recognition of this progress, we are today announcing some medium-term targets. We expect underlying profits to reach at least GBP 100 million within the next five years and leverage to fall below 2x. Before I hand to Mark to go through the financials, I've just highlighted on the screen some of our key trading metrics. I won't go through all of these, and there's more details in our wider presentation. But the progress we are making is clear to see, particularly in our Travel businesses. Mark will now talk you through our financial performance.
Mark Watkins
executiveThanks, Mike. Good morning, everybody. I'm going to cover the key points from yesterday's presentation, which covered the financial results for the group for the year ended 31 of January 2025. I'll then follow that with the outlook for the remainder of the year. I'm delighted to report that Saga delivered a strong set of financial results with growth across revenue, trading EBITDA and underlying PBT. This growth was driven by the continued momentum in our cruise and holidays businesses, alongside an improved performance in insurance underwriting. As you'll see, I should just highlight that throughout our financials, you'll see that we've introduced a split between continuing and discontinuing operations. This arises from the agreement for the sale of our insurance underwriting operations to Ageas as announced at the end of last year. This means that the performance of our insurance underwriting business and the associated written-to-earned accounting adjustments are now classified as discontinued. Alongside the growth I mentioned a moment ago, strong cash generation continued, albeit, this was lower than in the prior year, due to the expected reduction in the contribution from insurance broking alongside some one-off positive inflows that benefited the prior year. Net debt also continued to reduce and is now GBP 590.5 million at 31 of January 2025. This is GBP 46.7 million lower than at the same point last year and ahead of our previous guidance. Reflecting this lower net debt and alongside the higher trading EBITDA, the leverage ratio reduced from 5.4x to 4.7x. Turning now to the drivers of the growth in underlying PBT for the group. Saga delivered an underlying PBT from continuing operations of GBP 37.2 million, which was 8% higher than the prior year. This was driven by a 59% increase across our combined Travel businesses, but materially lower earnings from insurance broking, which is consistent with our previous guidance. Finance costs increased as a result of the utilization of the loan facility provided by Roger De Haan as part of the repayment of the GBP 150 million bond in May 2024. Central costs reduced following the actions taken in the second half of last year. After accounting for our discontinued insurance underwriting business and the written-to-earned adjustment, the group reported a total underlying PBT of GBP 47.8 million, 25% higher than the prior year. Turning now to look at net debt in a bit more detail. Net debt closed the year at GBP 590.5 million, which was GBP 46.7 million lower than the previous year-end. This, when combined to an increase in trading EBITDA, resulted in the leverage ratio materially reducing from 5.4x to 4.7x. This reflects continued strong cash generation with GBP 109.6 million of available operating cash flow, which was only partially offset by capital expenditure, debt service and some restructuring costs. I'll now cover the outlook for '25/'26, taking earnings first. We expect the Travel businesses to continue their momentum, with further expected growth across ocean and river cruise load factors and per diems, alongside increasing passengers in holidays. In line with our previous guidance, insurance broking earnings are expected to fall in '25/'26 as we transition to the new partnership model with Ageas, with growth expected from '26/'27 onwards. Overall, we expect underlying PBT to be lower than this of '24/'25 before returning to growth thereafter. Trading EBITDA, which excludes the increased finance costs that we have guided to previously is, however, expected to be broadly consistent with that of '24/'25. In '25/'26, as we are embedding our new capital structure and transiting to the Ageas partnership, there are a few changes and one-off items that I highlighted yesterday as they'll impact the group's net debt position. Firstly, the combination of the new term facility with HPS, which was drawn at the end of February and the undrawn GBP 100 million delayed draw facility resulted in the group having secured its financing until 2031, with incremental flexibility. When looking at the impact of this refinancing, the group's blended effective pro forma interest rate, including the ship debt, is around 7.6%. Applying this to our total gross debt of around GBP 660 million results in total interest of around GBP 50 million, with around GBP 35 million of this relating to the corporate facilities. Also in relation to the refinancing, we incurred between GBP 15 million and GBP 20 million of one-off debt issue costs, which, while amortized for the purposes of the P&L, will be paid during '25/'26. If we now take the Ageas transaction, we expect to see GBP [indiscernible] million of net proceeds from the April disposal. This is in line with our previous guidance. Finally, and also arising from the partnership with Ageas, we expect to incur cash implementation costs of around GBP 25 million. Looking ahead, these one-off items will reduce the deleveraging pace during '25/'26, but we still expect net debt at 31 of January 2026 to be lower than that at 31 of January 2025. Deleveraging remains a key strategic priority for the group. And from January 2026, the pace of reduction is expected to accelerate. I'll now hand back to Mike.
Michael Hazell
executiveThanks, Mark. So we've delivered a really strong financial performance this year. But as importantly, we've made significant strategic progress. So I want to spend the rest of this presentation bringing that to life. Since joining Saga, I've been really keen that we reinstill the core values and principles that made Saga successful. Being clear on those principles and who our customer is, is key to our success. Nobody knows this customer group better than us, and we have a wealth of insight and experience to support us in what we do for them. This is a busy slide on the screen, so I won't talk to every point. But it does help demonstrate the opportunity and potential for Saga. You can see on the left-hand side of the page, there are currently 26.4 million people over 50 in the U.K. And with an aging U.K. population, this is expected to grow to over 31 million by 2050. They're an affluent age group with time and money to spend. And Saga is recognized as the brand for this age group. You can see that in the middle of the page where we show 93% brand awareness. Once experiencing our products, our most loyal customers stay with Saga for an average of 18 years. And our diverse product range means we can deepen our relationship with those customers, encouraging multi-category product holdings. Our database is a key asset here. On the right of the page, you can see we hold valuable and rich insight into 9.4 million customers, and we're able to communicate with 7.8 million of them. So we're operating with a market-leading brand, loyal customers and a growing market into which we have extensive reach and insight. The opportunity for growth is clearly there for us. The actions we've taken this year mean we're now in a great position to deliver on this opportunity. Our cruise and holidays businesses are now all profitable and growing strongly. The sale of our underwriting business and new partnership with Ageas moves us to a significantly lower risk, less complex insurance model with a fantastic partner to support our growth ambitions. And our refinancing means we have secure and flexible financing in place for six years, creating a runway to now focus on growth. Our vision will support this growth and guide our actions. We want to be the most trusted brand for older people in the U.K., and our growth plans will deliver this vision. Each of our businesses is well positioned and we are now also able to look beyond our existing revenue streams, exploring new and relevant opportunities outside of our proposition today. With this in mind, we've added a fourth strategic priority to the priorities that we have previously talked to, focusing on driving incremental value from new business lines and products. There are a range of areas today where older customers are not well served. Our insight and experience in delivering great products and services designed for that customer group represents clear growth potential. Now let's spend a few minutes on each priority. Our existing businesses, which comprise cruise, holidays, insurance and money each have a vital role to play in our future growth, and all are now well set. In cruise, we continue to see increasing demand for both our ocean and river holidays, and there remains significant growth potential across these products. Load factors and per diems are growing strongly, and we improve our proposition each year to further drive that growth. We also welcome our newest river ship, Spirit of the Moselle, to the fleet later this year. Our holidays business is also growing well. Having addressed the operational challenges that were holding that business back, there is now much we can do to build on this and further develop our already much-loved holiday experiences. We've consolidated our travel leadership team with Nigel Blanks, formerly CEO of our Cruise business, now taking overall responsibility for Travel, in order to better take advantage of the synergies we have available across those Travel businesses. Our insurance business enters a transitional year as we complete the sale of AICL around the end of Q2 and prepared to go live with our Ageas partnership at the end of the year. These are exciting changes that transform the shape of our insurance business and represent significant growth potential as we develop that partnership. And our money business remains an area with significant growth potential, growth that will be supported by falling interest rates and the U.K. government's recent change to the ring-fenced limit for investment banks, together with bedding in our newer personal finance products. As I mentioned earlier, the second pillar of our strategy represents the incremental opportunity that we believe there now is to grow beyond what we do today, and build on the plans already in place for our existing businesses. Our primary focus will be on delivering our existing growth plans, but we also believe there are opportunities to meet the needs of older people in ways that we do not currently do today. The work to explore such opportunities begins now and will evolve over time. Updates will, therefore, come as and when we have further progressed and able to speak about anything specific. Everything we do comes back to our customer: Understanding our customer, engaging with our customer and delivering products and services built on what we know about our customer. Our third strategic pillar, therefore, emphasizes the importance of our customer relationships and the insight we have into those customers. Our publishing business is pivotal in this process, providing insightful and engaging content through a variety of formats. Alongside our award-winning print magazine, our new magazine website now regularly sees more than 1 million visits per month. Building on this demand, this year we will introduce a new quarterly digital version of the magazine, available free to all Saga customers, hugely extending the reach of this fabulous product. And our digital newsletters, which cover a range of travel, money and lifestyle topics, also provide -- are also proving to be incredibly popular. The 10.7 million newsletters sent in January achieved industry-leading open rates of 46%. So our customers are really engaging with those newsletters. These channels provide important feedback -- an important feedback loop for us, supporting the continual replenishment of our database. That database currently holds details of 9.4 million customers with a communicable base of 7.8 million. With the power of that database, we are able to understand our customers better, communicate more intelligently with them, and design products and services with their needs in mind. Finally, we have our fourth strategic pillar, focused on reducing debt and simplifying our operations. Mark has already covered debt reduction, and that remains key, but I'll focus on the simplification component. Our business has historically been a complex, highly regulated operation with revenue streams experiencing significant volatility due to the risk-based nature of our insurance business -- insurance model. This complexity drove an increasingly siloed approach across our businesses, impacting efficiency. Our systems and infrastructure were designed to serve that complexity, resulting in a rigid and costly operating model. The strategic action that we've taken over the past year will significantly simplify our insurance business, adopting a lower-risk model that removes much of this legacy complexity. And growth through partnerships will mean that we don't reintroduce unnecessary complexity as we grow. Mindset and culture are important here. Our recent changes in leadership and the platform we have built for the business give us the opportunities to encourage a more agile, entrepreneurial approach to business with efficiency and simplicity, a key objective in the way we do business. In short, we are creating a more streamlined and agile business with a lower-risk, higher-quality earnings profile capable of exploiting the growth opportunities ahead of us. That growth opportunity is clear. With our businesses all profitable, our refinancing complete and our new lower-risk insurance model being implemented, we are now in a strong position to deliver long-term and sustainable growth. The projections you can see on this page are supported by detailed growth plans for each of our businesses, and they don't include new business lines or products that we may introduce in the future. The chart on the left shows the expected profile of underlying profit before tax, beginning with '24/'25's continuing operation as the base. As Mark has already mentioned, '25/'26 will be a transitional year, reflecting the group's new capital structure with incremental financing costs, resulting in lower underlying profitability, but broadly flat trading EBITDA. Thereafter, having implemented our partnership with Ageas, we see a clear path to growth across each of our existing businesses, alongside lower financing costs as we reduce our level of debt. Our cruise and holidays businesses are already performing strongly, and we expect this momentum to continue. Our insurance business will operate from a lower cost, lower-risk model and benefit from the strength of our new partner, Ageas. And our money business has significant future potential from its newly-launched products and its growing savings platform. We are, therefore, confident in the outlook this gives us and our medium-term target of underlying profit before tax of at least GBP 100 million by '29/'30. And you can see from the chart on the right that we're also confident in how that translates into strong cash flow generation and deleveraging. And we're showing a medium-term leverage target falling below 2x over that same timeframe. There's no shortage of growth potential here and we're now in a position to deliver that growth. And so finally, to wrap up before we move on to questions. We've delivered a strong financial performance, growing underlying profits and continuing to reduce our debt. We've taken significant strategic action, and as a result, the business is in a great position to grow. All of our businesses are profitable, and we have detailed 5-year growth plans in place. There is further opportunity for growth beyond these plans as we explore incremental opportunities. We're confident in our existing growth plans and the routes to delivering at least GBP 100 million of underlying profit before tax and a leverage ratio of below 2x within the next 5 years. Our focus on customer and being the most trusted brand for older people will guide everything that we do as we continue to deliver great quality, differentiated products designed to meet their needs. Thank you for listening, and we'll now move to questions.
Operator
operatorPerfect. Mike, Mark, if I may just jump back in here. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation this morning. If I may, I'll just bring back up your cameras there for the Q&A. [Operator Instructions] I'd just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can all be accessed via your investor dashboards. Guys, you can see there we have received a number of questions throughout your presentation this morning. A thank-you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. But guys, perhaps if we dive straight into it, the first question that we have here reads as follows. How do you plan to differentiate the customer proposition under the new unified travel structure? And are there plans to expand the product portfolio?
Michael Hazell
executiveLook, I'm glad we started with a question of differentiation because that is key to what we do. Our travel propositions are already highly differentiated. If you look at our Ocean Cruise business, there isn't a more tailored and differentiated Ocean Cruise proposition designed for our customer demographic. And anybody that's been on our cruises will see that in absolute space. That is driving the demand for our cruise business. You're seeing that in outstanding load factors and very strong per diems. Around 18 months ago, we put our River Cruise business under the leadership of our Ocean Cruise leadership team. And what we've now been doing is building on the success in that ocean team and seeing that play out in our river proposition. And that is why over the last 18 months, you've seen an acceleration in the growth of our river business. And the differentiated experience, that really goes down to the [indiscernible] degree of detail, including our chauffeur collection service, the nature of our onshore excursions, and just every element of detail included in the overall cruise experience is really playing out across both ocean and river. This year, we've taken the opportunity to combine our overall travel leadership team into a single leadership team under Nigel Blanks, who was previously the CEO of our Cruise business. So you can expect to see that differentiated experience further play out across all of our travel propositions. That isn't to say they weren't differentiated already, but we can definitely further leverage on our successes in the cruise businesses into our deeper travel experiences. But it won't just be the product proposition and differentiation that will benefit from that change. We will also have synergy benefits that will come from a combined leadership team, but also a single coherent marketing strategy that plays right the way across our travel propositions. Because as you can imagine, we have a lot of customers that are interested in experiencing all of our travel propositions rather than any one travel process. And we certainly have customers that go on our hotel stays holidays every year, river cruises, tours and our Ocean Cruise over a matter of several years. So we're bringing all that back together, and we expect to see the success we've seen in our ocean business and the growth we've seen in our holidays business more recently amplified by those changes.
Operator
operatorPerfect. Thanks Mike. Just turning to the next question, which asks, how is Saga managing energy costs? And are these expected to spike up as previous contracts end?
Michael Hazell
executiveYes. Energy cost is a pretty immaterial issue for us as a group. Fuel cost is a greater part of our cost base for Ocean Cruise, but we're well hedged on that front. But in terms of the general impact of energy inflation, that doesn't have a material impact on us, and we manage it as part of our overall cost base.
Operator
operatorPerfect. Are you considering any inorganic growth opportunities, particularly in travel or through digital enhancements in the insurance customer experience?
Michael Hazell
executiveOkay. Well, that question, it just reminds me there was an element of our travel question that I didn't answer, which was, are you considering any new propositions? So I'll cover that up and then I'll just talk briefly to the insurance question there. I think in terms of -- are we considering expanding our travel proposition, I think the way to think about our travel proposition is we are adding more river vessels to our river experience. So there's capacity options there, and we're continuing to see strong demand. We're leveraging our success in Ocean Cruise, growing load factors and per diems as I've already talked about. Importantly, there's no capacity constraints in our wider holidays business, and we can continue to increase our inventory and hotel occupancy in line with the demand we're seeing. So we'll continue to look at new destinations and new hotels, but there's plenty of capacity coming through to support the demand on top of our growing ocean and river business. In terms of inorganic growth for our insurance business. Firstly, I think standing back on all of our businesses, it's worth remembering that the GBP 100 million medium-term target that we've set is based upon the existing businesses we have today and the product lines that we have. So it doesn't include anything new that we might do. That's really important because we're not going to talk about new stuff until we're clear about what those things might look like and can be specific. But it is really clear that the business we go forward with today sets us on that trajectory to GBP 100 million. Therefore, when it comes to inorganic growth, I think you can expect us to think about new insurance lines as part of our second pillar around new products and new businesses. But you shouldn't expect us to be thinking about going out and buying X, Y, Z insurer, that's not going to be on the pad. But certainly, there's opportunities to broaden our product range within insurance, and we'll think about that in due course.
Operator
operatorWe have a question here asking, any further progress on property held for sale?
Michael Hazell
executiveMark, do you want to just give an update on property?
Mark Watkins
executiveYes, sure. Just as a reminder, we've got a number of office buildings that we no longer use as part of the sort of hybrid way of working around the business that came in during COVID. Those properties have been for sale for a little while now. We are still in active processes for all of those properties. But there's no material update to give.
Operator
operatorDoes the year mark the last of goodwill impairments in the near term?
Michael Hazell
executiveYes. Mark, do you want to cover that off as well?
Mark Watkins
executiveSure. So I think just looking at goodwill, I think it's important, if you step back from goodwill, to realize that the write-downs of goodwill related to the previous business model. So as we move to the Ageas affinity model, we will continue to have to reassess goodwill each year. But certainly, I think the expectation of further material write-downs of goodwill has certainly diminished.
Operator
operatorThe next question here asks, has the potential for-sale and leaseback of the cruise ships discontinued or still under consideration?
Michael Hazell
executiveYes. Just to clarify, we were never looking at a sale and leaseback per se of the cruise ships. We were looking at partnerships across the business to see where we could score our strategic ambition. So in light of that, the Ageas deal was the key outcome from that. So we're not looking at sale and leaseback opportunities in our cruise ships.
Operator
operatorWe have a question here asking, with over 1 million customers receiving newsletters and accessing the website, how are you monetizing this digital engagement? And what's the next step in personalization or cross-selling?
Michael Hazell
executiveYes. I'm glad you highlighted the newsletter and the website success because those are key areas of focus for us and are performing really well. So in terms of the newsletters, it's worth just giving a little bit of color on that. So what we're doing with our newsletters is using our publishing strengths to bring brilliant content to those that are interested. And generally speaking, our customers are proving very interested in that content. And that covers our strength in travel -- by the way, it's not just about what we do. It is a broader range of content and general interest, but it does play to our strengths. So lots of engagement with our travel content, lots of engagement with our lifestyle content, and particularly strong interest in our personal finance and money updates, which plays to the -- our customer base's interest in that area. So we're seeing continued growth in that area. We're also seeing our strength in the magazine playing through into experiencing our new website. That's been growing really strongly, a new magazine website. That's been growing very strongly. As you say, we've got 1 million visitors to that -- visits to that site every month. What we are doing now, firstly, the newsletters gives us both the ability to understand what's of interest to our customers, because we can see what they respond to, what they click through to, and then we can take that and tailor our content going forward, but also understand more about our customers' interest when it comes to our marketing, but also our products and propositions. So I mentioned in my presentation, there's a feedback group that means we can understand more about our customers by what they read and what they don't read. We can then tailor our marketing for that. We could also design our products and services where we can see there is interest and gaps in the market to take advantage of. In terms of the website, it's no surprise that we've got fantastic content, and a lot of it in terms of back-catalogs that we serve up on our website. And it doesn't have to always be completely new. If you think about the length of our magazine history, look, planting tulips and how to do that successfully, that's not a new story this year versus last year, but we have got some brilliant content. And by the way, I'm making that one up, not as a keen gardener. But we have got some brilliant content that we continue to refresh and serve up on our website to give customers a reason to come back and check in with us. And what I really want to be able to do is get our customers coming to our website every single day to see what Saga got for me today. And that extends beyond our magazine website; that also extends to our homepage. Because what we're now doing is refreshing our homepage so that the engaging content that is on our magazine website is cycling through our homepage, so the customers are now checking in on our homepage everyday to see what brilliant content we're offering on that given day. That then means that we're able to share our trading and product messages as part of that experience and drive conversion through into our individual business websites. And we're seeing very strong conversion as a result of that. But overall, the digital journey across our business is something that is a key focus, and actually a new driver of travel success over the last 12 months. Conversion -- digital conversion in our Travel business is up 23% year-on-year as a result of that activity.
Operator
operatorAnd just sticking really with customer experience, the next question asks, with customer experience being vital to the target market, how do you manage the transition to Ageas and control standards on any online platform and core handlers?
Michael Hazell
executiveSo the first point is, it starts with the selection of the partner. So it wasn't by accident that we landed on Ageas. Ageas have worked with us since 2009. So we have an existing relationship with them. They've been on our underwriting panel for some time. So we know them and we know how they look after our customers already. They already have a significant exposure to older people, and therefore, they are proving -- they have proven experience in handling those customers in the right way. Importantly, in terms of our contact centers and a lot of our operational -- or a lot of our operations, when we go live with Ageas, those operations will transfer and those people will transfer across to Ageas. And therefore, it would be, to a large extent, the same people working for Ageas that are picking up the phone for Saga today. Wrap all of that around Saga and Ageas' joint interest in making a success of this partnership, then we will jointly run that partnership, making sure that Saga customers continue to experience the same experience they do today. And that's where it's taking some time to set up the partnership. You'll notice we go live at the end of this year. Because we're setting up Ageas' platform and bespoke Saga experience to make sure that our Saga customers get the same experience post partnership go live that they do today.
Operator
operatorPerfect. And what learnings for the digital development have you taken from Saga Exceptional which didn't seem to hit the mark?
Michael Hazell
executiveSo yes, that's a helpful example. And I think plays back to us repointing this business. Firstly, I would categorize exceptional.com as a good idea, but executed in the wrong way. There is nothing wrong with the idea about creating brilliant content and serving it up for Saga customers as a deep engagement tool. And that was the principle behind exceptional.com. What I didn't like about it was pointing people at a non-Saga website rather than using it as a tool to drive people to the Saga website and then drive conversion into our individual businesses and products. So our magazine website was the answer to exceptional.com, because exceptional.com had a significant amount of investment in it, so it's a costly engagement tool. But actually, at much lower cost, what we've been able to do with our new magazine website that replaces exceptional.com is drive very similar levels of traffic through our now Saga website as opposed to the separate exceptional.com website, and then drive conversion from that. Because when people engage with this content now, they're engaging with it through the Saga website as opposed to exceptional.com. So we are -- we have -- we're achieving the same traffic levels in a more cost-effective fashion. But really importantly, we're doing so through now our own website as opposed to a non-Saga branded website.
Operator
operatorHow are you hedged for fuel costs?
Michael Hazell
executiveDo you want to cover that, Mark?
Mark Watkins
executiveYes, sure. I mean as Mike said, our probably biggest exposure to energy is the fuel oil that used to power 2 cruise ships. Our general policy here is that we hedge out a significant proportion of that exposure for around 18 months. So we are 100% hedged for '25/'26, and we're about 75% hedged for the sort of beginning summer season of 2026. So that is a rolling program of hedging. So clearly, as we move through the year, we will be looking to increase the hedging amount for '25 -- sorry, '26/'27.
Operator
operatorPerfect. Thanks, Mark. And that actually concludes all of the questions. So thank you very much indeed for being so generous of your time then addressing all of those. And of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make it available to you immediately after the presentation has ended just for you to review. But Mike, perhaps before now just really looking to redirect those on the call to provide their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, if I could please just ask you for a few closing comments just to wrap up with, that would be great.
Michael Hazell
executiveThanks, Jake. So look, I really want to emphasize the progress that we're making here. We've delivered a really strong set of financial results, and you can see that in pretty much all of the numbers that we've put forward, 25% growth in underlying profits, beating expectations both at a profit level but also on a cash level. So strong performance across the board. But in parallel to that, and as significantly, we've set the business up now with the strategic actions that we've taken to really underpin growth in the future, and that's why we've confidently come out with those medium-term targets. We are delivering on what we said we would do and you could be confident that we will continue to deliver on that progress. Just highlight and remind you of the -- what those underpinning strategic actions are. We're restructuring our insurance business to mean that we are now on a lower-risk, less volatile insurance model, to mean that, as we go forward, we operate a less complex, lower risk commission-based income stream for the lion's share of our insurance business. Layer that on top of a brilliant partnership with Ageas, a 20-year partnership where we're confident in the combined growth ambitions of the 2 businesses. and then a fantastic Travel business, and you can see why we're so excited about where we can take this business in the future and our journey to GBP 100 million and plus with significant deleveraging. So exciting things to come, in a better position than we've been for many years, and hopefully, you can all see that in the progress we've updated on today. So thank you for joining. I appreciate your time.
Operator
operatorMike, that's great. Thank you once again for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order of the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of management team of Saga plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good morning.
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