SSP Group plc (SSPG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the SSP plc Trading Update. My name is Sandra, and I will be the operator for your call this morning. On the call today, we have Patrick Coveney, CEO; and Jonathan Davies, Deputy CEO and Group CFO. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to Patrick Coveney. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining this call following the release of our trading update this morning, which covers the fourth quarter from the July 1st to the September 30, 2024. Let me start the call by sharing the key features from our statement and then Jonathan and I will take questions. So as we discussed at the interim results in May, we had a significant job to do to deliver the second half of this year. We needed to step up and we have. Sustained good trading momentum through the third and fourth quarters, together with the actions we've taken to drive performance have enabled us to do that. 3 out of the 4 regional divisions have delivered at or ahead of our performance expectations for the half with one of them below. But taken together and with modest in-year benefits on interest and tax, we expect to deliver earnings per share for the full year on an actual currency basis of approximately 10p. So turning to the highlights of quarter 4 and the second half. Revenue growth was 15% in quarter 4 with 6% like-for-like growth, a 5% contribution from net gains and 4% from our previously announced acquisitions. In the second half, we saw a strong step-up in performance with year-on-year revenue up 15% and operating profit on a constant currency basis likely to increase from GBP 40 million in half 1 to between GBP 170 million and GBP 180 million in half 2. This would represent year-on-year profit growth for the second half of over 30% with 100 basis points of operating margin improvement. Turning now to each of our regions more specifically, starting with North America. We delivered a strong quarter 4 and second half in North America with good like-for-like performance and significant net gains. The 3 recent acquisitions are now fully integrated with profit and returns levels in line with our business cases. Importantly, while delivering approximately 20% revenue growth in the second half, our margin performance was also strong, with strengthening gross profit essential given the elevated level of wage inflation in the U.S. right now. Turning now to the U.K. Over the past 18 months, we have reset in our heartland U.K. market with a new senior team, a revitalized approach to serving clients and customers, a necessary investment in both proposition and in the core estate and deepening trust and alignment with our key brand partners. This reset has contributed to strong trading and operational execution in the second half of FY '24. We had an excellent summer with year-on-year sales growth of 12% in both Q3 and Q4, with 9% of that coming from like-for-like sales growth. Demand growth, combined with strong delivery through the peak trading period will convert to strong profit and margin growth with more to come as we transition into FY '25. In Asia Pacific and the Middle East, we have built a deep presence in some of the fastest-growing food travel markets in the world. Sales across this region grew by 30% year-on-year in the fourth quarter, with the 9% like-for-like sales growth underpinned by strong performance in our regional Australia business, a step up in Hong Kong and good trading in Egypt. Importantly, our acquisition of ARE in Australia, which we completed in May, is being integrated effectively into plan. In Continental Europe, while some parts of the business, notably Spain and the Mediterranean holiday markets have traded well, our regional results overall are disappointing with the summer performance behind our expectations, notably as a result of the Paris Olympics. Like many, we have planned for a step-up in demand through July and August. But what we saw was the reverse of this as non-Olympics tourists and Parisian commuters stayed away from the city and the dwell times in rail stations during the games contracted markedly. As we discussed at the interims, our profit performance in the European region was affected by the catch-up of significant contract renewals that followed the COVID period. Encouragingly, this program is now substantially complete and the reopened units are trading in line with plan with margins building. Standing back though, the performance outcomes for FY '24 in Continental Europe in profit terms are unacceptable to me and unacceptable to us. We are acting to address these issues with an intense focus on optimizing the performance of the very large number of new units that we've opened this year, tight management of our German motorway service stations business as we phase our now contracted exits over the next 18 months. The appointment of a new CEO to lead the region, Satya Menard, who started with us last month and who has extensive operating experience across major European and international foodservice businesses and a streamlined lower cost leadership model and a set of tighter operating structures across the whole region, which has already been implemented and will take effect for Q1 of FY '25. We'll share more details on these initiatives and our plan to build margins and returns in Continental Europe at our full year results in December. Drawing all of this together for the expected group full year results, operating profit is expected to be in the range of GBP 210 million to GBP 220 million on a constant currency basis, up approximately 30% on the prior year. Operating margin is expected to be approximately 6%, up 50 basis points on the prior year. We expect a modest in-year benefit on the interest and tax lines. So in aggregate, we expect to deliver an EPS level for the year of approximately 10p. Through the second half, we had a strong focus on cash. Net debt is expected to be in the range of GBP 610 million to GBP 630 million after capital investment of GBP 280 million and an M&A spend of GBP 150 million, including the payment of GBP 18 million in half 2 for the acquisition of ARE in Australia. This will leave our leverage level at the end of the year at approximately 1.8x net debt-to-EBITDA returning to within our medium-term target range of 1.5 to 2x. So looking briefly at the outlook for FY '25. Given the good momentum as we finish FY '24, we expect further revenue and margin progression into FY '25. Our priority, though, is to optimize the value and drive performance from the market positions that we have built and the considerable investments that we've made over the last 2.5 years. CapEx will be lower next year and we do not anticipate any new infill M&A activity. While it's worth noting the strength of sterling, where we have given specific guidance in our statement today on the currency translation impact, on revenue and profit for both FY '24 and FY '25. We remain confident in sustaining growth and in operating margin improvement in the year ahead. In summary then, we have delivered a good second half. The business is in good health, with 3 of our 4 regions delivering at or above plan. And in the fourth, we have a plan in place to improve profit and margin. We have tightened our agenda for FY '25 with a focus on building margins, building profitability and strengthening cash flow. Thank you very much for your time. And with that, I'll hand over to the moderator for Q&A, for a question-and-answer session with Jonathan.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question for today comes from Jamie Rollo from Morgan Stanley.

3 questions, if I may. Just one technical one first. On the 10p of EPS, you talk about some tax interest benefit that's not in consensus. If you could possibly please quantify that and just confirm that doesn't roll into 2025? Second is a bigger question on Europe, clearly it seems to have the problems more than just the Olympics or the German motorways. Could you sort of talk a bit about the extent of the review, maybe how long it could take and then whether there might be any sort of one-off cash restructuring or exceptional costs that could affect numbers? And then finally, I appreciate there's no sort of guidance of '25 yet. You're talking about further growth in sales and margin, but consensus EPS is about 30% growth, obviously, you've had some additional currency headwind today. But just notwithstanding currency, how do you feel about that EPS step up?

Jon, do you want to do the first question? I'll do the second here.

Okay, fine. So really just to deal with your first points about tax and interest. We'll give you more detail in due course. But essentially, what we've seen is the recognition of some deferred tax assets which will give us a modest benefit on the ETR for the year. And we've also seen some slight benefits in terms of interest income principally, which will help the interest line a little bit compared to current consensus. But I'd say, these are relatively modest but are offsetting to some degree the fact that the profit number at an EBIT level is sort of modestly below the middle of our guided range. But again, we'll give you more clarity in due course. But again, certainly, the interest is onetime. I think at the moment, our expectations are that the ETR next year will be sort of back towards the normal range.

Yes. Let me pick up on the second question. Jamie, so in the context of Europe, just let me give you kind of a short term and slightly longer-term element. So relative to the expectations that we had for European performance in the second half of the year and in particular, what would have been in the planning assumptions that Jonathan has referenced. The issue there that we highlighted in the script and in the statement is actually almost entirely France and almost entirely Olympics. In other words, we had a -- we do reference for this motorway service station business in Germany that we're exiting. That is under structural revenue pressure, and there is a kind of modest kind of operating leverage effect on that. But the main reason for us calling Europe back relative to the expectations and have been 1 of the 4 regions, which was behind our plan is that we anticipated an uplift in demand and an uplift in sales in Paris through July and August, and we didn't get it. And so that's the reason there. Now in terms of over time, we know we need to build back margins in Europe everywhere. We referenced in the interims, the very large renewal program, which is coming to completion in the Nordics. We are pleased with how that has gone and we're pleased with the improving performance in those units. And -- but if you do a kind of stand back on the European business, we think we can and will build margins over time. That's partly about the operating model that I referenced. It's about executing the contracted exits from motorways in Germany. It's getting the return on this very wide number of new units that we've opened in the last 12 to 18 months across Europe. And it's driving operating performance and cost efficiency across the region and where the new team that we're configuring and the initiatives that we've got in place our target will be doing that. But the specifics of the near-term challenges in -- through the summer are specific essentially to France, driven by the Olympics. Now if I come to the point on '25 guidance. We will talk more about this in the full year statement. But in simple terms, what we are flagging in this statement is the exchange effects of strengthening sterling and how this flows through and that's all.

Can I just come back on Europe? Are you expecting any sort of material cash or sort of P&L write-down restructuring costs?

No.

The next question comes from Dhar Manjari from RBC.

It's Manjari Dhar, RBC. Just a couple of questions from me, please. I wondered if you could give some color on the outlook for tenders coming on to the market in North America and how you -- whether you feel like you have enough scale now that you should be able to win contracts organically given the stance on M&A now? And then secondly, I wondered if Jonathan, perhaps you could give some color on price volume dynamics through for Q4, what you've been seeing and perhaps how you expect this to trend into the first quarter?

Yes, Manjari, thank you. What you see in our Q4 trading statement on momentum in America is continued strong net gains in the U.S., right? So we had 9% contribution from net gains in North America. We believe we'll continue to do that. We are building share at strong returns in North America. And we -- our plan is to continue to do that, and our expectation is that we will continue to do that. It's a really important region for us. We're trading well there and we're continuing to see the model that we have work in terms of driving growth through a balance of like-for-like net gains complemented by the set of acquisitions that we've made in the last 18 months there with us not anticipating that there will be any infill acquisitions anywhere in the group, frankly, including in North America through FY '25.

In terms of the latest trading and the inflation of volume underneath that, I think broadly speaking, that 6% like-for-like is probably 50-50 split between inflation and volume. So what we're seeing really just to add a bit of color here is that cost of goods inflation which I think in the first half, we were saying was sort of towards 5%, continues to ease, which is helpful, and that takes a little bit of pressure off the need to move prices up. We're also saying that labor inflation is probably still higher than cost of goods inflation at this point in time. But I think we are now moving to a point where the inflationary pressures are less and therefore, that's reflected in our pricing.

The next question comes from Ali Naqvi from HSBC.

Ali from HSBC. Maybe just to confirm, in terms of your planning assumptions from H1, Patrick, can you just confirm that you've achieved all that you had hoped to achieve at that point. And really the only thing here is the fact that you had finally moments being the Olympics and the German motorway business. Secondly, on '25, you commented you're going to reduce CapEx. Could you give some color as to how much of this you'll expect to reduce? Or is there anything that you think you may be able to defer or cancel if it's committed? And then finally, your comment on generating longer-term returns in the statement. Is there anything in the trading to date that means you have to work harder to generate returns? Or is this just part of integrating the acquisitions, new contracts becoming more mature and then the returns just come through?

Ali, thank you. Listen, I mean, we set out in the statement what our planning assumptions are and what our expectation of delivery is. You'll see it in the notes to the statement. I mean the simple answer is we have -- we anticipate because we still have to close out this full year, but we anticipate delivering within the planning expectations that we set at the start of the year on a constant FX basis ride the wave through the different things that we set out recognizing that we knew and we were called out on this back in May that we had a big job to do in the second half to get that done and we have. So that's what I would say on that. On '25, your point on -- you are right to call out the -- both what's in the statement and what's in the script about this, what I might call change of emphasis. And in terms of tightening up our agenda and a very strong focus on delivering the returns from all the investments that we've made in the last 2.5 years. I am conscious, I joined the business 2.5 years ago, we chose to lean in hard to recover the business strongly in terms of our market positions coming out of COVID, that was -- there was a high level of investment in that, investment in capability and investment in capital. And you can see that our emphasis in '25 will be on delivering returns from those investments that we've made. That will mean that our year-on-year CapEx is lower than '25 than it will have been in '24. Exactly where that sets, we have to see, but it will be lower. A decent chunk of it is contracted in the last gain associated with net gains and commercial wins that we have delivered and contracted, but are yet to build but we will have some choices at the margin around how much further we push that and we will look at that in a disciplined way with a high level of focus on the returns that we'll get from the incremental investment. But what you'll see if I take the numbers that we shared earlier, in FY '24, we had CapEx of GBP 280 million, and an M&A spend of GBP 150 million. So it's very unlikely to be any M&A spend and the CapEx number will be lower than that. And so that will be the -- that's how I think you can expect us to join up strategy execution with delivery of financial returns and stronger cash flows. On your point on delivering returns, I think the simplest way for me to put that is, I know and we know that we have a job to do to build returns in Europe. We're focused on that. I flagged some of the actions that we've taken already. There will be more. But actually, the returns that we're delivering across the wider group and in particular, across the 3 other regions of our 4 are where we need them to be although we think we can strengthen them somewhat further in those regions too. And that's what you can expect us to be focused on in '25.

The next question comes from Tim Barrett from DB Numis.

Can I just ask one on Europe and then 2 on the cash flow. On Europe, I know you'll put all the pieces together in a couple of months, but specifically German motorways. If they're loss-making, can you just quantify what might reverse mechanically on that? And then on the cash net debt has come in better than consensus, a good performance there. Is that due entirely to working capital for this year? And then if I can squeeze one last one. On next year, you're obviously not able to say yet what the CapEx will be. But is it a fair assumption that net debt has now peaked and could you give us any kind of steer on where you'd expect leverage to come in next year?

Yes, Jonathan, why don't I take the first you take the second to cash '24 and CapEx and cash for next year. The Motorway service stations, Tim, I don't want to go on too long here. We announced in our results last year in our full year results for FY '23 that we had served notice to our landlords that we were going to exit the totality of this line of business in Germany because it was a loss-making business and we wanted to come out of it. The notice period within that is quite long. And so what we've spent a big portion of this year doing is negotiating with our landlord on a phased exit arrangement, which achieved some things for them that enables us to derisk and reduce the flow of losses over the period in which we're serving notice. And that we finally contracted this September. And what that will mean is that rather than run all the units at a higher level of losses and finish them at the end of the notice period, we'll actually come out of the more loss-making units much more quickly but we're continuing to trade some units a little bit longer. That's the essence of the negotiated settlement that we've done with them, a whole series of other issues on that as well. What that would mean is we will continue to run with a reduced but modest level of losses in this channel through FY '25. But it is constrained and capped at a level that we can live with and would have been better than a sort of simple exit against the original contract. And so that's really all I can say in terms of specifics, it will be helpful to our business when we are fully out of this channel and we are coming out of it in, frankly, as skillful a way as we can. And by the time we get to '26, we will be almost completely out, and will have a different channel mix in Germany to what we have today.

Sorry, what the delta might be year-on-year in Germany?

It will be a modestly lower level of losses next year than this year.

Tim, so on the questions with regarding cash and net debt. So first of all, to this year, it is essentially, as you say, really, about the strong summer trading and the good generation of cash through increased negative working capital, which, of course, we'd normally expect to see seasonally in the second half. And that has been really behind us bringing the leverage down from 2.1x net debt to EBITDA at the end of the first half down to 1.8x. And remembering, within that, we've also acquired ARE for cash consideration of nearly GBP 80 million. It is worth saying that there will be, as you'd expect, a modest net FX benefits to the year-end net debt as well due to the strengthening of sterling. As we look forward, we've made the point really already that we will expect CapEx to come down somewhat in the coming year. We'll also -- when you think about working capital generation of cash, we will also now see the end of the unwind of some of those deferrals, principally around rent obligations that we put in place during COVID. So we're back into a more normal world where we would anticipate generating some cash from working capital. So I think what we would hope to see in the round is leverage starting to reduce somewhat to head towards the lower end of the target range. And thereby hopefully, by the time we get to this point next year, we can be thinking about the future and whether there's any opportunity to returning cash to shareholders. But as I say, that's still some way off.

The next question comes from Harry Gowers from JPMorgan.

Just wanted to follow up with one quick question on your last point, Jonathan. So I mean it sounds like maybe getting towards the lower end of the leverage range is kind of the trigger or the catalyst for additional shareholder returns? And I mean what -- I know it's early stages, but what could you envisage that looking like? Would you be more looking at share buyback or special dividend or yes, any early thinking on that point?

Well, it is, as you say, somewhat premature to be calling out at this stage, Harry. The only thing I would say the share is price is in the zone that is at the moment. I suspect we'll be thinking very hard about share buybacks rather than special dividends. But I think we're probably a little bit premature to get too focused on that now.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from James Rowland Clark from Barclays.

I just wanted to ask on the European cost actions that you flagged in the release. I just wondered, can you just give a bit more color on exactly the measures and actions you're going to put in place? Just sort of flesh out some of the specifics that would be really helpful. And to what extent these measures have already -- or these actions really come into force outside of Europe? And then finally, on those cost actions. When do you think we could realistically see some improvements coming through in the European profitability performance?

Yes. James, let me pick up, I'm going to do your last question first. We need an immediate improvement in European performance. And you can expect us to flag how we're getting on with that when we talk more comprehensively about the components of FY '25 delivery in December. So this isn't for the -- for whenever, we're acting now to improve the margin and profitability of Europe first thing to say. In terms of -- I mean, I flagged 4 different categories of action in my introductory remarks, and that's built on what was in the statement so I'll do the same again for you, which is part of the performance improvement is building all of these new units that we've opened across the region, but most materially in the Nordics, building them to the business case, as you would expect us to do. And we also confirmed that we are on track with getting those units with where we need them to be. And indeed, our performance in the Nordics relative to our expectations in that regard has been being where we wanted it to be. Number 2 was -- and I referenced this actually in my -- in response to an earlier question, which is getting the right structure in place for a phased managed exit that constrains the -- any further losses from our -- the exit from our motorway service station business in Germany, that is in place and it has been in place since September, in other words, since last month. Number 3 was work that we're doing to take cost out of Europe that goes to our overhead structures, our leadership model. The operating structures that we have across the region. We've put that in place. We haven't waited for Satya to come onboard to do that, we put that in place in the summer. And the effect of that is flowing through in current performance. September performance and into the FY '25 year. And then the fourth point is a -- we have gone with a different leadership model and a different leader consistent with the agenda that we want, which is on converting all of this growth, all of these renewals, this very strong set of share positions that we've locked in for the medium term through renewals now into building returns and building margins in Europe. And that's the brief that Satya has coming in and watching with our European team, but also with our group functions who will support that. We know and we are planning for a very significant strengthening of profitability and margins in '25 and '24. Much of that is in flight. But of course, some of that will be tweaked and owned by Satya as he builds the team that are going to take the business forward. So -- and again, our plan is to share some more of these details and what that means for the financial metrics for Europe when we do our full year results briefing in 2 months' time.

Next question comes from Anna Barnfather from Panmure Liberum.

Two questions. Firstly, just returning to CapEx. Can you remind us on the GBP 280 million, how much was specifically related to renewals or catch-up? And then secondly, just on to working capital again, could you just remind us how much of that working capital headwind was the catch-up on deferred revenue, please -- deferred rent, sorry.

Yes. Anna, GBP 60 million is the answer to your first question. And we did confirmed back in May that there would be a modest further tail of that into FY '25. But in cash terms, you can expect us to have -- what I would say is a CapEx well below the GBP 280 million for FY '25, reflective of 2 things, actually: one the -- probably I might just call, improve the end in any material sense of this category of COVID catch-up. And then I think also a somewhat lower level of contracting and renewal activity in the market which was a big feature of why our CapEx was so elevated in '24 and '25 -- sorry, in '23 and '24. And so we're -- we've spoken before about in the region of kind of GBP 260 million-ish of CapEx for FY '25. My judgment today, it will be below that, but we'll have a bit more clarity on what that looks like in a bit more specificity when we set out our plans in December. Jonathan, do you want to pick up on the?

Yes. So we -- I think you will have heard us say when we presented the interim results that we had seen a sort of GBP 30 million to GBP 40 million unwind of deferred rental obligations principally. And that was really the end of the road in terms of the sort of catch-up from COVID as I saw it. So I'd say that really was part of the cash flow and the cash usage in the first half. And as I said earlier in response to one of the earlier questions, we now I think, see the business returning to a more normal model in terms of the build of negative working capital as we look forward.

The last question for today's call comes from Jaafar Mestari from BNP Paribas.

Just wanted to bring up the U.K., obviously, nowhere near as problematic as some parts of Europe. I think you still called out a number of changes there in the operations. Just curious if it's upselling, cross-selling, margin mix, product mix, obviously, that's a business where previous management teams have already done tons of work. So curious where you still see opportunities? And related to that, U.K. passenger volumes in terms of commuters versus leisure, is that even a topic anymore, where are we compared to your pre-COVID mix? And have you adapted to that permanently?

Yes. I'll try to be brief on that because -- maybe hard though. We're doing a really nice job in the U.K. now and very hopefully, the progress that we signed up to and the agenda that we built to improve the business in all sorts of ways, which, frankly, was much needed is now feeding through to the type of financial performance that we need and those reflective of the quality of the business. So the -- you see that the U.K. is a pretty mature market and for us to be delivering like-for-like sales of 9% in Q3 and Q4 in the U.K. is really good. And the conversion of that into operating profit margin improvement and the way in which we're also generating cash in the U.K. is really good. So one of the narratives that we've lived with for a little while is that, we had a lot to do in Europe in aggregate, including in the U.K. What I think you should take from this results presentation and what we're saying here is we've got the U.K. on a really good path. Very, very encouragingly and excitingly, we're not finished in the U.K. in terms of the opportunity that's in front of us. And the net gains that we're getting, the growth we're getting in the air channel in the U.K. and the recovery and growth opportunity that we still see in rail gives us grounds to believe actually that our U.K. business is going to step up further in '25. So it's actually a really good model of joining up the right strategy, the right model of engagement with clients and customers, the right team, and that's feeding through to the financial performance and the progression of financial performance that we need. So it's a -- to us and to me, and I know some of our team may even be listening to this, it's the star performer of the second half for SSP. And -- but we're not finished. We're going to keep going in the U.K.

Yes, and perhaps just to add to that, Jaafar, you saw at the interims that the margin was still slightly down year-on-year in the U.K. which we ascribed then to the scale of investment disruption that came from the very successful program of renewals and extensions. And we said then that we would expect as that concludes and we get into summer trading to see a much better margin performance in the second half, and you will see that when you see the final numbers.

Yes. It's a really good example, right, of the strategy and the financial performance aligning, which we need.

Yes. And again, it demonstrates, as I think most of you will be very aware of, the drag that these big investment programs create in the business. And again, I think we'd like to hope that we're going to see material progress based on the peak of those investment programs now being largely concluded in Continental Europe, especially in Spain.

And that point on commuter volumes. Is that still an issue and a topic?

Yes. Well, I mean, listen, there the level of people commuting on the U.K. rail is lower today than it was 5 years ago. But it is still strengthening period-on-period. And that's what I mean when I say there's opportunity for some level of further recovery in commuting. But in addition to that, how we are executing is creating opportunities for growth and profit from here as well.

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Patrick Coveney for any closing remarks.

Great. Listen, thank you for joining us, and thank you for all the questions. Happy to follow up as may be and look forward to talking to all of you in December. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining, and you may disconnect. Goodbye.