Victoria PLC (VCP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Victoria PLC Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll, and I would now like to hand you over to Executive Chairman, Geoff Wilding. Good afternoon to you.

Good afternoon, and thank you very much for joining the call. Yesterday, we published our FY '25 results and confirmed the refinancing of our 2026 bonds. In summary, the last year's demand remains subdued throughout the year, and the focus, therefore, was on delivering the cost savings we took out at the time of our interim results in November. The result was that H2 EBITDA was up more than 25% on H1 or more or less flat revenues and Q4 was the strongest period of the year. This year, we are continuing to execute on cost savings, which are expected to yield an additional GBP 70 million per annum of savings over the next 18 months. We will set this out in some detail of these various projects during the course of this presentation. The bond transaction that we announced exchanging the existing 2026 notes for new 2029 notes has removed the near-term refinancing risk without equity dilution. It's increased the company's liquidity and provided more than sufficient runway for the company to deliver the GBP 70 million of cost saving projects that we will set out today. Alec Pratt, our CFO, will now take you through the FY '25 financial results.

Great. Thank you, Geoff. So Slide 1, just a headline summary there. So as Geoff mentioned, revenue was down last year in a very soft market. We've reported revenue of just over GBP 1.1 billion. This is in line with the guidance that we provided in May. EBITDA is GBP 114 million for the year and net debt rose GBP 57.9 million to just under GBP 900 million. As a result of that slight increase in debt and reduction in EBITDA leverage for the year finished at 7.9x. And obviously, that has now been addressed as part of the refinancing. Overall, for the year as a whole, there was a pretax loss of just over GBP 11 million. And the focus for the year is on cost savings going forward. In terms of executive summary, demand remains lower than the 2019 level by about 15% to 25% across our different geographies and we'll come on to guidance going forward. Cost savings targeted at the half year results were delivered of GBP 32 million, and we'll see the benefit of those flowing through into FY '26. This will benefit by GBP 20 million in year ahead. Incrementally, we have another GBP 50 million of savings that are being targeted to come in by the end of FY '27. And later in the presentation, we'll talk through where those savings are coming from and also the timing and phasing of those. Once those cost savings are complete, the business will return to being a mid-teens EBITDA margin and that will be before any cyclical or volume recovery, which would be on top of that. Market conditions remain at trough levels, but we are tentatively seeing signs of stabilization. That is, in particular, in the U.K. and our Southern European markets. More recent trading, we can see that volumes overall remain behind FY '25, but with an improving trend and average selling prices are higher than the year before. The Board remains confident in the medium-term outlook and in both volume and pricing recovery. And obviously, yesterday, we announced that we have successfully secured over 90% support to attract new senior capital to refinance all of our 2026 maturities, and I'll talk through that in more detail later in the presentation. It's important to keep the context of the 2025 results in with where we are in the cycle. Clearly, the pressure on the market is not a Victoria-specific thing that has been seen across the industry and across all of our peers. We've been very successful in growing the business over a 10-year period. And so this slide sets out where we are compared to our track record. In the top half of that table, you can see the pre-IFRS 16 EBITDA progression since 2016, As you can see, the average margin over that period is 13.6%. That compares to 7.3% in FY '25. So I think the key point we are highlighting on this page is that whilst the GBP 70 million of incremental EBITDA savings are a large number in absolute terms, we are very confident that we can deliver those and in the context of where we have been historically, that will just return us to where we have performed in the past. So as we go into the FY '25 results. The first page lays out an overview of the performance. So a lot of numbers on the page, but a couple of key messages to bring out there. So firstly, the business has been very focused on efficiency over the course of FY '25. We've reduced the level of SG&A, both on an absolute basis, but also on a percentage of revenue basis through self-help initiatives. These were enacted throughout the year. And what you can see in terms of profitability is that EBITDA was second half weighted. So you can see that was GBP 63.5 million in the second half versus GBP 50.2 million in the first half. And the margin in H2 was therefore 11.6% versus 8.8% in the first half. What that shows is that those cost saving initiatives are already having an impact. And as we disclosed in May, Q4 was our strongest period of profitability for quite some time. The next slide provides a breakout of revenue across our divisions. I think two key points to mention there. So in soft flooring, the main reduction in revenue was due to a change in average selling price. The main driver of that was a change in mix across the business. So part of our nonwoven rugs business actually performed very well. The selling price of that product is very much at the lower end. And so that replaced some of the higher-value products, which saw some decline. And therefore, that ASP declines across that division. In ceramics, there was a blend of volume and ASP reduction. So clearly, in a softer demand environment, some customers are choosing to switch down to lower-cost products and so pricing is under a little bit of pressure there. And also, we reduced volume as the business began to focus more on profitable sales. Across both our Australian and North American businesses, fairly stable performance there. So no material trends across those businesses in revenue. As we look towards profitability, this slide looks to break out the impact of reduction in revenue and then margin. So as you can see, in both soft flooring and in our ceramics business, the main impact there is on margin. As we've talked about previously, we are operationally geared. So actually reducing revenue does drop through to the bottom line. I would also bring out on the ceramic side last year, saw the roll-off of an advantageous hedging position through the course of the year. And so that actually reduced profitability as we went through the second half. As with the revenue performance in Australia and North America was relatively stable and clearly cost was kept under tight control at the central level. So the next slide really highlights the non-underlying charges. A couple of key points to bring out there. Firstly that the cash exceptional items remain relatively low at just under GBP 17 million. Those are highlighted in orange at the top. And then secondly, exceptional impairment charges, so GBP 186 million have been run through the accounts. Those are focused around our Belgian rugs business, our Spanish ceramics and then our U.S. distribution businesses. It's important to note that those are non-cash, so just an accounting measure. As we look through the lower half of the table, exceptions there, again, the main driver is amortization of acquired intangibles, which remains just over GBP 30 million. And the net movement in finance cost is broadly neutral. On cash generation, we've broken out the various steps here. The first piece is that actually in terms of operating cash flow, the key thing I would highlight there is that through the course of the year, there was an outflow of working capital. The key driver of that was due to our credit rating, we had a reduction in credit insurance. What that means is that our suppliers began to tighten in the supplier days, and therefore, we're paying them earlier and has an outflow of working capital. Clearly, with a successful announcement of the refinancing yesterday, that situation should improve. And we will have conversations with those credit insurers over the coming weeks. With that credit insurance being put back in place, we would expect an inflow of working capital through the course of FY '26. In the middle of the chart, we show how we are choosing to deploy capital. There are three black bars there in terms of CapEx. So maintenance CapEx remains relatively low at GBP 46.9 million. We have continued to invest in the business, both into improving the cost base. I'd say there was a GBP 26.1 million charge for exceptional reorganization CapEx. We then have GBP 30 million of expansionary CapEx, which was deployed. The main element of that is investment in our new high-tech ceramics plant in Spain, which we'll talk about later in the presentation. The teal bar of GBP 58.9 million shows that the Board has delivered on the guidance on disposals, two main elements to that. Firstly, the disposal of our Graniser business, which is a Turkish ceramics business that was sold in early H2. The second element of that is sales of properties. As we've previously talked about, there is a significant property portfolio across the group, and so that could be a sort of further liquidity if the right values can be delivered. Last year from an M&A perspective, a small outflow there, that was a mixture of earn-out payments and then small M&A focused in the U.K. business, which Philippe can pick up on later. The net impact of all that is that there was a GBP 57.9 million outflow of cash through the year and we'll kind of turn on to how that impacts the debt. So on this slide, we show the different elements of our debt. That is a very diversified lender base split across local facilities, a super senior revolving credit facility and then a variety of listed bonds. In total, the debt increased to just under GBP 900 million on a post-IFRS 16 basis, and our EBITDA set at GBP 114 million, which leaves a leverage ratio of 7.9x. Above that, there is also -- below that on the table is also our preferred equity. As a reminder, that is provided by Koch Industries, which is a large U.S. conglomerate. That is an equity instrument, which does not have kind of maturities or covenants or anything like that. So if you choose to include that as a liability, that increases overall liabilities to just over GBP 1 billion at 9.3x. So key announcement, obviously, is the refinancing yesterday. So a few things to highlight there. So firstly, this is a full solution for all of our near-term maturities. This provides stability for the group going forward. And clearly, it will be a very strong message for all of our customers and suppliers. It is through two key components. So the first is a new super senior facility of GBP 130 million. We announced last couple of weeks back. The key message there is that it increases liquidity for the group and does not have any covenants or any drawstops on that, so that is fully available. The second element which we confirmed yesterday is an exchange offer for our 2026 bonds. Those will be converted into new first priority notes, which extend maturity out to 2029. Pleasingly, we received over 90% support from the bondholders before we launched, which gives us excellent certainty around completion of that transaction. And in total, the transaction allows us to have a significant runway to execute our self-help initiatives, which we have laid out on later in the presentation. So to summarize, the transaction provides enhanced liquidity. The new capital structure has no financial maintenance covenants. There are now no short-term maturities with a materially extended maturity profile, and that has all been delivered with no dilution to equity holders. Quickly, the impact on the pro forma capital structure. So a lot of numbers on this page, but on the left-hand side, we have the existing capital structure. Then the changes, and then you can see what happens post transaction. So the largest change there is clearly the introduction of those new 2029 first priority notes. So those are GBP 534 million. We've assumed here that the full 2026 bond is removed. You will also see that there is a reduction in the 2028 bond of about GBP 72 million. That is due to some of the 2026 holders also holding 2028 notes. And so as part of their consent, they asked that their '28 notes were converted into first priority notes as well. And so what that means is that the remaining stub of the 2028 notes is only GBP 143 million, which as a proportion of the group's capital structure is relatively small, so as and when that is addressed, that is a reasonable bite size that we can refinance at that time. On the right-hand side of the slide, you can see the costs associated with each part of that debt. So the local lines clearly are an attractive kind of mid-teens -- sorry, mid-single-digit interest rates. The new super senior facility can be drawn either in pounds or in euros. And the margin on that is 6%. So depending which currency draw, that's kind of, call it, 8% capital. The new first priority notes have been issued with a 9.875% coupon. The important thing there to note is that we have the option to pay a 12-month period where we only pay 1% cash interest and the rest of the interest in payment in kind. We will take that option in the first year of the notes. And so therefore, the cash cost of our interest -- cash cost of our instrument in the first year will only be about GBP 5 million. So overall, with the refinancing, we will remain at about 8x net debt to EBITDA. And actually, the serviceability of that interest, particularly in the near term, is actually very strong and attractive. So with that, I'll hand over to Philippe to talk through the operational review.

Okay. Thank you, Alec. So first division, if we have a look at the first division, which is also the largest in U.K. and Europe soft flooring. For the record, this incorporates the broadloom carpet and LVT, underlay artificial turf and rugs. So we see reinforcing the U.K. strength and further optimizing of the cost structure. Important to notice is that if we exclude the rug division, we have a mid-teen performance of that division. So all the rest of the subdivisions in the soft flooring are up. Just talking about rugs. So the volume rugs segment of Balta has had a difficult environment. As you know, so we've done already two restructuring operations, and we have had to add another restructuring operation recently. So we've been announcing to the trade unions, the intention of a further restructuration whereby we would want to put most of the production in our existing Turkish plants. So instead of a 50-50 split between Belgium and Turkey, we would go for a 90% in Turkey and only 10% will be left in Belgium. This is just to enhance our cost base, yes. So just a brief overview on the rest of the division because there's a few other good growing parts of that division for broadloom. So extremely important is the expansion of the product groups there, which we see. So what we've done, the U.K. is the main market, as we all know, in terms of customers, product and distribution for soft flooring, but we needed to expand the product groups and the broadloom we have a market share of about 18%, and we need to expand on other flooring types, there's about 60 million square meters of other products being sold in the U.K. and we want to have our part in that. So we've also looked into reduction of overhead in that division. We've integrated or better even merged two brands with other two brands. So in order to take some cost out, this has allowed us to take out 50 FTEs. We've also -- at this moment, we can say that we have completed the integration of production of Balta ranges in the U.K. because Balta had a lack of broadloom production in Belgium. All of that has been moved to the U.K. This operation has come to an end. And then very important, of course, in that division is also the service component, the next day delivery. So we're not only a manufacturer, we're also distributor in the U.K. So presently, in the U.K., we have four brands and about 70 sales staff in the market to run for different service propositions. All of that is done to Alliance, Alliance is our distribution vehicle in the U.K., where we continue to deliver best-in-class service. Last year, we've delivered 120,000 order lines with an 83.5% next day delivery, even 95% within 48 hours. Alliance has also further evolved in an independent service provider and is providing services for 14 non-Victoria brands. Another subdivision of the soft flooring division is the underlay. We have a strong market share in underlay and we've done quite a bit of operational work there. So we've done an integration of a production unit we had in Scotland. We've integrated in the main site in Haslingden, so we've also integrated in a warehouse internally. We've done a small acquisition to do some -- to concentrate on production, especially on the rubber crumb manufacturing and then for that as well, we've further developed our European hub, which is called Estillon. This is a small acquisition we've done in the past where we want to expand because we think on the continent, we can provide a lot of growth for the underlay division. Last but not least, subdivision of soft flooring is artificial turf, can be very short there. So we've had a good year in artificial turf. Last year, we are mainly residential, 80% of that division is residential, only 20% is contract, sports field. So we've grown in both in residential and in contract and the growth was a bit higher in the sports side. Second division is ceramics. We've had or we've seen a more difficult environment in the ceramics division. The reason for that is that we had no favorable gas contract. So we've also been -- we've also seen that we've had a bit more pressure from new market entrants who are traditionally in the volume segment and who have entered in this segment with a different margin ambition. We've also probably kept too long our margin ambition before changing it to some extent in order to take a bit more volume. But the average price, I have to say, the average price dropped only 2.3%. And to compensate that, the management was able to take -- to reduce the average production cost by about 7% in terms of labor savings and all kind of other reductions. So there's been a lot of work in the ceramics division, in terms of taking cost out. So we've reduced headcount, we've reduced SG&A. So there's plenty that has happened. We've also speed up the time to market, which was important. We had some slack there in the last couple of years. So we caught up on that. We've also further reduced the number of SKUs in the ceramics division. And then on the sales side, we've opened three extra showrooms in the retail channel and we've reopened our large showroom, which is in Castellon, The Agora showroom, where we've done a big event for customers as we -- okay, this was rebuilt after the fire we had a couple of years ago. So important to highlight here in the Ceramics division, there are four strategic guidelines that we've set for ourselves. So, first of all, we want to intensify the approach to integrate the ceramics across Spain and Italy. We've also decided that we wanted to expand on small sizes and a special DIY approach. This is why we brought the management of a couple of companies to give it a special DIY approach, which is strong and mainly the Italian brands go for that. And then as a third leg, we set up a sourcing agreement also with recently sold Turkish ceramics brand, Graniser, where we can buy some specialty products or when there is an extra demand. So we don't have to fire up a new kiln, so we can do some third-party manufacturing when needed. And finally, very important is the investment. We've done or we're in the process of doing in Spain, what we call the V4 project. This is a project with the build of a new continuous press and a kiln with a very long one. So we have efficiency gains in order to try and reduce the cost. We're already developing product to that. We are trying to take orders on that as well. We've developed products, and we will see some upside of that project in the last quarter of this financial year and it's more aimed for the next couple of years to come. So the production output of that line will be about 5 million square meters. And we hope that this is all -- this is sales on top of the existing and is not replacement sales. Third division, can be very brief on the third division, which is Australia, very resilient performance, and we keep on having a positive outlook there. So quickly remind that we have two carpet plants in Australia and one underlay plant, all the segments in carpet in synthetic as well as in the wool and underlay have performed to budget. So we also have an import activity in LVT from Southeast Asia. There has been a bit more pressure on that because there's a lot of importers currently in Australia, but we have made some choices to move in the more higher end with our branding policy, which we're rolling out in Australia. Last but not least, is America. There, we see a resilient positioning in a challenging market. So just for the record, we are not producing anything in U.S. It's only an import activity. We have a market of about $300 million in the U.S. with the largest company. We have the Cali in San Diego, which is an omnichannel distributor. Unfortunately, what we have seen in FY '25 is that the North American trading conditions have remained extremely challenging, high mortgage rate of about 6.7% for a 30-year fixed mortgage, whereas we know that it should be around 5% to unlock demand. So also the housing transactions have been at the lowest with 4 million units, so we are waiting. But in the meantime, what we've done, so we've taken self-help initiatives to try and take cost out of the business, especially in Cali, where we have paused residential part of the revenue, which has allowed us to take out a lot of advertising costs in terms of pay-per-click contributions, which we had to make for the -- in the advertising budget. So we've also introduced new product in Cali, a bit away from where most of the market goes in LVT. So more real wood laminate and other affiliated products. So I think this is it for most of the content on the division, if I can hand over to Alec again, please.

Great. So we've a short session on driving performance. Going forward, clearly, a big focus is our self-help initiatives, so I'll provide a bit more detail on that. I've now been in the business for about 3 months. So I thought it would be helpful to kind of provide a bit of color in terms of what I've seen getting to know the business. So in terms of initial observations, let's say, obviously, we are a large business with a pretty diverse structure, which is one on a very federated basis. So a lot of the local teams have quite a lot of operational autonomy. Pleasingly, what we've seen very strong local teams, all very competitive with a strong desire to win in the local market. A number of those businesses actually have very strong positions within their markets and are in a number of cases, the leader and in some cases, by quite some way. Clearly in kind of a lower volume environment, that's really helpful, and hopefully, something we can take advantage of going forward. Now we are differentiated in a number of our businesses, so people see us sometimes as an industrial company, but we do have very strong brands. We've got a broad customer base. We have very impressive physical distribution capabilities in high-value end markets. So that sets us apart from a number of our competitors. And as we drive efficiency measures, that will hold us in a really good place. So in terms of the culture, people are deeply commercial and opportunistic. Clearly, in the sort of trade environment, that's important. And actually, we'll seek grow revenue from that basis. There's clearly a frustration with recent performance. As I said at the start of the presentation, that is an industry-wide phenomenon. The volume is under pressure. Nonetheless, we all want to be kind of growing the business and pushing forward performance. And I think what we'll go on to is there are very clear plans on how to improve profitability going forward. Now philosophically, we are beginning to see more and more benefits from working as a group. And we are one of the largest competitors across the flooring industry, particularly in Europe, and we have seen a lot of procurement savings, in particular, which we are able to put in place because of our scale. So there will be more to go for in that regard. And then whilst we've made good progress on consolidating a number of the acquisitions we've made over the last kind of 10, 12 years, yes, there is still more scope to integrate further there. So looking ahead, my key areas of focus and obviously, it's been a busy first couple of months with the refinancing, but we'll work with the team to provide more clarity on group strategy and financial targets. We aim to have improved communication both internally. So as part of working together as a group, we are communicating more with our senior managers and then obviously, with our external stakeholders, whether that's equity debt, et cetera. So hopefully, this presentation does give you a bit more granularity in some of our previous communications, and we hope to continue to improve that. There'll be ongoing strengthening of governance and controls. You would have seen yesterday with the announcement that we do intend to appoint another independent director, there's also work to do in terms of kind of rolling out or formalizing some policies and helping the local management teams with some bigger decisions. Fourthly, leveraging the advantage of scale. We are a big player. We need to take most of that. And so we'll look to do that going forward and then increasing emphasis on capital allocation and returns. So I think the message from the Graniser sale early in the year is that the Board will be very disciplined about the returns we've won from our divisions and actually they will be very pragmatic that if we can release capital to deploy elsewhere in the business, either through debt reduction or reinvestment in the business, we will do that. This is not about empire building, it's about being disciplined and actually driving returns. So the next slide is a largely repeat of the slide from the half year. I think the simple message here is that everything that was promised on cost savings in FY '25 has been delivered. The only piece that is not yet flowing through the FY '26 numbers is the ceramics bonds in Spain, that's expected to come online in calendar Q4 2025, and so we'll get 1 quarter of benefit of that. Discussing with the local team a few weeks back, the actual construction of that facility is going very well and well on track. The team is also focused from a commercial perspective or beginning to build up sales for when that comes online. So that is well on track for what we were expecting. The impact of that is that we will get GBP 20 million of EBITDA and EBIT uplift from the measures that have already now been put in place. So the next slide provides a bit more granularity on our previously stated additional cost savings to be executed through the course of FY '26 and FY '27. So the two charts on the right there, firstly provides a bit more color on the types of improvements that we're making. So these are backed up by, I think, 20 to 30 individual projects. We basically bucketed those into three different areas. The first of those is procurement, where we're targeting an additional GBP 10 million of savings. The best example that we've seen already that has now been executed is on shipping by using a single tender for all of our shipping, we're able to save about 30% of the cost there which was a few million pounds. And that is really just organizational and having a project lead to have a single tender rather than splitting that up across the group. There are plenty more of those opportunities, I think the exciting thing for shareholders and other stakeholders is that those things can be done relatively quickly, and they are done without requiring any capital. So I think those are -- that's the first bucket. The second one is GBP 10 million of savings from integration. So within a number of our operating businesses, they've been built up through acquisition. So there is scope there to consolidate the back office of those businesses. And so again, that is largely organizational should be capital light to implement. So that is another GBP 10 million in savings. Then the final piece is on manufacturing. So some of that is within individual plants, just kind of ordinary course, yet better production but the two main elements there we've already touched upon are, firstly, this new ceramics plant in Spain. And then secondly, the move of the rugs manufacturing capacity from Belgium to Turkey. So cumulatively, that's GBP 50 million of savings which are being run through across the group. The bottom chart there shows the expected phasing of that. Hopefully, that's a very helpful breakout as you think about your financial forecasts. So this year, we're expecting a GBP 20 million benefit, '27 GBP 30 million and 2028 as things get the run rate benefit of the stuff done in '27, there will be a further GBP 20 million. So the sum of that is that on top of our FY '25 performance, we're expecting GBP 70 million of cost improvement from our own self-help initiatives, that would obviously take our EBITDA up to GBP 180 million on a post-IFRS 16 basis. The other key thing to mention on this slide is the net incremental cost of implementing these changes is relatively small. So as part of some of the manufacturing initiatives, we will be able to release some value from the property as we move those plants. So that will kind of net off a lot of costs. So the total net incremental cost of this GBP 50 million savings is less than GBP 20 million. Within that, that includes the CapEx that we are spending to finish off that ceramics plant, That on its own is kind of EUR 12 million to EUR 14 million. And so there isn't a lot of additional costs on top of that to get all those synergies delivered over the next couple of years. So next on current trading and outlook. So as I'm sure you're aware from other building materials companies, market conditions are relative -- at a relative trough, but they are showing signs of stabilization. This is particularly true within the U.K. and Southern Europe. The group remains focused on improving margins and also being disciplined on pricing. And so the impact of that is, actually, we have seen average selling price increase in Q1 FY '26, and therefore, that's ahead of last year. From a volume perspective, obviously, last year was a year of progressive falls in volume. So when we started April this year, that was obviously starting from a lower point versus April the year before. But pleasingly, we are seeing an improving trend on that, as we look through the rest of the year, we would expect progressive improvement as we lap weaker comparables from the year before. So the impact of that is that after a few years of a falling market, we are now expecting a typical H2 weighting to resume and so implicitly, that is suggesting that we are seeing a more stable market at the moment. Now obviously, we've got very extensive cost savings coming through the business. So overall, in '26, we'll get GBP 20 million of benefits. Clearly, that's an ongoing measure. So H2 margins will also benefit from those savings beginning to come through later in the year. And obviously, we talked about there's a further GBP 50 million that will be delivered before the end of FY '27, and we'll get the full benefit of that within FY '28. So let me pause there. Chairman, hand back to you for any concluding remarks or Q&A.

I think we'll just go straight to Q&A because there's been quite a number of questions that have been asked. I don't think given the time that we've got left will be enough for the opportunity to get through all of them, but we'll select a number. So I'll read your questions as they come in and as they're there and I'll hand to Philippe or Alec to answer them. First one is what's your confidence level with respect to the GBP 70 million of projected savings, Alec.

So look, I mean, I said that is a whole bunch of different measures, so it's kind of in the mid-20s type number of different projects. We're very fortunate that we do have a number of different local management teams. So whilst that sounds a lot of different projects, actually, it's only a couple per division. Those have progressed very well. I think we have demonstrated through FY '25 that actually the execution of those projects to date has been very successful. The ones that are ongoing at the moment are tracking well. The largest manufacturing one is clearly that move from Belgium to Turkey. We are going through the regulatory process there with the Works Council at the moment. But what we would say about that is that, that team have actually delivered a number of those change projects over the last couple of years. It's also important to highlight that within Turkey, we already have a manufacturing footprint there with spare capacity. And so a degree of that is just moving the machinery and scaling up the kind of shift pattern there. So whilst these things always require quite a lot of efforts, we're confident in terms of the ability to do that.

So should I interpret your guidance as calling the bottom of the market? And if so, what are you basing this on? Alec?

Look, I think it is implied that if we're having a stronger H2 than H1 that actually that suggests that we are around the bottom. Clearly, month-to-month, there will be a little bit of volatility. But we are beginning to see signs of stabilization in those key markets, as I said, in the U.K. and Southern Europe, in particular. I think we're fortunate in the U.K., there are other peers that are listed and so you kind of cross reference to what they're seeing, which, again, looks like a positive story from it, as well.

You asked about the current relationship with Koch Industries, I'll deal with that because I spend time with them. I think most of the shareholders will know that Koch have a director on the Board of Victoria. He is contributing significantly to the recovery in the business as he comes out of the commercial excellence team from Koch and is a very valuable member of our Board. More generally, I would say Koch remain a highly supportive shareholder. We have a very good relationship with them. I talk to them constantly. They are doing what they can to help the business, and I see them as a very good partner. They're very straightforward and upfront to deal with. And I think I would describe overall, the relationship is very solid. So moving on to the next question. You are saying that your cost savings projects alone will increase EBITDA to GBP 180 million in FY '28. However, your revenue was about GBP 400 million lower than in FY '22. So can you tell us what impact on earnings would a GBP 100 million recovery in demand have, Alec?

Yes. So I mean, it slightly depends which divisions the revenue comes through. So gross margins across most of our businesses are kind of in the 30s and 40s. Clearly, there is a lot of operational gearing. We have provided a bit of guidance on that previously the kind of a 5% increase in revenue will drive kind of GBP 20 million of EBITDA. So broadly, if we are adding GBP 400 million of revenue. The drop-through there, you probably expect around, call it, GBP 100 million of incremental EBITDA that volume change would not will happen overnight, but directionally, that is kind of a reasonable number, but it will depend on which divisions that volume comes through.

You asked a question about the costs being the cost associated with the cost savings projects and synergy projects. So what is the cash outflow to achieve these projects?

Yes. So the incremental cost is about GBP 20 million. Some of that will come through CapEx. As I said, there's a EUR 12 million to EUR 14 million of spend on the ceramics plant this year. The balance of that will probably be through the P&L. On the kind of manufacturing moves, we're expecting that to be netted out through the property sales. So clearly, there may be a timing impact of that. So we are -- we will obviously sell those properties as quickly as possible as we're going through those projects. But clearly, you can't exactly match the sale timing there with the costs incurred.

There's been 2 or 3 questions about whether either myself or myself in partnership with another shareholder have any intention to take the company private. I can categorically state that there are no discussions underway or no plans at the present time to take the company private. It's just not something that's on the cards at all, and you can rule that out completely as anything that's been contemplated at the present time. Look, I'm acutely aware of the time that we're just about up in terms of time. So I'll hand back to the Investor Meet people just before we close.

That's great, Geoff. Alec, thank you very much indeed for updating investors today. And Geoff, if you had any final comments? And if not, I'll just redirect to investors.

No, I think that's the end of the session.

Fantastic, Geoff and Alec, once again, thank you for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the Board can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Victoria PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.