Vp plc (VP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the VP plc Investor Presentation, apologies for our short delay. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all of the questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll. And I'm sure the company would be most grateful for your participation. I'd now like to hand over to Neil Stothard, CEO. Good morning.

Thank you, Marc. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us this morning. I have my colleague, Allison Bainbridge with me, CFO. And I'm CEO of the business. There are 3 elements to the presentation, the first short one, which is I should just tell you through the highlights of the results to 30th September '22. Allison will then take you through the financial highlights, and I'll finish with commentary on the markets. So first slide in terms of highlights. I think, first of all, the 6 months to 30 September was a period of resilient performance for us. We were very pleased with a number of elements of the results. The earnings themselves, the quality was maintained. We improved our ROACE through 6 months, and we also maintain margins from the equivalent period last year. Recovery has continued, albeit relatively modest held back by certain market challenges. And we've -- the revenue growth has been partially delivered through increases in higher rates agreed with our customer base. The exported markets for us have been infrastructure and house build which has been against an inflationary backdrop, but nevertheless positive. Geographically, I would highlight the fact that our international division, which is much smaller than the U.K. made good progress as did our Mainland Europe operations, which report into the U.K. in TPA and in Groundforce. The capacity on our fleet is being maintained. We have a refreshed fleet this year as we have last. And as part of that fleet refreshment moving on to the ESG comment, we've been able to continue to focus on our drive to improve sustainability in terms of the initiatives that we have and in -- particularly in terms of the type of product that we're being able to provide to our customer base. To highlight the fact that the debt that we have is a period when interest rates are hiking is 62% is long-term fixed interest, which Allison will explain in more detail shortly. And the final headline for me would be the 11p per share interim dividend represents a 5% increase for the year. So those are the highlights. I'm now going to hand over to Allison, who will talk you through the financials.

Thank you, Neil. Financial highlights. I think we're pleased that these are a solid set of results showing continued recovery in the strength of our business. The main point I would want to draw out here is the fact that revenue was increased by 6% as has profit before tax and amortization in the period. And also, we are pleased that net margins have been maintained at 11.5%, which we believe shows the strength of our returns. The return on average capital employed is a key measure for us, and we're pleased to report that in the first half, this was maintained at 14.4%. This is ahead of our weighted average cost of capital, which have increased to 9% to reflect recent increases in interest rates, and it was previously 8%. As a group, we target 15% return on average capital employed throughout the cycle. This target was set over 20 years ago, and we've maintained that target. But that time, weighted average cost of capital was 11%. So we still feel that there's plenty of headroom within that target and against our working average capital -- weighted average capital. Here we go. Dividend. Moving on to dividends, which is Slide 8. As Neil already mentioned, we are going to pay an interim dividend of 11p per share, which is a 5% increase on the previous year. I've already mentioned that we feel we've had a robust set of results, and we have strong returns, and this is reflected in this 5% increase in dividend. Our stated policy is to increase dividends in line with profitability as long as those profits, we feel are sustainable and also that we pay out 2x dividend cover. The group has a strong balance sheet. And in the period, hire fleet, which is the equipment that we rent out to our customers, grew by GBP 10 million and also by 5%. The CapEx in there was GBP 34 million, but Neil is going to talk about fleet CapEx on a later slide. So I'll leave that for now for him. You'll notice on the balance sheet that we have had a working capital swing and adverse swing, and it has increased by GBP 18.7 million in the period. We feel this is -- we had a positive swing as a result of the pandemic, and this is a reversal of that, which we think now will flatten out. Behind that movement is mainly trade debtors. So there's an GBP 11 million increase in trade debtors in the period. Half of that is a result of our increased trading, the 6% increase in revenue and the other half is due to a slight increase in debtor days, which we're monitoring and keeping abreast of. The other element is the fact that our creditors have reduced by GBP 6 million, part of this is that we had a new system implemented for the purchase ledger, and this resulted in some delays for a while, but now we've rectified those, and we're now paying in time on the times that we previously were. As a consequence of the movement in net working capital, net debt has increased GBP 149 million and I'll talk more to that in a later slide. The next slide is around cash flow. We have strong EBITDA, and you can see that it's increased to GBP 47.8 million in the period, which is a 7% uplift which we find is pleasing. On this cash flow slide, you can also see that we've brought an exceptional item in the period of GBP 1.9 million. This was in respect to the strategic review. In April this year, '22, we announced that we had -- we're going to do a formal sales process. Before we did that, we carried out strategic review, which involved financial due diligence and commercial due diligence and the exceptional items are in respect of those costs. I've already spoken about the working capital movement and the fact that net debt has increased by an outflow of GBP 18.3 million. Interest rates will increase in the second half, but I'm going to turn to my next slide, which shows that -- with our net debt and facilities, we are fairly well placed in the fact that we have 62% of our net debt is at fixed rates. You'll notice that we have 2 private placements, which are long-term debt, 1 matures in January 2027 and the other element matures in April 2028. So that leaves us in a good position in the current environment of increasing interest rates. We do have a revolving credit facility, which matures in June 2024, and this is subject to SONIA, the margin of SONIA and SONIA was impacted when the Bank of England raised its rate. So I have mentioned, there's been little impact in the first half numbers, but we do see an impact going forward, which we will try and mitigate as best we can. As I mentioned, the key point is the fact that so we do have 62% fixed. And then my final slide is on our covenants, within the banking documents and the loan documents that we have, we have 2 covenants only. One is EBITDA interest cover, which has to be greater than 3x, and at the period end, we were at 9.81x. So lots of headroom there. And the second covenant is we have to have net debt-to-EBITDA at less than 2.5x. And at the period end, it was 1.6x. So again, we do have covenant -- headroom against our covenants. I'm now going to pass on to Neil. He's going to talk about the market.

Good. Thanks, Allison. So in terms of the market experience that we've encountered, which have delivered the quality of results that Allison's just described. And my first slide talks to the core sectors that the key businesses they're exposed to, namely infrastructure, construction, house building and energy together with a length of smaller markets, which we described under other. You'll see from the table that all of the markets apart from energy showed growth in the period. Dealing with energy and Other first, the energy market looks to have fallen quite significantly, that's primarily due to the fact that last year, in the first half we had a very large shutdown contract as a petrochemical complex, which does not repeat every year. And so we didn't have the benefit of that activity in the current year that we had a year ago. In actual fact, if you strip that out, the energy market has improved slightly for us particularly where we have exposure to the oil and gas segment through our Airpac business. In terms of Other, that's been a welcome increase in activity in that market. And that's primarily is a result of the catch up on COVID-related industries such as outdoor events and the aviation sector. So we're very pleased to see that those 2 markets pick up and contribute to the other line. The 3 main areas for us too large which are infrastructure and construction at circa 40% each. In infrastructure, we had a positive period of trading with -- on the contractors on the AMP program, AMP7, which is in its third year and would have been very slow the previous year. So that was a good development for us. We also have been quite busy on the rail activity where CP6, the 5-year program in rail has started to pick up. And perhaps our rail would have been better still, but for the industrial action, which has impacted some of the work programs over the last few months for our contractors and for network rail. Elsewhere, HS2 was a strong area of activity for us in the prior year on -- primarily on Phase 1, the London to Birmingham leg. We didn't experience the pickup in Phase 2 work that we expected in the current year as many of the contracts have yet to be let. We hope that having received an endorsement from the government most recently that they're going to continue with HS2 as envisaged that, that work will come through next year. In construction, the positives are in RMI in terms of the repair and maintenance side. And also, we've seen a decent pickup in activity on groundwork in civil engineering, which is pleasing because that's a fresh development in the last 6 months. Elsewhere, however, the markets are flat, and I will talk to that a little bit in the next slide. In terms of house build, we had a very good first half in the housebuilding segment with sustained levels of demand, [Marritt] which there was a shortage of supply of the type of products that we provide to that segment. The supply shortages due to the long lead times from manufacturers, which have continued. They are easing, but they have continued into the second half. So that's the micro VP view, if you like, in terms of the markets. To take a macro view my next slide talks to the use or utilizes experience often construction forecast which may even now be already out of date given the pace with which markets are moving. The point I want to make here is that in these 4 quadrants, we've got the lion's share of what we do in terms of supporting the overall construction and infrastructure sector. The top left-hand quadrant, the top right-hand quadrant and the bottom right-hand quadrant are all in our view, positive for VP. The -- all those markets, either fell a little or fell a lot at the start of the pandemic, but they recovered very quickly. As you'll see, infrastructure is well ahead of pre-pandemic levels. Housing is approaching pre-pandemic levels and to repair and maintenance activity is also in excess of pre-pandemic levels. So there's been a full recovery in those markets, in our view, to date. Looking further out and utilizing the forecasts, these graphs have flattened off. I put the same graphs in the prelims 6 months ago, using the spring forecasts for '22. There was a bit more optimism in the air at that stage, that's flattened out. But we don't mind flat. Flat profile is something that we can manage against. And certainly, we believe the infrastructure and the repair and maintenance forecast I think the housing forecast probably would -- if it was struck today would be flatter, if not slightly declining. But nevertheless, we're positive about those 3 elements of our market exposure. The fourth slide really just illustrates the gap in construction that new nonresidential, which is items like new schools, new hospitals, commercial buildings, office buildings. That really fell away post-Brexit, even -- fell away even further during the pandemic. There was little or no recovery as we came out of pandemic and the forecasts are still relatively modest in their recovery going forward. So I think that's a latent opportunity for us from an optimistic point of view, whenever that market changes. But more currently, it's a subdued market. It's a flat market. It's a market that we can and will participate in going forward. But our focus is probably looking at other areas of the market at the moment where there is potential for at least some growth. But just quickly running through the business performance slides. At a group level, good revenue growth at 6%, operating profits were also up 6%. So margins are maintained half year on half year. And that's against an inflationary backdrop in terms of our costs, and it perhaps illustrates the way in which we manage the business. We manage it efficiently and also that we've been able to, in terms of cost and also that we've been able to pass on some of the inflationary costs that we've incurred on to our customer base through increased higher rates. There are 2 divisions in the group, the U.K. division and international. So the U.K. is much larger. You'll see here that our growth in the U.K. was slightly less than the average. So 4% revenue line and 3% in PBITA. But nevertheless, quality of the profits in terms of margins have been maintained, and we have delivered profit growth, which we're very pleased with. I talked to the markets, and this is what influenced the U.K., in particular, with AMP7 and transmission work a positive for our businesses but a weaker performance in HS2, and there's slightly more subdued performance than we might have expected on rail. In construction, RMI continues to be positive, and we've most recently seen a nice pickup in terms of civil engineering activity. New build, as I -- my previous slide illustrate is still relatively subdued. Housebuilding has been stable throughout the period. There are clearly some challenges to come. But we are generally more of the view that the decline -- potential decline in house building is going to be gradual and over period of time rather than a short sharp shop that we experienced in the global downturn 10 years ago. So overall, margins maintained in the group, but in a period of lower growth. International, which is much smaller. We're very pleased to see an increase of 28% in the revenue levels, which translated into a more than doubling of profits. The margins for international are still below the group average. So we're looking the further improvement to come there, and we're confident that will happen. So we've seen a good recovery in our international markets. In the case of our businesses in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, that's primarily due to a delayed lockdown compared with, say, U.K. and Europe where activity has picked up a little bit later and particularly in the first half of our financial year. And the other side is what I mentioned earlier about a positive energy market, including a pickup in oil and gas. So a pleasing half year for International. So in terms of investments, we spent broadly the same marginal increase in new CapEx this year. We spent GBP 34 million versus GBP 32 million last, and a lot of that investment has been in substitutional products, products which are replacing petrol and diesel driven equipment and being replaced by battery and solar powered solutions, and we've had a lot of success in delivering that to our customers. We did order quite extensively after this calendar year in anticipation of some growth and also in anticipation that there were going to be lead time challenges all the way through 2022. Well, certainly, the lead time challenges have continued. However, our view and I think the market's view of growth has been more dampened. And as a result, we haven't necessarily gone ahead with all the capital orders that we made. And those orders have effectively gone back into the market. I know this has happened with, I think, pretty well across the board in terms of the sector. That's given the manufacturers a bit of an ease in terms of supply chain lead times, added to which we've seen some improvement with a long way to go in the fact that the manufacturers are now getting some of their components more quickly than they were 6 to 9 months ago. So we've managed that well. I think we'll continue to manage CapEx tightly over the next 6 to 9 months, dependent on how we see markets develop over that time. One of the responses to flattened rather than a rapidly growing market has been for us to look at the fleet that we already hold and to identify some areas where we can reduce investment in underperforming assets. And so in the first half, you can see that we've got considerably more disposal proceeds in the period. But as you'll have seen from Allison's slides, they've been delivered to good margins and an overall good contribution to the group. So net CapEx terms, the fleet is actually book value -- sorry, the fleet investment that we've made, net terms is 8% down on the prior period. But that doesn't mean that we're -- our fleet is getting older. As Allison's slides show the net book value of the group's fleet has actually increased in the period, and we still have a very young fit for purpose fleet across the whole of VP. So the last slide is just in terms of outlook for the group going forward. We are undoubtedly in our view in a lower growth environment. And therefore, accordingly, we've gone back to basics in terms of running the business. We're managing costs efficiently we're trying to mitigate the impact of supply chain inflation by passing on those where we come to our customers through increased higher rates. And we're also imposing higher rates -- higher hurdle rate for investment to reflect the cost of money, but as we see it going forward. So it's -- they're our main responses to that environment. In the U.K., I think infrastructure strength will still be good for us as a group. We do see stability through modest decline in house building, and I think we're happy that we can continue to flourish with that type of market backdrop, but we do see a flat construction sector, and we're managing the business accordingly to that expectation. International markets, we expect to improve further, and we look forward to that happening. We are driving our own sustainability strategy, and we are supporting customer aspirations as we work closely with our supply chain and our customers to come up with ever more innovative solutions to help with the sustainability challenge that we all have. It's been another strong period of investments in technology, both in terms of enhancing the customer experience, but also in terms of our managing our business operationally more efficiently. We've continued to invest in our people, our learning and development programs across the group are moving ahead nicely. We've taken another 40-plus apprentices this autumn and our graduate program has again got a full intake in the current year. So trading continues to be in line with board's expectations to date. We've got a resilience and proven business model operating in diversified markets. And I think with that, we're confident of continuing to deliver the outstanding long-term return to shareholders that we've generally provided in the past. So that's the end of Allison and my presentation, and we look forward to -- I think we can answer some of the questions, back to Marc.

That's great. Neil, Allison, thank you very much indeed for updating investors this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab situated on the right hand corner on your screen. This is where Neil and Allison take a couple of moments to review your questions that you've submitted already. I'd just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation along with a copy of the Q&A and the slides will be available by your investment company dashboard. Neil, Allison, you can see you received a number of questions from investors throughout today's presentation. If I would just ask you to open up the Q&A tab. Thank you to all the investors for your questions this morning. And Neil, if I may, just hand back to you to read out those questions and where appropriate to give a response and I'll pick up from you at the end.

Okay.

We have to read them?

Yes. I'm sure you're capable. That's the normal 50-50 we applied.

Yes, okay. right, you ready? So given to robust results, why do you think the share price isn't better reflecting the opportunity here?

Yes. I mean, it's a good question and it's a good observation. I think in truth, we are 1 of many stocks in the market at the moment that a drag, in my view, dragged down by just a general negative sentiment in markets at the moment, both in the U.K. and elsewhere. If we look at our peers, I don't think that we said any worse or particularly any better than any of the others. Obviously, we're confident that we're continuing to produce excellent results. And we certainly produced similar results when the share price has been a lot higher than it is today. But I think having been through round the city this week, there is still a certain significant level of caution about guessing how quickly things will improve. So as much as we'd like to see the shares reflect the performance and strength of the group sometimes we just have to be patient, but we're doing the best we can.

Okay. So the next question then is, how are you looking to build out your International division? Would you consider acquisitions to expand outside the U.K?

Yes. We've always felt that having activity outside of the U.K. was part and parcel of the breadth of opportunity and risk mitigation for us as a strong player in the U.K. We were very built into the U.K. market. We have invested -- we've got 2 international businesses, which is Airpac, which is based in the U.K. that has operations in Perth and in Singapore. And we have TR, which is based in Melbourne in Australia but with activities in New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore as well. So certainly, that is an area of the world where we would like to put more investment and to a degree that's been held back over the last 2 to 3 years as we've battled particularly with the pandemic. So I hope that, that will be an area where we will see some further investment in due course. The other element of international is that 2 of our U.K.-based businesses, which is TPA and Groundforce, we set up a European activity there some years ago. And that those businesses are now starting to mature relatively quickly in good markets, and we're very pleased with their development as well. Certainly for now, those businesses report are reported in the U.K. division's results. But what I can tell you is that overall, if you take the international division plus the European activities, we've currently got about 17% of group revenues coming at the U.K. I think probably we'd prefer -- I'd prefer that to be near as sort of 20% plus, but we're not looking to -- the U.K. will continue to be our core market.

Okay. Thank you. So the next question then, at the beginning references my retirement, which was announced at the same time as the interim results, and it makes a nice comments. So thank you very much for that. And then the question goes on to say, what's the planned investment moving forward into new equipment, et cetera? And where are you looking to invest?

Yes. I think I tried to answer the current or to talk to the current scenario for capital maybe on the question current scenario of capital investment. Next year, we're guiding analysts towards a similar level to this current year, which is a similar level to last year, which is enough to keep our fleet certainly refreshed. And the other dynamic is that we don't always reinvest in the same areas. So we're obviously continuing to optimize as we see it, where we should have the investment. So I think that we'll be looking to invest as we always do in new equipment as the growth opportunities present themselves. Obviously, if the markets improve, at a greater rate than we are all currently expecting, then the -- I would expect new equipment investment to accelerate in the same way. In terms of where we're looking to invest again, as ever, we will invest where the opportunity lies. So whether geographically, U.K., Europe or international or within the subsets of the divisions within those categories, we will go where the activity lies.

Okay. Thank you. So next question. I'll try not too quick. So do you see the housebuilding sector providing the business with good revenue opportunities?

I think the housebuilding sector, we -- general consensus that it's going to go through a more difficult phase in the -- certainly in the short term. But for us, as a business, we don't need it to be dramatically improving, we -- as I said in the presentation, we can cope with flat and we can even cope with an extended decline. The equipment that we provide to the housing sector, particularly our U.K. force business, it's a workhorse, if you like, for every house building site. And so to a degree, the customer needs the product, whether they're building 75% of the number of homes on the site or 50% of the number of homes on the site. They still need the product on there. So I think that we're as a business, we're still confident that house building is a good place for us to be.

Okay. Thank you. The next question is, please could you discuss the effects of inflationary pressures on rental fleet renewal?

Yes. It's a very good -- it's not necessarily a good topic, it's a very good observation. I think that the inflationary pressures on capital equipment have probably been higher than in any other area of our group activity. As I've said in a few of these meetings this week, 1 of the great things about rental is that obviously, we don't like our cost -- input costs to go up. But we have -- because we're buying that product to rent out for the -- its useful economic life to us, which might be 5, 6, 7, 8 years. We have the ability to claw that inflationary increase back over that time period in a way that would be very difficult to do if we were just buying the product and then having to sell it straight on. So I think there's an in-built dampening effect of the sort of extensive inflation that we've seen this year. Lots of the products that we operate in the environmental side, we say that over 60% of our fleet is 0 emission point of view. So that means that's a product that doesn't have an engine that's not producing CO2 emission. A lot of those products don't have many moving parts at all. That means that they last a long time, which means that, again, we're not having to rapidly replace a cheaper product with a much more expensive product we can spread that cost of that over a much longer period. So inflation isn't stopping as investing. We can't -- we will continue to work with the products that our customers require and services they require. And obviously, we've got to pass on some of those costs if the customer still requires the product.

The next question is, how do you see the competitive environment evolving in the current outlook?

I think it's difficult to quite work out what will happen from a competition point of view because the supply chain extended lead times, as I described earlier, will I think subdue all our enthusiasm, if we spot an area that we would like to disproportionately invest in or -- and maybe be attempted to do that at a price. I think that the competitive environment at the moment is relatively stable and probably reflects the market outlook for the time being. I think when competition is likely to become more visible again is -- will probably coincide as and when some or all of the markets which we operate in start to pick up in terms of prospective activity. It's always competitive, the rental sector. We're very used to that. So I suppose my answer to the question is that I don't see any particular reason for it to change from the current levels at this stage.

Consolidation or anything like that?

And yes, I mean, in terms of consolidation, yes, who knows. I mean it's not something that I particularly like to speculate on. I'm sure there will be people planning to do things, but that's fine. But no particular comment on that.

All right. Okay. Sorry, I went too far there. Could you say a bit more about the reasons for announcing the formal sales process and then terminating it? Was it just a matter of price?

Do you want me to answer that or you want to do?

Well, you can chip in on some things that -- so the reason for announcing it, so we announced the formal sales process in April of this year. And the reason we did that was we were approached by a major shareholder, who happens to be a trust with independent professional trustees. They were looking at their portfolio and the asset say if we would view to see whether there was an opportunity to sell those. As a Board, we obviously had to consider this request and talk to a bit on that. And we were also advised that we couldn't just sell that particular and at 50% of the shares because it was a major shareholder without being detrimental to the other. So it has to be the 100% of shares that were put up for sale. Before we announced the process, we did, as I mentioned in the presentation, some due diligence on commercial and financial things, which came through well. We didn't have any red flag issues, but there were some things that we could look at in there. The next thing we had to decide was whether we would do a public or a private process. If you follow the private process, according to the rules, you can only approach 6 likely bidders at 1 time. And because we have a major shareholder, it was felt that we wouldn't actually know who was really the interested parties and we wouldn't necessarily get best value on that. So we decided to do a public process, which indeed opened up quite a broad range of interest once we got to that process. So as I mentioned, there was a lot of interest. There was interest from trade, from private equity, from the U.K., from Europe, from overseas. So there was a lot of interest generated. When we made the decision to proceed we -- things have started to down a little bit. Well, the main thing that happened was Russia invaded Ukraine. And so we were aware of that when we made a decision. But a lot of the things that subsequently happened hadn't happened at that time. So the political instability, the rising inflation hasn't happened. So we made the decision to proceed with it. As I mentioned, we had lots of interest from bidders. As time went on, the bidders did start to fall out because I think interest rates and things started to get a little bit more difficult. So we got through and we got to the second stages with bidders, but we weren't able to -- they weren't giving an offer that we would feel that we could recommend to shareholders. So once we decided that which was in August, we announced that the process was completed. We had assurances from the major shareholder, from the trustee that it wasn't their intention to do -- pursue this path again in the foreseeable future. And indeed, I should have mentioned that they weren't unhappy investors when they decided to ask make this review, which is part of their due process of making sure that they have the right balance of investments in their portfolio. Throughout it, we maintained business as usual. We think we did -- we think we aim to do that, and we think we did a decent job of that. Neil and I did most of the work, so we were able to shield the business from most of the disruption. And I think the fact that we can point to robust results in the first 6 months of the year shows that we were largely successful in avoiding any distractions from the process as well. There might ones you want to point.

No. I think you've said it. I think that's fine. Yes. Okay.

Okay. Next.

And then maybe that's it. Okay.

Okay. Question, then. If HS2 was to be abandoned north of Birmingham, how big an impact would it have on your growth prospects?

Okay. So the HS2 work that we had during the 6 months we just reported on was fairly minimal. So we've delivered these results without that opportunity. Yes, it would be an element of growth for certain of our businesses that would be disappointing not to participate in, but it wouldn't really be a big problem. So I think that it's just something that can that we will cope within the normal way as happens. At the moment, as I say, we were hopeful that it will happen. If it doesn't happen, we'll just move elsewhere.

That's great. Neil, Allison, thank you very much indeed, you've taken all the questions that have been submitted from investors. So thank you once again to everybody for their engagement this morning. Neil, Allison, I know investor feedback is always important to you guys, and I'll surely redirect everybody on the call to give you their feedback. But I wonder before doing so, if I may, Neil, just hand back to you, just for a few closing comments to wrap up with, after which, of course, I'll redirect investors on the call to give you their feedback.

Okay. Thank you, Marc. Yes, I -- my main -- I think my main comment is that these are good, resilient set of numbers that we've produced in quite challenging times against the backdrop of high inflation and the potential distraction, but hopefully, Allison answered that of an FSP and despite 2023, creating some uncertainties for all of us, we're still feel positive that we can enjoy that opportunity. One of the Q&As mentioned Allison's retirement from the business. I will take the opportunity again to thank Allison on behalf of both myself and our colleagues, shareholders, alike for her tremendous support over the last 12 -- nearly 12 years. And while we look forward to on the Bielby whose Allison's replacement starting with us in the new year, we are sorry to see Allison go. So I would just endorse the positive comment that one of the Q&A said, and that's it.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

That's great. Neil, Allison. Thank you very much indeed for updating investors this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, could I please ask you not to close this session as we'll now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the company can better understand your views and expectations. This is going to take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of VP Plc, I would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good morning to you all.