Zigup Plc (ZIG.L) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Right. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. And I'm Martin Ward, Chief Executive Officer, Zigup Plc. Joining me today is Philip Vincent, our CFO; and we've also got Claire Owens, our MD of the FMG businesses here. The presentation follows a sort of usual format in terms of its agenda. I'll give us sort of an overview, first of all, just in terms of the business performance. We're going to go into Philip then for a summary of the financial performance before coming back to do a strategic review with myself and Q&A at the end. Okay. So starting, this is not only a great set of results but a record set of results with continued delivery of the strategy set out in 2020. The maturing claims and services contract wins previously announced led to good levels of growth in the U.K., and Spain has enjoyed the benefits of a strong economy and normalized vehicle supply. This has supported underlying revenue and EBIT growth. PBT reached a record high, which benefited from higher disposal profits as we rotated the fleet into a strong used market for LCVs. Cash generation was very good. And from an EBITDA of GBP 446 million, we have been able to progress further investments in the fleet assets, increasing replacement CapEx spend this year, which reduced the age of the fleet, make further returns to shareholders for the completion of the 30 million share buyback program, taking the share buyback to 90 million since we commenced the exercise. We continue to support the progressive dividend policy, which has returned GBP 56 million this year and increased the balance sheet value with fleet assets alone accounted for GBP 1.3 billion. And these returns and investments have been achieved whilst maintaining an unchallenging leverage of 1.5x. And of course, this has improved EPS and supported an increase in dividend returns. Let's turn the page. Looking at the operational highlights, just from an overview perspective, I mean, operationally, it's been very busy, and the business has cemented a leading differentiated proposition in the market with the platform of services appealing to a wide number of customers. And it has been an exceptional year for operational progress. We have added to our rental capability with a broad range of new products and value-added services in both the U.K.&I and Spain. And one good example is Blakedale, which has been a standard performer in the traffic management space, and we have supported growth with investment in their fleet, which is up 35%; and new customers, which are up 18%; and operating profits, which are up over 100%. And we also support their customers with additional services, including the specialist fit-out of key customers' owned vehicles who trust in our expertise and specialism in this area. Similarly, Claims and Services, which was formerly known as Redde, has grown its specialist capabilities and broadened its offering, including a new set of out of hours, first notification of loss and accident vehicle recovery services for insurers, which is seeing growing demand. Our scale has allowed us to do more for our existing partners, including contract expansion and new outsourcing customers such as Lex and Abacai Insurance, which went live in the year. We also won a new contract to support a long-standing group customer, Royal Mail, with repair capacity and have more opportunities in the pipeline. Investment in automating and digitizing our systems and processes is a long-term program that brings immediate benefits. For example, we launched a self-service portal for direct insurance rental customers, where around 75% of monthly activity is now going through online with no manual intervention. We plan to roll out this initiative more widely this year to other partners. An investment in our integrated repair facilities, an independent network, which now numbers over 600, is increasing our repair capacity, which remains a scarce commodity. So when I think about the broader initiatives, like our Customer First program, which has reenergized the team after what has been a difficult period where supply constraint in the U.K.&I and parts delays, of course, the real challenges for those on the front line. And looking at the structural trends towards EV take-up in the LCV market, there is positive momentum in the U.K.&I, with a fleet up over 140%. In Spain, the pace is a little bit slower albeit with an increase. We have also responded to a changing EV infrastructure market by developing new partnerships with energy providers. These are increasingly the best route to looking to install home and workplace chargers. So overall, the progress in FY '24 was significant and position us well for the opportunities ahead. So that's a sort of the brief overview for the business. And I will be back to talk about the strategic developments. But now I'll hand over to Philip for the financial overview.

Thank you, Martin, and good morning, everyone. It's great to be here this morning, talking about another really good set of results. So we'll go straight in. And we turn to Page 7, we'll take a look at the headlines to start with. So underlying revenues, excluding our vehicle sales were GBP 1.5 billion. That's 13.7% higher than the prior year with growth across all of the businesses. Earnings before interest and tax increased 13% to GBP 213.7 million, and underlying profit before tax grew just under 9% to another record high of GBP 180.7 million. And underlying earnings per share increased 10.4% to 61.4p, in line with the increase in PBT and benefiting from the share buyback program. And return on capital employed increased 40 basis points to 14.5%, benefiting from underlying profitability and disposal profits. So if we just turn on to Page 8, we can look at revenue. So our platform continues to attract and benefit our customers. And we've seen revenues grow across each of the businesses. So group rental revenue grew 6.4%. And in the U.K.&I, average VOH reduced 7.7% year-on-year due to limited access to new vehicles, but supply has improved significantly through the year with a good supply of vehicles now available. And product extension and carefully managed pricing enabled rental revenue to grow 4.6%. In Spain, access to vehicles has returned to normal and average vehicles on hire grew 4.1% and pricing continued to be carefully managed, resulting in rental revenue growing 8.4%. Claims and Services revenue grew 19.4% with the full year impact of the new contract wins as well as growth from existing contracts. And Vehicle Sales revenue of GBP 312 million was GBP 159.6 million higher than the prior year as new vehicles improved in the U.K. and Ireland, and it continued to be strong in Spain. So we now turn to Page 9. This chart bridges prior year's underlying profit before tax of GBP 165.9 million to GBP 180.7 million this year. So group rental volumes across U.K.&I and Spain contributed GBP 6.7 million of additional profit before tax, and our procurement activity continues to develop and alongside careful management of pricing, we have managed cost inflation across the businesses. Alongside extending our product services and a focus on customer profitability. This has resulted in Spain's rental margin of 18.2%, which was higher than expected and will be higher than our medium-term expectations of 15% for longer. Rental margin in U.K. and Ireland increased 40 basis points to 15.5%, in line with our expectations. And disposal profits decreased GBP 3.8 million in the U.K. and Ireland as older vehicles were sold with lower residual values and PPU, and increased GBP 14.1 million in Spain, where access to new vehicles has returned to normal. So in total, we sold 36,800 vehicles in the year versus 18,200 last year. And that also includes 7,000 Auxillis cars and nonfleet vehicles this year. Residual values have fallen in the U.K.&I and Spain, partly reflecting older vehicles being sold, but overall, they remain high compared to historic levels. And the increase in claims and services from existing and new contracts contributed an additional GBP 8.8 million of profit. And Claims and Services EBIT at 6% reflects the mix effect of business, all of which contribute to the profits for the business with high ROCE. And interest costs increased GBP 9.7 million due to a higher average level of debt and the full year of higher interest rates, which is offset by a reduction in corporate costs of just over GBP 1 million. Now if we exclude all the disposal profits from both periods, underlying EBIT increased 10%, continuing to demonstrate the underlying growth of the business. So now let's turn to Page 10. We can have a look at the cash flow. It's the same format as last year, showing our priorities for cash. So EBITDA of GBP 446 million was GBP 34.1 million higher than the prior year driven by the underlying performance of the business. And steady-state cash generation was strong at GBP 101 million, albeit GBP 90 million lower than the prior year, and spend on net replacement vehicles increased to GBP 125 million as supply has improved in both the U.K. & Ireland and Spain. The average fleet age in U.K. & Ireland has now decreased 1.7 months to 34 months. And in Spain, has reduced a further 2.6 months to 30.1 months. And the investment in new replacement vehicles will generate significant cash over the next 3 to 4 years. We paid dividends of GBP 56.2 million and have chosen to invest a net GBP 345 million in new vehicles, resulting in a net outflow of GBP 20 million. Now the growth CapEx of just under GBP 2 million reflects the fact that most of our CapEx spend this year was used to replace older with new, rather than grow the fleet in the U.K.&I. So our total CapEx spend on replacement and growth CapEx was broadly flat year-on-year. And this in part reflected the lack of new vehicle supply for the early part of the year. As with the leverage in the middle of our range, we have plenty of capacity to acquire more and with significant demand for those vehicles. We spent GBP 4 million on acquisitions and GBP 24.9 million on share buyback, completing the remainder of the buyback in the last couple of months of the current financial year. Now on the basis of ongoing improved vehicle supply in both the U.K. & Ireland and Spain, we plan to continue replacing the oldest vehicles in our fleet. And this means that I expect our total net CapEx spend to increase by just over 1/3 in FY '25. Now in part, that's a catch-up from FY '24, and that's all well within a prudent leverage range. Now the plan also reflects the fact that we have a good position in terms of access to new fleet at scale. We are seeing a return of discounts from OEMs to rental fleets. And simply put, we should be able to get more for our money with higher levels of discounts as volumes return. Now as the age of the fleet reduces, we'll see 2 benefits. First, maintenance costs will reduce. And secondly, the time vehicles spend in our workshops also reduces. Now, both of these benefit utilization and enhance cash flow and returns. Now if I do some modeling on the basis of what we would like to achieve within the business, given our expectations of vehicle supply over the coming 24 months, it would suggest that the average age of the fleet would reduce to around 28 months in both U.K.&I and in Spain. Now, this is on the basis that replacements go as planned and RVs trend as we expect them to. And then thinking longer term, I then expect our total net CapEx spend to reduce substantially in the years beyond, with a corresponding momentum to cash generation. Now the speed of this is principally driven by our appetite for fleet growth and how we want to grow the business. We, of course, continue to have the ability to control the CapEx spend as we see fit to manage our overall spend and capitalize on opportunities we have for other forms of growth. We would expect cash flow to benefit from this investment in fleet over the next few years through rates, utilization and lower maintenance. So although falling in FY '25 with the additional CapEx, this will quickly turn into strong cash generation and significantly increase thereafter. But I can see this moving to save between mid GBP 100 million to GBP 200 million steady state cash flow and then significantly higher then after, accelerating to well above GBP 200 million, everything else being equal. So whilst leverage would track higher with CapEx, it is expected to stay comfortably within our target of 1x to 2x range. And on the basis of a balance sheet, we significantly hired new fleet assets we will have added, which is also beneficial for refinancing. And this cash generation quickly normalizes at a significantly higher level it will provide us with enhanced options as to how we choose to invest for future growth and fund returns to our shareholders. And this will be on the basis for substantial asset-backed balance sheet, large and growing cash generation and leverage remaining at the bottom end of our rental peers. Now if we turn over the page, we can look at where we are on our balance sheet. So the business continues to operate with a strong balance sheet. Our net debt has increased GBP 48 million whilst the value of our fleet assets on the balance sheet has increased to GBP 140 million to GBP 1.3 billion. And we've maintained our leverage at 1.5x, unmoved from the prior year. 65% of our debt at the year-end was fixed, and we have an average borrowing cost of 3.5%. That's 40 basis points higher than last year, reflecting the full year impact of the higher rates, but still very well protected from the high rate environment. Now the chart to the bottom then bridges our net debt from April last year to April '24. Our net debt closed at GBP 742.2 million with ample headroom in our facilities, committed facilities of over GBP 244 million. And we generated a steady-state cash of GBP 166.2 million excluding our lease payments, and this included a net GBP 345 million invested in CapEx, replacing the fleet and growing in Spain to meet demand, GBP 4 million was spent on acquisitions and returned GBP 81.1 million to shareholders in the form of the dividends and the share buyback. In the top right-hand chart, which shows since FY '21, we've now returned GBP 177 million in dividends. We've invested GBP 45.5 million in acquisitions, extending the products and services of our platform, and we've returned a further GBP 85 million to shareholders through the share buyback. So the business continues to generate good cash, which is being invested to generate sustainable returns as well as funding returns to shareholders, and we expect to see significant cash from the returns on the current investments. Now I'll hand you back over to Martin for the business update.

Thanks, Philip. So overall, you would say that's a pretty good performance in terms of -- from a financial perspective for the business?

Yes, we're very pleased. With, one, the underlying financial performance of the business, but also the way we've managed the balance sheet, the borrowings and our leverage through the period as well.

Okay. Thank you, Philip. Thanks. Right. Okay. So look, we've -- the format for this in terms of this session, I think the last sort of 2, 3 years, we've used this to try and educate the market more about sort of what our products and services mean, what the integrated platform means. So we've moved on from that because I think the market has now sort of got its arms around that. So there's a lot more detail in here, granularity around the business. So there's a little bit more to talk to than I normally would. But before I turn to the strategy, just let me touch on the demand and supply environment. So the current market is positive. We've seen rental demand in all geographies as strong as ever. What we are seeing now is a number of requests for pricing from larger fleets, typically between 200 and 400 vehicle fleet operators. So these are operators that own fleet currently. So they obviously owned that fleet post the pandemic for longer than they wanted to. Now the time has come for them to replenish that fleet, and that's a big capital spend for those operators. So we've seen what is I can describe as a sort of a record number of requests where they're looking to move into a sort of a rental model, gives them a different proposition from their owned fleet and it supports that view that we said about outsourcing rather than owning a fleet. So this is a great time to be in the market for that demand. In Spain, the demand has remained robust. There's a strong economic backdrop there. The economy is doing very, very well, and we continue to grow market share. We're seeing what we can do with unconstrained vehicle supply, and you can see the numbers Philip has touched on already in terms of that growth. In Claims and Services, the insurers have made up some ground with pricing inflation. And I wouldn't say that they've covered all of that ground, but they certainly have made up some ground and there is pressure that still exists in terms of parts and repair inflation. So there is continued focus on that repair market. Leading players are playing a pivotal role in supporting insurers with high-volume work, and there's a lot to go for. It's still a fairly highly fragmented market. I've said to you before, and there's 4.2 million repairs in the market, over 2 million of those are insurance repairs. So there's a lot more for us to go for there. And owning that repair capacity and having that integrated is a great asset. It creates further integration opportunities, which, as I've said before, it minimizes the number of handoffs and it's a great customer service proposition. Well, look, in continuous discussions in terms of how we expand our services as well with our key partners, we've said that this has sort of been the building blocks for organic growth where they can take more services across the platform and also looking at are there any spaces that we need to cover where we think we are well placed. And we are supporting a number of new entrants, start-up pensions and Insurtech space as well. One example of this is Admiral Pioneer, which is part of the Admiral Group. So it's their new fleet product where they've partnered with a company called Flock that's brought this sort of Insurtech, if you like, to the table, corporate fleet specialists. And we will be supporting them on a fully integrated service proposition over a multiple year contract. So again, it's just sort of showing how the space is moving and how we sort of play into that space. I said earlier, our EV interest is steadily growing and that is reflected in our sort of growth in our LCV fleet. There's still not enough product out there that meets the demand of customers in terms of what -- how you want to use that product, but there is greater engagement with fleet managers about that transition. And as I said, we've seen some demonstrable growth, particularly in the U.K.&I. So all these dynamics are aligned with our long-term view and what the drivers are for this space, the structure of trends to outsourcing, both from fleet managers and from leasing companies and insurers all plays to the sort of the capabilities that we have. If I look at supply, as I said, in Spain, it's pretty much back to normal across LCVs and cars. U.K., I've talked about it before. I said supply is coming back. 2023 was constrained across the whole of the year, but we have seen that coming back. Now the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders there, we always put up that chart to show where registrations are, and you can see that it's slightly better than the predicted previously. It's up to 340,000 registrations rather than the 328,000 that they forecast previously. So it's obviously been slightly better. And that is reflected in what we say is an improving U.K. market, which has been notably stronger in the second half of the year. So on the supply time, what we're also seeing is that lead times have greatly improved from a year ago as well. So having the discussions with manufacturers across the supply in terms of when we can see that sort of product landing, there's a much more confidence. And we're also starting to see the emergence of volume discounts as well. So as you know, post-pandemic, immediately post-pandemic, those discounts weren't available because of the scarcity. I wouldn't say they've come back in the period that we've reported, but they started to come back to the table, and we expect that to continue that trend to grow where you see the sort of larger discounts as we sort of cycle through the current year. And also in the U.K., we've got the ZEV mandate, the zero emission vehicle mandate. So as you know, this is where manufacturers register vehicles in the U.K. If it's an LCV, then 10% have to be alternatively fueled on LCV, and 22% on cars. Now what we say is that plays very much to our strengths because we have a mixed fleet of cars and vans, so we can mix the product, so we can support manufacturers with the ZEV mandate. We can support that mandate to try and get down to zero emissions, and we can support customers with that supply as well. So I think we're pretty uniquely positioned in that front to take advantage of that. We've talked about the used market. We said we're seeing some softening in residual values. You've seen that more so in cars than LCVs, but they are still elevated against historical levels. We have a good quality product that's on our books. Philips talked about the GBP 1.3 billion of asset values. Well, we see that being elevated for a longer period than the short term. And also, if you look at LCV pricing in the market today, it does reflect the type of mix of vehicle that's being sold. So all the vehicles that have now come into the market with higher mileage, poorer condition, they're not going to command the best prices. We've got a mix of vehicles. We have a lot of younger vehicles with lower mileage that can come to market. We have a retail platform as well as a trade and auction platform as well. So the market dynamics are playing out sort of very, very well for us, both in the U.K. and in Spain. Okay. So if I look at the next slide, just moving on, and talk about our sort of strategy. So to be clear, our core strategy hasn't changed since 2020. It remains focused on delivering differentiated mobility solutions across the vehicle life cycle through our integrated platform. And I guess we've achieved much more over that time frame in terms of growth in product, services, locations, multi-year contracts, which to us actually just shows that there's a quality and sustainable look and feel to our earnings, and we emphasize that. So looking at the capabilities that we have today, we have the breadth of capability, we have a good platform which operates across scale, both in the U.K.&I and Spain, multiple touch points across the vehicle life cycle, and we're trusted by our customers and partners to have the expertise in each of these areas. So one of our core differentiations is the value-added services we offer alongside the provision of the metal. This provides us with good opportunities for incremental revenue and margin away from the simple metric of VOH. So value-added services deepens the relationship with the customer, and it increases their stickiness and likelihood to renew. It's all the things that we put together in those components that make it a very valuable proposition. It also leans into our strength as a trusted partner with expertise in what we do with an ability to provide and interpret data and analytics which support the strategic decisions customers are making, especially around fleet replacement and energy transition. So the platform that we have is also central to our ability to engage with customers in a broad range of channels, and this is increasingly digital as you know, and increasingly direct to the end user. So that universal trend of more interactions digitally is what we are supporting as we're migrating more of our services into that sort of platform. And we're doing that as we go along. So we're expensing a lot of the things that we do. It's not one big program that delivers everything. It's incremental. And if I turn to Slide 15, and let's deal with a sort of the refreshed brand name change and the pillars, our strategic pillars. So look, it was always our intention to rename the group from the merger in 2020. Redde Northgate sort of brought together at the time the identity of 2 businesses, and we didn't want to lose that identity. And obviously, had a pandemic to deal with shortly after. So it sort of went down the agenda a little bit. But as I said, it's always been our intention to change. So this has been in the oven for some time, and we completed an extensive evaluation to test the name and branding, and we were really excited, generally excited about the feedback that we got when we introduced this. We took this out to focus groups, over 3,000 people in total. They didn't know who we were, they didn't know the services we provided but they gave opinions on what emotions and what feeling the name gave. And as I said, it was very, very good feedback. We think it is refreshingly vibrant and clean. It does depict movement, energy and trust. People will have their own views, but this was the overwhelming feedback that we got from our -- from the market testing. So our intention over time is to build brand values to the names that users of our products and services begin to learn what being part of Zigup stands for. We have retained our operating brands. They have value. They're market leaders in their verticals, and we want people to identify with that. However, we will be introducing the operational brands as being part of Zigup. And as I said, as we build the brand values over time, then customers use as partners will understand what that value means as being part of Zigup. And keeping the brand names keeps continuity with customers as well in terms of services across the platform so they can identify with that. And this rebranding coincided also with the restructure that we did in the U.K.&I leadership teams, which brought together all the businesses under a single management structure. So we still have focus in the business around the sort of the day-to-day for the brands, but there is one unified management team in the U.K. focused on delivering the services through the platform. And at the same time as the rebrand, we did refresh our purpose to just make things simple. So keeping you moving smarter. We want to keep it simple. We've sunset the old strategic framework of focus, drive and broaden, which I know is used, and as I said before, is used by many, many firms and organizations for turnarounds, and it served us well over the last 4 years in terms of how we've identified with that. And we've introduced the new strategic pillars of enable, deliver and grow, which does resonate well with our strategic journey and how we set out our future plans. So our core strategy is not changing. Our position in the market with a differentiated business model continues to serve us well. Okay. If we turn to Slide 16. So just looking in detail at the 3 strategic pillars, starting with enable. So this just reflects our role in the supply chain for our partners and customers and within the business itself. It covers how we can leverage the key trends of new technology and connectedness, whether for engagement with partners and customers within vehicles or across our operations. So we look at 3 key areas. It's a continuous program of improving our digital engagement with customers and consumers. And this ranges from updating our e-auction platforms in Spain to driver-focused apps and direct hire bookings, which I mentioned earlier, which can be done entirely online. Within the business, there are many areas where we can increase operational efficiencies through automation and robotics, particularly within the claims process, but also other areas such as invoicing of routine charges. It does require the deployment of colleagues with deep local business knowledge to supplement robotics development expertise. And at its simplest level, robotics have improved accuracy to close to 100% in a number of claims processes. So that results in no rework, which could often be the cause of claims delays. But it does take time to develop these robotics, to install them, to test them and particularly around the Generative AI, which is being used increasingly. So as an example, we've got about 20 claims-based processes which have been automated to date by robotics, which has saved hundreds of hours per month of manual effort, and it enables the team within the businesses to be deployed more effectively on value-adding tasks. And there's plenty more to go for as well, but these are critical processes and then we are ensuring that we learn from our sort of early experiences with AI and robotics and that we can take those experiences forward. So looking at other actions in more detail, if we turn the slide. So on the left-hand side, you can see that we've launched or are piloting a number of outward-facing portals, where greater analytics and insight is now being provided to customers, both for drivers and fleet managers. With the increase in telematics installations, where over 20% of the Spanish fleet and over 30% of the U.K. fleet have installed it, there are significant data available on driver behavior and ability to optimize fleet performance. So these pilots have been -- some of these portals are being piloted in the U.K.&I with customers over the coming months, and a similar solution is expected in second half in Spain. And for fleets, considering their EV transition, we have a dedicated Drive 2 Zero Hub, where we launched a program, which allows fleet managers the ability to access on a regular basis the hub with the potential to migrate vehicles and routes to EV alternatives. So it identifies what their options are in terms of that transition. On the right-hand side of this page, some statistics that are on our training program because it's important that whilst we're doing all of these things with our customers, that we're actually investing in our people as well. And we're committed to providing skills and training essential to our colleagues to perform their jobs well. And especially to keep up with the technical demands is what's becoming an ever more complex environment, particularly around repairs. And when we -- just for your information, we had 3,000 people that have undertook EV awareness training alone. So we're doing that both online and in-person training, it's offered across the organization at all levels to help support career pathway. And one of the things that we're most proud of, we have more than 400 apprenticeships now in the businesses, and around 90% of those apprenticeships stay with the business after they've completed. So that's a really good retention point. And over 30% of vacancies within the business were filled from within, so promoting our people, giving them career prospects. So within the Zigup brand and organizational simplification, helping us to unify what is group culture and increasingly able to offer good development and career opportunities for our people. So I turn to Page 18. So I talk about deliver, delivering for our customers, because that's at the heart of our business and our corporate purpose. So there's been a huge focus on this over the past year as some of the challenges of the supply chain impacts have receded. We've ensured that customer service is firmly at the center of the branch KPIs. And also that customers can have the simplest route to access in our full product offering, particularly aided by the unification of the U.K.&I management team. And this is already delivering results, ranging from more leads being shared across the businesses and enhancements, has been enhancing the interest in ancillary products and specialist services that we provide. And to support this, we've been investing in our branches with improved tooling and technology and also productivity to get customers back on the road faster and smarter. So if you look at Page 19, and just looking at that sort of Customer First in just a little bit more detail, we do have a program that's called Customer First. It's been a great success in terms of reigniting passion for customer service, bringing accountability down to branch and transaction level. So customer feedback is key to everything that we do, both in benchmarking our performance and also in celebrating success. So when we look at Trustpilot scores, for example, we're rated as an excellent business. Northgate, I think it was 4.7 on Trustpilot. I think if we look at it today, it's 4.8, but significantly above the sort of mid-3s for other sort of rental sector operators. And this is a clear reflection of what differentiates us from others. We look at the wider businesses in Claims and Services, NPS scores for our replacement services and vehicle repair services also performed very, very strongly. It's a standout success in the market for what is a key area. Our insurance partners are very focused on service delivery, and it's important that we get that right, and we have been getting that right. Another example is, we've rolled out QR codes in all of our branches that allow customers to give immediate and direct feedback in real time. And we can see that now on an individual basis, on an aggregated basis, and we can respond to any sort of hotspots. And we also, as I said earlier, been investing in our property footprint, particularly within the branches. If we look at the slide, it sort of highlights 4 elements of recent branch investment. Plastic welding tools sounds simple, rolling out plastic welding tools in training. But it's actually allowing us much more opportunities for repair rather than disposing of damaged bumpers, for example. If you can repair, it improves turnaround time, it lowers waste and also lowers repair costs. And it's important that as a business, we are using all the latest techniques to do repairs that can lean into that. In Spain, both in Spain and the U.K. actually, we've installed new paint systems in most of our repair centers. What does that mean? Well, we have faster bake times. So as we're applying the paint, we can cure that paint quicker, which improves our energy efficiency because we're using less, and it has greater productivity because we can put more vehicles through the pipe. And at our branches and our premises, we've rolled out more EV charging. So it's rolled out to most of our U.K. branches now where we think they are viable as in they have places that we would renew the leases. And in Spain, the infrastructure, charging infrastructure is now in the vast majority of all of our urban branches. In green parts, we look at recycling. A good example in Spain is we've developed a database there to track high-demand parts within our branch network and on our vehicles and then we manage the dismantle in the vehicles assigned for scrappage or low-value disposal to extract better value from recycling those parts, which we can use in our own vehicles. It improves turnaround times, improves productivity and it helps towards utilization. Okay. Slide 20, just looking at sort of the broadening customers and the strategic pillar of Grow. We're constantly active on assessing opportunities for growth, whether that's in terms of our locations, increased capacity or whether that's products or new markets. And there has been significant progress over the past year as we position ourselves for the years ahead as well. Now this year alone, as I said, 9 new locations opened in '24, and we've either expanded or upgraded our property state with a number of these being larger sites, allowing for higher productivity, which allows us to implement better workflow. So if you think about it, when we move to a new site, we know exactly the template or the blueprint that we want for workflow. And it's amazing the difference it makes when you get the ordering of your site right and you can lay that out. And as part of the management restructure I've talked about, we have also put in place a strategic and M&A team that is helping to evaluate sort of opportunities and defining the targets for the future. When we're looking at sort of the mega trends and the structural trends in the market, we want to make sure that we are well positioned with our sort of acquisition strategy to make sure we've got the right targets. If I turn now please to Slide 21. Since the start of May '24, the new year, on top of the 9 locations I've talked about, we've opened 3 more branches, 2 in Spain and 1 in the U.K. You can see there in the pictures. I think that's Barcelona. So we've opened up a third site there. And also in Cadiz. And in the U.K., Chadderton in the Northwest. And all of these, as I say, have substantial footprints because we're planning on increasing that capacity. And when we look at our [indiscernible] state, we have 3 drivers to this. One, we want to improve the workplace environment. So taking on new modern purpose-built premises particularly around sort of the bodyshop and rental facilities. Or two, refurbishing our existing sites to make sure that, that working environment is good. I've said about second point, increase in future capacity. So larger premises that can take that additional capacity that we know we're growing into and leveraging that workflow efficiency, which increases productivity. And three, introducing new technology, which enables our sites to conduct best-in-class techniques for repair and maintenance. A digital environment in a bodyshop and a workshop, just think about it for a moment, and some of sort of the older sites, not all the sites, when they're vast, they don't have WiFi coverage, for example. And when you working on vehicles and you're relying on sort of personal devices that pick up WiFi to show you the latest techniques, give you talking on vehicles and wheels and things like that, all these little things add up. So putting that technology to all our sites to get full WiFi digital coverage, all the access points there ready for the technicians to use, it just speeds up and makes everything more efficient, again, adding to productivity. So it's making those investments that support it. I talked about plastic welding, aluminum welding is also a pretty newish thing. So we're investing in the tool and to enable our team to do that as well. Again, it just increases more of the work that we can do that is specialist. So we've grown our product set, and we've grown our vehicle segments. Motability, another good example. We provide 20,000 repairs to Motability, the brand, per year, and that's quite a unique solution because every stage of that process is configured with a specific set of measures and functionality to meet Motability vehicles and vulnerable customers. We've got 30 specialist sites that do those repairs. All colleagues are -- have completed disability awareness training and vulnerable customer training, plus all the adapted repair process and communication tools are in place in those sites. I mentioned vehicle recovery earlier as well. We've rolled out this out of hours, first notification lost recovery services, where we can provide that to our partners. We've done that with a volume partner. This is a core service for us. It's not core to some of our partners, and we're seeing that demand for how you can provide that total package of services across the space. Why is it important? If you look at out of hours recovery, a lot of cost is hidden in picking vehicles up out of hours and taking them to storage yards. Those vehicles can sit in storage hours for a long time when they're taken out of hours because the processes haven't sort of caught up in terms of what they need to do. What we offer our partners and customers, the ability to streamline that service so things get sort of fast tracked pretty quickly in hours or out of hours. And that brings about cost benefits, which feeds into pricing for insurance products, for example. So it's a pretty fundamental service. And as I say, we've been rolling that out during the year and expect that to sort of grow further. FridgeXpress was an acquisition we talked about last year. It's our first full year in ownership and the team there have been developing sort of innovation within the product. So one of our newest vehicles is a multi-temperature vehicle, which plays particularly into the pharma space, which was proven successful with customers. And just demonstrating here, Blakedale. I gave the example earlier with the work from traffic management. Just demonstrating when we take something on we can enhance it and make things more appealing to the markets that we serve. Okay. And just sort of finishing up here on Slide 22, talking about sort of pipeline and outlook. I think you can see it in the announcement this morning. We've said we've got a number of sizable opportunities in tender. And this does support our optimism for the future. The environment is very strong. We've seen good progression, got good prospects in the pipe, and we expect to see further progress this year. We continue with the sort of the BAU-type wins. Not everything is always a big win, but we do have a number of big new wins and the tender at the minute that we're hoping to succeed on. And all the products and services have resonated well in the markets we've served, and I've hopefully given you some good examples there of our right to win. Continuing to invest in that EV capability, we will see fleet managers, we will see the fleet sort of evolve over time. It will be -- take a little bit longer with the LCV fleet for sure, but we can see that we're ahead of the car park in terms of where we are with our total sort of car and LCV fleet. So with all that sort of investment in our people, in our assets, in the environment and everything that we can see, we actually see good progress in the underlying performance of the business, and we see that driving future revenue growth, profitability and cash flow generation. The way we look at the investments in the fleet is that produces significant cash flow benefits in the future years. That's the model. Mixing that with Claims and Services gives us a bit of mix in terms of how we invest in the business. But the combination brings about strong benefits to the business. So that's hopefully given you a little bit more flavor about sort of what's going on in the business, more day-to-day and give you a little bit more sort of feel for the business. As I say, it is a very good environment, a very strong environment that we're working into. And it feels like the markets are sort of responding well as well at the moment, with both in Spain and the U.K. Okay. That has done with the talking piece. I think it's a good opportunity now to ask you for some questions.

Andrew Nussey from Peel Hunt. A couple of questions, if I may. First of all, if we look at Northgate U.K. and Ireland and the 7.7% average VOH reduction, if we strip out acquisitions, what would that look like? And with that figure, do you feel you've been able to maintain market share? Or do you think you've been able to gain market share? You obviously specifically referenced Spain, but not the U.K. in terms of share. And also within that figure, what I would imagine, there's probably a higher level of customer churn in there, has that impacted the underlying mix of the business and your ability to develop it moving forward? And secondly, on the Spain margin. Obviously, you expect it to sort of normalize perhaps more slowly now. What do you think the reasons behind that normalization would be? Is it capturing inflation? Is it competition or any other impacts?

Okay, Andrew. So dealing with your question on sort of customer churn impact on mix on the VOH in the U.K.&I. So I mentioned previously at the last presentation and the ones before where we've been managing certain sectors, particularly last mile. There is an example in the business where a customer with over 1,000 vehicles that we took back over a period of time. We took them back because of potential exposure to that sector, potential exposure to any potential credit risk. So we've managed that in terms of that sort of decline in VOH. I think we've said it before, it's worth repeating. VOH previously, prior to merger, was seen as a key driver for the business. I think we've sort of inverted that a little bit and said, it's a metric for the business. It's not a driver for the business. So getting the right returns, the margin returns, you see we increased the margin. So from a lower VOH in the U.K.&I, we've increased revenue, increased EBIT, increased margin. So it sort of says -- that sort of feels like it's a better managed sort of position and more sustainable. And also during the sort of the period where capacity is being constrained, you can't grow the fleet when you can't get that sort of mix. Now you would have had in that time, you would have had some customers or potential customers that might have bought vehicles directly from retailers because if you remember what we said, when the supply started to come back in the U.K.&I, manufacturers pointed most of their stock at retailers because that was the highest margin. So retailers would have stock that they need to pass on. Customers that were having their vehicles come to an end and couldn't retain them or couldn't allow them to retain them because of a condition of mileage or whatever else would have to have an alternative, so they might have bought vehicles during that time, which now they might want to churn again, I talked about why we're seeing the 200 to 400 fleets coming back and asking that question. So I think we've maintained that sort of market share. We've managed the mix to suit our -- what we think is a more sustainable position in terms of margin returns and so forth. So hopefully, that sort of answers those two first questions.

Can I just -- so just on that mix point and therefore, utilization, should the 91% in the U.K. currently be seen as a better level or more expected level moving forward? Or as the capacity begins to freeze up in the workshop, is it going to be back to 92% or 93%?

We'd like -- I personally would like to see it move up a little bit further. I think the management team absolutely say, "Look, you've got to support customers with replacement vehicles. You've got to have vehicles available." So if somebody drives in, one of the unique points that we have is you can drive into one of our branches. If the [indiscernible] lights come on, if we can't sort it out, either we sort it out with the replacement vehicles. You've got to have some of that capacity available. And as you rightly say, Andrew, if you've got sort of workshop, stuff in the workshop waiting for parts or repair, it puts pressure on that utilization. So we say, replenishing the fleet, also getting newer vehicles should support the trend to a slightly stronger utilization. 92% is a strong position. 91% is where the market might operate or slightly lower. But we say this does support the trend towards it. Dealing with your last question.

Martin, can I just add to it? You asked FridgeXpress as well. I mean -- I mean it's not huge. Now it's about 600 [indiscernible] FridgeXpress. So it's not a massive impact. It will be sort of 1%-ish probably on that 7.7%.

So on Spain margin. I mean, go on Philip. You can talk about Spain margin.

Yes. So yes, it was better than we expected. The business is performing very strong demand. The business has shown over the last couple of years that really has been able to price the vehicles through, which historically, it was struggling, too, with premerger. It has been successfully doing that year-on-year now. They're continuing to look for efficiencies in the way they run their sites, not only by moving to locations that are more efficient but changing the design of how they move they vehicles in our sites, for example, so they can actually help with the utilization. So we would expect it to be higher for longer. Now it is going to come down because we have the higher cost of vehicles coming through, which are priced through, but that will increase depreciation going through. So what would it look like next year? It's probably 17-ish range. It's not going to be 15. It's going to be high for longer. And they surprised us all the time when they give us a new forecast.

It's David Brockton from Deutsche Numis. Can I ask sort of 2 question areas as well? The first one in relation to the CapEx and the guidance you set out, do you have a sense as to the sort of split between growth and replacement within that? And as you, I guess, you accelerate the rotation of fleet, anything we should be aware of in terms of the age of that cohort that you're exiting and what that could do for PPUs? Sorry, that's the first question with several in there. The second one, just in respect of capacity for your claims and services business. You touched on the physical capacity you've built. Can you just give an update on people and parts and how you see that progressing over the year ahead?

Okay, thanks David. Are you ready to answer the CapEx question?

Yes, I can take the first one, Martin. So in terms of the mix between growth and net replacement, always a hard one, David, because it depends on what's happening to the fleet at the end of the year. And we can estimate that, but we never know. If I look at my model, I'd probably say growth CapEx might be half of what we spent the year before last. I think we spent GBP 120-odd million the year before last. So I don't know, mid-50-ish around there will probably be growth CapEx would be the best guess. But it does depend on what's available. And it clearly depends on what's happening in Spain and the U.K. So for example, in the last year, the Spanish fleet grew, Spain growth CapEx, but actually the U.K. fleet trunked, we had negative CapEx. And net now, we have like GBP 2 million, so virtually nothing. So there's a lot of moving parts within there. . In terms of the aging, look, so I said if we increase by 1/3, we think we're bringing aging down to around 28 months. Now look, we're not aiming for 28 months. That's just what the model says we'll come down to. We will reflect the aging roughly into what the market requires at any point in time. And that's our best guess. Alongside, what does it cost to service and maintain those vehicles. As vehicles get older, they spend more time in the workshop, as I mentioned, cost more to service and maintain, and that impacts utilization as well because they're not on the road being rented or happen to give them a replacement vehicle. So we do want to bring it down, 28 months is where we're going to operate to at the moment. And then we'll see. We'll see how the fleet is reacting. We'll see what the customer is doing as well. And then in terms of what does that mean for residual value. So we are selling older vehicles, so it's sort of 4 to 5 years old. You see that in the top line sales revenue number coming down. And PPUs will probably come down a little bit as well because they're generally more damaged when they get to that age as well. So the profit per unit is often a bit lower.

Okay. That deals with the first two, I think. Yes. In terms of sort of capacity and sort of, as you said, on the physical side, you've covered that. People side of things. I mean we are a business, 7,500 people in the business. What we're looking to achieve here is that it's a blend because a lot of the services on claims and services is people in some form of distress. Something has happened and you need that sort of contact. What we want to offer is multichannel. So there might be some instances, which are not as stressful, and multichannel, you can come on digitally. You can make your bookings, you can self-administer, deploy services. And that's brilliant. You don't have to sort of come into a contact center. You can do it at a time of your choice. Other side of things as you do want to speak to somebody, something traumatic has happened, traumatic has happened, and you actually want to make that contact. So it's important that we have quite extensive contact centers at the business, and we've been supporting those in terms of having the right capacity to make sure we can meet it. The out of hours service is another good example of providing that contact when somebody needs to speak to you after an accident. So it's a bit of both. It's investing in the people, and we will grow our footprint for people as we win new contracts to support that, but it's also introducing the efficiencies for the digitization, which will absolutely bring about those sort of gains for us as well as we move forward and making sure the process are right in terms of which channels you go down.

And parts as well, I was interested in replacement parts.