Diploma PLC

Good morning, everyone. Happy New Year. Thanks for joining us today. I hope you're all well. I'm here with Chris. Sorry to have missed you in November at the full year update, but I'm now fully recovered and back on it. A few words this morning on our quarter one performance, and then we'll move fairly swiftly into Q&A. So I think the first quarter performance hopefully is fairly self-explanatory from the RNF. Following the excellent results in 2023, we're carrying good momentum and we're reporting a strong start to 2024. Organic revenue grew by 6%, which was fairly broad-based and volume-led. Controls and life sciences have delivered strong growth, continuing the trends from the last quarter of last year. And Seals has performed robustly with modest growth, seeing off the de-stocking the continued destocking in the OEM world. Our reported revenue growth was 10%, with an 8% contribution from acquisitions. And we carry on doing the rewarding small bolt-ons, three more this quarter, which we feel support our high returns on capital. The pipeline remains very healthy. And finally, we're really encouraged by the way we've started with our margins as well in the new year. So overall, we're very pleased with the start to the year. A few words on the outlook. We've got a long, successful track record of sustainable quality compounding. I'd say the market is a bit tougher, but the business model is resilient. And as we've talked about before, our execution of the strategy makes us more resilient. So we believe the current performance is really underlining that, underscoring that and demonstrating that. And we're feeling good about delivering another year of great results in 2024. I'll hand that back to questions.

Our first question today comes from Annalise Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, Johnny. Good to have you back. Two questions, please. So, firstly, you know, you've talked a lot about the resilience of the portfolio and the diversified nature of it, you know, meaning you've delivered another good quarter. Can you give any comments on what continues to be sort of the underperforming bits of the portfolio? I know, obviously, at the full year results, we talked about SEALs. and some of the areas there, and you're saying you're still seeing destocking there in the broader market. But I'm just wondering specifically in your business, is there anything that's changed materially for the better or worse, or any trends that you're seeing relative to the end of September? And then secondly, again, you've commented on margins, having started the year strongly. I'm just thinking about your full year guide. from memory, you know, typically your margins are a little bit lower in the first half relative to the second half, very marginally. So would we expect to see that typical split for the first half, second half of this year? Or how should we think about margins as we move through the year? Thank you.