Diploma PLC

Good day and welcome to the Diploma PLC Half Year Results 2025 Webcast and Conference Hall. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Johnny Thompson, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first half results update. I'm joined, as usual, by our CFO, Chris Davis. And it's the usual agenda. I'll start with an overview and then Chris will take you through the numbers before I come back to talk about the businesses, questions and answers as usual at the end. So let's get straight into it. We're making good progress this year, and I'm really pleased with a very strong performance again in the half. Sustainable quality compounding, in my mind, is about the ambition to grow our earnings primarily through great organic growth, together with the disciplines that make it sustainable, primarily measured by returns, and to deliver these in the good times and the bad. Earnings growth of 23% at 19% returns in the half demonstrate well these compounding credentials. The environment is of course a bit uncertain, but the quality and diversification of our portfolio together with our differentiated local business model allow us to navigate these times successfully. For these reasons and with positive trading momentum into the second half, we're confident in upgrading our full year expectations. Stepping back a little, I feel we're just getting started. I'm really excited about our ability to continue compounding for the long term too. It's been a very strong performance across all of our metrics. We're ambitious about organic growth. That's our priority. So I'm really pleased with 9.5%. And total revenue was up 14%. We increased operating margin by nearly two percentage points to 21.5%. And as a result, EPS grew by 23%, continuing our long-term track record. It's been a disciplined performance too, 78% cash conversion, significant balance sheet headroom with leverage at 1.1 times, and improved return on capital to 19.1%. Overall, it's a very strong performance, and we've started the second half in the same manner. I'd like to thank all of my brilliant colleagues, The skill, energy, and passion that they bring to their businesses and the group every day is what drives our success. Building our capability is the most important part of my job. We invest in developing our people and build capability further by bringing in new talent. Our differentiated culture of commerciality, accountability, and continuous improvement is thriving. The mood is positive and energized. Have a look at this short clip from the sales excellence event we hosted last month. 75 colleagues from all of our businesses came together in London. I think it really captures that positive energy.

And of course, our people, they're our biggest asset. And the engagement that we have, the mobilized workforce and colleagues that we have is a huge part of our success. It's a competitive advantage.