Diploma PLC

Good morning and welcome everyone to our trading update. Thanks for joining. I'm here as usual with Chris. I'll say a few words of summary and then we'll move swiftly on to Q&A. First, a few words on our performance. It's been a strong performance in quarter three, adding to our long-term track record of sustainable quality compounding. For the full year, we're upgrading our organic growth from 8% to 10%. And year-to-date, our organic growth grew by 10%. In controls, we continue to have great end-market support, aerospace, defense, energy, etc. And we're making good progress with market share, too. Windy City is doing very well in data centers. Peerless continues to do very well in aerospace. In life sciences, we continue to deliver well, consistent with the first half. And importantly, we're now seeing sequential improvement in seals as the second half progresses. Reported revenue for the year to date was 12%, 4% from acquisitions partly offset by FX. And operating margins are still strong in line with our full year guidance of 22%. Now a few words on acquisitions. We welcomed two new exciting businesses to the group, spending nearly 40 million at a blended eight times multiple. Hagenson we acquired. last month for 11 million pounds. It's a quality sealing solutions business, which will combine well with our existing M-seals business in Denmark. In life sciences, we acquired Alpha Laboratories for 28 million pounds. It's an important platform getting us into high-growth IVD end markets in the UK. It specializes in screening for bowel cancer and disease. And importantly, it allows us to bring our extensive IVD experience from elsewhere into the UK market. These businesses will contribute well to our future organic growth and at great returns. Overall, the acquisition pipeline is in very good shape. So we're pleased with the performance. We're confident it's going to be a great year for us. And we're feeling good about delivering sustainable quality compounding for the long term too. And we'll hand over for questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star 1 for your questions today. And our first question today comes from Anneliese Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Good morning, Jenny. Morning, Chris. Two, hopefully, brief questions from me. So, firstly, the acquisitions that you've made, can you comment at all on what kind of growth those businesses are doing today and what is the upside opportunity? You've talked about the combination with sales for the Danish business, for example, but are there revenue synergies, cross-selling, etc.? Is that the usual diploma playbook you expect to execute on those deals? And then secondly, just on DIXA, when we spoke in May, you were talking about seeing an improvement through the first half. How has that trended through Q3? And has that continued to improve as well as, you know, alongside your improving U.S. sales business? Thank you.