Diploma PLC

Good morning everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'm here as usual with our CFO, Wilson Ng. I'll say a few words on quarter three and then we'll move as usual to Q&A. It's been another great quarter for us. 15% organic growth continuing the momentum from the first half of the year. The sector trends are broadly the same as they were in the first half. Controls Very strong, broad-based growth, IS Group, Clarendon, Peerless, Windy, still growing double digits, taking good market share in fast-growing end markets. Life Sciences, conversely, markets are tougher. We're going through a little bit of product life cycle refresh. I'm really, really pleased with what we're doing in Life Sciences, what the team are doing, but We will expect low single-digit growth for the year. Seals, we've seen some acceleration in quarter three. We're expecting a good quarter four, two, not celebrating. International is a bit better. Apache and North American Seals still doing very well. So look, overall, we're really happy with the quality, with the performance of the portfolio. Peerless continues to perform fantastically, taking share in really good market conditions. Growth is moderating in the second half, as we expected, against very big comps. And that will continue to moderate into next year until we return to the track record of high single-digit, 10-ish percent growth. We're managing margin down modestly, and we'll continue to see good profit growth going forward. Very, very pleased with the rest of the portfolio. Organic growth now up at 10% for the year, excluding peerless. We spoke in May about CDM, an acquisition we've now completed. $170 million deal, $80 odd million of revenue. It's a great interconnect business for us, platform for them in the U.S. An attractive exposure to the U.S. defense markets. It's got a great team and they're settling in well. We did five deals actually in quarter three, although they were all announced at the half year in May and that makes 15 new businesses in the last 12 months, a record number actually for us. Deals of course won't always be linear, but our pipeline is strong, diversified and we've got plenty of balance sheet capacity. Just a few words on the full year outlook. We're increasing guidance as you can see, a further 7% upgrade. Organic growth guidance increased to 14%, no change to acquisition guidance at 6%, margins up to 26.5%, and altogether that represents 7% upgrades to profit growth for the year of a little over 40%. So overall, we're in very good shape. Momentum's encouraging, loads of opportunity ahead. The mood is buzzing. We're feeling good about continuing a successful long-term track record of sustainable quality compounding. And with that, I'll hand back for questions.

And thank you very much, Mr. Thomson. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad and just make sure that your line is not muted until you reach your equipment. And star 1 for questions. Our first question this morning is from Annalise Ramoulin, calling from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Morning, Jonny. Morning, Wilson. Thank you for the update. I have two questions, please. So firstly, you've upgraded guidance yet again for full year 26. Could you comment a little bit on what this means for full year 27 as we start to approach the year end? And then secondly, related, you know, given the where you're running at now in terms of growth and margins. Could we possibly expect an update to your medium term financial model when you report in November? Thank you.