Keller Group plc

Good morning everybody and welcome to the presentation of Keller's half year results for 2026. I'm James Roath and I'm the Chief Executive. Before I get on to the main business of the day, very sadly since our full year results, you'll know that my predecessor Michael Speakman sadly passed away at Easter and I wanted to take this opportunity to pay a final tribute to him. The results that you see today and many of the themes that come out in terms of just how great a business Keller is lead directly from Mike's work with the management team and the changes that were made in the last five or six years have been fundamental in my belief to how Keller has performed. Very sad that business will always remember Mike, but he did an absolutely superb job with Keller. So on with the presentation for today. Firstly, the cautionary statements, which I'm sure is a slide that you're all very familiar with. For our agenda this morning, I'm going to take you through a snapshot of our results before handing over to David Burke, our CFO. who will take you through the financials in more detail I'm then going to return to give you some greater colour around our divisions a view of the outlook and a reminder of our strategy as I think you all know we're going to be holding a capital markets day on the 14th of October and there we'll cover our strategy and growth plans in a lot more detail and then finally we're going to finish with a Q&A so a very brief results summary the Keller Group continues to deliver record financial performance with H1 2026 being no exception in fact 2026 is on course to be the group's fourth record year in a row revenues are up 11% overall due to significant increases in both North America and APAC EME is holding steady despite the Middle East conflict and a tough Q1 due to the winter weather Operating margin was also up on 2025 leading to an impressive 17% increase in underlying operating profit. Overall, H1 is a good demonstration of our geographic and sector agnosticism where we pivoted to key growth markets and high demand sub-sectors to drive top line growth whilst continuing to maintain our margin discipline. I'm now going to hand over to David for a more comprehensive overview of this excellent financial performance.

Thank you James and good morning everybody. Welcome to another excellent reporting period. The key highlight for the first six months is again the power of our portfolio. North America, after going backwards in 2025, is powering forwards. Whilst EME is down on revenue, it is picking up on profit and APAC is up on revenue but flat on profit. This slide shows nine of our most prominent financial KPIs and the performance of H1 2026 compared to H1 2025. Included in the finish is a slide in a similar format that tracks these KPIs over the last four full years to 2025. For H1 2026 the picture remains very healthy with the underlying fundamentals of the business continuing the upward trajectory we've demonstrated over recent years. The most striking feature is the level of growth momentum with all KPIs improving against last year at quite a healthy clip. So let's look at some detail. This slide sets out the underlying P&L for the half year. Looking at revenue, we have excellent revenue growth of 11% on a constant currency basis against a market backdrop that hasn't exactly been stable. In the box on the right you can see North America is the driver, albeit APAC is also growing from a smaller base given the buoyant foundations market in Australia. EMI is down, but driven particularly by bad weather in Q1, fewer major projects and less revenue coming through from the Trojina project in 2026. Our underlying operating profit increased by 17.1% on a constant currency basis. and we increased the margin rate to 7.3%. This again demonstrates the resilience of our portfolio where weaker pockets are offset by areas of strength. I will bridge that operating profit performance in the next slide. Net finance costs are slightly reduced given we have been net cash for most of H1 and the USPP cost is static. Taxation is at an effective rate of 23%, similar to last year. The underlying earnings per share has increased by 22%, driven by the improved underlying profitability and the impact of the share buyback. The Board has agreed an interim dividend of 28.7 pence, an increase of 57%. This increase is driven by our revised policy announced in March to be in the range of 2.5 to 3.5 times for the full year dividend and assumes we will be at three times cover for the full year with 35% paid at the interim. We'll now move on to the operating profit bridge slide. Moving from left to right, starting with half year 2025, underlying operating profit of 102.6 million. There is an FX impact of 1.9 million due to the dollar weakness against sterling compared to half year 2025 Coming to the North America division first which is up 14.1 million versus H1 last year This is an 18% increase in a market where not everything is trending in an upward direction The principal driver is the foundations business with data center and infrastructure sectors driving this phenomenal growth however within foundations block we've had challenges with the miami residential market seeing weakness with projects shifting to the right this miami business within foundations have been defying the broader residential trend for a number of years however concern over interest rates and broader macro uncertainties seem to have made developers more tentative we hope this is a pause rather than a downward trend Suncoast is up on a low 2025 base. This is the local team squeezing profitability out of what continues to be a sluggish residential market generally. The combined Moortrench Recon business is down after a strong last year. Recon has performed well executing a sizeable LNG project but the main client for Moortrench continues to limit investment given the impact the Iran war is having on its input costs. Now turning to Europe and Middle East where operating profit was up 4.2 million despite the reduction in revenue. The Middle East defied the market backdrop with improved volumes and profitability despite a temporary pause due to the Iran war. This is predominantly driven by the UAE with strong volumes and a change order on the Trajina project also helping. Elsewhere the market sluggishness of Europe continues, however the team continue to execute well, increasing profitability and retaining a decent margin level. The exited businesses delta relates to the Mauritius and Seychelles business we exited and represents losses not repeating. We call out the UK separately given the challenges in the market with high levels of competition and a low level of opportunities giving rise to pricing pressure. In the APAC division, Austro continues to perform strongly, offset by the Australia Foundation business which is up on revenue with reduced profitability due to Queensland weather, the impact of project settlements in 2025 not repeating, and price pressure as the business transitions between transport and new opportunities in energy, data centres and defence. Moving to the next slide, I'll cover off non-underlying items. The analysis box shows the items that make up the 5.4 million split between cash and non-cash items. We continue to invest in the ERP program and are getting close with the final build. We are entering into a phase of extensive acceptance testing that will lead to the pilot in Canada in early 2027, followed by the subsequent rollout across the board. restructuring costs relates to the group's finance transformation program which is now focused on north america i'll now move on to talk about cash cash generation does tend to skew towards the second half of the year with historic h1 levels being much lower and 2026 will be no exception Whilst free cash flow has marginally increased, the conversion rate has reduced, driven by increased working capital and capex levels as the business grows. This is offset by a lower tax spend due to the change in the rules in respect of US R&D deductions in 2025. Below free cash flow, the major increases are driven by the return of cash to shareholders, with the increased dividend and the increased level of share buybacks at the half year At the half year we are at 32.4 million through the 100 million buyback with the balance being what was left of 50 million buyback in 2025 being purchased in 2026. In the bottom right we highlight the reconciliation to net debt on an IS 17 covenant basis to 15.9 million. This slide shows the monthly profile of net cash stroke debt. You can see for the majority of H1 2026 we were net cash with the final dividend payout in June pushing us to net debt. We expect the profile for the remainder of this year to be pretty similar to 2025 and hitting circa 30 million net cash level after the impact of the share buyback by the year end. our funding facilities are in a comfortable position from a quantum and tenor perspective we have headroom of circa 655 million this is a very resilient position and along with our cash generating capacity gives us confidence as we look to the future at organic and inorganic opportunities it is worth reiterating our margin performance and our confidence in sustaining margins above 7% This is underpinned by the portfolio resilience referred to earlier and our continued focus on discipline and control in our bidding and execution activities. This is a snapshot of our order book with growth in North America including the I40 project driving the 20% increase. We have called out the I40 project separately due to its scale and multi-year duration. which will underpin future years revenue rather than the current year. James will talk more about the divisional movement later. Finally for me, a slide on capital allocation. We remain committed to this framework that we laid out in March so no change here other than the value of numbers for H1 2026. We continue to prioritise the business first through working capital and capex then continuing the dividends and finally the balance between capital spent on M&A and further shareholder returns through share buybacks. That's it for me. Thank you for your attention. I'll now pass you back to James who will take you through the operational review section.

Thanks David. our h1 2026 results demonstrate perfectly some of the key strengths of the group keller continues to showcase the power of our portfolio and these are a record set of results driven particularly by volumes of infrastructure and data center work alongside superb austral performance but they do also come in the context of a slow south florida market one of our normally strongest performers They come in the context of challenging volumes for more trench who had an excellent 2025. And they come in the context of a thriving but highly competitive Australia foundations market. Keller's geographic portfolio aligned to our market leading portfolio of products and techniques that enable us to win both small and large jobs is proving again to be a winning combination. On top of this, the quality of our people is ensuring that margins are maintained despite teams being very busy. Much of this is possible because the business has the scale to support itself where required and advancements in the last few years have transformed internal collaboration. I'm going to cover our US i40 product shortly, which is a perfect example of how all this comes together to deliver fantastic results for customers and for Keller. safety also remains a strength and as market leader keller sets the standard in our industry however we're not complacent and our forthcoming annual safety week is our opportunity to remind each other of this now i'd like to cover a bit of sub-sector analysis we're going to cover more of this at the capital markets day but i wanted to give a bit more color at these results because i think it really illustrates the power of keller's portfolio our sector agnosticism and our ability to pivot to the latest megatrends. This slide illustrates the top five subsectors for the group and for each of our three regions. The arrow denotes the trend versus H1 2025. Importantly, the top five represent less than 40% of group revenue and I think that illustrates the breadth of our subsector coverage. Aside from this, I'm sure nobody is surprised by the surge in data centres. They now represent the largest subsector for the whole group, with 9% of group revenue compared with 3% in 2025. Excluding Suncoast from the revenue numbers, they're more than 15% of our US revenue year to date. Data centres are also in second place in the APAC division, driven by new buildings in Australia. While we do expect the data centre trend to continue, I also have great confidence in Keller's ability to pivot to whichever construction megatrends exist in our market. Another notable trend on this slide relates to the decline in multi-family residential. Largely because of Miami, this held up in 2025, despite an overall tough US residential market. however in 2026 as David just said we've seen major developments delayed and the revenue in this subsector declining by approximately a third all other top five group sectors were up with mining in APAC particularly impressive due to Austral's strong performance now look at the regions in a little bit more detail as David has already said North America delivered a record first half performance with revenue up 16.7% to 984.4 million and operating profit up 17.7% to 93.8 million both at constant currency levels and margin steady at 9.5%. Growth has been driven by underlying volumes across our foundation's business. especially within data centers as we've just heard but also in high value major infrastructure projects such as i-40 the hudson river tunnels and the second avenue subway extension data center demand is a true mega trend we've done more of these projects in h1 of 2026 than we did in the whole of 2025 again keller's ability to pivot fast to growth subsectors remains a key differentiator The resultant standout contributions from our Southeast, our Central, our North and our Canada business units through strong project execution and commercial management of the increased volumes more than offset Q1 weather disruption and the softer South Florida residential market. Again, as David said, Recon delivered a strong performance on a major Gulf Coast LNG project offsetting the softer, more trenched trading. The order book is also up strongly to 1.367.9 million, reflecting our major infrastructure awards and in particular the I-40 highway remediation expansion. The data centre megatrend continues representing just over £100 million of our work in hand. And finally, Suncoast stayed resilient despite weaker residential markets through diversification and disciplined cost management. We are confident on the outlook for the remainder of 2026 in North America with that record work in hand and a healthy pipeline Leaving us well positioned for continued profitable growth and strong cash generation in h2 And now a little more in depth look at i40 so i40 is the largest project by quite a distance in Keller's history and The job is to reconstruct the highway from the Tennessee state line to North Carolina following significant damage caused by Hurricane Helene in 2024. The multiple complex techniques required illustrate both the enormous technical expertise that exists in our business and the ability to marshal the resources required to deliver at scale. I think Keller has been transformed in this respect over the past few years with the One Keller initiative a major factor in bringing the full power of the business to opportunities. This is a multi-year project involving a range of techniques critical to restoring to full operation a vital piece of American infrastructure. Moving on then to EME. Revenue in EME was down 5.2% to $396.1 million and at constant currency level. Strong Scandinavia volumes due to the Lulia project that we talked about a full year were offset by Q1 weather disruption and fewer large projects than in H1 of 2025. Underlying operating profit was up 28% to 19.2 million with margin improved to 4.8% from 3.6% driven by Middle East profit growth. plc plc plc plc As we look ahead, Western Europe remains subdued, with government infrastructure and defence spend yet to materialise. The UK market remains particularly challenging with volume and profits down. The order book is very healthy though, and it's supported by smaller jobs such as the two residential projects I saw recently on a trip to Warsaw. These are very much the bread and butter of Keller, particularly in Europe. overall the order book is up 16.5% to 396.7 million and we therefore expect continued improved trading in H2 supported by higher Q3 volumes and a very healthy tendering pipeline finally in APAC APAC revenue was up 22.8% 227.5 million driven by excellent momentum in austral and record volumes at keller australia underlying operating profit was broadly flat at 13.6 13.8 million sorry due to margin pressures in keller australia and the non-repeat of prior year project closure settlements austral continues to thrive with revenue and profit both up I witnessed first hand earlier this year the impressive civil works this business does in the mining sector and tendering volumes for complex high value civil and near shore marine projects for late 26 and 27 remain high indeed we will be announcing today that Austral has won a project at Parker Point worth circa 90 million Australian dollars which will go into our order book at the full year. Keller Australia has record revenues on the back of strong public spending demand in areas such as hospitals and data centres but profit has been impacted by pricing pressure as well as unusually severe Queensland weather. In Keller Asia revenue and profit were broadly flat with India expected to see volume growth in H2 after a slow start and with investment expected in the market our Singapore business is benefiting from growing construction demand such as the new terminal 5 at Changi airport that I and our executive team visited back in March the team is confident of maintaining recent momentum despite the order book being 18.9% lower at 174.6 million This is mainly due to a strong comparable period in 2025 where Ostril won several major marine contracts. We still have solid work in hand, good pipeline visibility and supportive market conditions and we expect the order book to pick up in H2 and it certainly helps with that recent win from Ostril. So the summary and outlook, beginning with our strategy for long term value. clearly will be using the capital markets day to outline our strategic plans in much greater detail. The structure we will use is the same as I described for our 2025 four-year results. I believe passionately that the power of Keller's geographic and product portfolio multiplied by the excellence of our people and their performance can deliver a highly attractive pipeline of opportunities. During the event, we'll use both Keller and market data to illustrate why this is the case and to be clear on our growth ambitions. We continue to make progress on all of our 2026 priorities. As David said, as an example, our new ERP will be ready for rollout at the start of 2027, beginning with Canada. And I've hired a new chief people officer, Matt Stripe, to bring real impetus to our talent agenda. clearly much more to follow in october hope to see you all there for the summary and our outlook the record results i think largely speak for themselves we've continued our focus on commercial discipline and operational execution and volumes clearly particularly in the us have been really strong the h1 2026 results are a testament to this We've got strong momentum entering H2 with performance as ever weighted to the second half. We remain confident in achieving our recently upgraded FY26 market expectations. Data centres prove that the business can pivot to growth sectors and we remain confident that this trend is going to continue for some time. But even more so, we remain confident in Keller's ability to pivot to whichever construction megatrends exist in our markets. at any given time. Our balance sheet remains very strong with optionality to grow both organically and inorganically through bolt-on acquisitions and I look forward to sharing much more of these plans with you in October at our Capital Markets Day. And with that I'll pass to a Q&A. Thank you.

Thanks very much. Thanks. Ainsley Laman from Investor. I think I've just got three, please. I wonder if you just give a bit more colour on the kind of data centre megatrends you talk about in terms of where is that kind of all across the US or at the very early stages of that? Do you expect that to get... bigger and bigger over the next kind of 12 18 months and second question maybe mainly on the us as well just any comment around cost inflation whether you know cement steel how energy costs or whether anything's changed on energy cost and then third question just on the emi margin is that step up more of a function of kind of better execution of some of those bigger projects or is actually some structural improvement that we should expect to be sustained in that division thanks

So, data sensors are pretty much all over the US. There doesn't seem to be a particular trend and there doesn't seem to be a particular trend in terms of rural or urban either. They pop up everywhere. We like them when they're in challenging geological conditions because they require more of Keller's expertise. to make them happen and in terms of the cycle I think we believe the projections and the number that I've heard quoted is 650 billion dollars to be spent on data sensors and I think we're still relatively early in that cycle so all the noises at the moment coming out in the US so the trend will continue

in terms of um cost inflation i mean because as we've always said in the past we are a short order business so we get the opportunity to re reprice uh if things do if things do increase and if we have longer term projects um then we we always insist on some form of protection whether it is an escalation clause or we'll price we'll price escalation into uh into the job as well so actually we're not seeing that much impact even with The fuel cost we did a bit of an exercise in the early part of the year to understand what the impact from the Iran war was Actually didn't turn out to be that material at all. So, you know, we feel reasonably comfortable with that Any margin I think is a combination of a few things I think one aspect is the fact that Regina projects which we provided for fully in 24 are came through as revenue in 25 with no margin so that's not repeating in 26 so that gives the margin a bump but also the fact that the UAE has had good volume through its business and at a reasonable margin rate that has helped as well and I think the other aspect with the rest of the business is even though the market is sluggish you know they're executing very well and you can see there's even a bump in profitability from the rest of the business despite that the fact that the market isn't great so there probably is a bit more to go on in emergent particularly if the if the market if the market turns thank you uh

I think I've got about half a dozen, but I'll do half of them now and come back later. Canada, no mention at all on the North American slides. It would be interesting to get an update on where you are there and how that business is performing. The second one on acquisitions, is there anything in the pipeline at the moment? Are you getting close to anything? And has your, I suppose, geographical preferences changed? changed at all um and the third one i suppose go back to ainsley's question on data centers it's missing from that top five list in europe is there nothing happening in european markets in terms of data centers or are you just not in that market at the moment sorry i can do the canada you want to do canada yeah yeah i think um

Canada from a couple of years back has actually transformed its deliveries at a very good year in 2025 and it continues to be that's why it doesn't feature in that bridge slide is because it's had two good half years in a row so there is a lot of infrastructure working on in Canada and we actually visited some sites in Toronto When we were there a couple of weeks back, very solid performance in that business.

Yeah, it was really inspiring. We have lots of young talent all around the world, but Canada in particular, we have some really talented engineers and they're working on big projects for the Toronto metro. But good note, we'll bring it out a bit more in the capital markets today. From an M&A perspective, I think the first thing to say is, and I can't keep saying I'm new, right? I think that's just about run out. But this has been my first 12 months with the business. And I think before doing any acquisitions, big or small, you want to take some time to just really understand where we're at. And also, as you've seen from the numbers, the organic growth is terrific. So I think we can afford to be patient with M&A. I still believe, and we'll talk about it more at the capital markets day, I still believe that there are opportunities in certain geographies to accelerate our organic growth. through using some bolt on inorganic acquisitions we do have a pipeline and we are actively looking at things but I want to make sure that they really do make a difference to the business and don't disrupt the fantastic momentum that we've currently got. Data centres, that's a very good challenge and again I think that's something that we can pick up in the capital markets. We just aren't seeing the same level of opportunities in Europe for Keller as we are in Australia or in the US. I honestly don't know to what degree that's to do with how many are being built versus keller's market positioning i i suspect less of being built but um we'll we'll pick that up and um and provide a bit more analysis at the capital markets day morning ben barrett rvc that's first one just on the order book uh you've yeah called out that the duration has extended is that just the i40p so is there anything else

to that and can you also chat through the current visibility the group has within that second question early days but thoughts on growth heading into 27 is there any fairly indication there particularly in north america third just on the group as it stands today i think the narrative has been that you're content with the areas that you are for now, but from a divestment perspective, is there anything that could be done there to further streamline the group? Thanks.

a pain to say that the IPOCTI project whilst it will chew through a good piece of that 380 million of that signed up contract in 26 there is an equal spread into 27 and 28 and I think other than that the nature of the order book remains pretty similar in terms of visibility we do tend to chew through two thirds of the order book in in six months and then the the balance gets made up by stuff that comes in and goes out during that um during that reporting period we don't see any change in that but from a momentum perspective we are um we are seeing good tendering levels that continues and we have no reason to believe the things are going to drop off as we as we go into 2027.

in terms of growth I'm going to completely duck under that bouncer we'll tell you that at the capital markets day we know how enthusiastically the market is waiting to hear some of those thoughts on growth and from a group perspective really happy with where we are from a geographic perspective uh david alongside mike has in my view done a terrific job of focusing us in on the markets where we can um really um really make a difference get paid collect the cash and and contract sensibly i'm happy with our geographic um uh geographic splits and from a business perspective you know i mean yes um you know more trench as an example had a has had a bit of a difficult year because of the middle east conflict but it had an amazing 2025 and you know austral goes from strength to strength and recon's having a very good 2026 so i think you know there's a there's enough diversity without it being too much right diversity in the portfolio so i'm pretty happy with where we are yeah and you'll see in

Anyway, we drop out of sales and Mauritius and we continue to look at areas like that There's not too much left in terms of small areas to to drop off But yeah, we continue to look at it, but I don't think there's anything material left

and the model the way that the model has been set up we're still able particularly in europe we're still able to pivot to um countries where there are opportunities with customers that particularly want us to to go there so as an example we've done a we've done a job recently in iceland we don't have a branch in iceland we don't have a team in iceland but it was a particular customer that wanted us to support them so our Nordics team supported in Iceland so we can within the model we have we can do that but I don't think we need to go around putting any more flags in countries Hey guys I'm Jamie Murray from Bank of America two questions from me first one is what are the key bottlenecks that you're seeing especially

in north america where the opportunity is clearly vast and how are you managing that and then secondly um just another stab at the order book clearly 1.9 billion is an unbelievable record that you guys achieved how much of that is going to be executed in the next six months versus beyond so in terms of bottlenecks like it's all it's always the same in this business it's people and it's

to a degree it's the operational executional people depending on what the job is sometimes the rig operators can be very specialist and there's a pinch point there superintendents the sort of site supervisors is always an area where there's quite a battle for talent in the industry and then even though there's a good pipeline of engineers coming out of particular US universities um there's still you know quite some work to do to get those people in and to get them trained up and to get the right experience so when i referenced earlier about um our new cpo that's part of having a keller does a good job of it at the moment but i think we can do better um in terms of planning that talent pipeline and planning uh planning those um investments in people so we'll be we'll be doing more of that kit's not a problem particularly in the us you can you can rent kit and rent rent equipment um so in terms of what we're doing about it it is it is keeping up with that that that organic piece this isn't a business where i could just go out and tell the team to recruit another thousand people so that we can do more work but i'm not even sure we'd necessarily want to right we want to we want to grow cautiously with the volume that's the volume that's there and then in terms of the order book as David said we burn through you should sort of take I40 out which we've publicly disclosed the value of I40 and then assume that the rest of it is relatively normal profile which is that we burn through about two thirds in the first six months we actually burn through around 35 to 40 percent in the first three months which I think one of the things when we talk in these results presentations we like to talk a lot about the big jobs right because the big jobs are the exciting ones they're the ones that sort of capture people's imagination but the reality is that Keller's average size job is somewhere between half a million and a million quid so we are still as I said in the presentation the jobs I saw in Warsaw they are very much the the bread and butter of what Keller does so 35-40% being burned inside the first three months shows you how quickly that order book turns and historically we'd have somewhere between 10 and 20% 10 and 15 maybe that is more than 12 months that's the bit that I thought he will skew we'll have a bit more in that pot because it goes into 27 and even into even into 2028 so I would take off I-40 and then assume that our normal profile exists. Even with that Ostril job that I mentioned a minute ago, that's a decent sized job, but Ostril already exists in those numbers I just quoted and they do tend to have, they're one of the ones that has a longer burn because they're bigger contracts with large organisations.

Did I miss the figure that you've got left to spend on the ERP program? Second one around working capital, how should we think about the dynamics around inflows outflows probably outflows as the business grows going forward so it will be useful to get an update on that have you got any material claim settlements to come in the second half of the year I suspect those are all yours David and the final one probably for James around the US businesses when we were talking about outside performing probably about as well as it's ever done you've made it into a proper holistic unit is there anything you can take from that and apply it to europe and australia in particular i suppose i'm thinking about there and you just haven't had a chance yet to do it okay um let me pick up and you didn't miss the number in terms of erp because i didn't mention it

um yeah and i think that i think as i said where we are with it is we're pretty close to the final build uh and doing extensive um and and doing extensive acceptance testing at at this time which we continue to run for the rest of uh for the rest of the year and then the plan is to launch in uh it's it's launching canada now I think we've got to come to a choice as to how quickly we then roll it out and I think that will drive a cost element and I think we've got to make a choice around that because we could do simultaneous rollouts in different parts of the world or we could just sequentially do it which would be a lower cost but longer time. We do think there is significant benefit for us in terms of getting it in as quickly as as quickly as possible so i think the ultimate um cost associated with the erp is is still something that we need to have that um conversation about how we go about the final rollouts and a lot of the the work that we'll do in canada in the first um three months in terms of testing that system and process um will drive will drive that decision um working capital yet i think you're absolutely right in terms of i would link it to the growth uh growth of the business um and and you'll see that there has been an outflow in the first um in the first half compared to this time last year i think the i-40 has a bit of an impact because there is inventory on that um there's quite a high material content um and uh and and that has uh bumped our inventory uh our inventory cost up Plc Plc Plc Plc Plc Plc Plc Plc Plc Plc Plc Plc Plc The claims register and frankly nothing is in that register that I don't think will lend from a material perspective in the second half. Never say never. And we've had situations where clients do go okay let's settle but there's nothing in the forecast in that respect.

And then your question about US performance is a great question. I would say that One Keller Mike and David's One Keller program has been pretty universally successful so I think some of the history that existed in the US also existed in Europe with different regions and countries not particularly working very well together and that's not what I see now there's a very collaborative approach of course the one advantage that the US has that I'd like Europe to have more of a scale so we're massive in the US and we have a good number of people and therefore I think that drives an overall higher capability so some more scale in Europe would be good I think in Australia yes there are also opportunities but we're already on the road with that because keller australia and austral work a lot more together than i think they have done in the past um we've seen quite a lot of bids recently so so though austral is more of a civil business more of a almost a general contractor um there are and there are experts in particularly in near shore marining and marine near shore marine there are elements where Keller Australia can come in and work with them so we're seeing quite a bit more of that and then I think the final opportunity for us is really and this is mostly to do with how busy they are rather than how willing they are but there is such capability in our US business that I think they can help the other regions a bit more with some of the things we do and in fact we started a little bit of that in APAC where there have been some US defence opportunities in certain parts of the world that are in that region and we've seen more partnering up between the US business and our other regions to drive opportunity I think there is a bit of a structural difference between North America and

and europe as well in terms of the regulatory environment you know one regulatory environment in in the us um so that's one factor i think because you have different regulations in france and germany you can't move a driller from france to germany very easily you've got to have german papers in order to in order to do that so that's one difference and then i think the level of vertical integration as well is a bit of a factor in terms of

in terms of pricing not much practical integration in the US and a lot of it in Europe which makes things very competitive We've just got three questions that have come in on the webcast to finish off the Q&A the first one is from Bruno Berry from West Yorkshire Pension Fund and he's asked the UK is a relatively small part within Keller Any thoughts about the prospect for this market, level of competition or M&A opportunities? And then two final questions that come in from Rob Chantry at Berenberg. Could you give us some more colour on the economic characteristics of data centres just in terms of resources needed, timings, length of bidding? um and then the final question having been involved in the i-40 project has that opened up any broader scope for major projects um deals in terms of bidding capability um technical capability and just understanding of the process around major projects in the us yes i think if we start with the uk look we're we're domiciled in the uk right and it's a it's a it's a difficult market for everybody

and the vertical integration that David just described is probably the UK has got some of the most of it in the world but it is an important market because of where we are and where we almost are but I think we see there remain opportunities in the UK particularly at the more ground improvement end of things rather than the straight foundations so we are we're committed to the market and we see those opportunities and sooner or later we believe that the UK market will turn and that there will be investments in infrastructure so it's worth waiting for that in terms of the data centres so we talked at full year about the number of jobs we've done and how much revenue and it's quite easy to remember because it was basically 100 jobs for 100 million of of revenue so even I can work out the math for what the average size of the job is I think we've seen a slight uptick this year I think the average size of the job has come from a million sort of million and a half I think that's skewed by one or two projects where they've been a bit more complex. But in general the thing to remember about what we do as a business is that what is being built is not the differentiating factor for the size of the job for us. The differentiating factor is the geology, is what we're building or the ground that we're preparing. a warehouse or a data center can have a completely different bill for ground improvement ground engineering in one geography versus another geography and that's got nothing to do with what's being built on them and the same applies in case there's a follow-up question which is around margin with margins are not dictated by the sub-sector margins are much more about what technique are we applying to the job and how complex is it and therefore what is what is the range of competition that we would have for for a particular job but one thing I would say about data centers which makes them particularly attractive for us not universally but in a lot of cases schedule is incredibly important everybody is in a real hurry to get these data centers put up and when schedule becomes the most important thing to a client and we have to balance resources to meet that schedule you do tend to find that margins are a little higher so it's not universally the case with data centers but i would say schedule being important is more prevalent in data centers than it is perhaps in other in other subsectors and then lastly on I-40 look we already do a lot with roads that's why that's why we've got that job you know because we have a lot of knowledge of it I do think I do think it demonstrates Keller's ability to do really big jobs and I think that pre-1 Keller Keller probably couldn't have done the I-40 job it probably would have been too big But now that we have an organization that has all the different branches and the different regions work very collaboratively with each other, we're able to share resources and meet the demands of a large project like that. That will definitely be useful for us in terms of referencing, I'm sure, because we'll get positive reputation from doing something like I40. important to say though that that doesn't mean that we go to a strategy of wanting you know that bigger is better right because as i said earlier keller bread and butter is those smaller jobs and the smaller jobs drive the utilization of our people and the utilization of our kit So whilst we want larger jobs, we wouldn't want to only be a large job business because that drives your productivity and your efficiency in too lumpy a way. So yes, great to have the reputation, great to have the opportunity to do more large projects, but definitely wouldn't want to just be a major project business. That wouldn't be a good route to go down. Okay, well I'm conscious that this is a very busy week for reporting so let you all go. Thank you very much for joining us today. We're obviously delighted with our excellent performance in the first half. Hopefully it's come across how much we think it reflects the strength of our geographic diversification and just our sector agnostic. Keller is supported of course by the brilliant people that we have out in the business and as I've said a few times and ducked a few questions we look forward to discussing our strategy in more detail at the Capital Markets Day in October on the afternoon of the 14th of October in this very building James thank you very much thanks a lot