Luceco plc

Thank you very much. And thank you very much, everybody for attending this webcast. As you can see from our smiles on page two, we're extremely happy with our results from last year. And on page three of the presentation, I'll take you through some of the highlights. Extremely strong financial performance. We grew our revenue by more than 30% and our operating profit also more than 30%. And we have more than doubled our profit over the last two years. Our business model has shown its extraordinary strength throughout the pandemic. Our vertical integration, owning our own factory in China was a huge help with the supply chain difficulties. We had a huge amount of inflation. The cost of raw materials and shipping has been particularly difficult, but we have managed to increase our selling prices and our operating margin actually improved over the previous year. We have also grown our business via acquisition. As you can see, we made an excellent acquisition of the DW Windsor lighting business. And only this morning we have announced a further acquisition of a small EV charging business called Sync EV. We've also entered the commercial power market with a whole new range of products that we have built organically. And we've improved a lot on our ESG focus. We were carbon neutral last year, and now 25% of our products are classified as extremely low carbon products. And with that, I will hand over to Matt, who will take you through the results.

Okay. Thank you, John. Morning, everybody. Let me just... Start by taking you through some of the detail of the financial performance for the year. So I wanted to pull out some of the key highlights first on slide five. So obviously there's really little doubt that 2021 was an outstanding year for the group. So revenue grew, as John said, by 30% to just over 228 million. That was the biggest increase in revenue that this group has ever produced. Adjusted operating profit also grew. by 30% to 39 million. And of course, that means that we did a great job of converting that healthy top line progress into bottom nine earnings. Furthermore, despite almost unprecedented inflation, we succeeded in expanding our adjusted operating margin by 10 basis points to 17.1%. I'll explain more about how we did that in a moment. And of course, that increase in profit resulted in a big increase in adjusted EPS to 20.2p, which naturally we're delighted to share with investors via a dividend of 8.1p, which was 31% higher than the year before. Okay, moving on to the income statement on slide six. Here I'll give you some more color behind this outstanding performance. So the first thing to say is obviously we were not alone or we are not alone in reporting strong revenue growth for 2021 against what is typically a weak COVID impacted comparative for most other businesses. I think what sets our performance apart though is the progress that we've made against our strong pre-COVID 2019 comparative. our revenue is now nearly 33 percent higher than it was before the pandemic and nearly all of that growth has come organically now some of it has undoubtedly come from supportive conditions in the uk rmi construction market but there's also little doubt that we have outperformed that market and i will explain how we have done that in a moment There's also no doubt that the group has benefited from a broader base of growth from its increasingly diversified products and customer base. So, for instance, as UK residential RMI markets inevitably cooled a bit as we got into the second half, after a very buoyant start to the year, we saw our non-residential and overseas businesses come through. with accelerated top line growth. And we hope to make this a group over time and increasingly diversified and therefore resilient group as time goes by. Gross margin inevitably retreated slightly as expected to 37.1%. And that was in the face of industry wide cost input cost inflation. However, we are satisfied with our selling price resetting plan. which is now fully implemented and through which we expect to pass on that inflation in full. In terms of our long-term outlook on gross margin, clearly there are inflationary pressures across the economy, but I would just say that this business has achieved 40% gross margin before the recent COVID-driven inflationary wave, and therefore we remain confident that we can return to those kind of levels over time. Turning to overheads, these remained under tight control. So to illustrate both the overhead control and natural operating leverage in this business, we state here that in the last two years, we have needed only 1.4 million of extra overhead to support 56 million pounds of extra sales. Indeed, all of that extra overhead actually relates to acquisitions, meaning that we are now using less overhead to support an organic business that is 30% bigger than it was before COVID. And that strong leverage of overheads basically turned gross margin compression into operating margin expansion to 17.1%. Expanding our profitability in these conditions, I believe, speaks to both the power of our brands as well as the quality of our business model. And then finally on this page, we achieved another year of low taxes. So the natural tax rate for this group, given the jurisdictions that we operate in, should be about 19%. We've kept it below 17% for the last two years, and that has been achieved through sensible tax planning overseas. Okay, moving on to slide seven. I mentioned a moment ago that we had outperformed the wider construction market. So how did we achieve that? Well, the building blocks of it were very similar to those that we set out at the time of our half year presentation. So firstly, we operate in attractive markets that are focused on the RMI side of construction. And since the year 2000, that RMI construction market has grown in the UK, has grown faster than the wider UK economy. And it's also grown consistently. So it's grown in 18 of the last 21 years. And we estimate that these attractive RMI construction markets, both in terms of DIY and professional, drive 80% of our top line. As you can see in the top right, these markets have also performed well during COVID over the last two years. So better than the wider UK economy. And you could also see that we have performed better than the wider RMI market. So how have we achieved that performance? Well, in all honesty, we do have a greater share than our competition of the DIY and small contractor end of the RMI spectrum. And it's that part of the RMI market that has been most buoyant as people have spent more money on their homes during COVID. But that's really only part of the story. As you can see in the bottom left, there's been a lot of self-help as well. So we've picked up 27.5 million pounds of new business wins, and it's been very profitable business at that. We've used our vertically integrated model to add inventory to combat supply chain disruption when some competitors found their warehouses empty. And investment in our fulfillment capability meant that we got more of our imagery into the hands of the customer on time, which has been particularly valuable during this disrupted supply chain period. Now, clearly, there's a good chance that our markets will not always be as buoyant as they have been in 2021. But the good news is that we have the proven ability to outperform. As you can see in the bottom right, we now have various ways of doing this. So we started life as a UK-based, consumer-focused cable reel manufacturer. Over time, what we have become is an international, increasingly contractor-oriented manufacturer of various electrical products. Our products can certainly still be found in the home. But they can also be found in the office, warehouse, or factory, and of course, increasingly also on the street. So we are now an increasingly diversified business, and you can see the benefits of that in the second half of 2021, when all of our sales journals delivered healthy growth. Okay, turning on to slide eight, you can also see the benefits of that diversity within our performance by product segment. So all segments deliver top line and bottom line growth, and we now enjoy healthy positions within each product category, aided by the share we have taken organically during COVID, as well as sensible bolt on M&A to expand into adjacent product categories, such as the recent acquisition of DW Windsor. Okay, moving on to slide nine, I'm sure many of you are keen to get an update from us on inflation. We have closely monitored the cost of this industry-wide issue during the year, and I've always transparently shared my latest thoughts on this with you. So just by way of update, at current prices, we continue to believe that input cost inflation across currency, freight and commodities will cost us £25 million on an annualised basis in total. Roughly half of that arose in 2021, with the rest expected in later years. And we expect that our selling price increases already agreed with our customers will offset this amount in full. albeit with a slight time lag. The inflationary backdrop is, of course, quite fluid at the moment, so we continue to monitor this situation closely and we will respond accordingly. The time lag that I referenced temporarily compressed our gross margin in 2021, but this should begin to reverse from 2022 onwards. And I think the final point to make on this slide is that the fact that we have found a home for £25 million worth of cost inflation, which is greater in quantum than the entire profit made by the company two years ago, I think speaks to both the strength of our brands, as well as how far we have come as a business in managing inflationary impacts. Okay, moving on to slide 10, obviously the pass-through of inflation had a significant impact on our profit progression. So in summary, we passed through 7 million pounds of the 13.6 million pounds of impact cost inflation arising in the year, and that therefore left a 6.6 million pound temporary profit gap. This gap will close from next year onwards. We were able to more than close this profit gap, though, with strong operational execution. So continued investment in our production facility delivered a further 1.9 million pounds of manufacturing efficiency gains. We also put a lot more volume through our existing sales and supply chain infrastructure, meaning high conversion of strong sales growth into profit. And this allowed us to protect, in fact, indeed, slightly expand our overall profit margin. OK, moving on to slide 11, you've seen me share this slide with you before, so it shows the latest trends in our four largest inflationary drivers within the business. In terms of latest trends, we did, in fact, see more docile inflationary conditions at the end of 2021 and the start of 2022, of course, only until the most recent terrible events in Ukraine. We do expect to see further easing in the sea container rate, notwithstanding the potential for some COVID-driven disruption, port disruption in China. However, we could also see further increases in commodities that are linked to energy, such as plastic and copper, which, of course, we are ready to react to. Okay, moving on to slide 12. This just gives you a bit more color on the operating leverage that we have achieved over the last two years. So the headline being that we have deployed no extra overheads outside of acquisitions to support the 52.5 million pounds of organic sales growth. So how have we achieved that? Well, mostly by maximizing the returns from our core businesses, particularly in the UK. So firstly, we've maximized our sales of existing products to existing customers through the consistent execution of our advantage business model, an obvious but sometimes overlooked and very profitable source of growth. We've leveraged our existing R&D overheads to develop adjacent products to sell to our existing customers. And we've also leveraged our existing highly experienced sales teams as well as our hard-won reputation to win over new customers. And this sharp focus on getting the very most from our existing overheads before adding new ones has led us to exit the German market and close our operations in France in the year as shown at the bottom of the slide. Our aim is to gradually enrich the quality of our business as we grow by focusing on those markets where we have the greatest advantage. Okay, moving on to slide 13, covering cash and debt. Cash was very much a year of two halves. So as you can see in the top left, we had to add 12 million pounds of extra inventory in H1. This inevitably slightly limited our free cash flow margin in that period. As you can see in the bottom left, we only did this to ensure continued customer service when supplier lead times lengthened due to well-publicized supply chain disruption. We were pleased to be able to fund at least some of this with quicker cash collection from customers as shown. We will unwind the imagery position as and when supply and lead time shorten. By the second half, the situation was normalizing and we got back into the 10 to 15% free cash flow margin range that you would associate with us. But this did not prevent us from maintaining a healthy capital structure Net debt leverage, which we now define excluding IFRS 16 to align with our new bank deal, ended the year at only 0.7 times EBITDA, despite £18 million spent on acquisitions, and that therefore left £84 million in additional borrowing capacity for M&A, some of which we have invested in the acquisition of Sync EV today. Okay, moving on to the balance sheet slide 14, there's not much more to say here other than to point out that our ROI slightly improved to 36.4% in the middle of our target range of 30 to 40%. This is almost certainly the best in our sector and amongst the best I would say in any sector and underlines how seriously we take the management of money that others have entrusted to us. Okay, moving on to slide 15, performance versus targets. We pride ourselves on the consistent delivery of compelling financial performance. We put our long-term performance expectations into the public domain for the first time in 2019. And the fact that we have largely met or surpassed these targets since then, despite COVID, highlights the underlying quality of this business. We originally stated our targets as performance ranges to be maintained through the economic cycle. This could imply some sort of limits on our long-term ambition, which I can assure you does not exist within the business. So we have chosen to restate our targets as minimum performance expectations, giving us the confidence to aim high and investors confidence in our resilience. Okay, final slide from me, slide 16. There is no question that we have made great strides over the last two years. It does perhaps beg the question in some people's minds as to whether this can be sustained. I think the answer to this lies on this chart. So the answer is that this group has a long track record both before and after listing on the stock exchange of sustained profitable market outperformance. Our culture, our business model and our balance sheets are ideal for it. I look forward to hopefully rescaling this chart to accommodate further market outperformance in future years. And with that, I'll hand you back to John to talk you through the strategy, business review and outlook.

John, I think you're on mute.

Thank you very much. That was excellent. So yes, I'm going to take you through our strategy and our investment case. I'll start with a summary of the investment case. We have extremely strong positions in high margin and consistently growing markets, and we have further room to expand within those markets. We have an advantage business model, which we have continually invested in over many years. The advantages exist throughout the business model from designing the product to fulfilling the order. And this is aided and supported by an entrepreneurial culture. As Matt has mentioned, we deliver consistent and compelling financial outcomes, some of the best in our industry. This consistency comes from the market we have chosen to be in and a focus on a detailed operational execution from the top down. There are three key elements of our strategy. to seize the expansion opportunities provided by our markets, which we have a long track record of doing. I would point to USB sockets, circuit protection and our recent very large opportunity in the EV charging market that I will come on to talk about more later. introduce innovation and new thinking into our products and processes, often ahead of our industry. And we sustain this advantage over our competitors by continuous investment in our business model. So the next few slides will explore these areas in more detail. We operate in attractive markets. There are three main reasons why we like the markets that we operate in. They offer future growth and the attractiveness in terms of their structural growth and the margin that is available. Our current addressable UK market with the products that we have is approximately 2 billion, and we have a 10% market share of it, but it's only 10%, which means there is plenty more to go for. We have the right culture and the business model to increase our share, focused on speed, entrepreneurialism, and the customer service to seize this. Our 2021 numbers show that we are doing an excellent job of this. If we had sized our addressable market seven or eight years ago, it would have been half the size that it is now. This is because we've used innovation and range extension via product development to move into new markets where we can leverage our existing brand relationships and our distribution and manufacturing, et cetera. If we keep doing this organically or alternatively via M&A, we can expand our market to over 3.5 billion in the UK and obviously more if we look to expand overseas. In short, we have a huge opportunity for synergistic growth. And then if you look at the attractiveness of our markets, have a huge opportunity to gain market share but also our markets offer excellent growth opportunities and margin so i'm just going to explore why this is because of the various structural advantages that they have we mostly serve the construction market which typically grows faster than GDP as living standards rise. And for example, people live in smaller family units. We believe the construction RMI is the most attractive part of construction. This is because it is less constrained by issues such as planning, the housing stock is actually aging, housing price appreciation supports it, and it is less cyclical. Electrical installation is also more attractive than construction or RMI generally. This is because over time, the regulations are becoming consistently more difficult and therefore require higher technical products and future growth will be stimulated by the decarbonisation of the energy supply. Changes in customer preferences should allow product markets to actually grow faster than the number of electrical installations. This is because, as I say, the technology demanded by consumers is ever higher. For example, USB sockets have replaced ordinary sockets and now EV charging sockets is a huge additional opportunity. So overall, this is putting electrical product manufacturers like us in an excellent position. We have built strong positions within these markets. We are number one in the UK in portable power. We are number two in wiring accessories, and we are now a top 10 lighting supplier. So moving on to the next slide, our growth opportunity. We have a long track record, as I said, of seizing opportunities in these attractive markets. We always look for opportunities to develop our product range and to sell new products into existing customers. significant source of growth for the group in the past you can see on the left hand side as i mentioned earlier usb sockets which was um an innovation of ours led lighting circuit protection these are all new products that we've launched since 2014 and you can see that 50 of the products Sorry, 50% of our revenue is now generated from new products that we've launched in the last three years. The EV charging market in which we've announced an opportunity this morning, an acquisition this morning, is probably the largest growth opportunity that our company has ever had. The acquisition of SyncEV brings with it excellent technical know-how and an established brand. And I believe that over the coming years, this is a huge opportunity. But we've also won new customers. Over the last seven years, we've won 42 million of new organic customers using our existing sales teams. And additionally, We have made further growth via acquisitions and we have 84 million within our existing capital structure to spend on M&A. On to the next slide. There's a bit more information about the business that we bought in the autumn. It was acquired in October. It's a leading UK manufacturer in the public realm of technical outdoor lighting. It's a well-regarded heritage brand, highly complementary to the Kingfisher business that we bought in 2017. And having owned it now for six months, we are very pleased with the potential of this business. It has a very strong brand. It has very strong relationships and the market in which it's operating is expanding onto the next slide. Our investment case. We have an advantage business model, so we make our own products. We have 80 MPD professionals in our business. and they have launched over 400 new products in 2021. Many of these were improvements on existing products, which is also extremely important. High powered USB sockets, USB-C sockets, smart IoT versions of our fire rated down lighters and EV chargers. Last year we launched the lower power mode two version and this year we're launching the high power mode three version. As you will all be aware, we also make our own products. We have our own factory just outside of Shanghai, which we have continued to invest in year on year and in 2021, we had about £2 million of P&L benefit from the automation investments that we have made. This is obviously an ongoing process with a lot more process improvement to come. And finally, we've also invested in the marketing in the training of the next generation of electricians. We've invested in new websites and in new digital marketing assets. And in fulfillment, we made a big investment in 2021 in our warehouse in Telford, and we also took on our own warehouse in Spain, where before we were using a third party. We have invested in the best in class IT warehouse management and demand forecasting and stock planning tools. The next slide, under sustainability, Our operations were carbon neutral last year and we joined the CDP also and we will join the SBTI in this year. Our products, as you know, obviously LED lighting is extremely low. carbon, but also EV charging is a move that will greatly reduce the carbon footprint. And we would forecast that by 2025, over 100 million pounds of ourselves would be from low carbon products. So we have been spending a huge amount of money on developing these product ranges, and we believe that the world will increasingly be spending a huge amount of money on using such products as the need to decarbonize only increases. Slide 25, the investment case, all of which I said before and which matters as described has led to an extremely compelling financial performance, especially in 2021. In terms of the outlook, I mean, 2021 was an exceptional year. It's a testament to our business model and our culture. It was a great year of progress. The market was favorable. The RMI market was particularly strong, especially in the DIY channel. So this will be a hard comparison for 2022, particularly in the first half. We are therefore expecting half one sales to be broadly flat, which after the acquisition of DW Windsor does imply a modest light for light revenue decline in the core business. But all things being equal, it should get easier as the year progresses. So the comps get easier. There is more benefit, obviously, from the selling price increases, all of which would have come through in the second half, not all of which would have had in the first half. However, there are still risks from COVID, particularly in China. And there is also a risk that as disposable incomes will get squeezed, it will become particularly hard for the consumer. However, what happens in... 2022, there is no question that our business is a lot stronger than it was five years ago. We have stronger market positions. We have a clearer strategy. We have broader sources of growth. We have a stronger leadership team. We have a well-invested business model that can beat the competition. And we have an extremely healthy balance sheet. We also have clear growth opportunities, particularly in EV and in M&A. And I'm very confident that we continue to outperform over the longer term. And with that, I'll hand over to any questions that people may have.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure the mute function on your phone line is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star one to ask a question over the telephone. We'll take the first question from Kevin Fogarty from Numis.

Good morning, guys. Well done on the numbers. Just a couple for me, if I could do. Just in terms of the phasing of the cost recovery, in terms of the kind of plans you've made now, could you give us any feel for what H1 looks like relative to H2? And just in terms of clarity, Matt, did you say that some of that sort of falls into 2023? um just in terms of that sort of cost recovery process um and i guess sort of second point um just in terms of today's acquisition um what's the sort of strategy here in terms of commercializing that you know what are its channels to market currently um you know how do you think it will sort of benefit you guys um you know going forward and i guess i'm thinking about There's obviously kind of revenue synergies here. Is there any kind of manufacturing opportunity for you guys? Or is this going to be a UK sort of specific product or just a bit more granularity on that? That'd be great.

So perhaps, John, if I take the cost recovery question. Sure, sure. Okay, yeah. So I think I highlighted there was a 6.6 million pound net profit gap in the year that we've just completed. I'd like to think that we could close a good chunk of that. this year. So there's gonna be a net profit tailwind versus last year's headwind. And in terms of phasing of that, I mean, there is a meaningful price increase that comes through in Q2 of this year. It's probably worth about 7 million pounds annualized. So we get a couple of months of that in the first half. a full benefit in the second half. So there will be, as John has mentioned, in terms of both the revenue progression and also the gross margin, there is a bit of a second half waiting by virtue of that one significant price increase, if that answers your question. I think, you know, and if we turn the headwind into a bit of a tailwind in the year that we're currently in, that will leave a little bit left over to come through in 2023.

Sure, okay, just purely because of that kind of phasing from Q2 onwards effectively. Yes, that's exactly right, yeah.

Yeah, so the margin in Q1 this year is below where it should be, but the margin in Q1 next year should not be below where it should be. So we first got involved in this about a year ago. Small business, but it's got some excellent technical people and it's got some good brand recognition in what is a very young market. And there is a bit of a land grab. So we thought that we would accelerate our our progress into the market by making this acquisition, both in terms of our technical ability, but also having a brand in the market. I think it's a huge opportunity. We can sell it through our existing customers. So their route to market currently is through electrical wholesalers and to the larger installers. The OSAF grant, which is the grant that the government pay subsidizing the installation of these devices, is actually being removed from 1st of April. From that point, it becomes a much more normalized product. We believe that normalized product will be bought through your local electrician. The same guy who puts in a socket in your kitchen will put in a socket in your garage to charge your car. A lot of those contractors are using BG products. We are, I think, market leader in UK residential sockets. So this is just another socket. It's a high-powered socket. It's a smart socket. It's an IoT socket. But ultimately, it plugs into a consumer unit. And we have roughly 20% of UK consumer units in the residential space. From, I think, early next year, I mean, they haven't quite finished the regulation. All new homes with off-street parking, by law, will have to have an EV charger. at the point of construction. And if you're building flats, then a certain percentage of the car parking spaces for flats will also need to have an EV charger. It's going to be a huge market. And that's just in the residential space and that's just in the UK. We have businesses overseas in the Middle East, in Spain, in Ireland, where we think we can sell these products. And then there are other markets and there are other channels in the UK, for example, Workplace, hospitality, railway, schools, you can name a lot of places where we believe reasonably low powered, reasonably competitively priced EV chargers are going to be situated. There are possible ties in with Kingfisher. There are possible ties in with DW Windsor, who have very strong relationships with local authorities. House builders I've talked about where we have a big market share already. The likes of Screwfix will be selling these products and obviously they're a huge customer for us. So I think our distribution is gonna be probably the best of anybody's. On the manufacturing side, we've been working on developing a product range in our own Chinese factory. since we did the 20% deal with them last year, and we'll be launching those products imminently in sort of April, end of April. They obviously have a product range, but we've been supplementing that and we have a slightly more competitive position making it in our own factory. Um, so I think all in all, it's a huge opportunity for us. Um, I think we could have done it anyway without this acquisition, but I think, um, I think with this acquisition, it is de-risked, um, and it's accelerated and I think it's very exciting.

Right. That's useful. And I guess just touching on one of those points rather than sort of hog the, uh, the questions. Do you have any idea, you know, clearly this expands your sort of portfolio, selling into the sort of challenge you do currently. Are you aware of any competitors of yours that, you know, have a similar offering and perhaps could compete with you? Or are you likely to be one of the few with? that sort of diverse range.

I mean, currently, Kevin, yeah, I mean, currently, there are no other wiring accessory manufacturers with an EV charging socket. They currently, I would be surprised if they're the only ones that go down this road. Currently, the market is dominated by EV charging startups. have products yeah some of them have brands they don't have great distribution particularly into the kind of sort of resi market i'm talking about um i can't rule out other competitors will follow us yeah no no i appreciate it it's a very nascent market but um just interested yeah i mean if we get if we get our if we get our market share of uk residential in this product category in line with the other product categories it's a big number you know we're not looking to you know and that would be with other competitors obviously sure sure yeah no that's helpful thank you for that thanks a lot thanks kevin as a reminder to ask a question please press star one

As there's currently no further questions on the telephone, I'll pass over for any webcast questions.

Thank you. We've had a couple come in on the webcast. Given geopolitical events, is the company looking to dilute the manufacturing dependence on China?

Yeah, I mean, look, this is something that we've been thinking about and looking at for quite some time already. I mean, in short, the answer is yes. I mean, DW Windsor actually gives us a UK manufacturing base. But yeah, we are pretty reliant currently on China. We've been looking at M&A opportunities nearer to home, which would mitigate that. We've been looking at Turkey, we've been looking at Eastern Europe, we've been looking at Other options further afield, such as Mexico. Our Chinese factory is a huge asset. It's been hugely successful over the last sort of ten years. But we are not blind to the potential changes that are happening in the world's view of China and the potential ramifications that could have. So it is a priority to reduce our exposure to that risk.

Thank you. There have been significant direct disposals in the last nine months, which have adversely affected sentiment and the share price. Are the management successfully confident of the future prospects to retain their remaining stakes?

Uh, I guess you're referring mainly to my share sale. Um, yeah, so I crystallized a capital gains tax, um, last year, which, uh, I needed to pay. Um, I sold, um, less than 10% of my sold about 8% of my shares. Um, I retained the other 92%. Uh, And I remain extremely committed and extremely confident that our best times are ahead of us. I think, you know, as we've said, the electrification and the decarbonisation of which EV is an example, is going to present fantastic opportunities for electrical manufacturers generally. And I think we're very well placed with our distribution, with our manufacturing, our marketing know-how in order to take full advantage of that. We also, unlike maybe five years ago, we also have a very strong balance sheet and we generate a huge amount of cash. So we can grow not only organically and the graph that Matt showed in his presentation of the long-term growth, that only has one small acquisition in it. So we bought Kingfisher in 2017 for 10 million pounds, and it's got a tiny little bit of DW Windsor in 2021, but we have very consistently organically grown this business. I believe we can continue to do that for the things we've talked about, investing in the business model, investing in new products, investing in new markets. But we can now also supplement that growth with acquisitions. And we have a very strong balance sheet and we are generating, as I say, a lot of cash. I think the future is very exciting, both organically and inorganically. And personally, having got the business to that point, I want to see what we can do with it and how far we can take it.

Can I just add to that? I mean, I think one could always look at this as a relatively small amount of selling for the reasons that John has described. One could also look at it as a business where management have got a significant amount of interest in driving forward the value of this business. Quite unusual actually for a main market company to have this much of ownership in the hands of management, including me to a lesser extent than John. So, I mean, I think that speaks to the confidence that we have in the business. And if there ever was a moment to be confident in share price appreciation,

sitting as we do on 11 times next year's earnings surely this would be a moment yeah i mean i would you know i would say i mean i mean i'd add to what i've said is that is that you know on a personal level um i don't have any other assets um i've been in this business for 25 years um so i think at some point it would be very um imprudent not to not to diversify a little bit i mean since ipo i've sold net about 10 of my holding or maybe a tiny bit more but not much more over than that's over five years um so i think that kind of speaks to the confidence i have in the business in the future

Uh, the next question through is, do you need to increase your inventory position as you did last year?

Yeah. So maybe if I take that one, John, so, um, I think, I think the answer is the answer is no. I mean, of course I can't entirely predict what happens next to global supply chains. What I can tell you is whatever happens, we will always do the right thing by the customer. Um, it's far better to have the order with the inventory. and not have the order at all. So we will respond accordingly. But if I stare into my crystal ball, I would say that most likely save for some potential for COVID zero related short term disruption in China. I would say that global supply chains from here get a little bit more predictable and a little bit easier. We're also not going to, I don't think, I hate to disappoint anyone, but we're probably not going to have another year of 30% top line growth. So therefore, all things being equal, that should lend itself to inventory reduction, not inventory increase. So we should get back to the kind of cash conversion and free cash flow generation that you associate hopefully with us.

The next question is on inflation outlook. Last year you successfully passed on price increases to customers. Are you confident you can continue to do so?

Shall I tell you that? Yeah, I mean, we've passed on the inflation that we experienced last year, including a very high shipping price, shipping cost. And obviously we ship a lot of products. So that is actually coming back. Um, it hasn't come back to anything like where it was, you know, pre pandemic, but the shipping cost has reduced by roughly 30% from peak. Um, we hedge, we hedge, you know, certain raw materials like copper. Um, but it is fair to say that since recent geopolitical events have been unfolding, the price of oil, which affects the price of plastic, the price of other metals has been stronger than we would have hoped. So there will almost certainly be further price increases needed if we want to maintain our margins. But we have always and consistently been able to pass on Inflation, as you can see, our margins over a long period of time have improved and have been healthy. And I don't see any reason why that wouldn't be the case now. And the inflation that we are experiencing now, because of the reduction in shipping costs, which is a very large input cost for us, is a fraction of what we experienced in 2021. In fact, probably net-net, not much inflation currently. Of course, that may change. But if it does change, we have the mechanisms with our customers, we have the pricing caveats agreed, and we have an ability to pass this into the market, and that is what we will do.

In which areas of the group are you looking to enhance with further M&A?

Well, look, wiring accessories is a very high margin business in which we have executed, in which we have a very strong position. So a quality wiring accessory business, potentially internationally, maybe that kind of mitigates the China manufacturing risks that we spoke about earlier. I mean, that would be probably the perfect acquisition. Another EV acquisition, maybe overseas, I would certainly be very interested in. And then other product adjacencies, I mean, high margin lighting businesses, I mean, DW Windsor and Kingfisher, they are niche, they are technical, they are specified, they are therefore highly defensible and high margin businesses. But there are lots of other product adjacencies where we can utilize our manufacturing expertise and our distribution expertise, both in the UK and internationally. But wiring accessories, as you can see from our numbers, is the business about which we are most excited. So maybe that would be the most likely Although having said that, the universe of targets, wiring accessories, is quite small. Matt, I don't know if you want to add anything.

Yeah, I think the only thing to add to that is that if said wiring accessory opportunity came with kind of a ready-made nearer shore manufacturing option to it, then that would obviously also deal with our desire to you know, say, complement our presence in China with manufacturing capability, you know, elsewhere. I think that's, regardless of what you think about the geopolitical prospects for China, I think it would be unusual. I mean, we aspire to be a FTSE 250 business. It would be unusual for a FTSE 250 business to have quite so many eggs in one basket, albeit a very big basket, clearly, namely China. So I think

using m a to diversify the manufacturing base would would be a you know a good thing to do thank you what are the plans for overseas operations you've pulled out of germany france and us in the past and they are relatively small to a group and and arguably sub-scale can you focus on a couple of territories that make a meaningful impact to the group

Yeah, I mean, it's true that we closed our U.S. operations, but actually, if you look at our U.S. sales, they've actually grown. So we have a distributor in the U.S. We have a sales office in Hong Kong that sells into U.S. retail. And actually, our U.S. business has grown, but we've done it without having a U.S. overhead. So actually, it's grown extremely profitably. france we've combined it to our southern european business that sits in barcelona so we haven't actually withdrawn entirely from the french market um but we have consolidated the overhead into barcelona we have withdrawn from the german market which we find extremely difficult um i think our as matt said earlier you know our strategy is to grow those businesses which we think have a competitive advantage and where we think we can win so we're going to fight less battles but we're going to fight them better and we're going to put our resources into those businesses which are doing well and we're going to be ruthless with those businesses which are not doing so well our Spanish business is doing extremely well our Middle East business which is based in Dubai and serves the whole Gulf region has always done well but continues to do well We have a business in Ireland, which is growing very strongly. And we have a business in Mexico, which is although small, also growing strongly. I think outside of M&A, we would not look to expand internationally again. It proved harder than I thought it would be to grow these businesses internationally, but we are committed to the ones that we've got now. Matt, do you want to add to that?

No, I think any other thing to say would be, I think as you look internationally, what we have in the UK is we have multiple product categories being sold through the same infrastructure, which gives us the P&L that we have. I think in our international markets, if you look at the most successful ones, they have the same. So in the Middle East, we're selling all three of our product categories into Middle East and And I think, you know, that becomes a bit of a determinant for success or one of the determinants. So I think that's sort of progressively where we migrate towards is trying to make full use of the overheads that we have internationally by selling expanded product sets.

Thank you. We have no further questions on the webcast, so I'd like to hand it back to the team for any closing remarks.

Well, I think I've pretty much said everything. I mean, a fantastic year in 2021. I think this year, particularly first half, is going to be tough to beat that comparator. I think the investments that we are making and have made both organically and inorganically, however, means that 2023 and beyond, we can return to good growth. And, you know, we look forward to executing the plans that we've got in place. Matt, do you want to?

No, I think that's a perfect summary.

And it is 10.30. Okay. Thank you very much, everybody.