Smiths News plc

Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. Ideally, we would have liked to have been meeting face to face, but actually because of the inconsistency of the rail network at the moment, we felt it was more practical just to have a virtual meeting. But we're very much intending and hoping that when we come to half year results, we'll be back face to face. So without more of ado, let's make a start. So welcome to our Smith News annual results. The presentation is being recorded and will be available to view on the investor section of our website later this afternoon. Together with Paul Baker, our chief financial officer, we will cover the highlights of the key events of our year, review our financial performance and give some wider context on the progress we've made. It is, I believe, a strong story, reflecting the underlying stability of Smiths News and its markets and what has been, by anyone's standards, a very uncertain economic environment. The second part of today's presentation, I'll also give some insight into the assessment we've made of opportunities to enhance our core business through organic growth and potential entry into new markets. For clarity, what I plan to share is our approach and direction, not a specific route map. To make it as tangible as possible, I'll give some examples of the trials initiatives we have underway. But the key message here is we're already testing our strategy in a low risk way.

We will of course welcome any questions anyone may have at the end of the formal slides.

So, starting with the headlines, we've delivered a good performance, underpinned by a determined focus on our key deliverables, together with some pragmatism in achieving our short-term goals. As a result, performance is ahead of expectations, with adjusted profit before tax up 0.6% to £31.1 million and adjusted operating profit of £38.1 million down 3.8%. Free cash flow of £48.2 million is an outstanding performance, up over 100%, benefiting from the planned one-off that came through in the first half. As a consequence, year-end bank net debt of £14.2 million is down by 73%, well below our target of one times EBITDA by the end of 2023, and frankly, a transformation from where we were just three years ago.