TT Electronics plc

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's now eight o'clock, so we will begin. I would like to welcome everyone in the room and on the webcast to the TT Electronics 2023 full year results presentation. It has been a few years since my last PLC presentation, but it's good to see a number of familiar faces, some in the front row here. So it's good to see you and I look forward to meeting you again and also getting to know those of you that I don't know so well over the next few months. So that will be good. And I know it's a very busy morning this morning. I can see that on your faces. So, we thank you for making the effort to come here this morning at 8 o'clock, but our intention is to be finished by 8.45, to allow those of you that need to get to the next presentation time to do that, and so that I don't get into trouble with the next company that's on the list. So, without further delay, I would like to explain what we're going to cover today. I'm really pleased to have our CFO, Mark Hode, with me this morning, and he will take us through the 2023 results that show a year of strong delivery for TT, with good progress made on all of the key priorities set at the start of the year. I'm then going to give a few first impressions of the business and share some of the things that I have seen firsthand during my visits to our operations following my arrival last October. And then I will share where I believe we have an opportunity to unlock further value. And the intention is to explore this more at the capital markets event on the 9th of April. So we will set that out for you today, but the detail will be later. on the 9th of April, some of those. I'll also give you the details on the outlook and specifically how we have clear visibility on delivering on the group's 10% operating margin target in 2024, which is the big hurdle for the company. We'll then have Q&A from the room and then from those on the webcast. And before I hand over to Mark, I would just like to publicly thank him for making my introduction to TT as easy and effective as it has been, and for showing me the ropes of an understanding of some of the business opportunities that we've got within TT. So I'll hand over to Mark now to take us through the results. Thanks, Mark.

Thank you, Peter, and good morning, everyone. At the start of 2023, we set out five key priorities for the year. I'm pleased to be able to report that we've delivered against every one of them. We delivered a £23.9 million free cash inflow with cash conversion of 92%. Leverage was reduced to 1.7 times. We expect to reduce this further in 2024. And with the divestment announced on Monday, it's already taken it down to 1.5 times on a pro forma basis. Margins have continued to improve, up by 110 basis points to 8.9%, excluding the pass-through revenues. And this was in large part thanks to significant improvement as expected in the performance of the power and connectivity division. For the group overall, delivery against our order book resulted in an operating profit improvement of 16%. As Peter said, and we'll show you shortly, we're on track to deliver 10% margin in 2024. On this slide, you can see the overall financial metrics for the business in the year, many of which I've just covered, but there are three points in particular that I'd like to draw your attention to. Adjusted operating margins were up by 110 basis points to 8.9%. Pass-through revenues are now starting to unwind and will continue to do so through this year and next. 16% growth in operating profit combined with cash conversion of 92%. meant that not only was there a strong free cash inflow and reduction in leverage, but it also meant that return on invested capital improved by 150 basis points to 12%, nicely above our pre-tax cost of capital and therefore generating shareholder value. Moving on then to the revenue and profit performance in each of the divisions. The recovery in power and connectivity that started in the second half of 2022 has continued and picked up pace in 2023. momentum continues into 2024. Revenue increased by 10% organically, and adjusted operating profit increased by more than 80%, resulting in adjusted operating margins up 330 basis points to 8.4%, benefiting from operational leverage and good efficiency gains. As well as delivering on growth, we completed the fit-out and transfer of the Ferranti business into a new facility in the Greater Manchester area in the second half of the year, positioning that business for further growth. The second half margins were 9.4%. With a strong order book and, as I'll come on to, the benefit from the divestment, we expect to see the business move back into the 10% to 12% margin range in 2024. GMS continues to perform strongly. Although headline revenues were down, when you strip out the impact of foreign exchange and the unwind of about £10 million of pass-through revenues, Revenue was broadly flat on a like-for-like basis as we anticipated after a couple of years of very strong growth. We expect a similar reduction in pass-through revenues in 2024. Even with like-for-like revenues broadly flat, adjusted operating profits increased by 16%, benefiting from pricing and ongoing efficiency actions. GMS is now delivering margins at 10% excluding pass-through revenues. GMS established new capacity within the existing TT Mexicali facility in the year and as a result is now able to offer increased choice to its customers around where product is manufactured as they look to diversify their sources of manufacture and this has positioned GMS for further growth. Finally, sensors and specialist components where revenue increased by 4% organically. Adjusted operating profit was down by 13% at constant currency reflecting the three million pound impact of the HVAC system breakdown in Plano that we've highlighted previously. The review of the HVAC system has now been completed and this issue is now fully resolved. As highlighted previously, order intake has been normalising with inventory levels in distributors having increased over the course of 2023. We are now seeing inventory levels start to reduce and expect them to return to more normal levels in the first half of 2024. So, while intake from distributors remains subdued, overall order intake in SNSC has started to improve thanks to new business won in 2023 from a number of Blue Chip customers. With a lower order intake in the second half of 2023, 2024 revenues for the division are expected to be lower. However, we expect to be able to mitigate the profit impact of lower revenue through cost actions which are in hand, and with the resolution of the Plano HVAC issue, which, as just noted, is complete. But profit will be more second-half weighted in this division. I've talked previously about free cash flow reaching an inflection point in 2023, and I think that's clear to see in this slide. We delivered cash conversion of 92% in the year and a material step up in free cash flow to £24 million. There was a healthy level of investment in capital and development expenditure, including establishing the new facility in Manchester and new capacity for GMS in Mexicali. Working capital improved in the second half of the year, with an £8 million inflow, of which £7 million came from inventory reduction. And as a result, there was a modest working capital inflow for the year overall. There was only limited cash exceptional spend, and this included some of the cost of preparing for our recently announced divestment. And in December, the UK pension scheme made an initial refund of surplus to the company of £5 million, less 35% tax. With strong free cash flow, debt reduced, and this combined with EBITDA growth, meaning that leverage reduced from two times at the start of the year to 1.7 times as we exit 2023, and we see leverage reducing towards the bottom end of our target range by the end of the year, and that will give us options. Earlier this week, we announced the divestment of our sites at Cardiff and Hartlepool in the UK, and an associated facility in Dongguan, China, referred to internally as Project Albert, rather than having to keep lists of those three sites. These business units mainly provide electronic manufacturing services and connectivity products to industrial customers. We're committed to the remaining businesses within the GMS and connectivity portfolio, which have a higher quality customer base in our target markets, with more differentiated complex products offering good visibility and low revenue churn. The divestment gives us a simplified operational footprint, removing three of the 21 operational facilities from our portfolio and is a meaningful step towards making TT a more profitable and resilient business. The divestment is expected to enhance TT group margins by 50 to 70 basis points with a 70 to 90 basis point impact in each of the power and connectivity and GMS divisions. Headline sales proceeds are roughly £21 million on a cash and debt-free basis, subject to a normal completion accounts mechanism. As a result, net debt and leverage will be reduced further. On a pro forma basis, year-end 2023 leverage will be circa 1.5 times. The 2023 results reflect a non-cash asset held for sale write-down of circa £32 million. and completion of the sale is expected by the end of the first quarter. As reported previously, in November 2022, we completed the buy-in of our UK defined benefit pension scheme. The trustee is now working through the final data cleanse ahead of moving to the buy-out of the scheme. We expect this to be completed towards the end of the year or early next, and will then move to progress the wind-up of the scheme. There is now an increased level of confidence that the scheme will have a surplus when all member benefits have been secured and as a result in December the trustee agreed to an initial refund of £5 million out of the surplus. We're now in discussion with the trustee regarding the quantum and likely timing of a final refund of surplus to TT. In January of this year we also completed the buyout of our much smaller US defined benefit scheme for a cash cost of £1.8 million. leaving the group now with very little in the way of defined benefit pension exposure. Here I've set out some items relating to guidance. I'm not going to go through all of them, but there are just a few items that I want to highlight. Firstly, I've given some pointers here to help with the moving parts on revenue, with the key point being the 3-4% of organic growth excluding pasture that we anticipate. Secondly, as I mentioned up front and as Peter will show you in a minute, we're on track to deliver 10% margin in 2024. And finally, I've set out the various moving parts within cash flow that point to conversion of 90% plus again in 2024. We're delighted with the inflection in free cash flow that we've delivered in 2023 and now expect another year of strong free cash flow. combined with the disposal proceeds, should see us moving towards the bottom end of our target range by the end of 2024. That will mean we have balance sheet capacity, and at that point we have optionality as to how we deploy it. So, in summary, before I hand back to Peter, a really strong year of delivery in 2023, and I remain excited by the prospects for TT and the opportunities that we've identified as a team to improve execution going forwards. Peter. Thank you, Mark.

I've come across TT many times in my career as a supplier and so I was really excited when the opportunity to lead TT came along. As most businesses, TT has clear strengths but also had its challenges. And I was really interested to understand how it was really performing and the opportunity that it has to progress. So over the last five months, I've spent time visiting almost every site with only a couple left to visit in the next few weeks. I have met with colleagues to understand their thoughts, visited a number of customers and spent time with some of our investors. And I am more excited about the potential for the business now than I was when I joined. And our ability to unlock further value. So why am I excited? Some of you that know me, I'm always excited. So why am I really excited about this? Well, what I've seen during my visits... and as I've worked with my colleagues over the last few months, is that we have a really strong platform from which to grow. And the issues we have are mainly within our control, things that we can do and are related to execution. The markets we operate in are good. growth markets. Aerospace and defence, healthcare and automation and electrification are all underpinned by long-term structural sustainability drivers. I've been really impressed with the industry experts within our sites who understand these markets. They help us develop differentiated product and technology that help us work with our customers on solutions that lead us often to be embedded on programmes for many years. That is an important point that differentiates us to other industrial companies. At the end of 2023, we had nearly a full year of revenue cover of which nine months relates to 2024, well above historic pre-COVID levels. with further visibility from our multi-year programmes, well beyond this and outside of what we report in the order book. The quality of our customer base and the geographic footprint of our manufacturing plants provide me with confidence in our ability to scale up as we continue to grow and we have some real talent to deliver this throughout the organisation. So whilst acknowledging the things we do well, there is an opportunity and requirement to improve our execution. Commercial focus and refine how we think about innovation to unlock the significant value within the company. I've seen examples of inefficiency and complexity in the business that often gets in the way of us having a clear path for growth, despite being focused on structural growth markets. As I've already said, I will provide a detailed view on these opportunities and what this means for TT at the Capital Markets event, but there is a lot of potential And one example that I would like to share today relates to the management structure. I believe our structure has hampered some of the opportunities to share best practice by being focused on the business unit or division rather than maximising the resources within the company. A different approach going forward would support improvements in efficiency, growth and innovation. And all of these are important to us going forward. If there's one thing I'd like you to take away from today, it's that we are laser focused on disciplined execution to drive shareholder value. and we are not waiting to get going. The business is driving towards improved performance and there is good momentum. Mark has already outlined the improvements in 2023. And in particular, a real momentum shift in the level of cash generation and a good improvement in operating margin. And earlier this week, we announced the divestment that is part of the plan to improve the quality of our earnings, strengthen the balance sheet further and bring a more disciplined approach to the business. This is a good foundation from which we will drive future growth and profitability. It is important as a team to execute our plan and deliver an improved financial performance. You can see on this slide that is our intention in 2024 to achieve an adjusted operating margin of 10%. This is within our control and is all about execution. As you can see in this bridge, pass-through revenues continue to unwind this year, perhaps not completely, but down to a very low level. The project Albert divestment is expected to close by the end of the first quarter, and therefore this benefit to margin is already confirmed. The HVAC issue that we identified in one of our US sites is now fixed, and we have taken appropriate action to make sure we will not see a repeat of this fault in 2024. The final element... required to reach the 10% requires an element of growth and efficiency gains to make up for the cost inflation and other headwinds. I am absolutely focused on execution and efficiency and we have good visibility on the growth given the quality of our order book and planned sales activity. And so, as you can see, Action on the major components for achieving the 10% have already been taken. And the final element is a key focus for us. And I am confident we will deliver this in 2024. So whilst we are mindful of the wider macro environment, I am looking forward with real confidence both for 2024 and beyond. We are well placed in structural growth markets and based on the strength of our order book and the initiatives already underway, we have clear sight to make further progress in the year, delivering 10% adjusted operating margin and bringing leverage down further. I'm really looking forward to sharing with you more on how we are going to unlock further value and setting out our medium term financial targets on April the 9th. So for now, that is the end of our presentation and we'll take questions from the room followed by those on the webcast. Thank you.