TT Electronics plc

I'd like to welcome you all in the room and on the webcast to the TT Electronics 2024 interim results presentation. It is a very busy morning for results and we thank you all for making the early time to be with us. I'm really pleased to have our CFO Mark Hode with me this morning and he will take us through the interim results. I will then talk about the great progress we have made in the first half on Project Dynamo, and I will provide more detail on the eight work streams that have been initiated, together with some early results. We will then take Q&A. And I just wanted to say before we get into the detail of the presentation that we have been very active over the period. Despite some challenging macro conditions, during the first half we have completed the sale of three business units described as Project Albert. We have reorganized the management structure, refreshed our strategy, and introduced our self-help program across the business, Project Dynamo. This early progress not only supports reaching our expectations and targets for the year, but it also strengthens our view that we are well positioned for significant further improvement over the coming years. So here are some of the key messages for today's presentation. Group revenue is at 1% organically, excluding the unwind of pass-through revenue and adjusting for the Project Albert divestment, which completed at the end of March. Our regional businesses have had a mixed period, depending on product mix and end market focus. We have seen strong European and Asian growth, and this has been offset by weakness in our North American region, where we have experienced significant headwinds in the shorter cycle components business with a significant impact on three sites where de-stocking has persisted for longer than anticipated. And although we are seeing some early signs of improvement, we have taken the difficult decision to reduce our workforce by just under 400 people for an annualized saving of nine million pounds. The reported adjusted operating margin is unchanged at constant currency against the prior year. However, the run rate margin, if we adjust for severance costs and Project Albert, is 9.3%. And encouragingly, for both H2 and the future, we saw very strong order intake, up 15% over H1 2023, and booked a bill in the period was 110%. And the area I'm most pleased with is the progress we are making with Project Dynamo. There is real momentum in the business, and I'm happy to share that we have identified some £17 million of potential cost savings and incremental margin. net of £4 million which will be reinvested in the business. This is a significant step up from the £5 to £6 million we committed to deliver from SG&A savings back in April and I can also confirm that £4 million of this saving has already been actioned. These structural improvements taken with the volume related cost action supports the Board expectation for the year which remains unchanged. and includes our four-year 24 guidance of 10% operating margin and leverage at the lower end of our range. So I'll now hand over to Mark to take you through the financial results.

Thank you, Peter. Good morning, everyone. There are a lot of moving parts in the first half numbers, but I will try to set it all out as clearly as possible and give you a good sense of the visibility that we have to a step up in both profit and cash performance in the second half of the year. So here we've set out the overall financial metrics for the business, and although it makes the table a little busy, we've shown you the numbers both including and excluding the contribution from the Albert divestment, which completed at the end of Q1. Revenue was down by 8% on a constant currency basis, but 3% excluding the divestment. And if you adjust for the impact of pass-through revenues, which dropped significantly in the first half, revenue actually grew by 1% on a like-for-like basis. And you can see the moving parts in the bridge on the bottom right. Adjusted operating profit declined by 8% at constant currency and 5% excluding the divestment. As Peter said, there was strong growth in Europe and Asia but a significant drop in components demand in North America and the impact of this mixed change is apparent through the first half numbers. The adjusted operating profit is net of 1.7 million pounds of severance costs incurred in the first half. Adjusted operating margins were unchanged at constant currency 8.1% and excluding the divestment were 8.7%. Earnings per share declined by 12% of constant currency due to the reduction in operating profit together with increased interest expense due to high interest rates. There was a £7.8 million free cash outflow in the first half, driven by a £21 million working capital outflow. We have clear visibility to that reversing in the second half of the year and to delivering our four-year guidance, as I'll explain in a little while. Return on invested capital was down slightly due to the weighting of profits the second half, but remains above our pre-tax cost of capital of 11%. and excluding Project Albert's return on invested capital on a 12-month basis was 13.2%. Finally, the Board has declared a 5% increase in the dividend to 2.25 pence per share. Before we dive into the moving parts behind the numbers, there are a couple of key things I want to highlight. First, as I said, headline margins unchanged at 8.1%, but as you can see in the bridge on the left, This is net of £1.7 million of non-recurring severance costs worth 60 basis points and includes roughly £16 million of Albert revenues, which generated a small loss in Q1. If you strip both of these items out, run rate margins are 9.3%. Secondly, following the order intake lows of the second half of 2023, we've seen a really strong pickup in order intake, as you can see in the chart on the right. Order intake was up 15% organically over H1 2023, and you can see that sequential improvement over H2 is even better. Book-to-bill was 110%, and although some of this intake is building the order book for 2025 and beyond, this supports increased revenues in the second half of the year. When you take into account the benefit of significant cost actions taken in the first half, this positions us well to deliver improved profit and margin in H2. The other piece of scene setting I want to touch on before we go through the performance of the regions is the end market growth, which shows a mixed picture in the short term. This slide shows the revenue and growth by market excluding the divestment from both periods. Healthcare was down 17% of constant currency, but roughly £6 million, or 8% of the reduction, relates to the unwind of zero margin pass-through revenues, all affecting the Asia region. The balance of the reduction all impacted Europe and North America, reflecting softer life sciences demand and the end of certain contracts in North America as we've prioritised certain aerospace and defence customers. Aerospace and defence itself continues to grow strongly, up 40% at constant currency, with the main benefit in Europe, but we've also saw growth with some key customers in North America. Automation and electrification was up 4% at constant currency and 7% excluding pass-through, with the main impact in Asia, driven by metro rail and semiconductor equipment demand. Finally, distribution, which is where we've experienced the main challenges in the half. This is the primary route to market for our components offering, most of which is in the North America region. Revenue here was down 28% of constant currency, reflecting the more protracted destocking than originally expected. We are seeing inventory levels gradually reduce as distributor sales to end customers exceed their intake from us and are starting to see early signs of improvement in order intake, but we are not expecting a sharp uptick in activity and anticipate a longer recovery path. So as you know, we're now running the business along function lines with a regional organisation and our segmental reporting now reflects this. In the appendix, you'll also find the first half results based on the old divisional structure. The European region delivered strong improvement in the first half. Revenue increased by 17% on an organic basis and this translated to a 74% increase in adjusted operating profit and adjusted operating margin improved by 440 basis points to 9.7% or 12.3% excluding Project Albert. This improvement came from operational leverage as well as good efficiency improvements. With excellent order cover, we're confident of delivering increased growth in the second half, which is expected to support further margin enhancement. As we indicated in our trading update, North America has faced a more challenging market backdrop related to components demand in the first half. With that low intake in the second half of 2023, being compounded by destocking taking longer than expected. But we've taken cost action and are seeing order intake improvement. Revenue was down by 14% organically, with a low demand from distribution impacting our three component sites in North America. Low utilisation of these facilities meant that the margin impact was high, and the 62% reduction in adjusted operating profit also reflects those severance costs associated with headcount reduction actions taken to address the volume reductions. We've reduced headcount by roughly 400, virtually all of it in North America, which will have an annualised impact of £9 million, with £5 million of that coming through in the second half of this year. As you saw in my earlier slide, order intake has improved. In North America, orders are up 21% over prior year, and in components we're starting to see early signs of improvement. We therefore expect a modest sequential increase in revenue in the second half. The benefit of higher revenue and the cost actions taken give us good visibility of improved profitability in the second half of the year. Finally, Asia, which had a really strong first half. On a constant currency basis, revenue was down by 3%, but adjusting for the divestment and the unwind of zero margin pass-through, revenues were up by 10%. Pass-through revenues in H1 were down to just £2.8 million. Adjusted operating profit increased by 26% at constant currency and 33% excluding the divestment. The growth in profit and 330 basis points of margin improvement were driven by operational leverage on the growth and with pass-through revenues now much lower, the impact on margins is far less pronounced. The order book for the Asia region covers revenues for the second half, giving us confidence of increased revenues and sustaining margins at this sort of level. So as I said, there was a 7.8 million pound free cash outflow in the first half, driven by a 21 million pound working capital outflow. There are sound reasons for the working capital outflow in the first half, and on the next slide, I'll explain these and why we see it reversing in the second half. Importantly, there are still the signs of structural improvement in cash flow that we've talked about previously. Exceptional cash costs were only half a million pounds, there was no cash spend on the UK pension scheme, and the small pensions outflow relates to the buyout of the US-defined benefit scheme, which deals with that exposure. Net debt, excluding leases, was £110 million, and leverage increased from 1.7 times at the year end to 1.9 times due to the lower H1 EBITDA weighting. Despite all of this, we expect cash flow to step up in the second half, as it did last year, and for the full year, still expect to deliver strong free cash flow, and to bring leverage down towards the bottom end of our target range. So now to look at some more detail on the working capital position. So in the chart on the top, you can see the evolution of working capital as a percentage of revenue from 2018 onwards. As you can see, this metric increased through 2021 and 2022 as we grew inventory with the order book, and there was a lag converting this into revenue. This then normalised in 2023, as you can see in that top chart. We expect this metric to move down towards the mid 20s by year end with working capital reducing and revenue increasing. The bottom chart shows you different elements of our working capital days and how the same dynamic played out with increasing inventory days partially offset by increasing payables days. The outflow in the first half is down to a few things, but the two main impacts are first seasonality, which we always experience. This calls a six million pound outflow, which will reverse in the second half. And then secondly, the growth we've seen has come from parts of the business with typically longer customer payment terms causing receivables outflow. We're still expecting to see only a modest working capital outflow for the year. The seasonality will naturally reverse. And the inventory controls that we've implemented from May, which Peter will talk about a bit more in a moment, expect a supported £15 million inventory reduction in the second half. So as I said up front, quite a few moving parts. But hopefully you can see that we've got good momentum and you have a better understanding of the drivers of improved profit and cash performance in the second half of the year. With that, I'll hand you back to Peter to talk some more about Project Dynamo. Thanks, Mark.

So, in April, we introduced Project Dynamo and explained that our strategic focus would be on improving efficiency, growth, and innovation, whilst focusing on developing our people, products, and markets for sustainable, more profitable growth. The central theme running through all of this is disciplined execution. Much of what we have focused on in the first half And what will be evident from the Project Dynamo slides I'm about to talk you through is the need to achieve both operational excellence and service excellence, to drive growth whilst also managing our cost base to allow us to remain competitive and achieve the returns that we need. In April, at our Capital Markets event, we committed to delivering competitively five to six million pounds of already identified SG&A savings by 2026. Today, we are increasing that number to 17 million pounds of potential savings and some incremental margin improvement. This number is net of reinvestment of around four million pounds to deliver growth, either in IT system support or focused resource. The anticipated benefit underpins our short and medium term financial goals. The pie chart on this slide shows that most of the Dynamo savings are in the efficiency bucket, followed by growth. We always said opportunities from innovation would take longer to achieve, but I am pleased with the progress that we are making in this area. And, as I've already said, £4 million has already been actioned, with the rest spread across eight different work streams. And more detail on that to follow. As you can see on the right of this slide, we have identified £6 million of SG&E savings, and this is at the top end of our estimate of £5 to £6 million. £8 million from efficiency projects that we have scoped, £7 million from growth and innovation activity, with the £4 million reinvested to give us our £17 million. We are also focused on working capital improvements, not just profit. Mark has already explained the H1 movements and our expectations for H2. However, we expect a further £15 million cash benefit by 2026 as inventory turns improve further. I will also share details of the work underway in our inventory work stream to support this. So let's take a look at the various work streams that we have commenced in the last few months. As I said at the capital markets event, our capabilities are good, but we can do better. We need to leverage all of our engineering and manufacturing assets across the business. The old divisional group structure hampered some of the opportunities to share best practice by being focused on the individual site or division, rather than maximizing the resources across the company. Our move to the functional-led regional structure is already delivering improvements in efficiency, growth, and innovation. And these are the eight work streams that I will now cover individually. One of our priority areas was our cost base, and in particular, how we could be more efficient and reduce duplication. And I've already talked about the progress we have made here. But this work will continue as we seek further savings. We also identify logistics and energy use as important areas of spend. And our spend on logistics in particular was not consolidated. And therefore we felt that this was an area of opportunity. We've now started the process of reducing the number of freight forwarders and focusing on efficient use of freight. We're also targeting our energy use and contracts that will provide real savings in 2025 and 2026. Inventory management is another priority area of focus. Over the course of the last two to three years, inventory levels in the business have increased largely due to the external impact of supply chain issues and the growth in our order book. In some instances, this has been exasperated by internal processes and we need to do better here. This topic has been more difficult for the business to address and inventory levels have remained stubbornly high. With the move to a function led regional structure, we've already appointed a group lead focused on inventory management, incorporating both planning and control. We have undertaken a deep dive on inventory levels across the group and taken a number of short-term mitigating actions and placed seven sites into what we've called special measures to get on top of the issue and implemented a number of process improvements as shown on the slide. And we are starting to see real progress. As I outlined previously, these actions underpin our H2 leverage reduction target by supporting the working capital improvement. And we are targeting a further £15 million of additional cash benefit by 2026. With regards outsourcing, we have identified more than £30 million of external spend on things such as machining, calibration testing, connectors and PCBAs, which has the potential to be insourced. For example, we have three machine shops in the UK, Abercannon, Fairford and Sheffield, and we also have third-party spend on machining. We are working through the opportunities to insource and benefit from our own capabilities, and we are confident that this will lead to increased productivity and profit. We see a similar opportunity on connectors and cable harnesses where we can establish regional centers of excellence. We are also using our teams to build in more TT content on bills and material where possible, supporting our one TT approach. But as well as improving our efficiency by insourcing, we have also identified four sites in particular where there is a high cost of production that we need to address. This is where the manufacturing processes lead to low yields or high scrap rates. We have formed teams, leveraging the functional organisation to focus on delivering improvements, reducing rework and increasing yields. We recognize that we will need to invest in some processes with additional resource. And in some cases, the issue is related to machine reliability and or capability. And we will target our CapEx investment to address this. While a lot of the actions highlighted so far are focused on the efficiency part of Project Dynamo, growth and innovation are equally important. We have already made some significant progress in commercial pricing and in growing our sales opportunities. We have identified a number of lower margin contracts and inconsistent pricing. So we have started to work with customers where pricing is an issue and with our operational teams where we have a need to lower our cost of manufacturing. Our actions have seen us refresh the global account management process and resetting expectations in some cases with our customers. In terms of pipeline and sales growth, we needed to strengthen the sales structure and our approach to the market. The sales team have now been reorganized with a renewed focus on developing new business opportunities, supporting regional activities, as well as using our group resources to unlock opportunities that we would have missed in our old structure. And on innovation, there is a clear untapped opportunity to leverage engineering expertise across the group. While we expect the majority of innovation benefits to be realized over the longer term, we have already identified some tangible benefits from working together, such as reduced system licenses from a range of different software that is not required, or supporting sales and new business opportunities by sharing resources and collaborating as one team. But it's not all about the future. We have a good pipeline of new product launches. Over 20 expected in the second half spread across our full suite of products. We have some great examples of the work our engineers are undertaking. And as an example, at the Farnborough Air Show a couple of weeks ago, we unveiled a technology platform of high voltage DC power conversion solutions. enabling more efficient, longer duration flights at higher altitudes for use in both civil aerospace and air mobility vehicles. This is part of our collaboration with the Aerospace Technology Institute. And this all positions as well for the future. So to conclude, a number of things give us good visibility. Our confidence in the four-year outturn for the group, visibility from our strong order book and order momentum, the completion of Project Albert, significant cost action taken, and some early benefits from our self-help program, Project Dynamo. And all of these underpin the board's expectations for the full year. We remain on track to deliver 10% operating margin and for leverage to fall in line with guidance to the lower end of our one to two times range. But the ongoing benefit of Project Dynamo, including the extra savings identified, will not only make the business stronger, it also underpins our medium-term financial goals. Growth ahead of our markets, 12% operating margin by 2026, and over 85% cash conversion with strong free cash flow, and mid to high-teens ROIC. As a management team, we are focused on strengthening the company to deliver on its purpose of enabling a safer, healthier, and more sustainable world. And our actions to date is making TT stronger for the future. And we are now happy to open up for questions, initially from those in the room, but there is also the facility for those on the webcast to submit questions, which we will cover after those in the room. Thank you.