TT Electronics plc

Good morning everyone and welcome to our full year results presentation for 2025. I'm Eric Lakin, CEO and I'm joined today by our interim CFO Richard Webb. Very happy to be with you all again for my first full year announcement at TT. 2025 has been a year of transition for TT Electronics It was a year where we faced clear operational challenges, but also one in which we took swift action to address them. Our focus has been on restoring operational control, strengthening our balance sheet and creating a solid platform for future growth. While there is a lot of work still to do, I'm pleased that we have delivered a stable performance and we enter 2026 with a much stronger operational and financial foundation. Let's start with a look at the headlines for the year. Despite the macro headwinds we faced, we delivered results in line with expectations, with momentum notably strengthened in the second half. We saw improved operating profit, margins and cash flow, driven by better execution and strict cost discipline across the group. Notably, our cash generation was very strong. We have significantly reduced our net debt and strengthened the balance sheet, which Richard will detail shortly. We have successfully restored operational control following the conclusive actions we took earlier in the year, particularly at the Plano and Cleveland sites, and I'll cover this in more detail later. Performance was mixed by region, but for clear reasons. Europe performed strongly, driven by structural growth in aerospace and defence. Meanwhile, North America materially improved and we have ceased production at Plano as we complete the closure of that site. Asia was impacted by softer macro-driven demand in EMS, but we view the region as better positioned operationally as we enter 2026. The next slide breaks down the specific actions taken during the year to build this stronger platform. First, Plano. Production has ceased and the site was closed according to plan. We saw a benefit in the second half from last time buy activity, but importantly, the closure removes a significant drag on our earnings going forward. Second, Cleveland Optimisation. We deployed specialist operational support to the site and results are clear. We have improved yield, productivity and customer service levels, including quality and on-time delivery. The site is now stabilised and on track to return to profitability. More on this shortly. Third, our components review. We conducted a strategic review which concluded that the components business could potentially be worth more under different ownership. So we'll be testing that. We have separated its management to ensure more focus and oversight and the board is currently evaluating a value-led disposal process. But that is not a commitment to divest. it is subject to market conditions. This is a solid business and with the changes implemented we are confident that it will be a positive contributor to the group. And finally balance sheet stability. Working capital discipline has materially improved and we delivered strong cash conversion in part due to successful inventory reduction initiatives in 2025. This work culminated in a significantly reduced year-end net debt and leverage positions. Focusing specifically on our Cleveland site on the next slide. In 2025, we launched a business improvement project targeting operational performance with a focus on rework hours and productivity, and I'm pleased with the progress made. As the charts illustrate, we have seen sustained improvement with overall productivity levels now consistently above our higher target levels and we work much better than expectations. On-time delivery, yield and cost of poor quality have also all improved. Crucially, the Cleveland site is stabilized and its financial and operational performance has materially improved throughout the second half. There is still opportunity to drive further improvements and the current focus is on the sales growth from existing and new customers to utilise the capacity available and further absorb overheads. Turning now to our next phase. As we look to the year ahead, our focus shifts from stabilising the business in 2025 to a more proactive agenda for value creation. On this slide, we have outlined the four clear priorities that would define this next phase. we have established a disciplined framework designed to drive sustainable growth and margin expansion built around four key pillars, which are, one, a realignment of the business to focus on divisions as opposed to regions. Two, a targeted cost reduction programme delivering material savings. As announced this morning, we expect to deliver approximately £3 million of net benefit in 2026, an annualised savings of double this figure, to deliver significant benefit in future years. Third, a sales transformation plan to upgrade our commercial capabilities. And fourth, portfolio optimisation to improve synergies and margins across the group. I will take you through each of these in turn in more detail later. But for now, I will hand over to Richard, who will talk you through our financial results.

Thank you, Eric, and good morning, everyone. I'll now take you through our 2025 financial results, starting with our group performance. Against a backdrop of mixed market conditions, we have delivered a resilient financial performance that highlights the benefits of the operational actions Eric just outlined. Revenue and profit figures are presented on an organic basis. This reflects performance at the constant currency and with the impact of the quarter one 2024 project Albert divestment removed from the prior comparative. Revenue for 2025 was 481.4 million down 2.7% organically. reflecting the strong growth in European aerospace and defence, which largely offset the softer demand we saw in the EMS markets for North America and Asia. Despite the lower revenue, adjusted operating profit increased by 2.2% to 37.2 million, demonstrating in large part the success of the turnaround actions undertaken in North America. Consequently, our adjusted operating margin expanded by 30 basis points to 7.7%. This margin progression was driven by the turnaround in North America gaining traction, continued progress in Europe, and tighter cost controls across the group, more than offsetting the decline in Asia. Adjusted profit before tax is up 5.5% to $28.7 million. benefiting from the lower interest costs associated with our reduced debt levels. Adjusted EPS is 6.9 pence, down 37.3% year-on-year, reflecting the impact of the higher effective tax rate of 57%, as we cannot currently recognise a deferred tax asset for the US. On a normalised basis, if we had been able to recognise a deferred tax asset, the adjusted effective tax rate would have been 25.4% and the adjusted EPS would have been 12 pence. Finally, we significantly strengthened our balance sheet, reducing leverage to 1.1 times from the 1.8 times this time last year, driven by net debt being reduced by almost 30 million. turning to the revenue bridge and focusing on the organic performance in the year. Europe was the standout performer, delivering robust growth. This was driven by sustained demand in aerospace and defense, where we're seeing structural shifts that are supportive to the business. This was offset by North America and Asia, where we faced volume reductions. In North America, the decline mainly reflects the EMS and components and market softness. In Asia, the reduction was primarily due to ongoing geopolitical uncertainty impacting customer order timing, particularly for the automation and electrification sector. Now turning to operating profits. The operating profit bridge tells a positive story of execution. Despite revenue headwinds, adjusted operating profits increased to 37.2 million, up 2.2% year on year. Overall, we delivered 0.8 million of net organic profit growth. This is the result of operational gearing in Europe, where higher volumes and favorable mix dropped through to profits, and the turnaround actions in North America, where the stabilization of Cleveland and the elimination of losses from Plano were critical. These actions allowed us to return the region to profitability in the second half. Plano, which was significantly loss-making in the first half, generated around 3.5 million of profit from last time buys in half two and contributed approximately 1 million to the group adjusted operating profits for the full year. Revenue at the site was 13 million in 2025. Production ceased at the end of the year and this contribution will not repeat in 2026. The progress in North America helped offset the impact of lower volumes and transition costs in Asia. where we have been investing to support the transfer of production from China to Malaysia. Now I'd like to focus on the balance sheet, which is a highlight of these results. We've delivered a strong cash performance this year. Free cash flow increased to 29.9 million, up 7.9%. This was driven by a significant step up in cash conversion, achieving 150% compared to 117% last year. The primary driver here, with our disciplined focus on working capital, specifically inventory reduction. We have successfully executed inventory initiatives across the group, resulting in a 14.8 million contribution to cash flow. When combined with the 12.8 million inventory reduction in 2024, that reflects a very pleasing 27.6 million reduction over the last two years. This strong cash generation has directly strengthened our financial position as we've reduced net debt by almost 30 million to 50.3 million and leveraged down to 1.1 times. Balance sheet discipline will continue to be a key focus. Earlier this month, we extended the expiry dates of our revolving credit facility to June 2028 and reduced the size from 162 million to 105 million. This facility is only drawn by 10 million currently and in the next few months will be completely undrawn. Before I move into the regional performance, I will reiterate that from our next set of results, we'll be moving to a divisional reporting structure which better reflects how we manage the business. This means a realignment away from regions into three clear divisions, power, EMS and components. Eric will talk about this in more detail shortly, and you can also find pro forma revenue and adjusted operating profits under this new structure for 2024 and 2025 in the appendix. Turning now to regional performance and starting with Europe. Europe performed well during the year, continuing to be a structural growth engine for the group. Revenue grew 7.4% organically to 144.4 million, driven by our sustained demand in our aerospace and defence markets. Adjusted operating profits increased 13.9% to 22.1 million, with strong operational leverage expanding margins by 90 basis points to 15.3%. We are seeing strong order intake across A&D, and the trends are set to continue into 2026. Turning to North America, Revenue declined 3.7% organically to 173.1 million. This reflects the volume reduction both at Cleveland and in the components businesses. However, operational performance improved during the year and the region returns to profitability. Adjusted operating profits was 1.2 million compared to a loss of 2.7 million in the prior year. margins recovered to 0.7%, a 220 basis point improvement. The operational turnaround was driven by two main factors. As Eric highlighted earlier, actions taken to stabilise Cleveland, improved yield, productivity and execution, materially reducing losses in the second half. In addition, production at the Plano site ceased at the end of 2025, removing a structurally loss-making site from the group, with last-time buy activity also supporting regional profitability during the year. We enter 2026 with a reset operational base in North America, which positions the business in the region for further improvement. And finally to Asia. Revenue declined 9.2% organically to 163.9 million. This was due to ongoing reduced demand from EMS customers in the healthcare and A&E sectors with continued geopolitical uncertainties delaying customer ordering. Operating profits fell to 21.6 million with margins compressing to 13.2%. This performance reflects lower volumes and some transition costs as we transferred a major customer from our facility in China to Malaysia, which is now complete. Completing this transfer strengthens our resilience against geopolitical uncertainty, better positioning the region moving forward. On the next slide, we have broken down revenue by our end markets. Aerospace and defence was the standout, growing 12% to 152.8 million. This highlights our increasing exposure to structurally attractive markets, where defence spending continues to rise. Automation and electrification softened by 13%, reflecting the macro and geopolitical uncertainty that caused customers to be cautious with order placement. Healthcare was down modestly by 4.3%, primarily reflecting reduced US research grants and funding, though our pipeline in medical and life sciences is healthy, and this remains an attractive market for TT. Distribution declined 4.7%, which was expected as component demand continues to normalize post COVID. Overall, the strong growth and positive structural trends we are seeing in aerospace and defense give us confidence. Whilst other end markets have not performed as well as we would have liked, this largely relates to macro driven softness of demand. We enter 2026 in a better, more stable position. Thank you, everyone, and I'll now hand back to Eric.

Thank you, Richard. I think we can all see there is an improving picture and a stronger financial base for TT. I will now return to the four priorities for our next phase before touching on our customer base and finally look at the outlook for 2026. First, our divisional realignment. As we have mentioned, from this year we are shifting how we organise and present the business away from our current regional structure, managed as Europe, North America and Asia, to a product-led divisional structure. The group will be aligned around three clear divisions, power, EMS and components. Why are we doing this? It aligns us better with our customers, capabilities and markets. It enables us to develop and deliver more coherent strategies aligned to divisions that have different technologies, characteristics, and routes to market. It also creates clearer accountability for product development, sales, and planning. As part of this reorganization, we will devolve further responsibilities to the operating companies to enable a more agile business with faster decision-making being made by those closest to the customer. This also facilitates a simplification of the organization structure, including an element of de-layering and increasing the accountability of performance to the sites. As mentioned, pro forma divisional breakdowns are available in the appendix. Second is our cost reduction program. To support this leaner operating model, we have initiated a targeted cost reset to permanently reduce our structural overheads. We expect this programme to deliver around £5 million of gross benefits in FY2026, which will be a net benefit of approximately £3 million after implementation costs. Looking further out, we anticipate annualised savings to be around double this year's level. This is a programme that directly supports our margin progression goals, and we will share more information as the year progresses. Third is sales transformation. We are upgrading our commercial capabilities and bench strength, particularly in North America and Asia, and investing in business development talent, tools and processes aimed at delivering improved pipeline, order intake and pricing discipline. In particular, there is a renewed focus on new customers and new product introductions, with these activities already bearing fruit, as there's been a significant increase in new business wins in recent months, especially in North America. finally portfolio optimization and as a management team we continue to review the group's portfolio on an ongoing basis to ensure it remains aligned with our strategic priorities and areas of competitive advantage Our strategic review of the components business is now complete. The board is actively evaluating a range of options, including a value-led disposal process, but as mentioned earlier, we are not committed to a sale. Our current focus is on improving margin quality and returning the business to being a value-creative part of the group. Looking further out, we have restarted early stage prospecting activity for targeted strategic Bolton acquisitions that strengthen our core capabilities and reach, especially in the power electronics sector, in which we have developed a strong capability and market position. All in all, we see these four priorities as being key to the next stage of TT's growth and delivering value for all our stakeholders. I would like to spend a bit of time looking at some of our customer relationships. During my first year at TT, I've been able to see our client relationships in action and understanding the significance of these relationships gives me great confidence. We serve some of the world's most respective and demanding companies across our core markets and these companies choose us because we operate in the mission critical space. Whatever the requirement, our customers rely on TT for precision, reliability, engineering capability and production excellence. These are not transactional relationships, they are deep multi-year engineering partnerships who seek to solve customer needs, typically in regulated markets for demanding specialist applications. This diverse blue chip customer base provides us with resilience against market cycles and is the foundation upon which we will build our future growth. I want to highlight what one of our partnerships looks like in practice on the next slide. So, Edwards is a customer we have supported for more than 15 years. They supply solutions to the semiconductor capital equipment market and we provide a full-tier EMS solution spanning PCB assembly through to complex high-level assemblies and specialist testing for vacuum technology. They operate in a highly demanding sector where precision and reliability are non-negotiable. By providing everything from comprehensive test development support to supply chain transparency, We give Edwards the confidence to meet their own commitments. It is this level of deep-rooted reliability that allows us to grow alongside our most specialist global clients. I recently met with a team at Edwards, and they conveyed the importance of our ongoing relationship to their success and the future growth of the business. As this example illustrates, our partnerships with customers go well beyond the supply-vendor dynamic, and we are deeply integrated with their processes to help create value over the longer term. Finally, turning to Outlook. TT enters 2026 on a firmer operational and financial footing. We have taken swift action to improve operational performance and are aligned on a clear strategy moving forward, underpinned by the growing strength of our balance sheet. We have high exposure to the A&D market, which supports growth and margins across Europe and North America in what will now become a significant portion of our power division. While we do expect some continued softness in EMS markets, I remain mindful of the ongoing geopolitical uncertainty. Our focus is firmly on what we can control. The operational and cost actions we have taken are expected to continue driving margin improvement and better execution across the group. The North America turnaround is now becoming a tailwind, with losses in the first half turning to profits in the second half. The significant improvement in the region, together with the cessation of production at Plano, gives us a cleaner, more stable earnings base moving forward. Cash generation also remains a key priority. We will continue to focus on working capital discipline and operational efficiency to support strong cash conversion. With leverage now reduced to 1.1 times and our financing facilities extended, we have significantly strengthened the balance sheet and increased our financial flexibility. So we expect 2026 revenue and adjusted operating profit to be in line with current market consensus and this reflects a more stable, higher quality and more resilient business following the actions taken during the year. 2026 is about consolidating the operational progress we have made maintaining margin discipline and continuing strong cash generation as we build a stronger platform for a return to growth, better place to capitalize on opportunities as they appear. While there is still more work to do and there remain external factors and market uncertainties, we enter the year with a more focused business, a stronger financial position and the greater confidence in our ability to deliver further progress. So thank you very much for your time this morning. I hope you'll agree that this is an exciting time for TT, and we're looking forward to sharing our progress moving forward. Richard and I are now very happy to take any further questions you might have.