Zigup Plc

Good morning everyone and welcome to the Zyga PLC Results for 2025. If I can go straight to slide one just to cover the agenda. Today we are going to present in our familiar order but with some slightly less familiar faces. I will give some overview thoughts on the year past and the year ahead before handing over to Richard Clay for the financial review. Richard is our UK&I Finance Director who has stepped in as Interim CFO before our new Group CFO, Rachel Coulson, arrives in August. I then asked our divisional leaders, Jorge Alcon and Harvey Stead, to walk through their respective areas before I round up and give some thoughts on our outlook. We'll then have the usual Q&A session. I know a couple of analysts who cover our stock are online this morning, and we will manage their questions accordingly. So if I just turn to slide three, or slide four on the deck, sorry. I call this a year of operational heavy lifting. I wanted to start this presentation with an operational slide because I think that is what really stands out this year. It has been a year of heavy lifting, starting with embedding the new organisational structure, where we brought the UK&I rental and claim services business into a single operating structure, created a group-wide ex-co team, which happened alongside launching the refreshed strategic narrative and introducing our new ZigUp brand. These organisational and corporate changes have brought about a sharp focus on delivering the platform of services across our markets. We have also taken how we engage with customers to a new level, using technology to make it easier and simpler for them to access our products and services across our integrated platform. This has been a standout success with industry-leading customer feedback creating real advantage between us and our competitors. This has been demonstrated by the traction we have gained with existing and new customers. High customer retention, strong pipeline of new business, contract extensions and a number of new insurance partner wins. These have been the results of doing what we do best. Delivering a differentiated set of mobility solutions which work and provide real value add to our customers as evidenced by the feedback we receive. We are a trusted and expert partner to a very broad range of customer sectors across Spain, the UK and Ireland, and we are continuing to see our strategy deliver results. It has also been a year where we have stepped up our investment into people, facilities and technology. We have grown the number of our body shop technicians, which improves our capacity. We've launched new customer self-service portals, which drives efficiency and are easy to use, and opened up new facilities which continue to build our scale and service points with more sites under consideration. And we've also seen excellent returns in the investments we are making within the business. For example, ADAS, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, which are becoming more mainstream. And now the repairs are now undertaken in-house, which improves the speed of repairs and our margin, and plastic welding, which allows more repairs over replacing, which not only helps with the reduction of waste but improves our margins. We've also seen a new CRN system and e-auction platform for vehicle disposers in Spain as investment examples where we can see short payback times and clear routes to support profitable growth. Just looking at the next slide and on the financial performance. So I want to start with some context to the financial results. First of all, because when some people without the history look back at the headlines, they say you've gone backwards in some areas, albeit we are reporting results above market expectations. So when we look back to the merger of Northgate and Ready in 2020, within weeks, we went into the pandemic period. Whilst things were clearly tough for everyone, they also brought about some tailwinds in some areas and some headwinds. The strongest tailwinds being that residual values went up considerably in the market, especially for LCVs. We saw the benefit of holding our fleet asset for longer because there were no new vehicles to purchase at the time. which generated substantial cash proceeds, and we saw high residual values, which supported very strong disposal profits. And then in the last couple of years, we also saw new vehicle price increases increase substantially, which consumed higher levels of capex. And in our claims and services business, post the lockdown periods, global supply chains were constrained, which led to repairs taking longer, and with that, higher rental lengths, which were elevated. So in that context, past results have benefited from those tailwinds and they've scaled down on a gradual basis. Those pandemic tailwinds have gone and this year's results closely reflect how the business has performed as a merged business. And the coming year will be one where we expect to have less impact from headwinds, including the 4.2 million P&L impact from the cyber incident that we experienced at the start of the year. And in addition, we have taken action to mitigate the cost of the NI increase and national living wage increases, which were around 10 million, which mainly came into effect in March and April this year. So when I stand back and look at the delivery from that context, I am pleased that the business has delivered another strong set of results above market expectations, and there is quality in our repeatable earnings profile, backed by a broad customer base and longevity of contracts. In the statement this morning, I talked about the benefits of the diverse business model and how our differentiated mobility platform strategy is delivering. And also that disposal profits are normalising so they don't cloud results. And Richard will give some views on where we see residual values going forward. The business model is working well. We grew EBITDA over 18 million and our net book value increased is now over £1.5 billion on the fleet, which discounts any further residual value upside. As expected, leverage ticked up as we've progressed extensively with our fleet refresh, purchasing nearly 30,000 new vehicles in the year, which supports a younger, modern fleet, including purchasing fleet to support growth, particularly in Spain. With the new group refinancing which we recently announced, this brings increased headroom at attractive rates which we are entirely comfortable with and supports a business model which is delivering strong returns. Our fleet investment delivers profitable growth and generates strong cash returns over the life period of the asset. Board is confident in our outlook and accordingly has set a final dividend of 17.6 pence, making 26.4 pence for the full year, an increase of 2.3%. We have, of course, been mindful of the very broad range of shareholder views on the balance between dividends and share buybacks, of leverage ranges and capital allocation. We continue to be disciplined on the use of capital and to invest for quality returns and a sustainable future. We believe we have these priorities right for the business as it currently stands, with significant flexibility to capitalise on the opportunities we see before us. We turn to the next slide. So before handing over to Richard, I want to give my views on our confidence for the business in the coming period. I think it's important to look beyond the headline figures, which include disposal profits, and to focus on the operational trading outcomes. When I look at our markets, I can see the structural growth drivers remain intact, and these are leading to healthy demand, allowing us to be selective as to where we invest capital. We have the ownership to usership trend that drives outsourcing to rental and large claims partners will continue to outsource and there's plenty more market share to go for. The huge increase in connected vehicle data and available analytics benefit larger players like ourselves and we are actively leaning into this on behalf of customers to support future mobility related decisions. And we are also supporting the growing customer preference for tech-enabled omnichannel solutions, like our £10 million plus investment in our recent AI-enabled contact centre platform, which is being rolled out and which will drive efficiencies and productivity. These are significant investments that we are making, which will go a long way to delivering ongoing value. So with the structural growth drivers remaining robust, market conditions have substantially normalised. Residual values have been stable since October last year, 2024, and higher durations are similarly stable from around the same time. We've also taken action to exit the personal injury legal marketplace, which is no longer core to our activities, and this decision will improve claims and services margins going forward. And so we can see the current market conditions offer plenty of opportunities for profitable growth in rental and claims and services based on a platform which is robust and very well positioned with a simplified sales channel. It is the combination of these which makes us confident that disposal profits aside, we can see ourselves achieving mid to high single digit growth in both rental businesses and in our claims and services. And while we still have normalising disposal profits having a headline impact on PBT, we were never rewarded for them in value. So seeing disposal profits move into the rear view mirror might be useful in measuring the quality of the underlying earnings. On that note, over to Richard.

Thank you, Martin. And good morning, everyone. I'll start by looking at the headline underlying results. So overall, we're very pleased to say group results were modestly ahead of expectations. PBT was at 166.9 million, which was 3% above the consensus PBT at pre-close. And this was driven mainly by growth in Spain, helping underlying revenue, excluding vehicle sales, grow 2.3%. Whilst this PBT result was 13.8 million behind prior year, this was due to the expected normalisation of our disposal profits and some claims and services dynamics, which I will go through in more detail shortly. EBITDA also continued its upward trajectory, growing 18.2 million, or 4.1%. Net debt closed at 836.7 million, with our leverage slightly below 1.8 times. The year-on-year increase principally reflects our continued investment in the fleet, up 211 million year-on-year, both replacing our oldest vehicles and growing the fleet by 3,000 vehicles. We close with a total fleet of 131,600 and a net book value of 1.51 billion. It's that investment in fleet that will create growth in revenue, PBT and steady state cash flow in the future. Turning to the next slide, let's look at revenue. Underlying revenue growth, excluding vehicle sales, was up 2.3%. And as Martin said, this was a strong operational result, given some of the headwinds. In Spain, VOH growth was particularly strong at 9.4%, with strong demand and continuing good access to vehicles. Overall revenues grew 9.5% or 12.3% on a constant currency basis. The higher revenue growth percentage reflects the impact of carefully managed pricing. UK&I rental revenue growth is 2%, with VOH reducing 2.6%. VOH growth in H1 flattened out in the second half and we also took the opportunity to defleet older vehicles into a stable used vehicle market alongside a reduction in the broker segment. The 4.6% difference in VOH in revenue reflects both carefully managed pricing and also strong 9% growth in ancillary revenues. Claims and services revenues were broadly flat year on year. Growth came from our lower margin but higher returns incident management and body shop businesses, FMG and FMGRS. These were broadly offset by lower volumes and higher duration in credit and direct hire products in auxilis. So what did that mean for underlying PBT? Rental profits grew 10 million, which was a strong result. This was made up of rental volume net growth of 6 million and rental margin improvements of 4 million. This growth partially offset the overall reduction in underlying PPT, which reduced due to three key drivers. The first was foreseen and flagged, being the reduction in disposal profits, as they near normalised levels and were down £9.4 million year on year. Ultimately, I could see these being at a run rate of £10 to £15 million in each of the two rental segments, based on current fleet. The second was covered at interims. The cyber incident in H1 created a one-off profit impact of lost time and customer leads on the claims and services businesses most impacted. And the third element are other claims and services impacts, and I have a later slide to run through these. In the year, we also took 20.6 million of exceptional costs versus near the prior year. These related primarily to a strategic decision taken at the end of the year that New Law, our legal services business, should withdraw from the personal injury market and the consequential impairment of assets associated with that decision. These are included within our reported PBT alongside impacts of historical depreciation rate changes and amortization of intangibles as per prior years. A full breakdown of these exceptional costs can be found in the appendix to this presentation. The vast majority of these costs, it's important to understand, including the new law ones above, are non-cash, with the cash costs limited to 2.8 million of cyber costs and 1 million of restructuring costs associated with the new organisational structure. Turning now to cash and net debt. As previously shown, we have reordered our cash flow to reflect our priorities to invest in organic growth and fleet replacement, alongside other capital allocation priorities. And what you see here is just that. Whilst net cash consumed was higher than prior year, this was principally driven by both net replacement and growth capex, investing in the future of the business. Replacement capex increased broadly as expected. As guided, this year we stepped up our replacement efforts as vehicle supply has now improved and OEM discounts have markedly returned. The used vehicle market was stable in H2 and there was strong customer demand, particularly in Spain. This supported investment of a net 388.3 million in net replacement capex and 65.1 million in growth capex. As a consequence, average fleet age reduced in both markets to around 28 months, i.e. reflecting a disposal age of about four and a half years. The movement was higher in UK and I due to the ageing having been greater there. We've also maintained a strong focus on working capital, leading to a strong inflow in the year. We added more third-party insurers into protocol and the business mix in claims and services business is now less from Auxilis with its longer working capital cycles and more from the shorter cycle FMG and FMGRS. Turning to the next slide, our balance sheet remains robust with prudent leverage increasing but as expected. Higher cash consumption led to a 95 million increase in net debt to 837 million. These funds are fleet assets that have increased 211 million to 1.51 billion. Leverage increased to just below 1.8 times. Let me explain why. We buy a vehicle to earn income over its life. However, on acquisition, there is debt, but no EBITDA, to offset that for the leverage calculation. As a result, leverage in such growth periods increases. Our expectation remains that we will remain within our previous leverage guidance range of one to two times, but this year it is likely to move to the top end of that band. Following the refinancing completed in the year and increases to facilities, our headroom increased to £412 million, providing plenty of capacity for future growth and reflecting the confidence of our banks in our business model. Finally, on this slide in the top right shows that we have returned over £326 million to shareholders since the merger, both through dividend and buyback. I will now cover the claims and services EBIT movement in more detail. Claims and services EBIT was impacted by three key factors, reducing profit and margins. Importantly, however, Rocky still remains higher than the other two segments at 17.6% this year. On the left, you see the differing financial characteristics for the different services provided within Claims and Services, as shared before at the teach-in, and on the right, a bridge to the Claims and Services EBIT year on year. Taking the right bridge first, the cyber incident in May last year impacted New Law, our legal services business, and Auxilis. We would clearly not expect this to repeat in FY26. Auxilis experienced a quieter summer, as reported at intrams, but the movement year-on-year was principally due to a significant reduction in hire durations. This reduction was higher than expected but has stabilised in H2, and so we expect to achieve profit growth overall in this business from FY25 into FY26. Then in FMGRS, our investment in new sites and the efficiency of our repair model added a further year-on-year growth of 3.6 million. This growth is principally linked to the number of repair technicians and their productivity, where we have been highly focused. And despite the headwinds and the changing business mix, divisional rocky held at 17.6%, reflecting that we scaled capital employee commensurately. Longer term, we still see claims and services as overall returning Rockies of more than 20%. And as context, if one added back the cyber incident impact, Rocky would have been 20% this year. Then on the left, you can see why margins are so much lower this year, as higher margin auxilis revenues were offset by lower margin direct repair. Given all of the above, we expect growth for this segment in FY26 and margins of above 5%. On the next slide, I often get asked why our steady-state cash flow is lower at the moment and how long that will last, so this slide is designed to help illustrate the point. Our steady-state cash flow is lower in this period because we have a higher level of replacement capex than normal, following supply chain shortages in earlier years. So how do we see this in the chart? Taking FY25, we see the 16.7 million of steady-state cash in purple, and then at the top, the EBITDA figure, up 62% over five years, with the net replacement capex in pink. Finally, in the green line, you see the number of replacement purchases made in each year. These replacement purchases were just below 25,000 in FY20, dipped in FY22 and FY23 due to supply chain challenges, and since FY24 have been more elevated. What is very clear is the degree to which replacement capex, shown in pink, impacts steady-state cash. So why is replacement capex currently higher? you need to unpack this and to remind you replacement capex is essentially the new vehicle purchase cost less the disposal cash multiplied by the number of replacements each of these drivers will therefore impact to some extent so taking them in turn when purchase prices increase net replacement capex increases And as we price rentals on Rocky, this will benefit the future. And so in a way, there is an element of embedded growth inside replacement capex. You can see that reflected in the balance sheet, as I've said earlier, feet assets growing 211 million to 1.51 billion. For disposal prices, when residual values and disposal prices were elevated, that reduced net replacement capex. This also helped reduce replacement capex in supply chain constrained years. Then, as a general rule, the number of replacements is the size of the fleet divided by the average defleet age of the fleet. So if the owned fleet is 120,000 and the average defleet age is 56 months, then there will be about 27,000 replacements. So you can see in FY22 and FY23, we replaced many thousands of vehicles fewer than that due to the supply chain challenges. We see the impact of that as we defleet vehicles. Our defleet criteria is determined by mileage and condition, not a target replacement capex number or fleet age. If it comes back unfit or uneconomic for rental, we send it to Vanmonster or Acacion in Spain for sale. But it can go out again. It will do just that. So you can see for the last couple of years, we've been replacing more than the average. So what does this mean looking forward? Three points. EBITDA is growing. Since FY20, it's up 62%. And this replacement and growth capex in FY25 now is locking in EBITDA growth in the future. Second, we have made good headway into the replacement cycle for the last two years and are now well through the replacements required and so replacement capex will start to reduce over FY26. This year we have been arguably at the hardest point in the cycle. Disposal prices have been lower as we are selling old vehicles often bought five and a half years ago Purchase prices have inflated a lot over those years but are levelling out, and the number of replacements is higher, replacing the fewer replacements in FY22 and FY23. So finally, as net replacement capex falls to those steady state cash flow increases, we would expect steady state cash flow generation to increase from the 16.7 million in FY25 to 200 million pounds plus in FY27 or FY28, depending on mix and assuming continuing market stability and other assumptions. It won't be a straight line, but we are confident of this trajectory. And so, what does this mean for returns and in the context of capital allocation on the next slide? First of all, on the left-hand side, returns typically go down during periods of high fleets investment. To illustrate this, I've shown an example LCV. Here you see that over its life, the capital employed reduces as we depreciate the vehicle. Pricing will typically stay constant or improve and costs will change through the life, typically highest in the third year of ownership due to replacement of key components. High level, this profile can equally be true of a claims and services contract with investment in fleet and or working capital. So in this example, a vehicle on an average returning 16% ROCI is below that in the first two years and on or above that in the second two. And then the second point on this slide is that we take a relentless, disciplined approach to capital allocation. Our capital allocation priorities are set out here and we always test opportunities against our requirement to be substantially ahead of WAC on any investment. In terms of growth in rental businesses, we see double-digit ROCIs, and this is why we are confident on new fleet spend. In claims and services, ROCIs can vary significantly by product type and contract, but would typically be above rental and overall expect 20% plus. Dividends are cash returns to shareholders, and we're committed to a sustainable and growing dividend. Similarly, share buybacks are another way to return value to shareholders, and we discuss these methods frequently. Whilst on paper a share buyback may have high returns, this must be weighed against the multiple organic and inorganic opportunities available to us that provide long-term growth for the business. And finally, acquisitions. Acquisitions will be used where they meet our criteria. As I showed before, we have spent £45 million on acquisitions since merger, with FMJRS featuring on the claims and services margin slide earlier, very positively contributing to the results, and Fridge Express and Blakedale growing fleet at just over 20% in rental UK and I, while generating strong returns to shareholders. With that, my final slide, medium-term views. So bringing that all together, we would expect rental margins of 15% to 16% in UK and I, which includes the impact of about 10 million that Martin referenced of NI and National Living Wage increases this year offset by other actions, and 17.5% to 19.5% in Spain. Whilst in claims and services, we expect an achievable margin of 5% plus, reflecting the change in product mix. With residual values more stable, we would expect disposal profits to settle at around 10 to 15 million pounds in each of the two rental segments. With net replacement capex normalising, steady state cash is expected to increase year on year in FY26 and reach 200 million pounds plus in FY27 or FY28. We also expect growth capex in FY26 as we still see strong demand for growth of our integrated mobility solutions. So overall, pleased to have delivered FY25 results modestly ahead of expectations and to have a medium term view of strong growth opportunities. And with that, I pass back to Martin to introduce the business updates.

Okay. Thanks, Richard. Look, you've given a lot of granular detail there and some workings out in terms of that sort of capex cycle, cash flow cycle. I think when people play this back in slow motion, they'll catch up with all of that. But it should be fairly straightforward. I think the business has been operating over 40 years on this sort of model. So it should be straightforward. Thanks for the explanations there in detail. So before I hand over to the business leaders, I just want to highlight, looking at slide 18, just want to highlight the work that the executive committee have made in aligning the group initiatives in a couple of areas. Firstly, we just make great efforts to ensure we have a coherent and sustainable people strategy to support a group of nearly 8,000 colleagues across a number of active markets. We've been mapping out our proposition that we can offer employees in terms of their career journey and the support we can provide to make them successful. Succession planning for key roles is an important aspect of the business and one we have been working on extensively. So we have a clear line of sight of upcoming talent and the methods that we need to develop for our best people. We recently announced that we were honoured with a King's Award for Enterprise this year, and this was in a category which is not well represented. So for promoting opportunity, especially social mobility. For us, this is all about our early careers efforts and our apprentice programme. which has won a number of awards, and as we seek to find ways to attract talent who might not think of the automotive industry as a viable career path. In real terms, the programme of work has taken the average age of our automotive technician population down from 54 years of age to 41, so a 13-year drop over three years by running our programme for apprenticeships, and that's a fantastic position to be in. We've also thought strategically about our technology roadmap, as well as tactically. And aside from the AI investments I mentioned earlier, there are some large scale upgrades coming up to implementation, which will refresh our operational technology, making it simpler to process transactions. And finally, I wanted to reiterate the appointment of Rachel Coulson, who joins our CFO in August from Pearson, where she has been deputy CFO for a number of years. Rachel is an excellent candidate and her broad experience in technology is a key skill that the business will benefit from. On that note, I'm going to hand you over to Jorge.

Thank you, Martin, and good morning, everyone. For those who couldn't make our Spanish event last September, I will quickly introduce myself and the business in Spain before talking through the highlights of EY25. I joined the business in 2019 with a background in general management and finance in machinery rental. And over the past six years, I'm working with Martin and the broader team. We have naturally changed the business, not only increasing its size, but also its operational performance and financial returns. We are the clear market leader in flexible rental and co-leader in LCB rental in Spain. One in five LCBs rented in Spain comes from Norgate. And we have built a business which has a clear growth trajectory through providing a unique customer center rental offering. And we are also very focused on delivering profitable growth through careful management of our cost base and achieving economies of scale. So if we turn to slide 19, with our position on market and positioning, firstly, it's important to understand that our marketplace is different to the UK in three key areas. Rental itself is not mature in Spain, with overall penetration low at 3% compared with 12% in the UK. Rental is growing by gaining share versus ownership with a 6.5% annual growth in the last four years. The traditional minimum term is the most common rental product. And third, the large pan-European players are principally leasing-type companies offering mainly minimum-term rental. This is with limited additional value-added products and no in-house branch or service infrastructure. The only one with a national focus in flexible rental has less than one quarter of our fleet size. In this market, Norgate has positioned itself with a very different business model, enabling us to outperform the market. And we have done this through two main levers. Firstly, building a unique customer proposal that is first based on a high-service flexible rental offering. So the flexible offering is gaining attraction, especially for those customers with seasonal activities or attracted by our flexibility advantages. Second, focusing on B2B, on enterprises, with our customers using their fleet as workhorses. And we are serving them with a network of customer-facing advisors, promoting the benefits of the move from ownership to rental. And third, this offer is based completely in a differentiated customer service. We are the only company with a unique footprint in Spain, 30 rental locations and 48 owned repair centers, strategically positioned across Spain and set locally to best serve our customers. And we have not only built this unique customer proposal, but we have made it profitable. And this has been first with a strict pricing policy based on Rocky, Second, optimizing the fleet utilization through planning and logistic optimization and with utilization currently strong at 91%. Third, standardizing and making leaner our processes at workshops to maximize the use of internal workshops and also using internal parts recovery centers to control our repair costs. And finally, strictly managing fixed costs to maximize our operational leverage and drive economies of scales. In terms of Y25, the market conditions were helped by the Spanish economy being resilient, which has encouraged growth from a diversity of companies, from SMEs to entrepreneurs or large corporations. We finished Y25 with a total fleet of just under 72,000 vehicles. Our unique market positioning has enabled us to grow our fleet more than double the market rate of 5%, with our VOH up over 11%. And if we look over the past four years, this implies 8% annualized growth, higher than the 6.5% of the market. So we are gaining market share. And this growth has been delivered with a strong 19.3 rental margin. In terms of the market outlook for FY26, the market conditions feel pretty resilient, with solid Spanish GDP forecasts and good prospects for rental growth. And in this context, and based on our high-tax service offering, we see opportunities to gain additional market share, both in newcomers to rental and in large customers that will go through a fleet renewal cycle next year. If we turn to the next slide. This year has been a record year in many ways, and not only in financial terms. As Martin has said, a year of operational heavy lifting for Spain as well, and I'm very proud of what the team has achieved. Our focus has been in building out our branches and our service offering, investing in new technologies, increasing our operational efficiency, and developing and supporting our people. So to touch on a few of these highlights, we are very mindful of our reputation for excellence in customer service. To manage this, we have worked to achieve growth alongside delivering the best customer service. And to do so, we have opened two new branches and one service center in the year, and more underway. The latest is a service center just south of Barcelona, our second largest urban market. We have also invested in a new type of depot in Madrid, designed as a delivery hub, where we will concentrate our efforts on providing new vehicles to customers. This gives us greater flexibility and ensures service excellence while managing a rapidly expanding fleet. The results of these efforts to improve our customer service have seen our MPS score reach historical highs at above 50%. Secondly, we have invested in scaling our technology capability as well, both in terms of a new CRM system to help better support customer engagement and also a completely new e-auction site. This will add value and potentially enhance returns to our vehicle disposal program. Thirdly, we have also been very cost-focused to ensure profitability growth and the maintenance of our strong rental margins. For example, repair costs rose only 1%, well below inflation, alongside strictly controlling fixed costs. And we have also grown our headcount well below our fleet growth as we look to gain economies of scale. And finally, our people will always be central to delivering strong results. We have invested in both training and growing our early careers programs with more than 200 interns in FY25, double that of the prior year. And as I look ahead for Y26, much of my focus is on ensuring we deliver best-in-class service to support our rapid and sustained growth trajectory. So in terms of the objectives, I have set the Spanish management team. This focus on, first, continue to grow our fleet and capabilities. Manage at a level which ensures this continues to be profitable growth. Second, constantly reinforce our best-in-class customer service by building out our physical presence and service capacity in order to manage the needs of this larger fleet. And third, properly embed and then leverage our technology investments of the past 12 months. Firstly, getting value of our new CRM to help clients in ways they might not even realize are available, and improving experience and profitability in our e-auction platform. Secondly, leveraging our digitalization projects to enhance our efficiency. And finally, developing a new customer service platform which will be based on the learnings and success of our UK colleagues' experience. It is a really exciting time to be working at Norgue in Spain and as part of the SIGA group. And now I hand over to Harvey.

Thank you, Jorge, and good morning. Following the organisational restructure in early 2024, I took on the role of Chief Operating Officer with responsibility for all of our businesses in the UK and Ireland. Over the past year, we systematically worked through a programme of restructuring to deliver simplification across these operations. We're extremely well positioned to fully embrace the broad range of opportunities with both our existing client base as well as new business prospects and it's because of this hard work, effort and energy that I feel positive about our future outlook. I'd like to provide an overview of the market environment for each of the sectors we operate in across the UK and I. I'll then more definitively look at our rental businesses and then claims and services. So slide 21, let's first look at the UKNI rental market. Demand remains robust, and as we indicated at the interims, both new business wins and our future pipeline are at their strongest for over five years. Supply availability is also back, and increasingly for the vehicle model mix that our customers require. LCV usage is consistently increasing. According to the Department of Transport Statistics, LCV miles have grown by 10% in the last five years and now account for around 20% of all road miles driven. And like Spain, rental penetration is growing. If I look at our target markets, 70% of our revenue comes from those customers we've worked with for more than five years. And half of our vehicles on hire are with customers who support critical end market sectors. The growth of technology both within the vehicle itself and also now available to fleet operators is another key market trend we are able to support given our scale and sophistication. Technology also favours the larger providers who can invest in systems that leverage data to provide better fleet management insights including predictive maintenance, driver training support and EV suitability. From a competitive perspective, we would estimate we now have around 20% of the UK LCV rental market in a sector that's highly fragmented with plenty of opportunity available. In claims and services, our influential partners and prospects are the large motor insurers alongside vehicle leasing companies and insurance brokers. Most of these stakeholders are increasingly looking for outsourced partners to manage non-core activities such as claims processing and vehicle repairs. Insurers are consolidating and we've seen several regulatory reviews. We are also entering a softer insurance cycle and together these dynamics increasingly mean our partners are seeking scale and experience from their providers. We currently work with partners whose policyholders represent well over 40% of all vehicles currently insured in the UK. So just thinking about the current market environment, it does feel more stable than in the summer period last year, with customer scripts updated and sector consolidation now much quieter. We've successfully renewed and extended contracts with several key partners, both large insurers and also fleet management customers. So overall, we have a solid and effective proposition to grow our market share with customers who value our scale and our end-to-end solutions. On slide 22, let's look at the Northgate businesses. The UK and I rental business is in good shape. Progress this year has been focused on ensuring the customer journey and the customer experience is as good as we can possibly make it. And the results are outstanding, with strong growth in NPS scores and Trustpilot feedback. For fleet customers, we've now simplified the journey, increasingly enabling access to all Northgate services through a single account manager. and we brought our online portals and consultancy up to date, combining data analytics with our long-standing industry expertise. The new business market is very positive and we've also done much to ensure existing customer retention is at its highest for a number of years. In our high margin specialist segments, we have also seen strong fleet growth over the past year. This reflects the success of our one road simplification actions and focus on cross sales. Our ancillary services, which are capital light, have grown by 9%. This includes solutions such as telematics and fleet management. We're investing in our EV charging business, which this year has secured long-term partnerships with Hive, British Gas and Scottish Power, all key players in electricity distribution. Alongside growing fleet to satisfy demand, our priorities for FY2026 are to implement our new UK rental operating platform which will deliver efficiency and flexibility to branches and contact centres alike. Secondly, we're driving efficiency through a one fleet programme where we are aligning our fleet purchasing across the group. And thirdly, we will consolidate our Darlington-based rental support services to deliver efficiencies and improved customer service. And then finally, slide 23, turning to claims and service operations. We've achieved much over the last 18 months since I last spoke at the spotlight sessions. In the past year, we've launched and grown our out-of-hours solutions, servicing existing customers and winning new business. We've added four insurers to work within our claims protocol agreements, which gives them the benefit of our automated claims processing and ourselves improved cash flow. We've also launched and grown our self-service portals. We've built a new operations centre to support national highways and our blue light customers. And we've grown our independent supplier repair network to over 540 sites. We've worked through a significant number of renewals this year and been able to demonstrate to partners the value we add. These renewals typically have included an expanded service provision. This has included the renewal of contracts with three of our major insurance partners and three of our key leasing customers. We've also welcomed another six to our platform. We have seen headwinds this year and I'm incredibly proud of the way the entire business worked together in order to immediately respond to the CYPR challenge in May 2024. We've also received thousands of Trustpilot scores ranked either excellent or high, as well as excellent Net Promoter scores across the businesses. FMG Repair Services has had a standout year as well. We've been able to recruit a significant number of the technical skill roles that were vacant, leading to higher productivity for many of our body shops and profitable growth overall for this business. There's more potential for FMG Repair Services, both through leveraging the investment we've made in new tooling and equipment, in our people and in the capacity in our sites to continue to grow. We've also taken the decision to exit the personal injury market. Returns have been increasingly less attractive and this no longer fits with the rest of our investment priorities. So the key priorities in claims and services for 2026 are focused on efficiencies and scale. Investing in a significant upgrade to our contact centre technology, which will allow us to start to use new tools such as AI to support our conversations and claims journeys. Increasing the number of partners who are using our technology in the form of self-service portals and e-null, bringing more convenience to the policyholder, claims efficiency and further reducing costs to our insurer partner. And looking for opportunities to grow or relocate some of our FMG repair services sites in locations where they will benefit from larger body shops with more productive footprints. The market dynamics discussed earlier are clearly reflected in this prior year's numbers, but there are excellent growth opportunities for us this year and beyond. Customers really value our expertise, capabilities, and increasingly our technology-led support. As a result, I'm confident for growth through greater activity with existing clients, together with our new partners currently being onboarded. So back to you, Matty.

Thanks, Harvey, and thanks, Jorge. I think you hear some very confident positions there from the two country business leads. So let's wrap up with some final thoughts and comments just on the outlook statement from this morning. Just to be clear, our strategic vision is clear, to be the leading provider of integrated mobility solutions and to be the outsourcing partner of choice through our diverse range of rental customers, large insurance brokers and partners and corporate customers. Our strategy is delivering what we have been looking to achieve. Excellent market position and a platform which offers a broad range of services delivered in the ways that customers want. and in FY26 we'll see that broaden out even further. Our investment intentions are very disciplined, as we've covered, and we are investing in technology, which we've said a number of times this morning, to help scale efficiencies and deliver great, continued great customer service. So we're investing in our facilities, so that will drive scale and capacity, and it will provide more of the solutions that our customers require from us. And yes, we'll continue to invest in our fleet. So we're going to continue with our capex cycle, which Richard sort of pointed out. But as you can see, the fleet, age of the fleet has come down demonstrably, both in the UK and Spain. There isn't much further to go on that, where we then reach a sort of a normalized position. And then, as I said, you'll see the returns on the cash side of our business. So with normalised market conditions, we have real opportunities to achieve our core goals of sustainable growth. We see this coming through market share gains and growing our share of the rental and claims wallet, together with delivering efficiencies from the tech investments that benefit ourselves and our customers. Final slide, confidence in our outlook. So yes, you'll have read the outlook that we set out this morning and summarised on this slide. Very confident on the year ahead. It's not plain sailing. The team have to work smart to continue to deliver great results. Richard set out earlier some helpful views on how we see the shape of our performance over the medium term. Outlook comments focus on FY26, where we have set what we believe to be achievable targets of mid to upper single-digit EBIT growth before disposal profits are taken into account. And whilst we're early in the year, the first couple of months have started very well. And on that note, let's move to questions and answers. Thank you. Okay, so we'll open up the microphone. We've got David.

Thank you very much. It's David Brockton from Deutsche Unis. Can I ask two things? One on Spain and one on the claims and services business. Spain growth is clearly very strong in a good market. I was just interested to get your perspective on where you think the share gains of the business are coming from. Do you think there's a sort of step change in growing rental penetration in the region and you're capturing those new customers? Or do you think it's coming from competitors that maybe don't have that sort of flex presence that the business has? That's the first question. Maybe, I don't know if you want to do that, then I'll do the second one.

Yeah, are you happy to answer that one, Jorge? Yeah, sure. I mean, it's both. It's both. I mean, first, I mean, the rental penetration is increasing and, you know, we are benefiting from this growth. you know, more customers moving to the rental solution. I mean, we're not benefiting, we're provoking as well. I mean, we're the only company that will have 150 people in the, you know, in the ground, you know, convincing, you know, especially small companies, entrepreneurs who, you know, usually have the cash ownership to move into the rental. But second, for sure, I mean, we are getting market share and especially because, you know, this flexible proposal and especially the service that we provide to our customers is very well perceived. So, you know, part of the growth of last year came from the flexible part, but also part from the minimum term because, you know, customers that are working with us in the flexible part of the product, they are also moving their minimum term fleet with us because they are ready to come with us and because they know our service and they are moving. We were traditionally a more flexible company, now we can play with the other two products.

Thanks, that's useful. And then on claims and services, I guess it's a two-pronged question. First, I guess when we look at the pre-merger returns of the claims business, the margins were higher, but obviously there's been a mixed shift towards direct repair activity and direct hire that's lower margin. I wonder if you could just maybe, one, financially just tell us how you think about that from a business perspective, but two, going forwards from a growth perspective, how you see the balance of opportunities between all of those moving parts would be useful.

Okay. Thank you, David. So, Richard, do you want to pick up the mix and the margin and what you see going forward?

Yeah. So, on the slide, you see from the spotlight session the breakdown of different margin and return profiles for the different types of services that Claims and Services offers. And as we discussed, there has been a shift from the credit hire and credit repair to the direct hire and direct repair and roadside recovery areas, which are typically lower margin but also higher Rockies. So what you see is this switch in margin versus Rocky. We primarily price on Rocky, and then we look at margin as a secondary lens. Where do we see that moving to in the future? That's in the background to my view of 5% plus EBIT margins in my medium term views. The reduction in auxilis as an overall part of the portfolio is expected to remain and therefore the growth is coming from the lower margin areas but overall that's basis of our 5% expectation.

I think it's important to understand as well though that what the acquisition of the nationwide sites did and the creation of FMGRX was it opened up opportunities across the group that we wouldn't have had. So I know we certainly have two large insurer relationships that FMG and Auxilius have benefited from significantly, that if we were only working with an independent network and didn't have that blend of our own sites and the network, we wouldn't have won. We've been told very clearly that it's because we have the capacity to own our own demand, and certainly looking forward, some of the opportunities we're working with, having RS as part of that proposition has made a really significant difference.

As it answers both your parts in terms of... Feel free to add some more if you want. No, I think it's covered. I mean, look, when we look at the margin and sort of where that driver's coming from as well, this is a strategic position that we're taking. So if we've got a cohort, an insurance, large insurance partner... that does multiple services across mobility in and they've done them previously in silos our strategic aim is to bring that together because it one it streamlines a customer journey very very well two we've got that operational leverage of scale now that we didn't have pre-merger So, naturally, customers are gravitating towards that platform because if you can give a partner a single journey through mobility, that is much better than dealing with four or five different businesses all coming at different points, different brands, different processes, different procedures. So, that's what we're doing. We're offering that very differentiated mobility proposition. We can see that growth coming from those areas still. We look at it, as Richard mentioned, from a rookie perspective in terms of what capital are we investing, what's our returns, what does it look like. In pure EBIT margin terms, yes, it comes down from a historic position, but we're very comfortable that we're driving the right outcomes. Thanks, that's clear. Okay, thanks, David.

Hi, good morning. Andy Smith, Pam, your Librem. Again, Spain and claims and services. Like on Spain, obviously, you're growing well. Do you have the capacity to continue growing at that rate? That's the question there on Spain. And claims and services, what's behind the shift between more direct hire repairs over credit hire repairs? Is that a trend or is that just a one-off trend? because of the way the accidents are happening.

Okay, let's deal with the Spanish question first. This is not a budget meeting, by the way.

So feel free to answer. Okay. I mean, same rate that last year is going to be difficult. Because we are really focused on providing the best customer service and We need to grow also our capacity, our infrastructure with the fleet growth. So we are incorporating new branches, new service points. We have to digest part of the last year growth. I mean, we will keep on growing with, I would say, single digit high. But last year was, I would say, something very, very high.

Yes, it was double-digit growth last year. As we've guided, we're saying sort of mid to high single-digit, and Spain contributes to that. On claims and sales, I know that question was sort of around what's driving more direct hires. I don't think it's that the market itself has changed demonstrably. It's just that what we're seeing as our share of the wallet, we're getting more exposure to that direct hire because of that operational leverage that we created through our scale. So previously, we were not operating in that space on scale. But now that we are, because we've got the branch network of the facilities, therefore we are exposed. So Harvey and the team are engaged in conversations that enable us to grow that mix effectively. I wouldn't say it's credit hire or credit repairs reducing, reducing. I would just say that the mix and our overall exposure is changing.

Okay. And if I can, two more. Ooh, go on then. Well, working capital. I can see that there's been a big swing in working capital this year from an inflow to an outflow. Just go through what's behind that and what we can expect for this year. And then, again, on the PPUs, if you can just give us some guidance on how you see that trending for this year.

Yeah, sure. So taking working capital first. So in FY24 there was an outflow of 5.6 million and in FY25 this year there was an inflow of 49 million. So why the large inflow in this year? So the main component of that is the auxilis business and putting more claims through our protocol agreements. So a switch from non-protocol to protocol helps us in working capital. It means that we get the cash in quicker. What should you expect for this year? My guidance would be flat working capital each year unless there's a reason to not say that. And at the moment there isn't a reason to not say that.

On PPUs. You saw how we said, look, they've been stable since October last year in terms of what we're seeing through residual values. So the market has been stable. I mean, our outlook in terms of we expect there's still a little bit of strength still in PPUs. We expect it still to graduate off over time. But the market is stable.

And what I'd add, because sometimes it creates confusion, is that residual values are stable, but the net value of the vehicle is increasing, because we've got more expensive vehicles coming into the mix, and you have to cohort and analyse that. And so our expectation, and in my guidance of 10 to 15 million pounds of the disposal profits, is the combination of those two factors happening. Yeah.

Okay, do we have any more questions from the room? Yeah.

I'm speaking on behalf of David Farrell from Jefferies. I'd ask two questions. The first one, as you've just answered, which is on working capital. That question was exactly what was being asked, so that's fine. And then second, just in terms of the steady state cash flow, where the 200 million, which was talked about here with FY27-28, just questioning, has there been a delay in where you see this cash flow coming from? When Philip was talking last year and focusing on FY27, his only comment on that.

So again, just to cover the working capital, I say it has been covered, but protocols, when insurers go into protocol, we get faster cash. It's provided a discount to the claim value, but we get faster cash, and that's the benefit we've seen because we've got more insurers that have gone into protocol.

tie that point really down second point Richard you want to pick that up on yeah so I went through it um David in quite a lot of detail on the steady state cash flow and capex cycle slide and we're progressing well through the replacement cycle and we see the steady state cash flow generation increasing in fy26 and as you said I see it moving to 200 million pounds plus And I've said FY27 and FY28 in my explanation because there are a lot of assumptions that underlie that. And I'm not changing the view. I'm just providing more detail.

Okay. Are there any more questions? Okay. Well, look, I think we're done. Thank you for your time and attention in terms of coming in this morning. I think hopefully you have heard a very strong story in terms of sort of what the delivery, not only for this year, but what that sort of outlook looks like for next year. We are very well positioned. This business model has been operating, okay, five years under the merged model, but Northgate, which is where the big CapEx and the fleet goes, over 40 years. And we're very confident in what we're seeing in the business. So, as I say, thank you all.