Compass Group Plc Ord New

Good morning and welcome to our full year results. 2025 was another great year for Compass. We delivered strong organic growth and margin progress, with profit up nearly 12%. Cash conversion was also very good, as we generated $2 billion of free cash flow for the first time. Net New Business, the cornerstone of our growth, was 4.5%, underpinned by strong new business wins and client retention of over 96%. This was the fourth consecutive year we've delivered net new growth within our 4-5% target range. This performance, together with a significant market opportunity, reinforces confidence in the sustainability of our growth algorithm and our ability to deliver long-term compounding shareholder returns. I'll talk more about this later, but before I do, first over to Petros to give you more details on the financials.

Thanks, Dominic. Good morning, everyone. We've made good progress across all our key metrics as we delivered profit growth ahead of revenue growth. Importantly, free cash flow was also strong, growing faster than profit. Let's start by looking at revenue growth. Net New Business continues to be in the middle of our 4-5% target range, with pricing and volume growth consistent with the first half of the year. With our disposal program now complete, acquisitions are contributing to growth. Operating profit increased nearly 12% to over $3.3 billion. Interest was $315 million, reflecting higher debt due to acquisitions. For fiscal year 26, we expect an interest charge of around $350 million, reflecting the purchase of Vermont subject to regulatory approval. As anticipated, our effective tax rate was 25.5%, and this is expected to be the rate in 2026. Importantly, earnings per share were up by just over 11% in constant currency. And turning to cash, CAPEX was 3.3% of revenue. Consistent with our guidance, we expect CAPEX to be around 3.5% of revenue this year. Working capital improved in the second half in line with our normal seasonal profile and was broadly neutral for the year. We expect a similar profile in 2026. As a result of our strong cash management, free cash flow conversion improved to 88%. turning to the regions. In North America, organic revenue increased by over 9%. Operating profit was up nearly 11%, reflecting margin progress. In international, organic revenue growth was nearly 8%, Operating margin was up 20 basis points to 6.1% as the region benefited from overhead leverage resulting in strong profit growth of nearly 13%. Group organic revenue growth was nearly 9% with the fourth quarter particularly strong as we benefited from increased catering and hospitality events across certain sectors. Excluding this one of factors, our underlying Q4 growth was around 8%. We expect this to moderate further in 2026, reflecting a lower inflation. Group margin increased to 7.3% in the second half of 2025, with our unit margin now fully recovered. Looking forward, we are confident of further margin progress whilst balancing growth and investment. We see opportunities to improve margin in both regions and to leverage group overhead. We expect to continue to make incremental gains in North America as we continue to improve productivity across our MAP framework and better utilizing tech and data. In international, as you are aware, we've invested in sales and retention to drive higher net new business growth. We expect faster margin progress in this region as we leverage these investments and benefit from M&A synergies. Dominic will talk about this later. Turning to the balance sheet, net debt to EBITDA was 1.4 times. As you are aware, last year we acquired high-quality businesses to capitalize on attractive growth opportunities through further subsectorization. This year, we expect to complete Vermat along with other bolt-on deals. As a result, leverage is likely to be above our target range in 2026, peaking at the half-year. However, our capital allocation model remains unchanged and we expect to deliver it in 2027 as the business grows and we deliver the M&A synergies. With our disposal program now complete, M&A is contributing to profit. Including Vermont, we expect acquisitions to add around 2% to profit growth in 2026. Now turning to fiscal year 26 guidance. We expect operating profit growth of around 10% on a constant currency basis, driven by organic revenue growth around 7%, around 2% profit growth from M&A, and ongoing margin improvement. Now, back to Dominic.

Thanks, Petros. As you've seen, the business continues to perform well and is in great shape. We're often asked, what's the secret to our success and continued market outperformance? There are two key factors. First, we have a unique sectorised business model, which is decentralised, with many of our brands still led by the original founder-owner entrepreneurs. This model, which was strengthened through M&A over many decades, is incredibly difficult to replicate. And second, we combine the advantages of this localised approach with the benefits of scale, particularly in food procurement and technology. In short, we combine the best of both worlds. We operate in a hugely attractive market with a significant runway for growth, which is continuing to expand. We're investing organically and in M&A to provide us with additional capabilities to accelerate subsectorization. For food services alone, our adjustable market is worth around $360 billion, of which we have less than 15% market share. And in addition, we see further growth opportunities in targeted high-value support services, where we estimate the market could be worth at least $800 billion. It's worth remembering we're already one of the world's leading support services businesses, generating more than $6 billion of revenue. The business and industry segment of the food services market is worth around $130 billion on its own. You may think as the most outsourced sector, it would have one of the lowest growth rates. In fact, the opposite is true. This year BNI is our best performing sector, with organic revenue up 11% and the highest net new business growth. We continue to invest in this hugely innovative and dynamic sector, increasing our addressable market by entering new sub-sectors or through flexible offers such as vending. Our experience in BNI bodes really well for the rest of the group. Our volumes are benefiting from increased participation in our restaurants as we deliver an even more attractive food proposition. The advantages of our business model mean we can provide a high quality offer at a superior value compared to the high streets. As a reminder, we typically don't pay many of the expenses that retailers do as we operate on client premises. We also leverage our procurement scale and have more menu flexibility, allowing us to change ingredients more easily to help mitigate inflation. Our clients also recognise the importance of food and often subsidise our offer. They are hosting more events on site and increasingly use food as a cultural glue and a key enabler for networking and team collaboration. Acquisitions enhance our capabilities and accelerate subsectorization. Targets are usually sourced locally and have been known to us for several years. We look for exceptional businesses with entrepreneurial teams and attractive returns. And the businesses we acquire benefit from continued autonomy under our decentralized model. We provide them with access to food buy, as well as global best practice sharing. Having completed many acquisitions over the years, we've established a proven track record of successful M&A. In vending and micro markets, we've been operating a rollout strategy of many small bolt-on deals in North America. Together with strong organic growth, Canteen has now grown revenues to over $4 billion. These acquisitions are hugely value-accretive to Compass, with returns typically above our cost of capital from year one. We're also investing in GPOs and recently acquired Regency Purchasing in the UK. As well as scale, we've benefited from their technology and systems, helping build out sectorisation. Regency volumes have doubled since we bought the business, with double-digit ROKI in year two. And most recently, we acquired 4Service in the Nordics, accelerating access to the multi-tenant building sub-sector in particular. Integration is ahead of schedule, delivering high single-digit growth, with financials ahead of our investment case. We've also recently agreed to acquire Vermat, subject to regulatory approval, a truly exceptional premium food services provider, with a market-leading presence in the Netherlands. Vermat will further improve our ability to deliver tailored on-site concepts and innovative retail solutions, as well as providing us with outstanding talent. Once approved, we expect Vermat to be margin and EPS accretive to Compass in our first full year of ownership. As Petros said earlier, over recent years, we've invested in technology and data to support our sales processes, procurement functions, and to drive operational efficiencies. We think of it as benefiting both growth and margin, as well as automating some daily tasks for our colleagues. For example, we're optimizing every stage of the sales funnel by using improved processes and data. We now have more visibility of future gross new wins by more accurately tracking the size of the pipeline, our probability and win rates. We've increased the use of automation tools for bid writing to improve their quality and to reduce preparation time. Tech and data are also transforming the client and consumer experience. We have a strong competitive advantage in this space, having invested in digital for many years, with around 1,600 people now working in this area alone. With hubs in the US, UK, France and India, we share innovations and best practice across our businesses, leveraging our breadth and our scale. We're using AI to improve our customer proposition, using proprietary analytical tools to optimize our product mix and pricing. This helps us to better match our offer to changing customer demand, as well as benchmarking pricing in our sites with the local high street. And finally, when it comes to our frontline colleagues, we're increasingly using AI to automate day-to-day tasks such as recruitment. In the US, we've streamlined our hiring process and reduced the number of recruiters. In Japan, we've implemented an AI chatbot for our frontline colleagues, which answers any queries they may have in seconds, delivering impressive productivity gains. In summary, 2025 has been another strong year for Compass as we continue to deliver on our growth algorithm. We expect to sustain this performance in the long term, delivering high single-digit profit growth, with the building blocks being mid to high single-digit organic revenue growth, ongoing margin progress, and contributions from Bolton M&A, now that our disposal programme is complete. For 2026, profit growth is expected to be even higher, at around 10%, as we benefit from the Vermat acquisition. Now over to Q&A. The operator will share instructions on how to ask questions. Please remember that you must be connected by phone to ask a question.

Operator, over to you. Our first question comes from Jamie Rollo from Morgan Stanley.

Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Three questions, please. First of all, could you talk a bit about what drove that very strong fourth quarter for organic sales, about 9%? I think you said 1% was from sort of one-offs. Maybe talk a bit about what those were. I think we saw a similar thing a year ago and even the year before that, these sort of one-offs. benefits that keep happening. But also the 7% guidance looks quite conservative, even in the context of an underlying sort of plus eight exit rate. So how should we think about the sort of cadence of organic sales through the year? Secondly, again, it's a question on the guidance, but on the margin side, so 1% profit growth from underlying margins, about seven basis points, again, looks a little bit conservative. I think for Matt alone adds about five basis points to the group because it's double digit margin. So could you talk about the upside to margins and also how do you think about that 200 basis points gap between North Africa and international sort of closing, if at all? And then finally, you've given us sort of lots of the AI benefits to the business and your clients on slide 24. Could you talk a bit about how you might mitigate against sort of the impact of job losses driven by AI on sort of office meal demand in general, please? Thank you.

Morning, Jamie, and thank you for your questions. Let me hand over to Petros for the first two questions on run rate and margin guidance, and then I'll pick up on the AI point.

Morning, Jamie. We feel our Q4 underlying rate is about 8%, as you said. We had particularly strong volumes in B&I, education, and sports and leisure that we're pleased with. Some of these we believe it's a one-time nature. And practically, we have taken this in our guidance for 26. If you think about what has changed As we move to 26 versus 25, it's to do with inflation. We're seeing inflation slowing down a fraction faster than what we thought last year, end of the last year. Spot rate on inflation about 4% blended. We believe it's going to be close to 3%. And, you know, we mitigate part of this for our clients. So when you consider our guidance for next year, it assumes a low rate of inflation within the 7%. It assumes a 45% corridor in a fifth consecutive year of delivering our strategy and a net positive contribution for volume. When it goes to margin, I think you give us too much credit of being able to forecast seven basis points or ten basis points on a going forward basis. I think our approach there is profit has to grow faster than revenue. Call it the ten basis points on average. What is interesting is our unit profit margin has exceeded what used to be pre-COVID. which gives us sound financials within, you know, the units and operations. We benefited from overhead leverage, and we expect to make consistent margin progression going forward. We do not see a ceiling to it. You will continue to see international business to grow faster with some group overhead leverage and some marginal gains in North America. I'll take a pause, and I'll pass it to Dominic.

Very good. Thank you, Petros. Jamie, when it comes to AI, I think in summary we see it as a net positive for the business. As you rightly say, we shared some examples today of where we're deploying data and AI within the business, most specifically around our growth processes, where we think we can get better outcomes on the pipeline build, the preparation for meetings, and the conversion into growth. So we're very, very excited about what we're seeing there. We're also very targeted around purchasing and the value we can derive from our purchasing processes and the efficiencies we can introduce for our frontline teams to enable them to dedicate more of their time to their consumer and their clients. When it comes more specifically to the question you raised around net employment numbers, I mean, first of all, just a reminder, BNI is our fastest growing sector as a group and also both within North America and international. Over 50% of that growth is coming from first-time outsourcing, which is very exciting. And as you've heard Petros say, we had strong volumes in quarter four within BNI. So we think our BNI sector is in root health right now. When it comes to AI, look, we're seeing new clients emerge, particularly on the West Coast where we've got a number of smaller startups which we are serving through our commerce series and SME type offer. We're seeing some of those scale into significant clients and we're excited by that. When we talk to our clients in the technology sector, they're very focused on talent retention and attraction, particularly as they seek to get the right capabilities to be best placed with AI. And I think we have a very important role to play there in them helping address that. And then lastly, we're seeing new subsectors emerge like data centers. So with regard to data centers, there's an opportunity for remote feeding through the construction phase. And then once in operation, there's an opportunity for us to provide onsite services, either in the form of restaurants and cafeterias or micro markets. And, of course, there's a whole range of different FM services that we're well-placed to provide to them in an environment where those services are very highly valued. So right now we are seeing it as an opportunity, both in terms of what it's bringing to our business and the opportunities it's providing within our clients' estate.

Thank you both very much. We'll now take our next question from Kate Seale from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much for taking my questions. My first question is also along AI. I guess thanks for explaining all of the benefits. I guess any way you could help us quantify the positive impact on the business, either on the revenue enhancement side or cost savings, any kind of examples or quantification you could give there would be really helpful. And then my second question is on your secured new business, 3.8 billion. That's up 11% year on year, which is very, very encouraging. I guess, could you elaborate a little bit on this number? I think the definition is the new business wins over the past 12 months. So would some of the business already be in the FY25 revenue number already, or is it mostly the pipeline for FY26 growth? Thank you.

Thank you, Kate, and welcome. I think this is your first call with us. When it comes to quantifying AI, we don't think we're in a place to do that right now. I think, like many things we see, we see puts and takes that drive volumes and new business opportunity. At the moment, on the sort of volumes and new business side, as you heard me say, we think it's a net positive. And then with regard to the savings that we're generating within the business, I think what we're seeing most of all is an opportunity for greater effectiveness and the ability to redeploy our people's time on more value-creating opportunities. We're certainly seeing that within sales. And what would I say? Maybe we're generating 15% to 20% time efficiency, which can be redirected into more value-creating preparation for meetings and bid preparation, for example. So that's really how we're thinking about it. It's how do we redeploy effort and time into the bigger opportunities. And then specifically on the new business ARO, yes, 3.8 billion. We're super pleased. We need to continue to grow that relentlessly year in, year out. Our pipelines look very attractive. More importantly, almost, than the gross new business wins, our pipelines are growing at the rate we need to see them grow. You'd have seen us speak today to the increase in the market that has come by way of some of the acquisitions we've made, which opens the total addressable market up for us. So we've now got a market which is over $360 billion. That's what's really exciting. The more we can target sectors and subsectors of opportunity where our operating model is we believe the growth is. As you heard Petros say, we're super excited that this is four years now reported within four to five. We're well-placed to see another year of growth within the four to five. And our objective is to continue to build our TAM and our processes deploying AI such that we can sustain those growth rates and those retention rates over the long term and deliver within the growth algorithm that we've shared with you. As you rightly say, some of that business will have deployed in financial 25 and will be rolling into 26 on an annualised basis. Some of it will be yet to deploy in 26 and the odd contract will have been one which will deploy in future years. as we've also witnessed in the past where we've got some business that comes online. So the correlation between new business one and the in-the-year benefit within our 4% to 5% range is rolling, but we're really pleased that we've delivered that 11% increase year-on-year, which gives us every confidence that we can sustain the 4% to 5% as the business scales and the absolute numbers get bigger.

Thank you. That's very helpful.

And our next question comes from Simon Le Chiffre from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning, Sri, as well, if I may. First of all, on the 3.8 billion new business wins, I'm not sure you mentioned the mix of FTO within this number. I think it was 48% by Q3, so keen to get an update on this. Secondly, on net new, just wondering if net new was also within the 4% to 5% range for the international region. And lastly, I mean, in the U.S., you mentioned some opportunities in data centers, but more broadly, do you believe you could benefit from different investment plans going on, like the Infrastructure Investment Chips Act and so on? Just wondering if it's something relevant for you. Thank you.

Thank you, Simon. Yes, let me pick up on your third question, then I'll hand the first two to Petros. Absolutely, we're super excited by investment in all new forms of technology, and we see those as opportunities for us. So I obviously referenced data centres, but yes, semiconductor manufacture where it's been ensured in particular is presenting opportunities for us. We're seeing data centres all around the world as an area of opportunity for us, and particularly where we see the build of new energy technology, those present opportunities for us. You know, there are, as we've always witnessed, there are new sectors and sub-sectors of business and industry that emerge at pace and scale, and we believe that we've got a range of offers that can play into those, which means we've always got what the client is looking for. You know, what's really important is that we're spotting these trends, we're moving quickly, and we are building an offer that is compelling for the client in their needs. Petros?

Morning, Simon. On the 3.8 billion DOM referenced, you know, it's growing 11%. AFTO around 45%, which is very pleasing to see. If you go back to pre-COVID, it was about one-third of our source of new business wins. It continues to be elevated, which plays back to the complexities of the clients and our ability to serve and solve some of their challenges. I would say it's broad-based and represents a fair share of our sectors, and as Don referenced, you know, particularly with P&I, we continue to have great momentum within this 3.8 billion. When it goes to NetUnion International, let's take a step back here, and if you look at from 2019 all the way back, international was nearly flat. We have four years of consistent good growth. We have four years of elevated net new for this part of the business, and the most pleasing thing for us is retention. You look at retention, we used to be in the low 90s. We are mid-90s sustainably. We would like to do better as we move forward in international business. We have opportunities. If you look in North American business, retention, some of our international business, the more sectorized we become, the more GPOs we deploy, the Compass full toolkit, we should be in a position to drive you know, marginal gains in international business. But we recognize consistent and good growth, and we're working towards sustaining this good growth in international part of business.

Yeah, I mean, I would probably just add to that. If there's anything that pleases me most about the business. It's the performance of the international region. We've seen an acceleration in our net new and improvement in our retention. As Jamie pointed out earlier, there's still a couple of points difference between the margins of North America and international. We see an opportunity to close that gap over time. We think the North American margin will continue to nudge forward. we see an opportunity for the international margin to grow faster. As we make margin accretive acquisitions, as we move toward GPOs in each of the individual international geographies, we see a good opportunity on margin there. There's still a delta in retention between North America and international. We think we can close that gap too as we deploy our processes, and we've seen consistent improvement. What's most important, though, is the sustainability and consistency of that. And we're starting to build a bit of a track record, as Petros said, over the last few years, and we need to sustain that going forward, and we're confident we can. Having said all of that, I'd also just like to remind us that the North America performance was extremely strong last year, and we're incredibly proud of that. We think that you have every reason to believe that that's sustainable, too.

Thank you.

Thank you. And our next question will come from Jafar Mistari from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. I have three questions, if that's okay. Firstly, because you've provided this all-in guidance, which includes M&A and VRMAT, just a couple of questions on this. What timing of the VRMAT consolidation have you assumed in the guidance? And two, how should we look at the 350 million net finance cost guidance in this context? Is it 300 million run rates until the VRMAT consolidation and then it's 350 as you pay for it? Or does the financing that you have in place mean that it's 350 regardless of the exact timing of the deal closing? And then more fundamentally, one of your competitors has announced they would be investing in Salesforce in their sales headcount in at least one large US vertical because they signed so little. Another one of your competitors paid their sales team $25 million extra bonus because they signed so much this year. How do you keep and motivate your hunters? You've talked about the founders' involvement. Could you give us some more color on the sales teams themselves who bring in 3.8 billion? How many are they? What sort of background? What sort of support do they have? How they run and how they're paid?

Thank you. I'll speak to the question on on our sales resource, and then I'll hand over to Petros for the first two questions around Vermont. Look, I think the first thing to say is the consistency of our track record. You've seen us deliver the new business growth now globally across North America and internationally, as I said, over four years. We've got a great line of sight of the fifth year. More importantly, we've been doing that in North America for certainly the 13 years I've been with the group and probably over 20 years. So there is a consistency to our process and execution that I think is critical to the strength of our performance. We've got longevity and tenure in many of the people who work with us. Our organization, as we talk about often, is designed around sectors and sub-sectors. So we have dedicated sellers for each of the offers that we provide to our clients. We have dedicated sellers who are focused on the first-time outsourcing opportunity. Often that's a longer sell, and so we're incentivizing them over multi-year rather than individual years' performances. I won't speak to the individual reward structures, but we have processes that have worked for us repeatedly. Our pipeline looks out one in three years, and we're excited by that. And when you speak about the different competitive pressures, again, having been around this business for a while now, I've seen the competitive pressures ebb and flow. I see no real difference today to that which we've experienced previously. I think it's really important that we keep doing what we're doing. And that starts with expanding the TAM so that we've got ever more opportunity, being relentlessly focused on what the pipelines look like one, two, three years out, being relentlessly focused on. our retention and how we secure and preempt to minimize the retention risk. You've seen a consistent improvement in retention. We put that down to our SAG processes and non-SAG processes, which we're getting more dedicated to all of the time. And actually the use of data around consumer MPS and our client feedback on an anonymized basis is allowing us to make even better decisions around that. So, we just remain relentlessly focused on doing what we're doing, on sharing our best practices and scaling our teams. We're always adding sellers into the business to ensure we can continue to grow at scale. But what I come back to is how important it is to continue to expand the TAM to give us the marketplace to grow into. And again, elevating the conversation, we have a 15% global market share. In an industry that's still 50% self-op, there's a huge runway for all of us to grow into.

Good morning, Zafar. Morning. On Vermont, just to remind everyone, it's still subject to regulatory clearance. We have taken an assumption on contribution as of the first quarter of 26. We have line of sight where in the final stints of this being closed. and we remain very excited to welcome the Vermont team within the Compass Group family. When it goes to the interest expense for next year, about 350 million, this assumes Vermont, including the numbers, and a bit of in-field M&A that will continue to invest in the business as we move forward.

Thank you. So just to be clear, it's going to be 350 regardless of that time? Yes. Can I have a short follow-up on this, please? What's your assessment of the EPS creation of the deal? You said positive for this year because you're presumably closing it late in the year but you immediately have that higher finance cost it doesn't look like we can justify even a second decimal upside to to consensus eps but if we annualize it on a full year what sort of equation do you think this this deal if everything happened at the same time interest costs and consolidation please i i think i think uh in doming script i think we say

It's going to be accretive on EPS on a full year of ownership. You have to appreciate, you know, pending on when this deal is going to close, there is a different contribution profit vis-a-vis the interest cost. We'll be accretive to group as it closes. And importantly, with the synergized cases, as we go in delivering, you know, good growth and some synergies on the cost lines, we should be able to drive further EPS accretion on a year-to-year basis.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next question will come from Leo Carrington from Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. If I could ask three as well, please. Firstly, on the North America H2 margins, which were flat despite the organic growth, is there anything to call out as weighing on the margins this year? Possibly the $440 million of MMA spend. Anything there would be useful. Secondly, I do appreciate the focus of yours was on BNI today. But in healthcare, your US peer won a big multi-site contract. Is this part of an acceleration in outsourcing in North America healthcare segments that you can also see, or something of a one-off? And then lastly, I was interested in the slide 29 showing the guidance evolution pre-post-pandemic. What exactly do you attribute the improvement, the increase in like-for-like volume growth to that you expect to see? Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Leo. Why don't I take your second and third question, and then Petros can speak to North American margins. Look, first of all, yeah, I mean, the healthcare sector remains incredibly exciting for us. It's one of the sectors with the most significant first-time outsourcing opportunity, both in North America and international. We are seeing contracts come out on a multi-site, multi-service basis, which are first-time outsourcing opportunities. So whether we would call that an acceleration or it's the normal trend, I think we'll determine as we go. but there are some very exciting opportunities in the sector, and that's the case both in North America and international. And I could say the same for higher ed as well. So look, our sectors remain vibrant. We see lots of opportunities, not just in B&I, but across all of the sectors, and really informs our confidence today in sustaining our net new growth algorithm and the ever-expanding TAM. And then when it comes to like volume growth, I think there's quite a few puts and takes that we could pull apart, whether it's sort of return to office over time and so forth. But I think the biggest single trend for me is the one that we sort of call that in the slides today. And that is, I think, the greater appreciation of the value that we offer relative to the high street. I'm very confident that the quality of what we offer is on a par. I think we've got some exceptional consumer offers now within our estate. But we're providing that to our consumers at a very, very significant discount to the high street. And through this period of elevated pricing, that delta has become ever more. um we talked about why that is obviously it's the fact that you know we typically aren't paying utilities on site but i think you know our scale of purchasing is just so much greater than the high street competitor set that provides advantage and our menu flexibility is so much greater and i think you know therein lies you know a huge opportunity to create value for our consumer That combined with the opportunity or the case where many of our clients are partially or fully subsidizing the offer. I think that's meant that we are capturing more people on our estate and they're having more day part occasions with us. And I really do believe that that is what is behind that. a successful volume growth. And I think you can see that in a number of our sectors. And then when you think more about where you've got the type of consumer that would be within the sports and leisure, the event sector, I think we've got even better at retailing, understanding per capita spend, consumer trends. We've got data analytics businesses that are helping us drive an understanding of those. And we're working very closely with our clients because the clients see there's such an important part of their hospitality performance to be able to drive that. And hence, we benefit from that too. I think you see that in the Q4 volumes, you know, where we have a positive calendar of events, we're also performing positively on volumes.

Good morning, Leo. On North America, we're really pleased on what the business has achieved. If you really step back and you look at North America, operating margin is fully recovered to pre-COVID. Within 25, there was noticeable margin progress as the business grows. Just want to remind you, business is 65% bigger to pre-COVID. And enjoying this elevated growth and still delivering massive progress is quite remarkable for our teams, I think. On a going forward basis, we'll expect still to do, you know, some marginal gains as we grow, more of an overhead leverage. And we remain positive on the trajectory of this business. If you are referring to the half two versus half one, we made progress versus both half of last year. And as we came to a fully normalized world on recovering the margin, there is some seasonality in there. North America has always been stronger margin in the first half to second half.

I would add on margins that, as a group, I probably feel as confident as I've ever been that we will see steady, consistent, incremental margin progress in North America and international. Why is that? Just to remind ourselves of the portfolio work we did where we exited a number of the more volatile markets. I think we've got much more consistent business now. We've got a much more sustainable foundation and base, and I think we can grow from that consistently from here. So that's what's informing our confidence, both in North America and international, that we should see consistent, steady margin progression.

Thank you, Dominic. Thank you, Precious.

Thank you. Our next question will come from Estelle Weingroth from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. I've got a first question on North America. You talked about the very good performance of BNI. Can you give us an update on other segments, in particular higher education, any indication on these full-term enrollment numbers? And a second question on Europe. Can you provide a bit more granularity on the underlying momentum? You mentioned BNI and sports and leisure. Can you be more specific, perhaps, on the country basis, or at least any country, to call out underpinning this solid momentum? And have you noticed, have you witnessed any signs of a softer macro in some countries in Europe, like in France, impacting volumes? Thank you.

Petros, do you want to take the North American higher ed question, and then I'll speak to Europe?

Good morning, Estelle. So North America, as Dominic referenced, you know, very strong BNI, low double-digit growth, broad-based across all sub-sectors. If you look in the rest of the sectors, we're in the high single-digit growth territory, which is quite pleasing. It's what we call broad-based growth. And actually, if you look at our sector footprint, we expect to be this way as we are fully sectorized and we're winning, you know, good businesses within every sector. When it comes to education, I think enrollment came in good, in line with our expectations. Convenient to have some, you know, good momentum in the education business as we move to the fiscal year, 26 year.

Great. And with regard to Europe, I mean, actually, Estelle, you spoke to it. We are two-thirds of B&I business in Europe. So for us to grow, we need to be seeing positive growth in B&I, which is the case. got a very exciting pipeline. We've won some really nice opportunities in the Nordic region, in France, in Germany. We continue to perform extremely well in Spain and in Turkey. So we've got a strong portfolio of countries that are all growing together. Importantly, and going back to the earlier conversation, what's really stepped up has been our retention performance in Europe. Again, if we compare it to the years that Petros described when we were flatlining for growth, the real difference there is a 2-3% percentage point improvement in our retention rates, which we believe are sustainable. We've got very rigorous retention processes that we've trained out and we're managing through the region, and that gives us good confidence in momentum. We've got a very exciting pipeline for Europe. And I think the other feature is, for example, we've launched our Levy sports and leisure brand into Europe. And we're managing that across all of our international markets now, actually. And we're seeing good momentum as we start to win our first account. Obviously, we talked about it's not in Europe, but the Australian tennis open. which was one last year, but also we're seeing our first ones in the sports areas in Europe, which is exciting. And then latterly, obviously the acquisitions we've made for service in the Nordics and others are starting to give us access to new sub-sectors within BNI, which gives us even increased confidence on sustaining those growth rates in Europe. So we think that it's an ever-improving performance that we can expect in Europe, and we'll continue to nudge up within our net new growth range of 4% to 5%. On the macro point, sorry, at this point we aren't seeing any degradation on our volumes from the macro, but we remain watchful. And look, I know there's some concern out there about are we likely to enter any recessionary conditions across the piece. I think a reminder, first of all, we're not seeing it. And then secondly, we do believe that the resiliency of this business can demonstrate itself in those times. First of all, Our clients look for value and cost savings. And whenever there's been a tighter macro, we've seen an acceleration in first-time outsourcing and also in rebidding of contracts for more value. And I think we're very, very well placed there. And then secondly, if the consumer is looking for value in tougher times, then I think everything I said about what's driving the volume performance will stand us in incredibly good stead. So look, I think we feel well placed, whatever may be ahead of us.

Thank you.

The next question will come from Ivor Beaufort Kelly from UBS. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. You've mentioned FM a couple of times in passing on the calls, whereas it usually feels like we go several quarters without it being mentioned at all. Can this be an indication that it's a bigger focus going forward? And can you talk about the relative margin contribution of FM services compared to the traditional food services and outlook for growth? Secondly, you're investing in M&A in GPOs in the UK. You still don't have much in the way of GPOs in the rest of Europe. What would realistic timelines be for rollout of GPOs in your continental European operations and what's actually needed for them to be successful? And thirdly, on the healthcare in North America, as I understand, a lot of the US health groups already have their own GPOs. And since GPOs are a key element of your offering, What is your relative positioning compared to your peers, given I understand the GPOs in healthcare actually like you to use them rather than your own procurement? Any comments there would be helpful.

Thank you for those questions. Actually, really interesting and thoughtful. First of all, FM, yes. Look, we're predominantly a food services group. 85% of our business is food. But look, that 15% that we deliver support services across a spectrum of different services in FM is $6 billion. That makes us the fifth or sixth biggest support services company globally. We also operate support services with great capability in many markets. We've quietly got on with that. It's been growth neutral. So it's been growing at a par with our food service business and actually is also margin neutral. So on a par with our food services business. So it's good business for us. Where we sell it alongside our food as a multi-service offer or an integrated offer, it can be very sticky with clients. Typically, we've seen it in the defense sector, the remote sector, the healthcare sector, and increasingly within the education sector. Within BNI, it's often sold separately rather than as an integrated offer. But look, we think it's an attractive market that in a number of countries we are well placed for. We quantified the market today within our slides, $800 billion. It's very fragmented. So there's a long runway for opportunity for growth. We're clearly not prioritizing that over our food service business, but we will consistently execute. And we really just wanted to remind everyone today of the scale of that business and the capabilities that we offer. And that I think if you're very selective in the services you provide and where you work with clients, then it can be an attractive adjacency to food. On the M&A for GPOs, yeah, you're absolutely right. We've been building out our UK food by business very successfully over time. We gave some great examples today, particularly Regency. Now, our US food by business continues to be incredibly accretive for us and an important part of our portfolio. We have a food by business in Canada, Australia, and the UK. We already operate GPOs today in some of our European markets. So we operate them in the Scandinavian area, within Belgium. We haven't yet built those out in some of the other bigger individual countries. It is an area of focus for us. You asked what is the recipe for success. Actually, when we take a step back, what enabled both the US and the UK to build a credible and scale food by offer was first acquiring the capabilities of a GPO. and then bringing the compass volumes into that GPO to get aggregate scale, and then to franchise the capabilities and the services alongside the scale into the third-party market so that we can grow disproportionately with our own estate, our acquisitions, and the third-party growth. And we think that really is the sort of the recipe for success in other markets, and it's one that you should expect to see us pursue over time. And then finally, with regard to the North American healthcare GPOs, yes, we partner with many healthcare GPOs that operate for themselves across their own healthcare estate. Remember, they're typically buying pharmaceuticals, equipment, linen, and other non-food categories where they've got significant scale. actually bringing their food volumes into our significant food buying volumes can yield even more value for them. So we think there's a really interesting and exciting way to partner with the North American healthcare GPOs to give them more value and bring more volume into our model.

Thank you. We have time for one final question today.

Neil Taylor from Rothschild please go ahead with your question good morning thank you just a couple of quick follow-ups actually to previous questions firstly just touching on the on the last question around SM support services. In your prepared remarks, I may have misheard, but I think you mentioned that you would consider adding to those services through M&A. I just wanted to make sure I understood that correctly in in isolated instances, obviously, but if you could clarify there. And then secondly, Dominic, going back to the point or the focus you put on the expanded addressable market, the additional sort of 40 billion or so Can you just talk a little bit more about where that's come from? You mentioned it's come through the acquired expertise over the last 12 months or so. And are there opportunities to continue to replicate what's happened over the last 12 months through further M&A? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Neil. Look, on the first point, I think, you know, we'll consider tucking bolt-ons wherever appropriate within our portfolio to ensure that we've got the right offer for our clients and that, you know, we can continue to either defend our estate or to grow the TAM. And that would apply within bolt-ons within FM's and support services as necessary. Separately, your question on the TAM, yeah, I think it's been a really positive feature and one of the driving reasons for the M&A that we've done over recent years. If you think about full service, it's given us access to the multi-tenant market. Where previously we would seek to win business through our clients, we now partner with the real estate owners as they construct new facilities, which are multi-tenanted and multi-service. It's an exciting segment that we weren't previously as exposed and didn't necessarily have the capabilities for. It's a trend in the Northern European countries and it gives us the capabilities that we can build into other European markets. I think that's a great example. We've done a number of micro market acquisitions in the UK to build a canteen type micro market offer in the UK. That comes first with technology and then by building a regional presence such that we can offer our clients national coverage with a technology enabled solution. That's opened up the micro market and vending sub sector in the UK to us where we previously didn't have the capability or range of services to deliver that. That's something that we feel we can replicate in other international countries, given the learnings that we've had in the US and Canada. In particular, the Hoffman acquisition gave us access through a high-quality frozen offer into SMEs. where we can deliver in, at lesser scale, a consistently high-quality offer that can be frozen and used over time. That's an exciting part of the market that we previously didn't necessarily access. And with Vermont, although not yet closed, they have an exciting join program, which is a sort of technology-enabled delivered-in solution, which, again, we can leverage and learn from. I think all of the M&A, we talk about giving ourselves access to capability, both in terms of the business model and offer, but also the people running the businesses. And I think those are great examples of that and where we'll focus as we go forward.

Thank you. That's very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. With this, I'd like to hand the call back over to Dominic Blackmore for closing remarks over to you, sir.

I mean, just quickly say thank you all for joining us today, and we look forward to hosting you with the first quarter results in February next year. In the meantime, wishing those of you a happy Thanksgiving or happy Christmas holidays. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect.