Compass Group Plc Ord New

Welcome to conference group 2026 first quarter training update conference call hosted by Dominic Blakemore, group chief executive officer. All is being recorded. Ask a question, please press star 1 on your touchstone keypad. I will now turn the call over to Dominic Blakemore for his opening remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to our Q1 trading updates. As usual, Petros is alongside me. We've had a strong start to the year, delivering organic revenue growth above 7%. Growth moderated as expected from the exceptional Q4 run rate, but the overall momentum remained very positive and strongly within our multi-year growth algorithm. Both regions and all sectors performed well, with sports and leisure and business and industry the fastest growing. For the fifth year running now, net new business remains in our 4% to 5% range, supported by sustained strong client retention of over 96%. Outsourcing trends remain robust, with new business wins up 10% year-on-year to $4 billion, nearly half of which came from the B&I sector. We completed the acquisition of Vermont in December and are now progressing with the integration. Together with synergies from the other acquisitions and operating leverage across the business, we're confident in delivering good margin progress this year. We've also announced our intention to change the currency of our share price from sterling to US dollars from the 1st of April. Turning to guidance, our expectations for 2026 are positive and unchanged. We anticipate underlying operating profit growth of around 10% on a constant currency basis, Driven by organic revenue growth around 7%, 2% profit growth from M&A and ongoing margin progression. Before I hand back over to the operator for Q&A, I'd like to address the trends we're seeing in AI across our business. BNI continues to be one of our fastest growing sectors, both globally and in North America. Supported by strong net new and positive volumes. Contract signings are very healthy, with over half of the new wins coming from first-time outsourcing, driven in part by the continued expansion in the tech sector, where we have a very strong presence and are growing above double digit. After spending three weeks meeting with around 40 current and prospective clients, one message came through loud and clear. AI is driving significant improvements in efficiency, productivity, and growth. But capturing the opportunity requires new skills and evolving roles across organizations. It's also important to remember that 80% of our business is in sectors such as sports, defense, mining, manufacturing, education, and healthcare, which are largely insulated from any AI risk and continue to offer us very strong pipelines and attractive first-time outsourcing opportunities. The remaining 20% of our portfolio is in white-collar B&M, which spans tech, professional, and financial services. And over one-third of this is related to tech, where we are benefiting from what's been described as the largest infrastructure build-out in human history. The other two-thirds includes professional and financial service clients, where only a very small proportion is exposed to entry-level roles. The AI supply chain now spans energy generation, chip manufacture, data centers, modeling, and applications. And we already have a very strong exposure to all of these layers, where we see an acceleration in growth as this ecosystem continues to scale. And we're an active AI adopter ourselves, embedding AI across our operations to drive growth and productivity, particularly in sales execution and procurement. In summary, we're well positioned to benefit from the AI economy, both supporting our hyperscaling technology clients and by participating in the broader AI supply chain. Experience has also shown us that our business has proven extremely resilient through major cycles, from the global financial crisis to COVID, and we've consistently adapted, emerged stronger, and accelerated net new growth. With that, I'll now hand over to the operator so we can take your questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Again, to ask a question, please press star 1. Thank you. We will now take our first question from Jamie Rollo of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Two questions, please. First of all, just on the 4% net new, you've obviously outlined very good ARO and retention numbers. Could you perhaps just give us your confidence level that that net new figure sort of accelerates through the year and how you see the quarterly cadence? And also maybe just looking into the year ahead, should we really be thinking more about a sort of 4% net new business rather than that 4 to 5 number? And then the other question to a higher level, just on GLP-1 adoption, are you seeing any impact on portion sizes, any impact from protein mix on revenue or margins, anything to change your sort of like-for-like volume assumptions? Thank you.

Thank you, Jamie, and good morning. Let me take those two. I mean, first of all, I think, take a step back. We're now, this is the fifth year at which we've been delivering within the 4% to 5% range. And again, that is a very significant acceleration on the level of net new in this business pre-pandemic. That's largely because we're delivering consistently across the entire portfolio with good net new in both international and North America. We see every opportunity to sustain that over the years to come. We're very, very excited about the pipelines that we see for one to three years, but more importantly, the evolution of our subsectors and the opportunities that they generate for us. We're working very, very hard on opening up new subsectors for us where we don't currently compete, like defense in certain markets, like airline lounges outside of North America, like data centers across the globe. All of those expand our addressable market and give us more opportunity to both sustain that net new growth rate, but also accelerate it. If I look into this year, we anticipate a similar level for the first half of this year, similar trends in Q2 to Q1. And, yes, you're absolutely right. With a record level of new business signings now at $4 billion, if we retain and sustain the levels of retention we've got, we would expect to see a modest acceleration into the second half in that new and for the full year. That gives us confidence going into next year. I think, as we've always said, we will be within that range as best we can see. Perhaps in some years it may be lower, in some years it may be higher. That's exactly what you've seen us deliver. Our ambition is to push above that range, right? And we'll do everything we possibly can to improve our sales execution and expand our addressable market to do even better. We've had years when North America have been above five. We've had years when material markets for us have been above five. So our ambition and expectation is to build the pipelines and processes that can achieve that more broadly across all of our business. When it comes to GLP-1, to be honest, we're not seeing an impact at this point in time. Were we to, we think it's a positive for our business. Again, let's just remind ourselves that we can adapt our menus, our portion sizes, our offer. We can premiumize in a way that we can deliver to the consumer what that consumer wants. So we do believe that were there to be a different demand pattern, we could respond to that in a way that is positive for the business. Separately, we would say that we're seeing more protein-enriched products within the canteen vending business, and we think that's exciting because it gives us a broader range of skews to market to our consumers, more variety and potentially more opportunity.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. And we'll now take our next question from Jennifer Mastari of VMP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Two questions please. Firstly, just so we're all on the same page, if you could Give us a little bit more color on the very qualitative descriptions you've made of these KPIs for net new business. It sounds like it's 4%, but we would love to hear a decimal if there is one. Does that mean pricing is between 2.5 and 3 and is net positive volumes? Does that mean 0 plus or between 0 and 1? Please, that would be extremely helpful. And then related to net new business, we've seen good signings that have continued to tick up. We've seen retention that you stated is unchanged. And so that would suggest if you start towards the lower end of the range, it's just the timing of those wins, really. So maybe some more color on that. Is it... broad-based, where there are a couple of bigger contracts that explain why there's a temporary mismatch. And I'm sorry, that's three questions. But lastly, if I take your $4 billion of findings and 96% retention, that would suggest at some point the net new year deserves to be delivering is 4.7%. Is that something that is a good assumption for the end of 26, early 27? Or is there anything we should have in mind in terms of further timing discussions? I suppose there's also a slightly pedantic point about FX in your $4 billion, if part of that is international, etc. Can I do that math, the $4.7 billion?

Thank you, Jifar. Quite a lot to unpack there. Let me have a go in the round and then maybe hand over to Petros for some more detail. What I'd first urge you to do is not fixate on the quarterly trends. um you know we can have one material contract opening which can distort the trends from quarter to course i think it's much more important to look at the trends over the year and over time um we delivered four and a half percent last year we've done that for four years consecutively uh closer to four percent at the moment The momentum between Q4 and Q1 is largely about a lower level of pricing resulting from a lower level of inflation, which I think we very much signaled in previous calls. The $4 billion of new business is a really exciting number. We've got a very exciting pipeline ahead of us. And, yes, there are some quite chunky deals in that pipeline, right? And there were some chunky deals in the $4 billion. But, of course, we've always had large deals in there as well as – the smaller deals which we see consistently across our smaller markets. It has to be a mix for us to sustain these levels. Yes, if you do the math, you would anticipate an acceleration, as would we. Again, as I said earlier, if we sustain the levels of retention we're enjoying today, then that should be the case. and that would give us confidence going into the first half of next year and as a platform to build from with very exciting pipelines. So I think what's most important for us is we've set out the four to five. The four to five underpins the mix of housing and digital organic growth. We've consistently been there. We see ourselves staying there and to build from here, and that underpins the model which gets us to the double-digit earnings, as it were.

Petros, did you have one? I think Dominic referenced all the good points. The only thing I'm going to say, Zafar, is on volume, we're seeing about half a point positive contribution in Q1. We remain positive for the next quarters. Just to put this a bit in context, we were lapping a massive Q1 last year with quite a chunk of return to office and a very dense post-election calendar. We're driving, we're seeing in the print about half a point of contribution, which is higher than pre-COVID. It was nearly flat. And this gives us confidence that the volume will continue to contribute positively as we go. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Leo Carrington of City. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much. Good morning. On two themes. Firstly, in terms of the growth in B&I, I appreciate that detail on AI. I wonder if it would be also helpful to elaborate on your exposure to prime or grade A offices versus the out-of-town secondary offices, and just thinking about the relative durability of those as employment centers. And then secondly, on M&A. Can you give some color on which regions and subsectors saw the M&A spend when excluding Vermont, the $200 million? And then regarding Vermont itself, I appreciate we've got the sector deep dive on the mine, but can you outline what the post-integration plans are for the business, please?

Sure. Leah, thank you for those questions. I don't have a specific breakdown in the split between our sort of prime city B&I clients and those which would be outside. And of course, you know, the split we often see is that our B&I clients are largely city-based. And, of course, our manufacturing data center and other such clients would be more suburban or remote for very obvious reasons. So I think we're talking about potentially different categories of clients. It's also why you would typically see brands like Restaurant Associates, Flick, Bon Appetit represented in major urban centres, but Urest would be more in the manufacturing blue-collar suburban locations. And we believe that there's a level of, again, resiliency in that model because of the different trends that we would see in the Urest and B&I central city locations. So hopefully that gives you some color. I know it doesn't give you the exact quantified detail.

Petros, do you want to answer on M&A and on that? Yes, how are you? 1.9 billion in Spain, 1.7 billion in Burma. 200 million is just bolt-on in fees for vending and attending the United States. We have been doing this for a long time. It does help on growth. It does help on the margin expansion as we go. We have a pipeline for the second half of the year in M&A, as we discussed in the December call. When it comes to Vermont, we closed in December. We are in the process of integrating the business within our portfolio. We cannot comment on how, you know, this integration is going. It's too early. Rather than we're very excited to welcome an excellent business and the management team within the Compass family. Thanks, Petros. Thank you, Leo. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. And we'll now move on to our next question from Ivar Beaufort Kelly of UBS. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. I want to follow up on the AI exposure or non-exposure as the case may be. But within the business and industry division, what sort of contract structures do you actually have in place and how would your financials actually evolve if you do see your clients have lower office attendance? And linked to that, are you actually making any changes to the contract structure that you're writing here to protect from lower volumes in the future? And secondly, a follow-up on Jamie's question about the GLP-1 drugs, what sort of proportion of your revenue mix actually comes from add-ons like snacks like chocolate bars and crisps, which might actually be exposed if people are eating less food? And lastly, it's probably one-off in nature, but can you give us a sense of the potential opportunity from the Football World Cup that we're going to have this summer? Do you allow for anything within your guidance at the moment? And could there be upside? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Ivan, for those three. Yeah, look, first of all, specifically with reference to AI, I may be giving a bit more color than I gave in the intro. Generally, we feel very positive about the opportunity that comes from AI within our portfolio. As I said, 20% of our business is white-collar B&I. 7% of that 20% is with tech clients. In the last quarter, we grew 14% in that sector. There's a phenomenal opportunity to partner with the hyperscalers here. And if you do the math, that's contributing a point of group growth. And we've seen that growth both across net new and volume. Just to give you one example, we talked about it before. We understand there are plans in place to see something like 6,000 data centers in the U.S. by 2030. That's the U.S. alone. That is both new constructions and it's the scaling up of existing construction. When those facilities become scaled, we see an opportunity of around $4 million to $5 million per data center. In reality, that's created a new subsector for us, which could be anywhere between $10 and $20 billion, of which we have perhaps a 1% share today. That's a super opportunity, and I think a very real example of what's out there for us in this phase of expansion. And that's without speaking to the level of expansion we're also seeing within that client base in their programming software and coding divisions, which is also very, very significant. both in the U.S. and within their operations overseas. So I think that that speaks to the opportunity. When you talk to the risk, we would believe that what we describe as entry-level roles, which I think those are the ones which have been categorized as being at most risk, at least in this phase, would be no more than 10%, 15% of most of our 13% of employees. of Wycolic Professional Service, Financial Service, BNI. So again, the math would get you to one, one and a half percent if half of that were at risk over a number of years. We feel it's largely insignificant and immaterial and manageable. I'd also point to the fact that everything I'm seeing right now is that we're seeing role replacement rather than displacement. Whenever I talk to the CEOs of our clients, we understand that new roles are being created around data integrity, data management, data compliance, the technology skills to be able to manage the LLMs and decide on the most appropriate models, and the retraining of colleagues around how to use AI and deploy the outcomes. So I think there is a net positive there. I'd also point to some of the research which suggests that we could be in a phase of very significant net job creation over the years to come. All of that said, were it to present a risk, I think we learned a lot through the pandemic and working from home. We reorganized, we structured many of our contracts to protect us from any significant volume declines. We still have the basket of contracts we've always described, which a third, a third, a third broadly as we reverted to that post-pandemic, which gives us good shelter and mitigation against the potential risk. So we do feel, should risk materialize, we're well-placed to address it. We actually believe that there is more opportunity than risk for us in that space. Moving on to GLP-1 drugs, I don't have the exact breakdown of confectionery and soft drinks. Obviously, our core is providing food and beverage on the plate, as it were, a culinary offer, as opposed to a snacking and confectionery offer. We do have that in our canteen vending business, and I would suggest signal that it continues to be one of the fastest-growing sectors of our business, both from putting down additional sites, but also from the life-to-life volume growth within that. And I think part of that goes to the ability to put new products in to replace those products which may become off-trend. People are still consuming, they're just consuming differently, and we have an ability adjust and adapt to that um and then actually football world cup um we how this works is there a number of stadia um that we are presently in that will be used as venues for the world cup um we will obviously get revenues associated with that but typically those stadia would have been used for concerts and other events during that period of time so in the round we believe that it It's broadly neutralish. We are doing a few other things like fan zones, which will give us a bit of volume tailwind in that fourth quarter. I wouldn't call it out as being material. I think it will be a positive contributor for us.

Great. Thanks so much.

Thank you. And we'll now move on to our next question from Estelle Vengerot of J.B. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. I've got two questions. phasing of organic growth for the year, anything to flag on margins in terms of margin expansion year-on-year in H1 versus H2? And the second one, with one of your close competitors hiring a lot more new sales in the U.S., is there anything you're seeing out there in terms of the competitive landscape? Thank you.

Let me take one first, then I'll hand over on March into Petros, and he may also add to the second question too. Look, I think it's important for us to say that we always grow our sales force every single year. We've always said that this is a virtuous circle of growth. To be able to grow proportionately on bigger volumes, we need more sellers. And we're constantly adding. We're also adding sellers to new subsectors and new opportunities like first-time outsourcing, like defense in North America. So we ourselves are constantly investing. It's not a new thing for us. It's just part of our model. I think that's very important. very important to say. Secondly, no, we aren't seeing anything different competitively, to be brutally honest. And in reality, and I think Petrus may add some colour to this, we don't earn most of our growth from the largest competitors. As we've said repeatedly, half of our growth is coming from first-time outsourcing. Of that balance of 50%, probably two-thirds of that comes from small local regional players. So actually, this industry isn't about a head-to-head or a three-way fistfight, as it were. It's a much more balanced growth story than perhaps the narrative allows. Petros?

Let me just take the margin question. Overall, we feel confident on margin progress for 2026. And beyond, and we discussed this back in December in previous calls, if you think about the three levers we have, core business margin expansion, we're making really good progress there within our map framework for performance when it comes to purchasing. and productivity. Second thing is operating leverage. You have seen last year and the last couple of years we're driving some good efficiency there as we've grown and continue to enjoy around 7% growth. And the third thing is the M&A acquisitions in the line of sight we have on synergies we delivered last year. which helped on our profit performance, as well as the opportunities we have for this year as we move forward. If you take the three components of margin expansion, we feel good about it. And overall, we view the implied margin expansion in our guidance as a floor for 2026. Thank you, Isra.

Thank you. Thank you. If you find that your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Thank you. And our next question comes from Andre of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Jingleman. Three questions, if I may. First one about healthcare and education. You didn't talk about this segment. Can you give us some more color about the evolution? Second question about pricing moderation. What do you mean exactly? Could you also give us some granularity? And third question about leverage. So you confirmed your target of leverage and the acquisition already done or in the pipe. But could you consider to use your balance sheet to return some cash and try to surf on the opportunity of your stock level? Thank you.

Thank you, Andrea. Let me hand those three over to Petros. So when it goes down to healthcare and education, both sectors perform well within our 7.3% field. I know we talked in the past about the normal education. Actually, we see good trends there when it comes to our state. Remember, in education, we have a very tiered offer spanning consumers, visitors, faculty, all the populations we cater, and we see some really good performance there. The opportunity on first-time outsourcing remains very significant in this sector. Remember, it's the less penetrated. And in 2025, we'll mobilize a couple of very large institutions on the first-time outsourcing that will have good credentials to keep up in this sector. I would say similar trends, good growth, volumes, positive volume contribution. I know in the past we talked a bit of if there were any concerns on the tight end spend in this sector. We're not seeing anything. We're not seeing anything either through patient feeding or employee feeding in our restaurants. Again, this sector represents a massive first-time outsourcing opportunity for us as we go forward. On pricing, just to remind everyone, before we discuss appropriate pricing. So if you think about our Q1 pricing, it's about two and a half percent. You know, the run rate market basket inflation is north of 3%, and we need to continue to do a great job for our clients as we go forward. If you compare to quarter four last year, call it is about 70 bits reduction on inflation. And this is what you see in the trajectory of our Q4 to Q1. print in organic, which is consistent to our expectations. On leverage, I think just to remind everyone, we completed very much for 2026. We have a good pipeline of M&A and we discussed about the opportunities we have within GPO and other portals. We're going to go through 2026, digest the investments we have executed. And as we go to 2026 September, We'll see where we end up on the leverage ratio, and then we're going to have to balance our M&A pipeline and consider other options as we move forward, which will provide an update at that time.

If I may just add to the first answer on healthcare education, I think you're seeing in our results very strong performances in BNI and sports and leisure. In BNI in particular, I think that's where we've benefited from our sub-sectorization approach. And then separately in sports and leisure, we've really focused on our sports and leisure offer outside of North America, where we've seen some very exciting growth. We can't do all things, but I think there's even more opportunity in healthcare education, and I'm very focused on working with our operators and teams to see what more we can do there. So I think the current trajectory is good, but it could yet be better, and that's the pressure we're putting on ourselves. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Simon Ricky Bray of Jefferies. Please go ahead.

yes uh good morning two questions uh please um first of all on margin and the phasing i'm not sure if i missed it but any specific failing between h1 and h2 this year and certainly on inflation and i mean where you inflation on your cost base is currently trending please thank you hi simon morning on margin we will continue to make progress on half one

versus last year and have to versus last year as we go. And this is consistent within our growth in PML algorithm. And we're confident in this. On inflation, we do expect inflation to continue to moderate as we go to Q3 and Q4. And again, it will depend on some of the forward-looking indicators. You look at some of the commodities, supply chain impacts. But in our guidance, actually, we have a factor that's more moderation as we go. Thank you.

Thank you. And we'll now take our next question from Kate Chow of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much for taking my questions. Hello, Dominic. Hello, Petros. I have two questions to follow up on earlier points. First on the AI, I guess new opportunities, thanks for putting the numbers there. You mentioned that your current market share is 1%. That would be a lot lower than your market share in North America, BNI, for example. Can you talk a little bit about why that's a bit lower now and what are the efforts there to kind of increase market share Are you developing new brands kind of to gain your fair share? And what is the maybe target market share you're looking at in the long term? And then just a follow-up on the FYI guide of margin and kind of bottom line. Petros, you said clearly it's a floor. So are you potentially looking to revisit this at first half results? Thank you.

Thank you, Kate, for those two questions. I'll take it first. Yeah, look, I think we've seen the data center opportunity being different, and largely that's because of the scale of this generation of data centers. And that's either because they're being newly built or they're being expanded from their footprint. That, therefore, gets them to a level of service requirement that becomes attractive for us and also attractive for the clients to outsource. I think the second thing to that is that these are our clients already within the more traditional offers that we would provide in their offices or large-scale centres in major So we're talking to our own clients about opportunities that we can now serve that are sufficiently scale for us to address. Typically, you need, I think, three core skills. You need some form of canteen or restaurant offer. You need a micro-market vending offer. And you need a level of support services. And we can package all of those together for those clients. So we're starting to see those come to market in bundles. When aggregated, they're attractive opportunities. We can provide services to those anywhere where they are developed across the US and also in the major countries. Western European countries. So we feel very well placed to exploit this. I think it's very much about it being effectively an emerging subsector as to why we have such a low market share. You know, we have 20% or so share in most of what we do in the US. Why wouldn't we aspire to that? And I think it's an opportunity over time, but clearly it's one that's going to be very much accelerated into the next several years.

Kate, on the margin, I think we covered this. You know, we're confident. We have three months within the year. We're going to go through the first six months. We're going to see all the three levers I referenced before on how we're performing. And we assess for half one where this leads us for a full year expectation for the guidance. And we'll let you know in May.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll now take the last question from Sabrina Blanc of Brimstone. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everybody. Just one question regarding the pipeline. Can you provide more color in which areas you would like to develop? And notably, following the Vermont acquisition in the Netherlands, do you see other opportunities to develop the subsectorization in Europe?

Yeah, morning Sabrina. So just to the ground, there's 4 billion of new growth signings. Around half of this is within BNI. BNI is the most outsourced sector. And having said this, we keep being surprised and keep delivering some great new signings in this sector. I think Sports & Leisure looks very strong. We launched nearly now a year and a half ago internationally our leading franchise. We have won some very large accounts and we have great prospects in all of our international regions. I think when you look at the construction of the pipeline and you think about healthcare and education, we truly have an opportunity within the first time outsourcing, is the less penetrated. It's a bit of a slow burn, you know, to unlock this opportunity, but we feel we have the sectorization, the expertise and the client credentials to unlock this over time. To your point of sectorization, if you think about North America, I think we are sectorized and fully sectorized across our portfolio, and this is what we've seen consistent growth for the last 10 to 15 years. If you move to international, the acquisitions we have made in Europe has sectorized us neatly on BNI. We think on LEVI. It's an organic play for us as we go. And we may explore some opportunities in education and healthcare as we go. We think with the portfolio we have today, we're well-placed to capitalize these opportunities across our key sectors. I don't know if Dominique, do you want to reference anything?

Yeah, I think it's a great answer, Petros. I just add on from that, let's remind ourselves that the man operates in Netherlands, France and Germany. So immediately we effectively have a subsectorization opportunity in all of those markets. Separately, I see no reason why that offer can't be extended to other continental European countries. I think that would be a bad pace and timing to do that. I think what we've learned is that it's very hard to build brands organically within our own stable, as it were. What comes from a great offer is the culture. operation of that brand. And so I think we feel very privileged to have acquired for Max, and we think that the strategy to subsectorize should be very much based on acquisition rather than on development. And as Petros rightly said, we think we can play in somewhere like sports and leisure with our own very well-developed brand internationally and the brand standards that come with that. Hopefully that's helpful, Sabrina. Thank you.

Thank you all very much and look forward to speaking.

Pardon the interruption. That was our last question. I will now hand it back to Dominic for closing remarks.

Thank you very much. Thank you all for joining us today and I look forward to speaking to you again at the half-year.

Thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.