Hello, you're watching Pro Anctit. I'm joined by Galliford Tri CEO, Bill Hawking. Bill, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today. Could you stop by giving us an introduction to Galliford Tri for those who may not already know you? Yes, of course. We're a large listed construction company operating in the throughout the UK. And we operate predominantly in the in the public and regulated sectors, about 90% of our business in the public and regulated sectors. Across all of the the departments you'd expect. So we work across defence, education, custodial, health, etc. And we have a large portfolio of of work in water and wastewater across all of the water companies in the UK, as well as having a number of specialist businesses that operate across infrastructure and building. Your full year results for 2024, and they show a strong performance, record revenue and profit growth, strong cash and an increased dividend. What were the drivers of this excellent performance bill? Yeah, of course. So we had revenues of £1.8 billion in the year, which is up about 27% on last year's revenue. So very good. We're with an operating margin up to 2.5% up 13 point spaces points on the previous year. Our PBT was up at £32.7 million, which was up 48% on the previous year. And that produced earnings per share of 27.9p and a dividend of 15.5p per share. And that is up 48% on the previous year. So a very, very strong performance in the year. And in addition to all of that, we've also announced today a £10 million share buyback, which follows a previous £15 million shareback a couple of years ago. Our order book is in fantastic shape with £3.8 billion and that's all high quality work, which underpins our margin aspirations. And take us to some of the drivers of the performance bill. Well, to start off with, I think, Stephen, it's a robust risk management. So it's a combination of having really good process around managing your risk, being very selective about the projects that we take on and working with clients who value a good, strong balance sheet and a good reputation. I think those are the key things. And therefore, the order book that comes out of that attitude means is a robust order book, which means that we can perform consistently and predictably all the time and that strengthens our already strong balance sheet. And so that's a philosophy of how we run the business. We came into this year with something like 92% of our work already in hand and 70% of the following year's work already in hand. And that just enhances our ability to be really selective about what we do. Bill, and may you sense how the group's sustainable growth strategy to 2030? Could you remind us of that strategy, please? Yes, effectively, we intend to grow the business to revenues of in the order of 2.2 billion pounds at an operating margin of 4% by 2030. And we do that in a few ways. We continue to grow our big revenue generating businesses. That's building infrastructure, which is mainly roads and highways and environment, which is mainly water and wastewater. So we continue to grow those big revenue generators, both in terms of revenue and in terms of margin. And then in addition to that, we have a portfolio of specialist businesses that we are growing and they are all higher margin businesses and we're going to grow those up to critical mass to augment those standard construction margins. We're also going back into the affordable housing market. So this was a market that we've been excluded from from a few years following the sale of our partnerships of business to to history back in 2020. But those covenants have come off now so we can reenter the affordable homes market. And for us, affordable homes means sort of mid rise blocks of flats for councils and residential providers. Finally, Bill, could you summarize the investment case for the business? Yeah, look, we've got a to start off with, we've got a great bunch of people, 4,200 excellent people. Alongside them, we've got very strong processes about risk management and selectivity, a very strong order book at 3.8 billion pounds, a very strong balance sheet with 155 million pounds of average cash across the last year, 42 million pounds of PFI assets, no debt, no pension fund liabilities. So we in very good shape. And the outlook for the business is very positive in terms of the infrastructure that this country needs, both social and economic to underpin this country's productivity. Bill, thank you very much for taking the time to speak to us on what's a very busy day for you. Nice to speak to you. Thanks to you, take care. Let's gather for China's CEO, Bill Hocking. (logo whooshing)
