discoverIE Group H2 2025 Earnings Report

discoverIE Group EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 39.70
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

discoverIE Group Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

discoverIE Group Announcement Details

• Quarter: H2 2025
• Date: 6/4/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, June 4, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 4:30AM ET

discoverIE Group (LON:DSCV) is an international group of businesses that design and manufacture innovative electronic components for industrial use. The Group provides application-specific components to original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”) internationally, with a focus on key markets driven by structural growth and increasing electronic content, namely renewable energy, medical, transportation, security, and industrial & connectivity. The Group employs c.4,500 people across 20 countries. Its principal operating units are located in Continental Europe, the UK, China, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Mexico and the USA.

discoverIE Group H2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Operating profit rose 8% at constant exchange rates to £60.5 million, with record margins of 14.3% for the year (14.8% in H2) and a new target of 17% by FY 2029.
• After a 7% drop in organic sales due to industry destocking, Q4 orders rebounded 15% (4% in H2), signalling that customers have completed inventory run-downs.
• Free cash flow grew 9% to £40.4 million and adjusted EPS rose 5% (8% at CER), despite higher interest charges, with potential for a 3% EPS boost per 1 pp fall in base rates.
• Carbon emissions have fallen 59% since the 2021 baseline, keeping the company on track for a 65% reduction this year and net‐zero by FY 2030.
• Two acquisitions totalling £29 million were completed this year, and an £80 million funding facility could support M&A equivalent to around 15% of current EBIT.

Presentation

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Thank you for coming this morning to the discoverIE annual results presentation. I think we have a couple of new faces in the audience, but it's the same old rogues here. Bruce, our Chairman, over there. Simon, who's going to follow me, and of course me, and then Lili and Henry. Henry is—where's Henry? Everyone knows Henry. Henry is now part of the team with Lili on IR. He'll answer all your questions. He can tell you the real answers now. Right, it's been a good year. As many of you will know, there's been quite some pressure on the top line with widespread industry destocking. Our operating profits are up 8% at constant exchange rate. We're very pleased with that. Of course, we're pleased with it.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

We're also pleased with the fact that margins reached a record level of 14.3% for the year, 14.8% in H2. That is against the target of 15% by FY 2028. As a consequence of that, we've increased our target to 17% by FY 2029 and 2030. That represents something over 10 years now of continuing operating profit and margin growth. It's a very important metric for us. As those of you who know us well will know, we set a target out over the sort of three to five-year period, and then we aim to hit it early, and then we bump it up again. That's exactly what we're doing this morning. As I say, that's despite sales which were 2% lower at CER, 3% reported, driven by 7% lower organic sales, -10% first half, -2% in the second half.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

We'll talk more about that and how we've managed that and been able to offset any sort of margin squeeze. Q4 orders were up 15%. It was up 4% in the second half and 15% in the Q4. Very, very strong bounce back. The reason for that is that most of the subdivisions in the business came to the end of their destocking period, and the consequence of that is that customers start placing orders again. The result of all that is adjusted earnings per share up 5%. That's with the effect of the higher interest charges, which of course are starting to abate and will continue to abate, from which we will benefit as we go forward from here. Cash flow, fantastic. Free cash flow up 9% to GBP 40.4 million, 106% conversion rate. Very, very cash generative through the cycle.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Our carbon emissions are also in good shape. Came down by 59% since our base year of calendar year 2021, meaning that we're well on track for our 65% reduction this year, calendar year, and then net zero by 2030. We made two acquisitions during the year for GBP 29 million, Hivolt and Burster, some of which we'll talk about a bit later. We have a very strong pipeline of acquisition opportunities. Again, we'll talk a bit about that later. We've got GBP 18 million of funding, which on the multiples we're acquiring at is about the equivalent of being able to acquire about 15% of current EBIT. We've got good opportunities, and we're just focused on getting the timing right of some of those opportunities. It's been a good year. We're well set for going forward from here.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

We'll talk about some of the operations later, but I'll now hand over to Simon to take you through the financials.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

Great. Yeah, thanks very much, Nick. Okay, first up from me, the financial highlights. Front page table here. I hope you'll recognize that this is a strong set of results delivered in tough conditions. Despite that, it's been a year of quite heavy industrial destocking in a number of businesses. Look, we're still delivering record profits, record margins, record EPS, and record cash flow. We're really pleased to be able to deliver that to you guys coming through the backdrop that we have. I'll give more detail on all of these later, but it just gives you that oversight. Okay, next up is this is a table actually we use at the Capital Markets Day. It shows our medium-term targets across the top. In the center, you can see the results through cycle results across a 10-year period.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

At the base, I've put this year's numbers. If you take on the left, organic sales over the 10-year period, we delivered a healthy 6% annualized growth this year, coming through the bottom of the cycle. It's 7% down, but as Nick said, it's improving to 4% down in the second half. Actually, that's quite similar to the previous downturn. If you remember, that was COVID. We came through that very nicely. Despite that, looking at the margin, despite that impact, we've delivered some really decent operating margin growth. Up 1.2%, up to 14.3%, 14.8%, as Nick mentioned in the second half. That adds to 8 percentage points that we delivered over the previous 10-year period. We're really sort of moving that up. We've easily, comfortably achieved our 13.5% target, if you remember, we set for this year.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

We're pretty close now to the 15% target. We've moved that target up now to 15%, five-year target, 17%. EPS, again, that margin has really helped us deliver on the EPS front despite higher interest rates. Up 5%, up 15% in the second half. That adds to 19% annualized growth that we've been achieving over that previous 10-year period. Cash conversion, you can see, continues to be strong. We're a very cash generative company. That's over 100% conversion rates. That, again, is sort of in line with what we've achieved on average over the last 10 years and nicely above our target that we set ourselves. The return, we've managed to keep that improving. Despite having done a couple of acquisitions this year, despite the destocking, it's still gone up. Actually, look, the second half is at 16.4%. Again, a good number.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

On the right there, we are continuing to do good work in terms of reducing our carbon emissions. You can see that's down 59% since the base we set three years ago. Nicely on track for the 65% target we set for this coming year and well over half towards the net zero target by FY 2030. Moving on to operating profit and margin. You can see on this chart that actually, regardless of what the organic sales performance has actually been, we've continued to deliver good growth in operating profits and margin, as you can see there. It's flat in the COVID year, but we'll take that. This year, profits up 8% at constant exchange rates to GBP 60.5 million. The margin, as I say, lifted up by 1.2 percentage points. There are a number of factors in there driving that improved margin performance.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

I think a very key aspect is our flexible production model, which allows us to sort of flex our production costs with volumes. That is a really important thing to keep your gross margins at a decent level. Plenty of activity in terms of getting better pricing, pricing for value, but lots of efficiencies too. There are lots of small things that add up. There are production transfers where we sort of move production between businesses, bring production in-house. We are doing more clustering. We have talked about clustering before. Cross-selling between the clusters is really starting to pick up. All those sort of things compound to make us a more efficient business, and that will continue. As said, we have increased the margin to 17%. That is actually the 10th time, looking back, that we have increased our margin target over the 15 years that we have been following this strategy.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

Moving on, this gives you a nice walk from last year's profits, GBP 57.2 million, up to GBP 60.5 million this year. The three bars on the left, that's our organic performance. We like to sort of show you that. If you look at it, the real upsides there, gross margin, that's actually the organic gross margin for us is at 1.6 percentage points. Those efficiencies helping both the gross margin, but also we've reduced operating costs through those efficiencies by 2%. Those two combined have offset much of the impact from an organic perspective that is caused by the sales shortfall. GBP 2.4 million organic profit impact from an organic point of view. All of that, you can see, is in the second half. The first half, second half was flat.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

That shortfall, together with the impact of a stronger sterling, has been more than offset by the seven acquisitions we have done in the last 18 months, the GBP 6.8 million there. Profits up GBP 3.3 million, up GBP 4.4 million at constant exchange rates. I really always say this, I like this chart because it just shows you what our strategy in action is about. Organic performance, it is about operating efficiencies, and it is about accretive acquisitions. I have also put this chart in. I think we put it in the Capital Markets Day again, but it neatly shows how we have lifted our margin from 7.6% seven years ago to the 14.3% you see now. It is a nice even split between what work we are doing organically, but also in terms of accretive acquisitions.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

I think looking forward to the 17%, you're probably going to ask, well, how are you going to achieve it? I think we would see about a third of that coming organically and two-thirds from acquisitions, but let's wait and see. Next on to the divisional performance. Nick touched on this. You've got a real contrast between the early cycle S&C business and the later cycle M&C. Just looking at S&C first, organic sales actually at 1% overall for the year. It's actually up 6% organically in the second half. That growth, combined with really good gross margins, we've been putting cost in. We've been investing costs into the business. We've got the benefit of four acquisitions in the last 18 months. All of that's helped lift profits by 26%, up to GBP 36 million. Operating margin up, I think, 3.6, over 20% now.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

Really decent performance from them. Orders were at 12%. We delivered 12% order growth through the year, nipping up to 15% in the second half. A really good, strong performance coming out of the low point of their cycle. Conversely, M&C still been some quite heavy impact on destocking for those guys. Organic sales down 11%, so 10% down in the second half. It is still a bit to come out there. We have done a lot there, you can see, to minimize the impact. Good gross margins again. We have reduced some of the operating expenses, make it more efficient. We have reduced the profit impact down to 9% and the margin impact to 0.6 percentage points. You can see that the orders through the year down 4%. I think we put this in the trading update. Orders were up 15%.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

That is good. It is a good sign. We need that to continue as we do in S&C. Really, record performance from S&C, resilient performance from M&C. Nick will take you through a bit more detail on the two divisions later. Next on to earnings. This tracks you from profit of GBP 60.5 million down to EPS of 38.7 pence. You can see the finance costs actually up 16% in the year. The interest rates on average were about even year on year. The average level of debt was higher this year versus last year. As Nick said, we should get the benefit now. I have put the data as rates start coming down. We have got a variable-based debt facility, so we will benefit. A 1% fall in base rates will give us about a 3% EPS pickup. Fingers crossed there.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

Tax rates, tax rates down 1 percentage point. That's the use of some historic tax losses. Overall, 6% growth in operating profit, 8% at CER converts to 5% growth in EPS, 8% growth at CER. That was 15% growth in the second half. If you remember, it was 4% down first half, 15% up second half. Really excellent second half performance. That adds, if you can see the graph, we've delivered 15% annualized return over that particular period. It all adds to that. I've put a number there. Reported EPS up 58% sounds huge. There were some disposal costs associated with Santon last year. If you take those out, we're up 15%. It's still a decent bit of growth there. Finally, we've got a progressive dividend policy. We've increased the dividend again by 4% in line with the interim.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

Actually, looking back, we've grown the dividend in the 15 years we've been around by 150%. We are pretty pleased with that. Next, on to cash generation. This chart, you'll be familiar with this from previous years. It takes you from the adjusted EBITDA of GBP 68 million through to free cash flow of just over GBP 40 million. The two bars on the left, that's our capital investment. You can see we've reduced working capital attach. We've invested GBP 6 million in CapEx. There is a replacement Chinese facility thrown in there. There are a number of product line extensions. There is a fair bit in there, but it's only 1.4% of top line. That is very capital light. I think it was slightly up on last year, but it's capital light. That is what we are very much about.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

If you look at the chart in the middle, free cash flow's up 9% year-on-year. Operating cash up is up 5% year-on-year. Actually, if you look at it backwards, it's 16% annualized growth in cash flow over the last 10 years. That's not too shabby. Conversion rates, they're strong. I said that they're over 100% for both those cash flow metrics. That's what we've delivered. You can see the table at the base of that, which shows our conversion rates over the last 10 years and they're averaging over 100% as well. In terms of balance sheet, we ended the year at GBP 94 million net debt, GBP 104 million last year. Gearing's come down from 1.5 down to 1.3. Within that, it was about GBP 33 million we spent on acquisitions and earnouts. We've received actually GBP 13 million on disposals.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

That's the Santon disposal we had talked about this last year. Proceeds came in this year. We have also got the deferred consideration from the sale of Acal BFi. That was due this year and came in on time. GBP 13 million in total. I have also noted there that we have done a buy-in of our defined benefit scheme. That should save us about GBP 1.5 million of annual cash flow going forward. Just as you asked, in terms of funding capacity, 1.3 gearing translates to around about GBP 80 million capacity by the end of this year. That is plenty for us to be going on with, plenty of scope for more accretive acquisitions. Finally, it is another look at the KSIs. We like the KSIs. This sort of metric allows you to see the picture of those KSIs through the history.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

It reflects, you can see our journey in that. If you look at the lines two and three, sales and EPS, in good times, we're growing really strongly. In tougher times like COVID, like now, we're pretty resilient. On the top line, you can see that through all of that, we're growing profits, we're growing operating margin. Four, five, and six, we're delivering strong cash flows, good returns. Finally, we're delivering on those environmental promises. With that, I'll hand over to Nick to give us the operational overview.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Yeah, just to recap of what we're about, we think that we have a very strong value proposition. We create innovative products that are driven by a technological need, and we help customers create solutions for their equipment that they perhaps wouldn't otherwise be able to do. It's got very high added value.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

We increasingly price according to the value that we're creating rather than a sort of cost-plus mentality. Very important today, we have the flexible international production footprint, which is important and very relevant. We can move production according to where customers need it, or perhaps in this case, where tariffs are more dictating it currently. We are creating a real value solution for big customers globally, and they like it, they need it. We are building a very strong position that we're able to add to by acquiring other similar, smaller, independent standalone businesses and build out our footprint. We start from a strong base. We have a very clear strategy to grow, acquire, generate more efficiencies, and repeat. Yeah, we're in good shape. This is just a quick overview of the group.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

At the top right, you can see the geographic splits. I think perhaps most relevantly down at the bottom left is the organic growth profile through the year. The headline point here is that the destocking has been mostly felt in the U.S., which is down 16%. That follows 20% organic growth last year, followed by U.K. and Germany, both down 7%, and then the rest of Europe and Nordic down around 3%. The one bright spot was Asia, excuse me, which recovered by 1%. If you look at those bar charts on the right, you can really see the difference between the first half and the second half. The blue chart at the bottom there, bar chart, you can see that the industrial connectivity and security sectors were down 10% organically in the first half, recovering to 9% organic growth in the second half.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Very strong sort of switch in performance as that destocking sort of came to an end there. Looking at the data, a different slice of the same data, the middle bars there, you can see that our top 10 customers at a group level were down 5% organically in the first half, up 13% in the second half. That's significant because sort of 18 months ago, the first signs of destocking were led by those top 10 customers. You can see how that's played through the year and then recovered strongly in the second half. Design wins. We always talk about our design win figures. Excuse me, the performance continues to be strong. We grew 5% in the year. More importantly, perhaps that's up 30% on two years ago. Very, very strong design wins.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Despite the softer top line, the design win progress has continued, albeit at a slightly slower pace, but nevertheless continuing. We have a bank of design wins registered during the year with an estimated lifetime revenue potential of over GBP 350 million. As we always say, you cannot precisely correlate design wins to next year's sales numbers because it is not that closely related. The thing that I always ask you to remember is that without design wins, we would have no future revenue. It is fundamental to this business. They are in good shape. As you can see from the chart at the bottom right, they are continuing to grow. In addition to that, behind the design wins is the list of new opportunities that we are working on, where we have a pipeline there of well over GBP 1 billion potential value coming through.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Really good fundamental for the business. Notwithstanding the year's negative organic growth, we're focused on long-term growth markets. Actually, they have been more, and our revenue has been more resilient than the market overall. What we expect to see is very good sort of steady recovery of revenue over the next stage of the cycle, sort of playing into this whole point about long-term growth through the various cycles. In the capital markets day last September, we added security as our fifth target market. That's obviously a bit of sort of flavor of the moment. Our security market is focused on both commercial and military security applications. It is, in terms of design opportunities and design wins, obviously a fairly fast-growing sector at the moment. The other four target markets, industrial and connectivity, is a fairly wide area but continues to be an exciting area.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

There's actually quite a lot of technological innovation going on in that area, particularly in the sort of connectivity of industrial applications, robotics, AI-controlled remote applications, things like that. Medical. Medical is mainly medical equipment for us. Think scanners, think diagnostic equipment, things like that. Transport is principally things like rail and marine. It's not electric cars, never has been. Renewable energy now is we sold our solar business, the Santon business, last year. It is now principally wind along with a little bit of hydrogen. Those are all markets that they all ebb and flow in slightly different timings, but they are good markets, we believe, for the long-term sustained growth of the business. Looking at the Magnetics & Controls division, you can see here that, as Simon reported, it was down 11% organic. Sales were down 11% organically for the year.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Importantly, orders for the year were down 4% organically, but up 4% in the second half, up 15% in the final quarter. That was principally as the industrial and connectivity markets started to turn the corner. You can see geographically, North America being the main destocking culprit, followed by sort of Europe and U.K., similar to the overall group profile. During the year, we acquired two businesses, which have actually gone into S&C, but we have brought in three businesses over the last three years: Silvertel, Shape, and DTI, all of which get included into the M&C division. Sensing and connectivity. This business grew 1% organically, but orders grew 12%. Again, with the second half, orders up 4%, and fourth quarter orders up 15%. Very, very strong recovery, again, as the destocking came to an end.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Hivolt and Burster are the two recent acquisitions we made. Hivolt in Northern Ireland last August, and then Burster in January of this year, based in Germany. You can see here the slightly different geographic profile. U.K. is a bigger proportion of revenue here, 22% of revenue, and that was down 6% in the year. North America just slightly better than flattered, up 5%. That is principally driven by some of the big security applications. A little bit on order book. We have currently about four and a half months order book. That is down from the seven-month sort of peak order book level that we had at September 2022. That is actually slightly elevated, about three to four weeks compared to historic norms. There are really three reasons for that.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Firstly, I think it's fair to say across the industry generally, customers have moved from a just-in-time to a just-in-case mentality. It doesn't do them any harm nowadays to just put a little bit more order book in place. Secondly, actually, some customers, particularly in some of the big sort of medical customers that have been destocking pretty significantly, as their demand profile has actually softened slightly as well. They have pushed out some of their orders, and we generally don't allow reschedules, but there's been a bit of an effect of that. It means that it effectively extends the order book coverage window. Actually, on the positive side, we're seeing that that 15% pickup in orders that we saw in the fourth quarter includes orders, long-term being 12-month frame orders that we're receiving from some of our big recovering customers.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

We have seen some big industrial and medical customers place 12-month orders, which affirm that the call-off scheduling varies a little bit, but that all goes into the order book. That has obviously an averaging up effect. The net effect of all that is the order book is slightly elevated, flattening out overall from the adjustment period of the prior couple of years. We think that is probably the likely new norm for now in coverage terms. Outlook, importantly for us, the growth drivers are in very good shape. Our order trends and sales trends are steadily improving. Most of our business units have now bottomed out and are picking up a little bit more to go, but most of them are there. Sure as X or X, the final steps will follow.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

We have a very, very good bank of design wins, which are important for the medium-term organic growth, driving the medium-term organic growth. We have got a very significant pipeline of acquisition opportunities. The areas that we need to be, the drivers that we need to be strong, are strong. That is really good. We have unchanged the outlook for this year. We have got a positive outlook for FY 2026. Further progress. Q1 has kind of started okay, a bit better than it further continued improvement steadily. It is doing what we would expect it to do. Our expectations for the year are to have the normal H1, H2 split. We are fairly balanced, sort of 47, 48, 253 typically. First half, second half split, and this year is no different from that. As we have talked about, we have upgraded our margin targets.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Notwithstanding the somewhat volatile trading conditions that could have sort of adverse or positive effects, we are doing all we can to continue making good progress. We are well set to continue that trend from here. That concludes the presentation. I think now we will move over to questions and answers. We will probably move up to the table, shall we? Okay. Mark, hi.

[Mark Fielding, Equity Analyst at RBC]

Mark Fielding from RBC. Thanks for taking the question. Actually, two questions, please. One very short term, one much longer term. Short term, just give Ryan a comment on whether you have seen any recent change in trends in the last couple of months after tariffs, just how things are evolving in the more near term. Maybe just do that first and then.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

There is certainly more uncertainty, unquestionably. There is less clarity. Things change. They pause. They start. There is a bit more start-stop.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

I think we've been somewhat shielded from that because our order books are actually quite good. The call-off, the sales output is much smoother. The activity levels in the customers, it's quite clear that the levels of uncertainty have a sort of slightly sort of destabilizing effect on behavior of customers.

[Mark Fielding, Equity Analyst at RBC]

The longer-term question. Simon preempted the question of what will the split be, organic, inorganic. I'm still going to ask about it because actually, the run rate in the last seven years has been broadly, on average, 50 basis points per annum of organic margin improvement, which, if you kept going at that rate, would largely get you to that 2030 target.

[Mark Fielding, Equity Analyst at RBC]

I suppose my question is, is there structural reasons you would not be able to continue to deliver the sort of efficiencies and benefits you have over the last seven years from an organic perspective?

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

I think we are going to continue to work on that. That is why I said, let's wait and see. I think, obviously, with some of the businesses which are low margin, we have done a lot of the heavy lifting on that. Acquisitions that come in, we continue to look to improve efficiency as well. Let's wait and see. I think a third, two-thirds is a good estimate for now. We will push hard. We probably said a third, 2/3 in the past.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

We did.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

I think we did. It came out different. Obviously, the important thing is to get there.

[Mark Fielding, Equity Analyst at RBC]

Great. Thank you.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

Only taking questions from Marks today.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

Mark too. Yeah. Can we just talk a little bit more about the balance between the divisions? Because S&C had a really strong year. Margins north of 20%. Presumably, margins do not go higher than that short term. Perhaps more of the focus this year is what you can get out of M&C. I guess the question is, how comfortable are you that it is just later cycle issues versus something a bit more structural, particularly the U.S. being very weak and the orange one not liking windmills, whether you see any real impact from that?

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

If you stand back from it, we have always had a one of our focuses has been to reduce exposure to any one customer, any one particular market area, and any one particular geography because over the long term, you always get variations and things come in and out of fashion or vogue.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Our model of low customer concentration, largest customer just over 6%, low individual application concentration or target market concentration, all of those things sort of protect us from the kind of gyrations that we're seeing recently. Has anything fundamentally changed in the M&C area? No. I mean, M&C has a big exposure to things like electrification, not just renewable energy, but sort of grid optimization and other sort of subset areas. The reason that the M&C division is softer at the moment and recovering more laterally is because the C of M&C is the area that has yet to fully turn the corner. The follow-on question is, why is that?

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

The why is because there are customers in that sector that have been very, very heavily affected, particularly in medical in North America, from the prior shortage period, component shortage periods two or three years ago. They stocked up very heavily. Our products into that sector have a sort of high sort of semiconductor content, which kind of added to the concerns. Customers are taking the stock that they've burning off the stock that they've had. That comes through in the M&C growth rates. The medical diagnostics is still a good space to be. It will come back once those inventories are burnt off.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Great stuff. If I can, sorry. One more. Just on the M&A side, you said you're waiting for the right moment, lots of prospects out there. How much is that also affected by the geopolitics?

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Are you looking different places, different industries? How does that affect your hunt for the next target?

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Yeah, we've slightly shifted our focus. When the tariff issue was announced, we just sort of paused on acquisitions that were sort of U.S.-dependent to some extent and shifted our focus to other areas. Once the tariff situation sort of settles, we will look at it again. In the short term, we're progressing opportunities that have a lower U.S. exposure until that has been, until that's also clear and steady and stabled out.

[Andrew Douglas, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Thank you. Morning, gents. Andrew Douglas from Jefferies. A few questions, please. Can we focus a little bit on the 15% order intake in the fourth quarter? Sorry, I'm a bit lazy here, but is there a weak comp in there that we need to be cognizant of?

[Andrew Douglas, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Is it a one-off pre-buy impact from the tariffs? I guess what I'm trying to get at is, is that just a one-quarter blip? Then we go into the first quarter and we're back to, you could say, progress. I don't know what that is. Mid-single digits.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Yeah, there's a bit of all of that. Yeah, yes. There's not pre-buy. Our products are on a three- to four-month lead time, and we didn't see any kind of particular pre-buying activity from customers. What we saw is that in certain sectors, as their inventory destocking came to an end, their order levels just bounced back very strongly. It was against a weak comp, yes, but a continuing sort of weak figure through the year.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Once it is destocked, you have destocked, then your order levels have to bounce back through to reflect your demand. That is what has happened.

[Andrew Douglas, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Yeah. No double-digit order intake in the first quarter like we have seen in the fourth quarter.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

I could not possibly comment.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

Does not sound like it.

[Andrew Douglas, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Slightly following on from the two questions from Mark's. On the M&A focus, clearly we have this security focus. Given what is going on with commercial aerospace recovery and defense now being the vogue sector, are you struggling to find sensible acquisitions at sensible prices, or are you guys operating in a slightly different world where maybe SDR does not make a difference?

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Our business is about buying reasonably priced, high-quality businesses. We are not going to buy a business that is very highly priced because it is in a super attractive sector.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

What we will do is buy businesses that have some degree of possible exposure into that space. We'll pay a reasonable multiple for them and hopefully try and accelerate the growth through increasing focus into that sector. That model works better for us, we find. There's a bit of a sort of a gold rush inevitably on some of the sort of defense-related businesses, and that's something we don't need to get involved with.

[Andrew Douglas, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Last one, just on Mark's question. We've seen a lot of industrial companies in our universe having to put cost back in when recovery comes from a top-line perspective. Sounds like you've got quite a lot of firepower in terms of cost out. Do you have to put cost back in soon? If so, when do you pick that kind of moment? Is it based on order intake?

[Andrew Douglas, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Is it gut feel? Is it post-order intake improving? Just trying to figure out that kind of margin improvement. Do we have a little bit of a slow period and then a bit of a catch-up?

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Yeah. Growth, I mean, to continue growing, you've got to continue putting a steady rate of costing in. We have been taking cost out overall, but within certain areas of the business, as Simon referred to in his slides, we did actually put cost in. You manage it very much on a micro, case-by-case basis. We have plans to put more cost in, and it's the rate at which we put that cost in. We phase the cost in according to the conditions that we're seeing. That has always been the case, and it'll continue to be.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Yeah, there's cost to put in, and we'll choose the timing when we feel the timing is right.

[Andrew Douglas, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Okay. Thank you.

[Maggie Schooley, Director at Redburn]

Thank you. It's Maggie Schooley from Redburn. Order trends are obviously moving the right way, but what we've seen across the industry is that the sales growth has been lagging, particularly somewhat different than in other cycles. Historically, you've probably had a timeframe in mind from orders to sales growth starting to inflect. Can you give us some indication about what you're thinking in this particular cycle, given the unprecedented conditions and what we're seeing across the rest of this cycle? Kind of have a feel for and particularly that you mentioned you had some long 12-month orders in the fourth quarter. How should we think about that normalized order growth rate and then the conversion into sales?

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Orders have inflected, and sales are following, but they have not fully caught up yet. That is the headline. In the fourth quarter, we saw both areas come back strongly, as we talked about in orders, and that will start to flow through into, or is starting to flow through into, sales. Typically, there is a four- to six-month lag between orders and sales coming through, realistically. I mean, it varies from sort of application customer to customer, but that is broadly what we see. What we are seeing is orders has done this, and it is sort of back to where it was just over a year ago, and sales is catching up.

[Maggie Schooley, Director at Redburn]

Second question, if you could, qualitatively. On page 18, you give the end market skew.

[Maggie Schooley, Director at Redburn]

Could you just perhaps give us some qualitative understanding of what you're seeing by end market so we have a better idea of how we should be thinking about that?

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Yeah. I mean, industrial and connectivity and security are growing quite strongly, actually. Within industrial and connectivity, that's quite a wide catchment area. Some of the connectivity security-related applications, sorry, connectivity wireless comms-related applications are growing quite strongly. Wireless metering, as an example, is something that has really been—there was a big wireless metering project that was on hold this time last year. We had the design win, but it was on hold at the customer, and that has now taken off. We're seeing these specific projects moving quite quickly. Security, there are quite a lot of moving parts in security. Actually, it's not as simple as all security is up.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

It moves around quite quickly. The net effect of security is it's up quite significantly. Mostly the security is in, well, almost all of it is in passive applications. Training, wireless comms, things like that for military applications, and then things like data centers and the like. Medical is slow. Medical equipment is slow. Our largest medical equipment manufacturer started to recover in the fourth quarter, but the others are playing catch-up. Certainly, some of our U.S. medical customers are still burning off some of that big inventory that they built up. Transportation is mixed. It's very much project by project. We've seen a couple of project delays in the U.S., offset by one new one that was accelerated, but it's a very lumpy kind of more of a lumpy kind of business.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Renewable energy is wind, and that has been doing very well during the first half, slowed a bit during the second half, and actually in April and May has picked up again a bit. I do not know if that gives you, that is not very qualitative, but that is kind of a little bit of flavor as to what is going on.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

It is good just to sort of reinforce the reason why we are,

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

these are long-term growth markets, but we are in a number of markets, just one, rather than just one. It is all about sort of de-risking the model. We are in a number of markets. We are in a number of technologies. We have got different divisions and all of that. You can see that this set of results is a great example of that, but it de-risks it. We can still get that growth.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Things are going to move at different rates, but we're in the right sort of areas for overall the company's going forward.

[Maggie Schooley, Director at Redburn]

Sorry, one last question. Kind of a sort of on Andy's, and it's two-part. Cash conversion, as you start to recover, should we be thinking more around the 90% level?

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Yeah. Once that's the history. If you look back at our conversion, it's when times are strong and you start to get some sales growth, you're going to have to invest in working capital. That's why we tend to have that target of 85%. It allows for lower conversion rates in higher sales times.

[Maggie Schooley, Director at Redburn]

A completely unfair question, and I'm sorry for this, but there's been some concern with companies who have exposure in the U.S. on Section 899 from the big beautiful tax bill in terms of cash remittances.

[Maggie Schooley, Director at Redburn]

Have you had a look at that?

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah, I did get.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

That's right. That is an unfair question.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

It is unfair. Yeah, it is something that we are looking at.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

I do not think initially is an issue, but yeah, we are looking at it, and it might have changed by tomorrow anyway.

[Maggie Schooley, Director at Redburn]

Thank you.

[James Bayliss, Analyst at Berenberg]

Morning, both. James Bayliss from Berenberg here. Just looking at slide 25 in the appendix on the gross margin profile. Can you talk us through that acceleration from 2023 up to FY 2025 and the 42.9% you have got now? And then if we think about the future margin story on the organic side of the business, how much more is there to be done on managing that gross margin up through proactively working with your operating companies?

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Obviously, acquisitions has a positive averaging up effect.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

We buy higher operating margin businesses, and they have higher gross margins. Additionally to that, our organic margins have increased across the businesses. Although there is a mixed effect in the headline figure, as a higher margin business may be growing faster than a lower margin business, you get those kind of effects coming through. Despite that, actually, across our operating businesses, almost all of them have delivered organic gross margin improvement. The reason that that has happened overall is really three reasons. Firstly, flexible production is key. As volumes have come off in the destocking, we have been able to take the direct costs down accordingly. That protects you do not get the gross margin squeeze that you get in a more automated production environment. We can do that because we have got high mix batch production operations. That is the primary or that is the first reason.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

The second reason is efficiencies. As we put businesses into clusters, we move stuff around. We do a lot of that. We move production. We are always moving production from one business to another for some certain reason and customer. You get efficiencies from lower cost labor rates, better purchasing, aggregating some of the purchasing through the cluster. There are lots of small, as Simon said, there are many, many, many small moving parts, but they add up to quite a significant contributor. The third area is we have better, we spent years building up this design pipeline. We put a lot of focus on the quality of the design pipeline and the design wins. One of the outcomes of that is that the margin profile of the revenue we have these days is better than it was 10 years ago.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

We're able to have more robust margins through better quality revenue streams. That's not about necessarily putting prices up with existing revenue, but having a better priced new revenue stream than perhaps an old outgoing revenue stream. You add all that together, and then you add on the acquisitions, and that's how you get the gross margin improvement. Now those plans are in motion. They've been running for a number of years, and they'll continue to run. We actually did a check during the year to make sure that we weren't missing anything in terms of volumes. The resounding feedback that we got back from the businesses was that we're in good shape with the volume, and our efficiency programs are working really well. Yeah, just keep more of the same. Just keep going.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

Yeah.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

If you look back, we're quite visible in terms of we put out what the organic gross margin improvement is, and obviously, you can then work out what the bit is from acquisitions. If you look back, certainly the last three years, a lot of that is organic. I said it's 1.6 percentage points this year. It might have been a similar, I think it's a similar sort of amount the previous year. A lot of what Nick, a lot of those initiatives that we've been following are coming through. The clusterings, we've been doing a bit, but that's really taken effect over the last few years. You're getting the benefits of that really coming through.

[James Bayliss, Analyst at Berenberg]

Sorry, can I just pick up on that? Because from the outside, it's looked like the clustering has had a big effect, particularly in a period of weaker volume.

[James Bayliss, Analyst at Berenberg]

How far can you push that before it starts to sort of dent the strategy of keeping things very decentralized and autonomous, particularly when it comes to, I guess, M&A and pitching to entrepreneurs who run their own businesses?

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Yeah. We do not impose the we put businesses in clusters, and the cluster management and the opcos within the clusters come up with these plans, and they are all incentivized to do it. It makes sense for them to do it. I mean, for example, over the last year, we have moved a business. We bought a business that had production on the East Coast of the U.S., and we have now integrated the production facilities into another one of our businesses in the U.S. in Minneapolis. That is just a net it is a net gain. All parties are incentivized to do it.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

It actually has other additional benefits because by moving the production into this larger facility, it comes with all the medical certifications required. We have won approval of a new major U.S. medical customer on the back of it. We will get new revenue from it. It is not like we are sort of forcing them to do something that they would really rather not do. It is more a case that we put them together. We incentivize people. We have common sort of incentives, aligned incentives throughout the group. We put them together and we see what opportunities and synergies we can find, and then that is what comes through. How far can it keep going? We are cognizant that we have more to do. Where is the limit? We are conscious that we do not want to push it too hard, but I do not know.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

We'll keep going until we find that we can't get more. Of course, the areas where it will come more from is the more recent acquisitions. As we keep the rate of acquisitions going at a healthy lick, we should be able to keep that coming through. Those will then be classed as organic margin improvements.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

Yeah. Clustering is, yeah, it's also a big hard integration. As Nick said, it's getting them to work, similar businesses to work closely together and find opportunities. We're not sort of dragging out loads and loads of costs in order to do that. It's actually more about efficiencies at the top line and on gross margin. Okay. I think this must be the last question. I'm being waved at at the back.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

Yeah. Just a follow-up on the other part of that, actually, which is the pricing part.

[Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE]

I suppose I'm just curious whether the more inflationary world that we had in recent years allowed for a bit of an exceptional step change in how you approach pricing and whether you still see that same pricing momentum in the design wins going forward. I suppose linking to that, tariffs, and are you going to deal with that potentially with partly pricing or surcharges because the two are obviously different in the long-term impact? Just how does that all fit together?

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

On the tariff point, there's a difference, so there are lots of, so if it's a component that we're, if we're buying a component that is subject to tariffs for use in our production, then because it will be a small proportion of the system cost, we will pass it through as a price increase.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

If the customer requests and those conversations have been happening for some time now, in some cases, the customer requests us to classify it as a surcharge. They would choose to account for it as a surcharge, and then we will make the adjustment accordingly. We basically class it as a price increase. Most of the tariff effects, though, are incurred not by us, but by the customer. Where the customer is importing product, upon the point of importation, they pick up that tariff as it enters the country. We do not actually mechanically see it.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

On the wider thought of the strong pricing of recent years, does that continue in the design win backlog that you have?

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

We feel as though we price the products fairly for the value we're creating, which means we don't want to undercharge and we don't want to overcharge. We think we've struck that balance fairly well. What that does mean is that, as we've seen over the last three years, as things like we had the rapid inflation of three years ago, we pass that through. We haven't got room to just absorb that. We've made that very clear. We've been consistent. Customers have understood that and accepted that partly because we haven't taken advantage of it. No one likes a price increase, but they have accepted that in the context of the products we're supplying, that's not an unreasonable position to take, and we've pushed them through. We continue with that approach and mentality.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Through the last five years, and longer, our gross margin has been very steady because of that approach. We have not taken any negative hits from adverse external conditions sort of blowing us off course. We will not because it plays to the heart of the value proposition of our products. Very high tech, very highly differentiated, small proportion of customers' equipment spend and cost, but absolutely critical. That is sort of the backdrop. If we do not abuse that position, then our position remains a strong one. That is very much what we intend to do.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Thank you.

[Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE]

Right. Thank you. I think that is it. We have got a cool time. Thank you very much for coming, and thanks for all the attention and questions. Thank you.

Participants

Analysts

• Analyst 1
• Analyst 2
• Maggie Schooley, Director at Redburn
• Mark Fielding, Equity Analyst at RBC
• Andrew Douglas, Managing Director at Jefferies
• James Bayliss, Analyst at Berenberg
• Nick Jefferies, Group Chief Executive at discoverIE
• Simon Gibbins, Group Finance Director at discoverIE