Marshalls H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 11, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: The group delivered 4% revenue growth in H1 2025, driven by improved trends in Landscaping and strong performances in Roofing and Building Products.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Landscaping Products saw a 1% decline in revenue and breakeven operating profit due to pricing and mix pressures, but an accelerated improvement plan targets £9 million of annualized savings by 2026.
  • Positive Sentiment: The Roofing segment grew revenues by 11% and operating profit by 7%, led by Meridian Solar, which is expected to achieve ~30% full-year growth amid favorable regulatory changes.
  • Positive Sentiment: Building Products posted 6% revenue growth and 8% profit growth, with Water Management expanding mid-teens and a 25% jump in infrastructure design projects ahead of AMP8.
  • Negative Sentiment: Group operating profit fell 16% to £28.4 million, margin slipped 2.2 pp to 8.9%, EPS dropped 16% to 6.6 pence, and the interim dividend was cut 15%, offset slightly by a £4 million net debt reduction and 94% cash conversion.
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Earnings Conference Call
Marshalls H1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 10 speakers on the call.

Operator

Right. Good morning, and welcome to Marshall's 2025 half year results presentation. Thanks to everyone in the room for joining, especially in the middle of the holiday season and to all of you online too. As always, I'm joined this morning for the presentation by Justin Lockwood, our Chief Financial Officer, and we also have Simon Borne, our Chief Commercial Officer here for the Q and A too. I'll start with a brief overview of our half year performance.

Operator

From there, I'll focus in on our Landscaping Products business following the trading update we shared on the July 25. I'll talk through some of the challenges currently impacting our profitability and the encouraging progress we are making through our performance improvement program, which is set to deliver a material uplift in profitability. After that, Justin will take us through the group's half year financial results in more detail, And then I'll return to share an update on the early momentum we're seeing with our Transform and Grow strategy across the other business units outside of landscaping. And then I'll wrap up with a short summary and outlook before opening the floor to questions, both from those of you here in the room and those online too. Just a quick reminder for the online participants, you can submit your questions at any point via the chat and we'll read them out before responding.

Operator

So let's move into the half year summary. Back in November 2024, we introduced our Transform and Grow strategy, a clear roadmap for shaping a group where long term profitable growth is driven by the combined strength of our diverse portfolio of market leading businesses and brands. This approach ensures that our medium term performance is not reliant on any one single business unit. In the 2025, the group returned to revenue growth, up 4% year on year, driven by profitable growth across key areas. Roofing and building products delivered strong performances, up 116% respectively.

Operator

Encouragingly, we also saw a positive trend in landscaping products where revenue contracted by just 1% and that's a marked improvement from the 11% decline that we saw in the second half of last year. Profitability improved in both roofing and building products. In roofing, Meridian Solar continued to perform strongly benefiting from those regulatory tailwinds that are expected to increase the adoption of in roof solar in England and Wales from around 10% to 80%. Marley Roofing also delivered a robust performance gaining profitable share in clay tiles and timber battens and holding its market share in concrete tiles and therefore reinforcing its market leadership position. In building products, water management and mortars were the key drivers of profitable growth.

Operator

Water management strengthened its position in new housing and secured more specified higher margin infrastructure projects, highlighting the significant market opportunity beyond residential new build for that business. Our mortars business benefited from a moderate uplift in build rates across new housing sites, which favored our ready to use products. And this was partially offset by a softer performance in our bricks business, where increased sector capacity and a slowdown in activity during quarter two intensified pricing pressure. In response, we made a deliberate strategic choice to protect margins rather than chase volume at lower prices. With landscaping profitability below expectations in subdued markets, we've taken decisive action to accelerate our performance improvement plan.

Operator

These measures, I'll return to in more detail shortly, will reduce costs, align capacity with current market demand and deliver annualized savings of around £9,000,000 in 2026. We're also addressing a smaller currently unprofitable part of our business either by improving its performance or exiting it altogether. And importantly, we've maintained a robust balance sheet through disciplined working capital management with adjusting operating cash flow conversion at 94% and net debt reduced by GBP 4,200,000.0 at halfway point. So before Justin takes you through the detail of the results of the half year, I wanted to focus in on landscaping products. In the 2025, we've seen that improving revenue trend that I highlighted.

Operator

And that reflects the work of the sales team in engaging with our customers and strengthening those relationships. With new trading agreements driving positive momentum and delivering volume growth and regaining market share in what are clearly subdued markets. However, our margins have been impacted by a combination of market, pricing and product mix dynamics. Subdued markets and overcapacity are acting to suppress pricing. The cumulative inflation in building materials over the last few years is driving value engineering of projects in both commercial and domestic sectors and has resulted in a deterioration in product mix with a shift to more lower margin commodity products and away from value add solutions.

Operator

In the medium term, we do expect a market recovery and know that this will act to ease the challenges of overcapacity, supporting a shift back towards higher margin value add solutions and reducing the pressure on pricing. But with no improvement in market conditions expected in the near term, we are not relying on the market recovery and are accelerating key parts of our performance improvement plan. In June, we put this comprehensive plan in place and we've been executing it at pace. And as a quick reminder, that improvement plan has four key priorities, strengthening our leadership and realigning the organization to drive specification portfolio simplification to reset our portfolio to better meet the needs of our market and our customers and drive operational efficiency through network optimization reinvigorating and building long term strategic customer and supplier partnerships and investing strengthening core commercial and operational excellence capabilities. The plan has not changed and we remain confident that these initiatives will deliver a material improvement in profitability in 2026.

Operator

Commercial actions we have taken are delivering a clear improvement in revenue trends, regaining market share and we are starting to see an improved mix of product in our order intake. We've made good progress on portfolio simplification and network optimization in the first half of this year and are taking additional steps in the second half to accelerate these plans. And in the next few slides, I'll provide more detail on these actions. In the first half of this year, we took a significant step toward forward by partially closing one site, unlocking annualized savings of approximately GBP 3,000,000, around half of which will benefit twenty twenty five. Given the continued subdued market conditions, we are accelerating our plans to reduce costs and enhance operational efficiency.

Operator

Actions are already underway to deliver an additional GBP 6,000,000 in annualized savings, GBP 1,500,000.0 of this will benefit in 2025. This is a substantial and strategic piece of work is involved a complete remapping of our landscaping manufacturing network and will result in relocating production of our core product ranges closer to our most profitable markets. Together, these two programs are expected to deliver total annualized savings of around £9,000,000 with approximately £3,000,000 benefiting 2025. In addition, we're addressing a small unprofitable part of our product portfolio and our focus is clear, either return it to profitability or exit it altogether. The new landscaping leadership team is now fully embedded and successfully led a business reset, strategically positioning the business to deliver improved margins on the back of volume growth and increase market share through the remainder of this year and into next.

Operator

The Capital Markets event last November, we acknowledged the need to reinvigorate our customer relationships. Since then, we've made significant progress in engaging at every level, positioning Marcels as the preferred strategic partner, creating value for both our customers and ourselves. We now have multi year trading agreements in place with our key customers, which which are driving a notable uplift in brand presence and share of voice across our distributor network. The images you can see on screen are just a snapshot of hundreds of examples on the ground, impactful displays, deeper engagement at branch level, and joint marketing campaigns. In our top three distributor partners alone, our share of voice now exceeds 75% and in one of these it is around 90%.

Operator

And it's not just about distributors. The relaunch of the Marshalls accredited installer scheme has boosted engagement ensuring that our products are being promoted and installed by the highest quality professionals in the industry. And while overall market activity remains subdued, we are winning business in the near term and are increasingly well positioned to capitalize on rising demand as and when market conditions improve. Now whilst the revenue trend is encouraging, margins came under pressure in the first half of the year due to a less profitable product mix with a shift towards commodity products. However, we're beginning to see signs of recovery in the commercial landscaping sector, which represents approximately two thirds of our landscaping business.

Operator

It's important to remember that commercial projects typically have a gestation period of anywhere between three and eighteen months. Against that backdrop, the positive impact of our sales team's effort on the specification pipeline is particularly encouraging. Their focus sort of supported by targeted incentives to drive an improved product mix is delivering results. Between April and July, we recorded an 8% increase in the order intake of value add products, signaling strong momentum and strategic alignment. And to further support our sales teams and customers, we're simplifying our product portfolio, a clearer range architecture structured around good, better, best.

Operator

We'll ensure the right product ranges are positioned at the right price points and this will create a stronger platform for value add growth and improve profitability across both commercial and domestic sectors. We will be actively working with our customers to transition volumes from discontinued ranges and we're enhancing our better tier offering through focused new product development leveraging the capabilities of our dual block plant technology at St Ives. This transformation is progressing at pace. While it's difficult to fully appreciate the scale of the work underway, it will result in 28% reduction in SKUs. To bring this to life, we'll be removing 16 ranges and across the remaining portfolio, removing overly complex combinations of sizes, colors, and finishes, making our offer clearer, more compelling, and easier to navigate for both our teams and our customers.

Operator

So that combination of self help measures and the actions we are taking to reset the business already gaining traction, positioning our landscaping products business for an material improvement in profitability in 2026. So I'll come back after Justin has talked through the financial results for the first half of the year to briefly update you on the early progress we are seeing with our transform and grow strategy across our other business units. Justin?

Speaker 1

Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everybody. So I'm going take you through the detail of our financial results for the first half of the year, and that will include an update on each of our reporting segments as well as our cash flow performance. I'll then give you an update on the strength of our balance sheet before running through a recap of our capital allocation policy. So this slide sets out the key financial headlines for the year. Revenue grew by 4% to £319,500,000 but operating profit contracted by 16% to £28,400,000 and that reflects a weaker performance in our Landscaping Products business.

Speaker 1

That fed through to a reduction in earnings per share of 16% to 6.6p per share. And we've applied our dividend policy of maintaining 2x cover, and that's resulted in a 15% reduction in the interim dividend to 2.2p per share. And we've continued our disciplined approach to cash management during the period. And as a result, our pre IFRS 16 net debt closed the half year at £152,000,000 which is a £4,000,000 improvement compared to June. So I'll now run through the key drivers of performance at group level, starting with revenue.

Speaker 1

The chart on this slide sets out a year on year revenue bridge from the 2024 to the 2025, and it's split between our reporting segments. So as mentioned on the last slide, we reported revenue growth of 4% year on year to £390,000,000 and that's against the context of continued subdued levels of market activity. And it also compares to a contraction of about 2% in the second half of last year, showing encouraging trends in both Landscaping and Building Products and a continued good performance in Roofing. So in Landscaping, revenues contracted by 1% in the first half of the year, and that's a significant improvement on the 11% rate of contraction in the second half of last year, with volume growth being offset by targeted price investment and an impact to a shift in product mix, which reduced revenues. In Building Products, revenues grew by 6% and that's a step up from the flat revenue performance in the second half of last year, and it was led by improved performances in Water Management and our Mortars business units.

Speaker 1

And in Roofing, we reported revenue growth of 11% in the first half, and that's comparable to the 13% that we reported in the second half of last year. And it was led by continued very strong growth from Meridian Solar as housebuilders continue to adopt its market leading products, alongside a smaller rate a slower rate of growth in Mali that built on its market leading position and increased revenues in a subdued marketplace. So now moving on to operating profit. And the chart on this slide sets out the component parts of the 16% reduction in operating profit to GBP 28,400,000.0. And you can see clearly from the slide that we reported growth in profits in Building Products and Roofing Products, but that's been offset by a significant reduction in profitability in our Landscaping business.

Speaker 1

And there's a similar story from a margin perspective with a modest improvement in margins in Building Products, continued strong margins in Roofing, but a significant reduction in the margin in Landscaping. And as a result, the group operating margin contracted by 2.2 percentage points to 8.9%. Now we continue to have a medium term target to for that margin to recover to around 15% as we benefit from operational leverage generated from incremental volume from the execution of our Transform and Grow strategy and a recovery in market volumes. So I'll now talk through the drivers of performance in each of our business units, starting with Landscaping Products. So as mentioned earlier, revenues contracted by 1% year on year, And that's against the context of subdued market activity levels with sector wide volumes being materially below historic norms.

Speaker 1

As Matt mentioned earlier, we returned this business to volume growth during the year, and that volume growth was 6%, and it was driven through improved customer engagement and the new trading arrangements that we put in place with key distributor partners. But that was offset by targeted price investment, which was around 2%, and a shift in product mix, which had the impact of reducing revenues by about 5%. Now of that shift in mix of products, about half of it was driven from a shift from value add to commodity products. And those value added products have got significantly higher revenues and significantly higher margins than the commodity products. So moving on to the operating profit performance.

Speaker 1

Operating profits contracted by £8,000,000 And as a result, the reporting segment was broadly breakeven in the first half of the year. A number of drivers of that reduction in profitability, the first of which is the targeted price investment, which clearly flows straight down to the bottom line. Then we've seen the impact of that shift from value add to commodity products, which has resulted in a less profitable product mix. Now those two factors were partially offset by the benefit of additional volumes. In addition to that though, the business has been impacted by cost increases, the largest of which has been labor related from cost of living increases and increased National Insurance contributions that have not been recovered through price increases during the period.

Speaker 1

And in addition, our manufacturing efficiency has reduced year on year, particularly in our Natural Stone business. Now in response to this, we've decided to accelerate the network optimization element of our Landscape and Improvement Plan. And as Matt touched on earlier, we expect that to deliver annualized savings of GBP 3,000,000 sorry, GBP 9,000,000, with GBP 3,000,000 being delivered in 2025. And we're confident that, that will create a more agile and flexible business that will facilitate a material improvement in profitability in 2026. So now moving on to Building Products, which, as I mentioned earlier, delivered revenue growth of 6% year on year.

Speaker 1

And that was driven through growth in both Water Management and Mortars, partially offset by lower revenues in Bricks and Aggregates. In Water Management, we saw good growth in both our core housing market and in the wider infrastructure market, aided by improved inventory availability and good service levels. In mortars, we benefited from some increase in activity levels, but the relatively slow build rates on housing developments, which favor our ready to use mortars products. In Bricks, in a very competitive marketplace, we chose to prioritize price over volume in order to protect our gross margins. And as a consequence, revenues dipped slightly.

Speaker 1

And in Aggregates, we saw lower demand in our regional marketplace. Profitability grew by 8% to £6,900,000 in the period. And that profit growth was driven by Water Management, where we saw the benefit of increased volumes and a stronger product mix and in Mortars, where we benefited from higher activity levels and strong pricing discipline. But that was partially offset by lower profitability in Bricks due to the lower volumes. So now moving on to Roofing Products, where we had revenue growth of 11% during the period, and that was principally driven through very strong revenue growth in Meridian solar of around about 50%.

Speaker 1

And that, as I mentioned earlier, is reflective of house builders continuing to adopt the business' market leading products as part of their response to changes in building regulations that require increased levels of energy efficiency. But it's also worth highlighting that we do expect the rate of growth in this business to moderate in the second half of the year as the comparatives get tougher. Marley Roofing augmented that performance by building on its market position and gaining share in concrete plain tiles and timber battens and holding share in concrete tiles. And that resulted in an increase in revenues. Operating profit increased by 7%, and that was driven by Viridian Solar with incremental volumes and its disciplined pricing strategy resulted in improved profitability.

Speaker 1

And profits were modestly lower in Mali, where we saw weaker manufacturing efficiencies and targeted investment in customer engagement and commercial capability. We've chosen to increase the level of capital expenditure in this business during 2025 with a focus on improving manufacturing efficiency and product quality, And that will put the building blocks in place for long term margin delivery and sorry, long term revenue delivery and margin performance. So now this slide sets out the profit and loss account from operating profit through to earnings. And as mentioned earlier, operating profit contracted by 16% to £28,400,000 Finance costs were lower year on year by about £1,000,000 due to lower borrowings and the reductions in base rate. And profit before tax contracted by 17% to GBP 22,000,000.

Speaker 1

The effective tax rate we've applied at the half year is 24%. That's in line with the full year effective tax rate from last year, and it includes the benefit of a Patent Box arrangement. And adjusted earnings per share reduced by 16% to 6.6p per share, reflecting the weaker operational performance. So now turning to our cash flow performance and the movement in net debt. And the chart on this slide sets out the movement in the component parts of the movement in net debt from the December 24 year end to the June 25 half year.

Speaker 1

And it illustrates the seasonal nature of our working capital requirements. And you can see that working capital line there, which absorbed about GBP 26,000,000 during the first half. That's normal, and it reflects higher levels of trade accounts receivables from customers. And you can see that it absorbs a reasonably significant part of the EBITDA generation during the period. And it's the principal reason why net debt has increased by £18,000,000 since the year end.

Speaker 1

Now our operating cash flow conversion continues to be very strong at 94%, and it reflects our continued focus on working capital management. And I'll touch on that a little bit on the next slide. Finance and taxation cash flows totaled GBP 12,000,000 in the half year. That's a little bit higher than it was this time last year due to a normalization of the timing of interest payments and some front loading of taxation payments in 2025. Net capital expenditure was GBP 8,900,000.0, and that comprises gross CapEx of GBP 9,700,000.0 less the proceeds from a site disposal of GBP 800,000.

Speaker 1

And we continue to tightly control capital expenditure given that we don't need any more incremental capacity as things stand today. And we also made the final contingent consideration payment in respect of Meridian Solar, which at a cost of £6,600,000 in the first half of the year. So we closed the half with net debt of £152,000,000 which is £4,000,000 better than the twelve months earlier. So this slide sets out a number of measures focused on working capital management, returns and balance sheet strength. And as mentioned on the last slide, we continue to take a proactive approach to working capital management with both debtor days and creditor days improving year on year and average inward return being flat.

Speaker 1

Returns dipped to by 0.3 percentage point to 7.3%, and that reflects the weaker earnings during the period. We do have a target to return on capital employed to around 15% in the medium term, and that will be driven through operational leverage underpinned by a Transform and Grow strategy and a recovery in market volumes. The balance sheet continues to be robust with leverage stable at 1.8 times, so the same as it was this time last year. And we've got very significant liquidity against our bank facilities of £145,000,000 which provides the liquidity and capital to execute our growth plans. And finally, just moving on to a recap on our capital allocation policy.

Speaker 1

So our first priority is to continue to invest in organic growth opportunities. No change in our view that our strategic plan will require between 20,000,000 and £30,000,000 of spend in the medium term, but our spend this year is expected to be slightly below the bottom end of that range. We'll continue to invest in those areas, which will enhance the group's competitive advantage being carbon leadership, leading brands and our best in class technical and design support. Our dividend policy remains unchanged, maintaining 2x cover of adjusted earnings, and the interim dividend is in line with that policy. At the start of the year, I guided to net debt being unchanged in 2025, and that continues to be our current view.

Speaker 1

So whilst our expectations of EBITDA generation have reduced, we'll have lower taxation cash flows, lower dividend cash flows, and there'll be a bit less investment in working capital and capital expenditure than we originally assumed. And we continue to expect to see reductions in net debt from 2026 onwards due to the cash generative nature of our business. And we're still targeting leverage in the range of 0.5 times to 1.5 times EBITDA, which will provide optimal flexibility. And finally, we will continue to consider selective bolt on M and A opportunities that will accelerate our Transform and Grow strategy. So I'll now hand back to Matt, who will take you through the strategy update.

Operator

Thanks, Justin. It's clear that against the backdrop of macroeconomic uncertainty and continued subdued activity across our key end markets, we've delivered a performance that underscores the strength of our broad product offering. It's a direct result of the group's diversification strategy and highlights the potential for a successful turnaround of our landscaping products business. So now let's turn to transform and grow strategy and I'll give you a brief recap and share some of the early progress we're making across our other business units outside of landscaping. With customers at the heart of our strategy, we're building on a common set of capabilities that we know they value.

Operator

From carbon leadership, best in class technical and design support and our market leading brands. Our Transform and Grow strategy is establishing that clear pathway forward to shaping a group where long term profitable growth is driven by the collective strength of our diverse portfolio of market leading businesses that ensures medium term outperformance is not reliant on any one single business unit. Our medium term goals are clearly defined. They are built on delivering market outperformance across our businesses and leveraging the financial strength of the group to support sustainable growth. Our successful diversification strategy has created a more balanced exposure across our end markets.

Operator

We're building a group with three more evenly contributing reporting segments across landscaping, building and roofing products. In the near term, activity levels on our key end markets remain subdued. However, commercial and infrastructure representing around 30% of group revenues has shown greater resilience. The government's ten year infrastructure strategy and commitment to major infrastructure investment alongside the AMP8 investment cycle in water is expected to drive increased activity in the coming years. New housing, which accounts for around 45% of group revenues, continues to face relatively low activity levels.

Operator

While there is a clear structural need for more homes near term economic uncertainty is dampening confidence despite improved mortgage affordability following successive cuts to the Bank of England base rate. The government's ambition to accelerate house building during this parliament supported by planning reforms and the £39,000,000,000, affordable homes funding program with a commitment to build 300,000 new affordable homes is encouraging, but these measures will take time to translate into increased activity. Housing RMI makes up the remainder about 25% of group revenues. Repair and maintenance repairs remains more resilient which is reflected in the strong performance of our Marley Roofing business. However, the improvement segment of RMI continues to operate at historically low levels with homeowners cautious about committing to more significant renovation and improvement projects in the current climate.

Operator

So while near term market conditions remain challenging, the medium term fundamentals are encouraging and support our confidence in the group's strategic direction. And with our portfolio of market leading brands and differentiated propositions, the group is positioned well for sustainable growth across all its businesses in landscaping, roofing and solar, where we have enviable market positions and in water management and bricks, where we have significant headroom for growth. And back at the Capital Markets event in November, we outlined a clear role strategy for each of our businesses to drive growth and outperformance across our two brand powerhouses, Marshalls Landscaping and Marley Roofing and our three growth engines of Viridian Solar, Marshalls Water Management and Marshalls Bricks and Masonry. So let's briefly touch on the early progress with Transform and Grow beyond our landscaping business. Marley Roofing has reinforced its market leadership position in the first half of the year and the business is investing around GBP 5,000,000 in capital projects that will enhance both product quality and manufacturing efficiency at two of our concrete tile manufacturing sites.

Operator

In addition, we're investing in developing bespoke software that will support our specification selling strategy by enhancing the customer experience and increasing product attachment rates. And progress continues on integrating the solar roof system into Marley's full roof offer with a defined strategy and ongoing discussions with selected house builders ahead of a wider rollout. Through the first half of this year, Viridian Solar grew in line with expectations driven by the increasing penetration of the housing of housing built to part l regulations. Regulations that present a market opportunity of £77,000,000 a year per 100,000 new homes built and where Viridian Solar has around a 40 to 45% market share. And the team has continued to strengthen its position with key house builders signing a two year extension to a solar steel with its largest customer for its Clearline Fusion roof integrated solar panels.

Operator

Viridian Solar's outlook improved further during the 2025 following the government's announcement on the future home standard, which will make solar panels mandatory on most new homes. The impact of the new standards announced will drive an increase of penetration of solar on new homes to around 90% and combined with the requirement to increase the solar power output per home has the potential to double the businesses addressable market to around a £162,000,000 per year per 100,000 new homes built. The implementation times are expected this autumn and will fuel further market growth after the current part l regulations are fully embedded in 2026. And as you'll hopefully remember from Viridian from Viridian Solar, they also launched the ArcBots product, a patented product that acts to mitigate arcing in solar connections, thereby reducing the risk of fires and can be used with any solar panel connection. Sales of ArcBox have grown over a 135% in the first half of this year, primarily in The UK, but also in Europe where we've appointed three wholesale partners in Spain.

Operator

Water management has delivered a strong performance in the first half of the year with growth in both its core housing market and by winning business in the wider water management and infrastructure business. We've invested in new design software and training programs across our engineering and commercial teams, which is enhancing engagement with key specifiers. And we're on track to deliver over 3,000 project designs in 2025, an uplift of over 25%. Importantly, more of these projects are for larger, more complex design schemes. Now one example of this is the Tobruk Spillway project where the reservoir threatened the word threatened the town of Whaley Bridge in the Peak District and was widely reported on the news.

Operator

Our structural engineering team provided the solution with a combination of our Ready Rock retaining wall system, which is a bit of a mouthful, and our winder drainage network solutions. The team have also won further high value infrastructure business with further work on HS2, Hinkley Point C Nuclear Power Station, and numerous projects across motorway, motorway junction improvement and major over a road schemes. The team has also established framework agreements with key key tier one contractors and built relationships with design consultancies, building a very strong foothold ahead of the AMP8 cycle with water infrastructure design work up 35% year on year. We expect feasibility and design work to continue to ramp up further through the latter part of 2025 and construction on projects to commence from mid-twenty twenty six and continue to grow in number throughout the eight amp cycle. To support this growth, we've also undertaken a detailed capacity and capability review to inform a targeted capital investment plan, which we'll evaluate in the coming months to align our future investment with the highest value and growth opportunities.

Operator

And finally in bricks, as you've heard earlier in the presentation, 2025 saw encouraging demand from house builders. However, increased sector capacity and softening activity levels in the second quarter intensified price competition. In response, we made a deliberate strategic decision to protect margins by focusing on the differentiated value of our low carbon BRIC offering competing on quality, sustainability and long term performance rather than price. So on the left hand side of this chart, you'll see that we're launching a major advocacy campaign in the second half to reinforce our carbon leadership, positioning our lower carbon bricks as the sustainable choice for UK construction. Just one of many compelling facts I could share is if all the new dwellings built in 2023 had been built with lower carbon concrete bricks as this, it would have saved around 215,000 tons of carbon dioxide.

Operator

And when it comes to myths about concrete bricks in regards a limited range, on the right hand side of this chart, you can see the comprehensive range of formats, aesthetic finishes, and over 200 colorways that we have today to meet the needs of our house builders. And with further MPD being worked on with our house builders that will be launched later this year to enhance this offer. So I hope this provides you with a brief update on the early progress of Transform and Grow across our business units and demonstrates the significant opportunity we have for growth and value creation. So now let's turn to the outlook and summary before we join the Q and A. As we look ahead, we remain mindful of the ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty and at this stage do not anticipate any meaningful improvement in market activity levels through the remainder of this year.

Operator

That said, we are clearly focused on the plans and actions within our own control. We continue to be encouraged by the medium term outlook supported by the government's commitment to more new housing and infrastructure investment throughout the parliament. And our Transform and Grow strategy is positioning the group well for sustainable growth across our diverse portfolio of businesses. And we remain confident in the ability to deliver a material improvement in profitability and returns over the medium term. So in summary, at the half year, performance reflects the encouraging progress of the group.

Operator

We've returned to revenue growth despite subdued market conditions, demonstrating the early impact of our strategy. We've delivered improved profitability in both building products and roofing products, and we've continued to execute our landscaping improvement plans at pace, taking decisive action to accelerate the optimization of our national manufacturing network and reduce costs. And we've maintained a robust balance sheet underpinned by disciplined working capital management. And with that, I'll ask Simon and Justin to join me for q and a. Thank you.

Operator

Where are we going first? Should we go left to right, which is over here, my left?

Speaker 2

Adrian Kearse, Pammul Liberum. Three, if I may. Could you remind us what proportion of revenues come from water perhaps in the first half 'twenty five? And how does that compare as a proportion for 'twenty four? In Slide 10, you talk about order intake up 8% in April to July for the value add products.

Speaker 2

Could you perhaps give an indication of what order intake is across the wider landscaping division? And then finally, you talk about so return 7.3% in the first half, remain committed to delivering 15%. Could you perhaps walk through what kind of changes to the balance sheet, for example, in particular, working cap, we need to be thinking about what how is that going to evolve in order to get to your 15%?

Operator

Okay. When it comes to Water Management, I'll let Justin talk a little bit more about that. But I think our growth was 15% of revenue in the first half of the year. And then we'll take order intake, I'll let Simon do that one, and then I'll let Justin do the ROCE. So if you want to cover one and three first, Justin?

Speaker 1

Right. Okay. So the first one was Water Management. So as we said before, Water Management revenues in 2024 were around about GBP 70,000,000. And Matt said the growth that we've seen in that business has been mid teens during the period.

Speaker 1

I think that probably answers your question there, Adrian.

Operator

Yes. Do want to answer the ROCE question as well?

Speaker 1

Yes. So if you think about capital employed across the business, we're talking if we start with fixed capital, so capital expenditure, we're guiding to between GBP 20,000,000 and GBP 30,000,000 a year, which is broadly aligned with our depreciation. So in terms of fixed capital employed, you shouldn't really be assuming that particularly increases.

Operator

In terms of

Speaker 1

the working capital, the best planning assumption for that will be for it to increase in line with revenue with the revenue growth in the business. I mean, reality is, I'd certainly expect trade receivables and payables to increase in line with that. I'd actually like to see a bit more inventory turn coming through as we see an increase in revenue levels. But if you keeping it simple, if you increase your working capital at the same rate as your revenue, you'd be in the right space.

Operator

You want to pick up

Speaker 3

on the order Yes. Order intake overall, Adrian, is up across both domestic and commercial. But the encouraging bit within that is the split between the commodity mix and the value add mix. If we take Q1 of this year, if we look at the value add element within commercial, it was down minus 8% and the swing is now plus 8% across April, May, and June. So really encouraging swing.

Speaker 3

Clearly, there's a gestation period for that to flow through into sales and therefore impacts on the p and l, but it's really encouraging.

Operator

K. Where should we go? Keep going left to right or my left to right.

Speaker 4

Thanks very much. So it's Rob Chantry at Berenberg. Thanks so much for the presentation, guys. So yes, three questions. So market structure and landscaping.

Speaker 4

Obviously, I guess you're the market leader at 40% in concrete. It's on the two at kind of 20%, 25%. Where are the main problems coming from? Is it in the tail in terms of the 30%, which is, I guess, family owned and smaller? What are they doing with kind of pricing in the kind of that part?

Speaker 4

So kind of make talk around market structure and who exactly is causing the problems. Secondly, capacity reductions. Can you just remind us how much in your landscaping network has been taken out mothballed into 2022 and what the capacity will look like post the upcoming round of cuts? And then thirdly, Water Management, you outlined there GBP 74,000,000, revenue growing 15%, but clearly low absolute share, but the market is growing quickly. Can you just talk about the competitive environment there?

Speaker 4

Where are you winning? Where are you missing out? How do you see changing to really capitalize on that opportunity? Thank you.

Operator

Okay. Simon, do you want to talk around market structure in landscaping and I'll share in there and the really the competitive structure in that marketplace?

Speaker 3

Yes. You're right, there's a lot of regional pressure in terms of market structure across landscape. We find ourselves competing with smaller kind of family owned privately owned businesses that are not distressed. And that's where we've seen the kind of impact on price and the pressure on price over the past couple of years. We've seen a slight change in dynamic now, we've managed to displace a lot of those competitors, both the regional competitors and some of the larger competitors and that's the point that Matt made earlier in terms of taking market share and in fact certainly through our merchant partners, we're in excess of 75% across the patch and winning business certainly with Tier one contractors and house builders.

Speaker 3

And we believe we're doing that because of the service proposition, the kind of technical know how that we talk about and indeed that geographical footprint that we've got. So we are seeing a shift in that regard, and that's why we've managed to get some traction around that.

Operator

Okay. You could carry on and talk around capacity and landscape or I could let Justin do it, up to you. Justin, do you want to talk about capacity?

Speaker 1

Sure, yes. Surplus capacity is depending on which production process you're looking at, is somewhere between 3040%. And we have since the I guess, the volume challenges that started in 2022, we've permanently closed one site in Scotland. So it wasn't an enormous site, but that one's closed and we sold that, so that won't reopen. And we've partially closed a site in the rest of the network, and that's what we did in the first half of this year.

Speaker 1

The assets on that site, we can use other assets across the group where we've got particularly high levels of availability on them. So there's we've got plenty of capacity across the group. And the actions that we've taken this time around, let's ignore the partial closure that I just touched on, don't permanently reduce capacity at all. What they're really doing is making the sites more efficient and moving production closer to the customer. So a reasonably significant portion of the GBP 6,000,000 of savings that we expect to generate come from lower logistics costs rather than people related costs.

Speaker 1

So it's driving manufacturing and logistics savings through the estate. So we've got plenty of capacity left in order to respond to any conceivable increase in demand.

Operator

Okay. And then your final question, I think, was around the competitive environment in Water Management. And I think back at the Capital Markets event, we talked around that whole water management infrastructure market. And there's one there are a number of competitors, but there's one very significant major competitor who supplies into that market. But we believe, given the level of investment going into water management and infrastructure, that there's plenty of space for for someone like us to to grow within that.

Operator

And that margins in that area will also be accretive as you're starting to to look at more highly specified bespoke types of design into that area. So we believe the opportunity growth is still significant both in the market and for ourselves and that margins should be higher than what we're seeing in our new housing market as well. And you can see that when I talked around the number of the design work being up 35% in our Water Management business reflects that growth that we're starting to see and should materialize through the Amp eight cycle. Does that answer the question?

Speaker 4

Yes, that's correct.

Speaker 1

I think it's just probably worth adding as well that we don't expect any significant benefits from Amp eight investment until midway through So a lot of design activity going on at the moment in that space, but not translating into dispatches, but very encouraging for 2026.

Operator

Clyde no, we'll go that way, sorry.

Speaker 5

Ainsley Lammerman from Investec. Just two for me, please. First of all, just on new housing, some kind of mix messages across the sector. Just wondered some of the early kind of I think you mentioned water and water. Are you seeing the beginnings of a sustained recovery in new housing, do you think?

Speaker 5

Or is it just a lot more precarious than that? Just interested in your view there. And then the second question, just on the drop through for building products and roofing. If you look at the drop through, it wasn't that great in the first half. I mean just maybe a bit more color in terms of what held that back?

Speaker 5

And would you expect what would be the key drivers to really improve the drop through going forward on those two divisions?

Operator

Simon, I'll start with the drop through one, and then I'll come back to New Housing Market.

Speaker 1

So I guess what we saw was in Water Management, we saw strong growth in profitability in our in the mortars business, again, growth in profitability and actually drop through in line with our expectations of their businesses. But we are investing also in both Water Management. So we talked about the increased capability from a design perspective, so we're putting people into that structure. We've also put people into the brick structure as well to improve our engagement, particularly with regional house builders. So the drop through is, I guess, from an operating profit perspective, is moderated a touch by that.

Speaker 1

And then you've got the impact in Bricks, where we saw lower profitability from and I guess, less efficiency through our manufacturing network as well as a result of that. So there's a few moving parts going along there, but there's a layer of investment in Transform and Grow, which is in those numbers.

Operator

Okay. And on the new housing market, I can't really comment on what other people are seeing in the new housing market, but certainly, what we're seeing in our own business doesn't signal a significant upward tick in new housing certainly through this year, particularly in terms of completions. And it's certainly quite mixed music from the house builders themselves around that front as well. So if you were to say, do I see a sustained recovery? Not at the moment, no.

Operator

Do I see some early very early signs of life and you have to see this continuing for a while? We're winning new business in or more business in Water Management, our civils and drainage, and that's usually a first sign of sites being opened up as civils and drainage goes in. The other part is in flag curbs and edging in our landscaping business, and that's one of the things that goes into new housing sites early. And we've seen an uptick in that as well. Whether I could sit here and say that's the start of a sustained recovery in new housing, I think I'd be very foolish to say that at this point, given the fragile nature of the housing market and coming from quite low comparatives year on year.

Operator

So hopefully, does that answer your question, Angel?

Speaker 1

Yes. I think perhaps just to add to that and tie that back to one of the points I raised in the presentation was this shift in mix. So part of that shift in mix was from value add to commodity, but the remaining shift in the mix was from a relatively stronger performance from FlagCurve and Edging compared to Concrete Block Paving. And whilst that results in lower revenues, it doesn't actually result in lower margins because the margin are reasonably comparable across those two businesses. Clyde?

Speaker 6

You. Clyde Lewis at Peel Hunt. I think just two for me. The GBP 9,000,000 of savings that you flagged this year, does that include anything from the 2,500,000.0 loss maker that you've got within landscape? That was the first one.

Speaker 6

Second one was around product mix, going back to that topic. And I suppose it be useful to sort of hear about the domestic side of things as to whether you've seen any patterns And also then going back to the commercial side, is it really just you better sort of pushing the value added products through the specifiers? Because I can't believe the sort of value engineering side of things has changed for the better in the last three to six months at all.

Operator

Do you want to pick up on that side of product mix and domestic and commercial?

Speaker 3

Yes, I'll start with the commercial bit first, Clyde. I think it's where we were focused prior to the changes that we made in terms of the commercial team and the kind of focus that we've got through that commercial sector in with the Tier 1s. I think we were chasing business that wasn't particularly value add and therefore the pipeline was kind of filled with the more commodity type products. We've changed that approach now and it's value over volume in a lot of instances, so that's why we're seeing a shift, as well as the fact that we've got a really good proposition from a service and technical perspective. But it is really about the change in focus on where the value is in the supply chain.

Speaker 3

In terms of domestic, we're not seeing that flow through quite yet, but that will be supported with the product value mapping work that we're doing. And if you recall, when we were here last time, we talked about the gap in the product ladder in terms of the good, better, best. And what we've now got is a range and a pricing point that will allow us to trade through that good into better. There was a big gap and we weren't able to trade up from kind of good to best and that's why we saw a migration into our competitors. We've plugged those gaps, we've realigned the product portfolio map and we're able to trade certainly with our merchant partners and our customers much better through that.

Operator

Probably say on our portfolio, I think we described our portfolio as it was looking more like an egg timer, too much sitting in best, too much sitting good and not enough in the better tier. And actually what it needs to be is more like a diamond. You want more of your ranges sitting in that better tier, so you can navigate people up and down as the market moves. And in simple terms, that's kind of how you visualize it. There's a huge amount of work that's gone into that to remove ranges and remove complex.

Speaker 3

Just one supporting point on that as well. I think it's how we're category managing through our partners as well in terms of how we're promoting our products, what we've got in the yards, making sure there's a really good balance between the value of products and indeed some of the commodity products that are on the ground.

Operator

Probably also relates back to incentivizing our sales teams on margin and product value add mix, not on revenue, which actually makes a significant difference in the way your sales teams behave in the market. In regards to the GBP 9,000,000 savings, no, it doesn't include any benefit we get from resolving that unprofitable piece of business that I've talked about. So that's an additional benefit or saving depending on what we do with that piece of business in 2026. So it will flow through into 2026. So we will resolve that this year.

Operator

Chris?

Speaker 7

Morning, Chris Millington at Deutsche. First one, I just wanted to kind of explore the backdrop to landscape in both commercial and domestic and just how much volumes have shifted since 2019. I presume it's differential, it's just difficult to get under the skin of given we don't get full pricing and volume breakdowns. So that's the first one. Next one I wanted to ask really is, I was about Viridian growth rates, Justin's favorite question.

Speaker 7

What do you think would be a good rate of growth for H2 and '26 in that area? Sorry to put you on the spot. Next one, water management, massive difference in market share between residential and infra. Is there something about the products you manufacture that means that share will always be different there or could it be overcome? Yes, that's pretty much it, I think.

Operator

Do you want to do the Veridian one? That's probably fairly straightforward to answer. And then Simon, would you like to pick on to the landscaping and I'll pick up on Water Management?

Speaker 1

Okay. So yes, so we do expect the growth rate in Meridian to moderate in the second half of the year, and that's due to the comps becoming tougher. If you look at the 2024 numbers, we saw a real the real start of the Partel adoption in the second half of the year. So I'll answer my questions your question in a slightly different way. I'd expect the growth rate for the full year to be around about 30% to 33%, something like that.

Speaker 1

So it results in a business with revenues of a touch over £50,000,000 or thereabouts. And as we roll forward into 2026, the growth rate will moderate, and it will get slower as we pass through the year unless the future home standard starts kicking before then. But I doubt that, I think, is my view. So I think you'll see a much more moderate rate of growth in 2026, probably somewhere in the teens.

Speaker 3

In regards to volume, Chris, think generally it is softer versus 2019. Think what's important within that is the mix within that and how we drive as market leader, we should be driving the mix in the market and that's our intention. We do see a volume pick up and we are seeing a volume pick up with regards to the Marshalls volumes. But for me, it's more about how we drive the mix moving forward as volumes do recover as the market picks up.

Speaker 1

I think it's probably fair to say on landscaping as well that in broad terms, we were using our capacity back in 2019. So I'll give you an indication of how much volume has come out of that market. So we didn't have huge amounts of surplus capacity. We're pretty much selling what we made on the basis of a twenty fourfive shift pattern.

Speaker 7

Yes. And now you're running 35% maybe?

Speaker 1

And now you've got that amount of yes, but you're not running a number of assets. So you're not really it's not you're running all your assets, that is you've got a number of dormant assets across the business that and we've taken some capacity out, albeit we've put some in as well with the dual plot plant, which is giving a different capability.

Speaker 7

And would have been miles away to say that volumes are down 40% and up 60% in domestic, 35% in commercial. Would that be daft that sort of profile?

Speaker 1

I think you're probably over egging how much the domestic is is down. I'd say it's it's between four forty and fifty.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Thanks.

Operator

I think the only thing I'd add around landscaping, and this is reflecting on the past. The team that we now have in place are looking at absolutely the right sets of data and analysis. And I'm afraid to say I don't think prior to that and putting the new team in place we were. So actually, all the work we're doing on the portfolio, which should be stuff that's done on a continuous basis, the stuff we're doing around network optimization should be continuous, wasn't done for a while. The amount of work that goes into analysis is actually the stuff that's now starting to show up in the business because we're tracking the right types of data and being able to demonstrate progress, make sure we're targeting our sales teams and our operations teams to do the right things.

Operator

And that's what gives us confidence in all the work that's within our control to make a difference to profitability and to do those things out in the market in a more progressive way that bring back the value add mix and bring back the margin into the business successfully. And I'm really confident in the team that Simon and ourselves have put in place to deliver that, so very confident in landscaping. I think the other question you had was around share in water management. Yes, we I mean, if you look at water management and infrastructure, there's a lot of headroom for growth. What's stopping us from going at nothing at the moment in terms of winning share.

Operator

As I said, we've been growing in that area. The key bit that we will need to grow further than where we are is the capability and capacity review that's underway across our two water management sites and choosing where to invest in more capability particularly and further capacity. It's about deciding what we want to make in terms of the solutions that offer the highest growth returns to us in water management because you're not going to go and tackle certain parts of the market because it will be that will be something F. P. McCann can do themselves better than us.

Operator

But we have spare capacity in water management across those sites at the moment to support what we're doing. It's gonna be the right investment in capability and capacity at the right time to fuel that growth. But it's a large market. Are we wanting 30% share of it? I think that would be very ambitious, but a lovely ambition, but certainly we can have more of that market.

Speaker 8

Charlie Campbell, Stifel. Only one really for me. Just intrigued on the 28% reduction in SKUs in landscaping. I'm just wondering if that's had a margin or an inventory impact on the first half. And if not, is there an impact in the second half we should be thinking about?

Speaker 3

No is the answer to that. I mean some of this work is still yet to flow through as we work through the deletions of the portfolio. And I think just need to stress that 28% reduction, we still have a very, very comprehensive kind of offer in terms of the product placement. But the answer to your question is no, no impact in H1.

Operator

Can I just check any questions online?

Speaker 9

Yes, we have a couple online. So firstly, is the network optimization plan and landscaping a mothballing or a permanent reduction in capacity? Will the rationalization materially impair peak output when markets eventually recover?

Operator

I think we answered that earlier on, but it's more other than the partial site closure in the first half of the year, it's actually about mothballing parts of sites so they're not manned. But it leaves us with retained capacity to respond to the market as and when it recovers with a sort of 30%, 35% excess capacity across the network if choose to bring it back on. So hopefully that answers that. Yes.

Speaker 9

Thank you. And secondly, since the business is throwing off cash, is with side

Operator

second second Transform and Grow strategy and supporting those business unit strategies, and that's certainly on our agenda. But yes, mean, paying down debt is the plan. I said this year, I think our net debt will hold year on year, but the intention is that, that improves through 2026 and we start paying down the net debt and get our leverage back into that one to 1.5x range that we've targeted for the medium term. But M and A optionality is something we want to keep on the table. Okay.

Operator

I think that's all the questions. Thank you very much everyone for joining. Thank you. Thank you.

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