SIG H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 5, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Group like-for-like sales rose 1% year-on-year, driven by 5% growth in the UK, outperforming weak markets.
  • Positive Sentiment: Disciplined cost management offset pricing pressure, delivering a 30% increase in underlying operating profit to £15 million.
  • Negative Sentiment: Non-cash impairment charges of £23 million in UK specialist markets and interiors reflect ongoing market weakness.
  • Positive Sentiment: Free cash outflow narrowed to £9 million, with working capital efficiency improving by 20 basis points versus prior year.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Full-year guidance remains unchanged despite subdued markets in H2, with cautious expectations on near-term recovery.
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Earnings Conference Call
SIG H1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 5 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good morning, everybody. I hope you're all well. Good morning, everybody. Hope you're all well. Welcome to s I

Speaker 1

welcome to SIG's I h one twenty twenty five results presentation. I'm Ian Ashton, the group CFO, and I'll take you through the result our results and progress over the last six months. This will take about twenty five minutes, I expect, and at the end, we'll, of course, have time for questions. So the agenda. As you can see here, I'll give a quick overview of the half, then cover the financial results, and then give some color on the progress we're making across our businesses.

Speaker 1

The next slide, but before our results, as you'll hopefully have seen, we were very pleased to announce on the July 8 that Pim Favart will be joining as a c CEO on the October 1, and we'll then move up to the chair role after eighteen months or so. Tim has a lot of very relevant experience. And having, of course, met him, I know he'll bring a lot of energy to his role and to the group, and indeed fresh insights. He's looking forward to the challenge, and we're looking forward to having him on board. He'll be introducing himself to our investor and analyst community during quarter four.

Speaker 1

While this transition is taking place, our managing directors in each business have a very clear plan and focus on what needs to be done over the coming months, and the performance over the first half reflects, I believe, the strength of the wider management team. Onto the summary of h one. The key message is that we've continued to perform well relative to the markets in which we operate, but that those markets do remain stubbornly subdued and challenging. I'll cover the numbers in more detail on later slides, but overall, we grew like for like sales by 1% over last year. Within that, the standout was The UK, where we grew 5% in aggregate.

Speaker 1

As well as outperforming our markets, we've continued to focus on short- and long term measures to manage costs, productivity and cash flow and to good effect. We've made further structural reductions in overhead costs, and our modest cash outflow in H one was notably improved versus prior years. On the right hand side, you'll see reference to the progress we've made on key strategic areas. For example, we've been clear and consistent for some time that we need to significantly improve our UK interiors and Benelux businesses, and that's happening. Specifically, we said back in March that UK interiors would return to profit this year, and I'm pleased to say they're ahead of schedule and reported a profit in h one.

Speaker 1

And to the final comment on this slide, despite the backdrop remaining weak and not showing signs of improvement as we head into h two, our guidance for the full year remains unchanged. So the key financials. Group sales were up 1% over the prior year on a like for like basis, I mentioned. Gross margin was down by 50 basis points on h one last year, primarily from pricing pressures in the current market as one would expect. The lower sales and gross margin were more than offset by disciplined management of operating costs, and this led to an underlying operating profit of £15,000,000 about £3,500,000 or 30% higher than last year.

Speaker 1

After finance costs, which reflect the refinancing last October at higher interest rates, we've reported an underlying loss before tax of £10,000,000 I'll look in more detail in a moment at the key elements within all of these numbers. Below underlying profit, other items were GBP 23,000,000 for the half, almost all of which was noncash impairment charges related to certain assets in our UK specialist markets and UK interiors businesses. This mainly reflects the prolonged market weakness we're seeing at the moment and the resulting impacts on the relatively near term focused modeling we're required to use for our impairment testing. Free cash outflow was £9,000,000 Given the usual seasonality in the business, which generally sees working capital rise during the year compared to the low point in December, this was a good result. Net debt of £524,000,000 includes £330,000,000 of leases, a number which, as expected, has risen slightly versus last year.

Speaker 1

Leverage also rose as a result of that and of a slightly lower rolling twelve months EBITDA versus a year ago. And, of course, I'll cover cash and the balance sheet, in more detail in a couple of minutes. So next, here is our simple, usual simple bridge of the revenue number. The £31,000,000 higher volume represents around a 2.5% increase for the half year. Net price deflation impact of 13,000,000 reflects a 1% decrease, with slightly positive input cost inflation more than offset by pricing pressure in the market.

Speaker 1

Branch changes, mostly closures along with a small number of openings, are not reflected in like for like numbers. They resulted in a net 13,000,000 drop in revenue. The closures were of underperforming, often poorly located branches, and that closure is part of the restructure that is helping and will help the bottom line. Finally, working days in FX in aggregate were a further slight headwind on reported revenue. Revenue trends.

Speaker 1

This slide shows the trends for the last six quarters. On volumes, we reported last year and early this the gradual recovery to marginally positive like for like volume growth, and you can see it has now been positive for three quarters. Towards the end of the half, that growth did moderate slightly, and certainly June sales in most markets were slightly softer than we'd expected a few weeks earlier. No big swings, to be clear. It has just reinforced our caution about H two and the timing of any meaningful recovery.

Speaker 1

On pricing, the blue dotted line on here, the net deflation has continued to moderate and at this stage is pretty much flat year over year. As I've mentioned before, input cost inflation, which we seek to pass on, has been offset by selling price pressure as to be expected when demand is subdued. The black line is the group total like for like rate, I. The result of the two dotted lines. We expect that to remain in modest positive territory through h two.

Speaker 1

Turning to the next slide. So this shows the year over year drivers of operating profit. The first three colored bars show the gross profit impact of the various sales and pricing dynamics I've just talked about as well as small amounts of GP loss from the closing of those few branches. Moving across, the GBP 8,000,000 OpEx inflation was as we guided at the beginning of the year, I. 2% to 3% in aggregate.

Speaker 1

Employee costs are about half of total OpEx and rose around 2.5%, which accounts for around half of that 8,000,000 number. The 21,000,000 in the green bar is the underlying savings we've made on OpEx versus the prior year, a material number. A big driver is the annualization of restructuring changes we made in H two last year. We guided the 2024 results that we expected a further 16,000,000 of full year year over year benefit in 2025, and we've seen around 10,000,000 of that come through in h one. This was combined with other savings through ongoing discipline on all OpEx, including rigorous management of the natural churn in headcount that always occurs in businesses like ours.

Speaker 1

So the net result is that our profit went from 12,000,012 million in 2024 to 15,000,000 this year. So cash flow. In the appendix, we've included the usual detailed breakdown of cash flow and net debt. This slide focuses on the key drivers of free cash flow. Lease payments of £35,000,000 on our fleet and estate was at a very similar level to the prior year.

Speaker 1

It will grow slightly over time with the business, as I've said before, not least with inflation, but it remains a relatively stable number. Pounds 8,000,000 spent on CapEx was very much in line with normal trends of recent years and reflects continued targeted investment in the business as well as normal maintenance of the estate. Working capital was a good story in the half. We executed a number of initiatives across various businesses, which delivered favorable results. Some of these involve negotiations and agreements with suppliers, for example, around timing of rebate payments, which in the past have only affected year end numbers, I.

Speaker 1

They won't necessarily help our full year movement on working capital but do help intra year phasing. Our average working capital as a percentage of sales, which is a key metric for us internally and will remain a major focus, fallen versus prior year by 20 bps, as it happens the same as the movement in period end working capital as shown on this slide. 6,000,000 of cash exceptionals in the period relates mostly to the restructuring actions we executed or at least announced in H two of last year, notably in UK interiors and Benelux, and also a small number of branch closures in France and Germany. So that gets us to GBP 18,000,000 of positive operating cash flow, higher than underlying operating profit. Then after operating cash, we have interest and tax.

Speaker 1

Of the £25,000,000 interest, roughly half related to the imputed interest within our leases, and the other half was interest payable on our bond. Cash tax was pretty minimal as expected. And I'll reconfirm the full view of these numbers in the technical guidance. So that was the H1 cash flow. Continuing to improve cash generation, it clearly remains a key priority.

Speaker 1

Turning now to the balance sheet. You may recall that in October, we successfully refinanced our core facilities, both the €300,000,000 bond and the £90,000,000 RCF, extending the maturities out from 2026 to 'twenty nine. I won't repeat all the details, but the key data points are shown on the right hand side here. Liquidity remains robust, as you can see, being GBP 172,000,000 at the June despite the modest cash outflow in H one. The GBP 90,000,000 RCF was undrawn throughout the period and remains undrawn.

Speaker 1

Net debt rose due to normal increases in lease liabilities as well as the cash outflow to GBP $524,000,000. And as I mentioned, pounds $333,000,000 of this relates to net leases on our fleet and estate. Leverage on a post IFRS 16 basis, as is all our reporting, finished the period at 4.9 times, a modest increase in the six months. We're, of course, targeting a reduction in leverage and expect a recovery in profitability to drive it down over time. So finally, in this section, the normal additional points to assist with models.

Speaker 1

The big picture is there's virtually no change to any of this guidance versus what I set out out at our last results announcement in March. I've already commented on the impact of inflation and deflation on the top line in H1. And in short, we expect the full year impact to be similar, I. E, minus 1% to flat pricing overall. OpEx inflation will, as always, remain a factor, and we expect the full year impact to remain broadly at the levels we saw in 'twenty four and '5, I.

Speaker 1

E, 2% to 3% increase. On CapEx, no change. On interest, we still expect a full year charge in the range of 50,000,000 to £55,000,000. As of today, I would actually expect to be in the lower half of that range. And finally, tax, also no change of any note.

Speaker 1

As mentioned here and as reported previously, our underlying effective tax rate is not very meaningful, so it's more helpful to guide to a P and L number, which I now expect to be in very low single digit millions this year, which is very slightly lower than guided in March. And finally, we expect our cash tax for 2025 will be about two times the H1 number, so about £4,000,000 So moving on to the business review. I'll start with a very quick reminder of our operating footprint across Europe. We have 420 branches and over six and a half thousand people. On the map, you can see we have businesses in six geographies, trading as either SIG or under the other strong local brands we have in France and Germany.

Speaker 1

In the first half, our operating profit was roughly split half UK and half Continental Europe. The next slide, turning to the performance of each of our nine operating businesses in the half. This slide is all the top to bottom in terms of revenue, with H1 revenue in gray bars and then H1 underlying profit in the green. You can see it's a mixed picture across the group in terms of H1 sales growth rates. Margin wise, all the businesses are operating well below their potential due to the ongoing demand backdrop and the negative operational gearing effects of a lack of sales volume against the relatively fixed operating costs of our network.

Speaker 1

On the like for like growth rate column, you can see that five out of our nine businesses are back to growth despite the subdued demand. We have three still declining in H1, two being our French businesses, but we're confident they are also outperforming what are currently particularly tough markets. As we've pointed out before, it's notable that our two most profitable businesses are those in roofing, not what might sometimes be seen as the traditional SIG businesses of insulation and dry lining. I'll discuss the larger markets in a few minutes, but for now, we'll just comment briefly on Benelux. That business is still making a small loss, as you can see.

Speaker 1

We clearly aren't satisfied with that, but it has delivered an improvement in operating profit of over £1,500,000 in h one, driven by the significant restructuring of The Netherlands business last year. So it's good to see that improvement coming through, clear evidence that the business is on the right path. Before I go through our large businesses in a in a little more detail, a quick recap on our strategy for those of you newer to us. As set out here, one of our long term objectives is to improve our operating performance and drive toward a medium term operating margin of 5%. We're taking actions across the business to improve the way we're operating now and which are also positioning us to win in a medium and longer term growth market.

Speaker 1

In particular, we're positioning SIG to benefit from the market rebound when it comes and from certain key areas of growth driven by both structural and regulatory tailwinds, such as building fire safety, energy efficiency and sustainability, the need for more significantly for significantly more residential housing and infrastructure investment, all trends that play into our product offering and customer base. Our strategy is grouped into four pillars under the acronym GEMS being grow, execute, modernize and specialize. The bottom half of this slide summarizes just some of the key areas of strategic progress in h one under each. I'll turn to each of our larger businesses now and pick up on these points in small detail. Improving our UK and Tourist business has been and remains a key priority for the group, and we've made very good progress in the year to date.

Speaker 1

When we talk about execution, this is a great example. The business led by Howard Luft, who joined us in October, delivered strong improvement in sales and profit in h one. Howard and the team have done an excellent job in turning ourselves turning around our sales trajectory through really revitalizing our sales teams, the sales strategy, and obvious obvious as it may sound, relationships with customers and suppliers. The like for like sales trend over recent quarter shows this quite clearly, and this is set against a backdrop of a fairly flat market in h one. From a low point of 9% sales decline in q three last year, the business delivered a very strong 12% in q two this year, clearly taking share.

Speaker 1

Part of that sales acceleration has been through rebuilding our relationships with key customers who include large specialist contractors in major cities like London, Birmingham, Manchester, and also our relationships with house builders and their suppliers across the country. The three examples shown here, just to give you a sense of the range of types of projects we're involved in and some of our h one projects, from commercial buildings such as the high rise 42 floor refurbished Citigroup Tower in Canary Wharf to the very large hotel being constructed at Manchester City Stadium, a venue particularly close to Howart Heart. And residential new build projects include examples such as this housing project in Southport by a national housebuilder. Looking forward to the second half, q two was especially strong in terms of market share gain, and it would be too simplistic to extrapolate that h one trend line out into h two. But certainly, we expect more good growth despite a tough, pretty flat market.

Speaker 1

Looking at the profit and cost side of The UK Interiors performance, people cost make up around 50% of our overall OpEx. And from q three to q three twenty four, we accelerated the progress on the cost base in this business. We've now reduced the headcount by around 15% over the course of the last eighteen months, most of it completed by q four last year. The more recent activity in h two of last year was in particular weighted towards more corporate overhead roles as we've aimed as far as possible to preserve roles close to our customers. It's delivered around £3,500,000 of annualized cost saving, a benefit that is split pretty evenly between h one and h two this year.

Speaker 1

On the right of the slide, you can see that this cost work, combined with the stronger sales, has driven the business back to profit, as I mentioned earlier, and earlier than we'd expected or guided. So we've seen a GBP 4,000,000 uplift year over year. So in summary, it is great to see our largest revenue business get back into profitability at the midyear point. Moving on to France, and our two French businesses. Sales in both remained suppressed as demand has continued to decline in H1, with the French market down around 10% in interiors and around 5% in roofing.

Speaker 1

Our teams are delivering like for like sales rates that are slightly ahead of their markets, which we believe is a very solid result. Profit wise, Interiors trading as LEET, is a well run business and is managing its margin well in a very challenging demand and pricing environment. Roofing trading as La Riviere has also performed very solidly. They did benefit to the tune of about GBP £11,500,000.0 from property sales in the period related to previous branch relocations, without which their profit would also have dropped off slightly versus the prior year. Looking at our strategic progress, we've closed five consistently underperforming branches in roofing, branches whose numbers would look better in a better market, but which for reasons of geography, local market or history, we concluded would never quite get to where we want margin wise.

Speaker 1

We've also continued to focus on our strengths and differentiation as a specialist distributor and have launched and grown sales in new specialist roofing products under our own Etanques private label for waterproofing and roofing. The French interiors team is also working to develop a customer e commerce platform, part of our modernized pillar, and this will launch later this year. Overall, a solid half in France, and Julian Montero and our team there continue to navigate well the trade offs and decisions required in these very challenging market conditions. In Germany, the market has also remained tough, and this is most pronounced again on the residential side, which is well down within a declining overall market in h one. Our like for like sales were flat, up from the prior year 3% decline, a sign of our progress and some initial signs of market stabilization.

Speaker 1

The German business has, of course, faced strong price pressure like others, and has but has also made modest investments in experienced sales teams to continue to grow market share and to ensure we're best placed in the market to capture growth in the medium term. Alfonso and his team have also been making progress on specialization, and you can see in the bottom right of this slide some of our new private label products. Our new Vega Power range covers a range of accessories and fixings for walls and ceilings, while the Clean Air range includes products and solutions for air conditioning, control and thermal efficiency of flooring and ceilings, both being complementary to our wider ranges, and products. The German business also continues to modernize, and makes good progress on the ecommerce and omnichannel sales model, that they adopted and and and commenced last year as we reported at the time. Finally, just a word on the fiscal stimulus package announced by the German government during the period and win which will take further shape over time as regards to specific different packages designed to boost growth.

Speaker 1

It's clearly very early days and too early to gauge impact in any detail at all, but we think fair to say that the overall impact on the German economy should be helpful to growth and to sentiment more generally, including to the construction sector, as a subset of that. Our UK roofing business, The UK's largest national specialist roofing distributor, has delivered 6% like for like sales growth, a very good result against a fairly flat market as we continue to grow our share. As a reminder, our roofing business serves a market that is slightly more weighted towards RMI than newbuild. In the period, we've seen weak demand on the RMI side, which is quite heavily influenced by interest rates and consumer sentiment. Operating profit of £5,800,000 represents 18% growth over the prior year, a strong result despite the pressure on gross margin and normal OpEx inflation and and benefiting really from stronger sales on a broadly stable operating cost base.

Speaker 1

Our strategic development in the half has been focused around growth. Chris Lodge and his team are doing a great job with internal initiatives to upscale our sales teams, branch managers and other leaders to keep serving our customers better and running our and leading our branches better. These programs get great feedback and engagement from our people and from our customers. On solar, we added solar panels into our product range last year. And in h one, we launched a program of free solar panel installation training to the roofing customer base, which you can see on the bottom right here.

Speaker 1

This is to keep building long term pull for these products from our customers as the markets improve. Installing a solar panel is quite different to installing roof tiles, but roofers have unique access to roofs, and many are wanting to broaden into solar. So our strategy is to help upscale and grow sales to our core customer base as markets recover further in the future. So on to our final slide, summarizing our first half and where we are today. Firstly, as I said, we're looking forward to having PIM on board from the October 1.

Speaker 1

In terms of markets, they remain weak, notably in Germany and France, but we're performing robustly and outperforming our markets. Profit is impacted by the weaker trading, but cost actions are mitigating this effect. We've on cash initiatives too, and that's helped us maintain our liquidity at a healthy level. Looking ahead to the full year, we've confirmed that we're not changing our expectations. As to whether we'll see meaningful improvement in market conditions in the next five months or so, we do remain very cautious on that.

Speaker 1

Working capital discipline will continue in H2. And as a result, we expect the full year cash outflow to moderate substantially versus the outflow we saw last year. In summary, we continue to use these weak markets as an opportunity to tighten and sharpen our cost base, our sales and service to our customers and our operating model. In the medium term, we do expect these cyclical markets to recover, helped also by material structural tailwinds. Consequently, the operating leverage in our business model, along with the improvements we're making, will enable us to deliver a strong step up in margin and therefore in free cash generation and ultimately in shareholder value.

Speaker 1

So that concludes the formal presentation. We'll now move to questions, and I'll pass over to the operator for those of you on the phones.

Speaker 2

Thank you very much. We'd now like to start the Q first and Azzy Lehmann from Investec. Azzy, your line is now open.

Speaker 3

Great. Thank you. Hi, Ian. Just two from me, please. Obviously, good turnaround in U.

Speaker 3

K. Interiors. I just wanted to give a more color there. I mean, you kind of the slide seems to suggest you've taken out the structural costs. So it's now from here just more about kind of better customer service, driving more volume through that business.

Speaker 3

Is that a fair kind of view of what's going on there? And to get the nice step up you've seen in Q1, Q2, is that just customer service available to stock rather than kind of giving much upper the gross margin level, which is interesting, the dynamics of what's really driven that boost to sales for U. K. Interiors? And then second question, just on France, guess, market very weak.

Speaker 3

I think you mentioned you closed some branches in France. Is there much structural cost or branch kind of reorganization to go after in France? Or are you just happy to with the structural cost base you've got, it's just a question of the market being where you can that need to come back?

Speaker 1

Ainsley, thank you. So on interiors, you know, is it is it now just about sales growth and and more of that as as opposed to costs? With basically the question and and what are we doing on, you know, price. I think that, you know, the driver, the medium, longer term driver of margin improvement, you know, will come from from the operational leverage and driving sales. And I expect that over the next over the next year or so, that will be the bigger driver.

Speaker 1

And we do expect, as I said, that that sales growth to continue. You know, that that's not to suggest there's nothing more that we can and will be doing on costs. You know, I think that applies in all of the businesses. We've done a lot of heavy lifting over the last, you know, twelve, eighteen months in particular, but, you know, there's always more that can be done, and I think that that would apply in in in UK interiors as well. And in terms of price, you know, as in all the businesses, we're clearly you know, the teams every day and man in particular in this environment are managing, you know, price and volume and and those trade offs.

Speaker 1

And we've talked about it before, and I think they're doing a very good job on that. And and that certainly applies in UK interiors. You know, of course, you know, you need volume to put through the to put through the, you know, the machine, and and there's, you know, maybe been a slight bias back towards getting just volume through and and, you know, getting in you know, building customers and the customer base, but but not certainly not at any price, and I think they're doing a good a good job there. In terms of France, you know, I mean, we we have closed in the in the roofing branch. I mean, just to put it in context, we have about a 100 branches in roofing in France.

Speaker 1

So what we've done is, yeah, you know, they've done a pretty rigorous job of identifying the branches, which for all sorts of reasons that I mentioned are just not today, and we don't think in the future gonna get to where we want to get to. And they take the decision to, you know, to take action and close them. So it's not, you know, it's not sort of a a retrenchment or anything like that in the French market. We're, you know, we're making, I think, very balanced decisions around, you know, around the estate and what we're doing. They are looking, you know, as all the business is very hard at costs.

Speaker 1

It's not it's not just about what I've just talked about on branches. You know, they are, for example, testing at the moment in the French market how we can leverage the infrastructure across the two businesses. We absolutely don't want to lose the intensity, and and focus that those two businesses have. But where it's sensible geographically or for other reasons, we are beginning to just explore how we can, how we can leverage the cost base there. So we'll continue to do that.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Angie. Next question?

Speaker 2

Our next question comes from Christian Hulff from Deutsche Bank. Christian, your line is now open.

Speaker 4

Hi. Thank you very much. Morning, Ian. A couple of quick questions for me. So just any comments you have on current trading, as I said, particularly in the context of Slide nine, because it shows, obviously, like for likes in Q2 moderated against what was very soft comps, but then the comps get a little bit tougher.

Speaker 4

So just tying that into the guidance for some like for like growth in H2 despite the tougher comps and no market recovery. And then the second one, just on staff turnover. I know that was an issue maybe twelve, eighteen, twenty four months ago. But just any update on that and whether the retention of staff has improved significantly?

Speaker 1

Kristin, thank you for the questions. So in terms of current trading, as we highlighted on that slide, and I think others have commented on it, and I think our partners, suppliers and customers commented probably June was just slightly not quite where we'd expected or others expected it to be, you know, given where we'd been in sort of March, April time. But I wouldn't wanna overplay that. I mean, you know, on that graph, given the sort of the scales involved, sort of zero, one, 2%, it can sort of probably look a bit more dramatic than it really is. I think if you look across the sort of May, June, July period, you know, there was, you know, pretty good stability there.

Speaker 1

So so, yes, it it probably it probably gave us, you know, just reinforced our view, which would you know, frankly, we already had that we weren't expecting some big pickup in h two. But, again, it's you know, there's been no no big swings to the negative or or positive in in recent weeks and months. And then in terms of staff turnover, I mean, we always have churn in our business, know, as all businesses like ours do, know, more so at the branch levels than elsewhere. We've managed that, I think, quite well over the last couple of years, as I mentioned earlier. You know, I don't frankly, don't I don't think we've really talked in the past about having problems with retention, and I would actually say that we, you know, we we we do a a good job of that.

Speaker 1

I mean, there's always you know, we do look very hard at at staff turnover, and, you know, where it where it sort of bumps up. You know, we take action and pay a lot of attention to it. But, I don't think it's anything out outside the norm of what you'd expect in a business like ours. You know, we know, frankly, we we have you know, I don't think we have, you know, many sort of regrettable, you know, departures, if you like. So thank you.

Speaker 1

Next question.

Speaker 2

Thank you very much. We currently have no further questions, so I'd just like to hand back to Ian Ashton for any further remarks.

Speaker 1

Okay. So we'll wrap things up there. Thank you very much indeed for your attendance and interest today, and goodbye.

Speaker 2

As we conclude today's call, we'd like to thank everyone for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

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