discoverIE Group H2 2026 Earnings Report

discoverIE Group EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 41.30
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

discoverIE Group Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $443.30 million
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

discoverIE Group Announcement Details

• Quarter: H2 2026
• Date: 6/3/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, June 3, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 4:30AM ET

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

discoverIE Group H2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Trading momentum improved through the year, with Q4 organic orders up 14% and sales up 5%, helping the company exit the year strongly and return to organic growth across the business.
• Neutral Sentiment: Adjusted operating profit rose 1% and adjusted EPS increased 4%, while the adjusted operating margin held relatively steady at 13.8% despite higher investment in growth.
• Positive Sentiment: Cash generation remained very strong, with 92% free cash flow conversion, and working capital as a percentage of sales improved to 16.6%, supporting self-funded growth and acquisitions.
• Positive Sentiment: The company completed or announced three acquisitions focused on higher-growth, higher-margin markets, particularly defense and aerospace, and expects the deals to be accretive to margins over time.
• Positive Sentiment: Outlook and order momentum remain encouraging: Q1 trading started well, orders are still running ahead of sales, and management said the business is in good shape for the year ahead with a strong design-win and acquisition pipeline.

Presentation

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Good morning, everybody. Nice to see you. Thank you all for coming. A few new faces in the audience, I shall do a quick few introductions. I'm Nick Jefferies, joined here by Bruce Thompson, our Chairman. Simon Gibbins, our Finance Director, and Lili, I've lost her again. Lili Huang, our Head of IR. Who I look forward to talking to you individually as well. These are the results for the year ended March 2026. I'll start off by taking us through a quick sort of highlights of what's been going on. Simon will then take us through the numbers, I'll come back to an operational review and the outlook. The key point is we've seen increasing trading momentum through the year, which finished with what we consider to be a very strong exit. Orders up 14% organically in Q4.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Sales up 5%, leaving us with organic sales for the year of 2%. Both divisions are in growth. We'll talk more about that later. The order book is up 5% by the end of H2 compared to H1. It's a function of orders being higher than sales. We'll talk a little bit more about that later, but that's continuing to grow. We're also investing in future growth. We've added additional production, sales, and management capability, specifically in Europe, or principally in Europe and the U.S., but also a little bit in Asia. We'll talk more about that. That means that our adjusted operating profits are up 1%, and our adjusted operating margin down just 40 basis points on last year, but still at 13.8%, still a very creditable level. Adjusted EPS up 4%. Cash flow, as always, has been very strong, 92% conversion.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

That keeps our average over the last 10 years of around about 100%, which, of course, is a key function of this model, enabling us to self-fund more of our acquisitions. We've made three acquisitions recently, most recently announcing 3Gmetalworx just a couple of weeks ago for GBP 50 million, for 90% of that business. Trival, we completed on last month or April, sorry, which we acquired for GBP 40 million. In December, we acquired Keymat, which trades as Storm, for GBP 5.5 million. Those are three high margin, higher growth businesses with a key focus on, particularly or at least the last two, on the defense and aerospace markets. We're very pleased with those acquisitions, and looking forward to 3G coming through to completion in the next few months.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

The multiple of those three overall with an EBIT multiple of nine, which we think is appropriate given the growth and the level of margins and cash that these businesses generate. Going into the new year, we have a very strong pipeline of design wins and acquisition opportunities. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. We'll come to the outlook. We feel as though the business is in good shape. These results are very much an in-line set of results. We've exited strongly, and we think we're in very good shape for the year ahead. With that, I'll pass over to Simon to take us through the finances.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

Thanks, Nick. Good morning, everyone. First up from me, the financial highlights. It's been a robust performance for us. Conditions have been a little tricky. We've seen the sort of back end of de-stocking in our Controls division, Controls unit. That's the last unit of ours to recover, and that has now recovered and is back to growth in the final quarter. As you can see, we've returned orders and sales back to organic growth. We've returned the order book back to growth. We've got a positive book-to-bill. We've actually delivered our best profits, our best earnings, both adjusted and reported. Once again, we've delivered, as Nick said, strong cash flow. Through all of this, we've been investing for growth. We've invested in new resources, in new capacity, in working capital, and in accretive acquisitions.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

Just a reminder, these are our KSIs that we have. The top line is our medium-term target. That's a full year. The middle line is our strong through cycle performance that we've delivered over the last decade. Underneath, you can see our results for the year. In terms of sales on the left, very healthy 5.5% organic growth on average across that 10-year period. This year, we're back to growth at 2%, a strong Q4 finish. As we said, that's 5%, which is getting on towards that average growth level. In terms of operating margin, you can see over 10 years, we've actually added over 8 percentage points to margin. This year, we could see the pickup happening and therefore, we've invested for growth.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

Yes, that does hit the margin in the short term, but in the longer term, it will pay back as we push towards that 17% margin target, which we're very much on track to achieve. EPS, we're coming out of the bottom of the cycle. We've delivered 4% EPS growth. That's adding to 14% growth we've delivered on average over the last 10 years. Cash flow is strong, as I said, nicely above that 85% target that we've set ourselves. ROCE, it's down a little bit and that's the investments we've made, growth investments, but it's still above our 15% target. You can see at the end we're still doing great progress in terms of reducing our carbon footprint, 68% down in four years, 65% was our target this year. Next stop, net zero in 2030. Right. This is profits and margins.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

You can see that is sort of sketched out on the chart there, since FY 2018. Underneath you can see, if you have got good eyesight, in orange I have put the organic sales performance. Hence you can see the cycles at play. In terms of operating profit, that is obviously a combination of sales, gross margin, OpEx. Gross margin has stayed strong and I will talk to that on the next slide. In terms of OpEx, we have put in GBP 4.4 million of OpEx this period. Half of that is into growth investments. We have invested in new sales resource, new engineering resource, new capacity in Asia, in Thailand, in South Korea, and also a new facility we are building in India, which is very exciting, and that will complete in August.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

The thing about new resources for us is it can take over a year for those new resources to start actually delivering value. Timing is all important. We saw the pickup, and therefore it was the right thing to do to make the investment now. Short-term impact on margin, so margin would've been slightly ahead, if we hadn't made that, but it's the right thing to do as we push towards that 17% target. Obviously, the profits themselves have been clipped by that GBP 2.2 million investment. We're still up GBP 500,000 and we're still continuing our growth profile, 16 years of growth in terms of profits. Actually, since FY 2018, 17% compound growth in profits, nearly doubled or doubled since COVID. They're none too shabby in terms of track record through the cycle. This gives you a walk. I do like this graph.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

It basically gives you a walk from last year's profits, GBP 60.5, this year's profits, GBP 61, and splits it up between organic performance and acquisitions. The first four bars on the left, that's our organic performance. Split between sales, its gross margin, its mix effect, and its OpEx. Revenue is GBP 3.4 million of profit equivalent. Gross margins are actually up. If you look at the businesses, they're up on average by 0.2 percentage points. Actually that's been offset by the mix effect we've got with Magnetics, which is a lower margin part of our business growing more strongly than Controls, which is actually the higher margin business. It sort of offsets. There's the GBP 4.4 million that I talked about. Without the OpEx investment for growth for GBP 2.2, organic profits would've been up GBP 0.7.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

With the investment, we're down GBP 1.5, actually that's more than offset by the acquisitions we've made in the last 18 months. That's Burster, that's HiVolt, that's Storm adding GBP 2.2. Profits up, overall up GBP 0.7 CER, GBP 0.5 at a reported level. I do like this graph. I think it's a good illustration. You can look back, in terms of our model. It's about organic growth, it's about operating efficiencies, and it's about accretive acquisitions. Next, a look at the two divisions. We've invested in both divisions, both operationally for the future and acquisitively as well. If you look at S&C, S&C sales are up organically 2%, that's led by medical and security and by North America.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

If you include the acquisitions, they've got Burster and HiVolt, and include the investments we've made in the OpEx, then sales are up 8%, EBIT is up 7% CER, and a slight clip on the margin of down 0.3 percentage to 17.8%. M&C likewise, that's also up 2% organically. In this case, it's actually led by renewables and it's led by Europe. Now, the profit themselves have been impacted partly by the mix, partly by the investments we've made, but it's sort of limited to a 2% reduction in profits and a 0.8 percentage point reduction in margin. With controls now back into growth, all divisions are sort of well set, all units are well set for growth as we move into the future. I'll skip through.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

This is a quick slide, just obviously walks you down from profit, down to EPS, 1% profit growth becomes 4% EPS, lower interest, lower tax. We've actually got lower acquisition costs, we're delivering 18% growth in reported EPS. That's a big record for us. Dividend up 4%, as it was last year. In terms of cash flow, this gives you a walk from the adjusted EBITDA, GBP 68 million, down to free cash flow of GBP 37 million. The two bars on the left, that's our capital investment. We've invested GBP 5.5 million into working capital. That's to support our growing sales and our growing order book. Actually, during that time, we've actually reduced working capital as a percentage of sales from 17.2% down to 16.6%. It's good work there. Investment in CapEx, GBP 6.6 million.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

That includes the facilities that I talked about earlier, but it's still only 1.5% of sales, similar to last year. It's very capital light. Operating cash flow, GBP 56 million. 91% conversion, similar to the free cash flow conversion, which is 92%. You can see at the base of that chart, our conversion rates over the last 12 years. As Nick said, that's averaging around 100%. It's a really strong part of our model. You can see in the middle chart that actually, operating cash is slightly lower than it was in the previous two years, and that's just purely a function of working capital. This year, as I said, we've been investing in working capital to support sales, to support growing order book. The previous two years, sales were reducing a little and so was the order book, and so we were releasing working capital.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

That's a pure dynamic at play there. Even with the cash where it is, it's sort of 19% CAGR growth over 12 years. That's none too shabby. That's a very good level. Very cash generative. In terms of balance sheet, GBP 81 million net debt. That's a gearing of 1.2, which increases with the inclusion of Trival, which completed in April, and 3G. It increases to 2.2, and we expect that to reduce to 1.8 over the course of this new financial year, very much in line with our target gearing range. Finally, just to look at our financial journey over the last decade. Ultimately, what you'll see through those KPIs is very strong performances, when times are good, and very resilient when macro times are tougher.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

It's been a good year, and we're sort of exiting with a number of good growth levers in place, and the year is well set. With that, I'll pass to Nick for a operational review. Thank you.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Okay. Just a very quick summary. We have a very clear compounding growth strategy. We focus on selling into markets with structural long-term growth drivers. Everything we do in our organic programs and our acquisitive programs is about generating growth over not just the short term, but medium and longer term. All of the acquisitions we make are with a sort of can these businesses grow over the next 10, 20+ years? A very long-term view, and we target design opportunities, and identifying design opportunities and design wins in markets that have those characteristics.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

That should and does enable sales growth well ahead of GDP through the cycle. As the previous chart that Simon put up sort of showed you can see that that's the case. We then acquire highly differentiated businesses. We like businesses that have higher margins, high growth, good market exposure to those target markets we're looking for. We generally target the businesses. We don't generally get involved in sort of public auctions and things like that. We identify a list of targets, and then we develop relationships with those businesses, hoping that they'll sell to us over time. It's a big market. There are a lot of businesses out there to look at, and a small portion of those businesses are the ones that are suitable for us, but that's still a lot of businesses. We focus on enhancing the operating margins.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

We do that two ways. Through efficiency programs, which we've been delivering now for over 10 years, which has driven the margin to where we are now, and then we acquire higher margin businesses on top of that, as the three that we've recently announced demonstrate. That puts us in very good shape for 17% by FY 2030. Very cash generative, as Simon talked about, and then we want to minimize our impact on the environment. We have a very clear, consistent strategy that we believe is one that delivers results both sort of short and longer term. Worth also mentioning two things on the right. Our products are unique and very hard to replace. Once they're designed in, it's very difficult for customers to design them out. It's not something they want to do. Generally, we have very sticky revenues.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

The other thing to just bring out is that we have a relatively low customer concentration. Our top 10 customers account for 20% of our sales, with our largest customer being about 6.5%.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

A quick recap on the sales. Firstly, we are a global manufacturing business. We have made 30 acquisitions since 2011. As of today, we have 36 manufacturing sites around the world occupying a total footprint of just over 1 million square feet. We have a widely dispersed manufacturing base, which provides both close to customer manufacturing, which helps us in situations when tariffs in the U.S. are introduced, but also we have larger sites in lower cost labor regions where we can get the economies of scale as well. We have very flexible manufacturing footprint. The recovery that we have seen through the last year is really, well, firstly, you can see on the bar chart at the bottom, Europe was the stronger region of the three, growing at 3% organically. That was led by Western Europe. Germany within that was particularly strong.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

We had actually some big renewable energy projects, some big industrial products, and some big German medical customers are leading that growth. Nordic was actually down 2%, but that was because one of our major customers asked us to move transfer production from Europe to India. We are now making that very same kit in India so that our customer can benefit from the Make in India program and supply their end equipment, again, renewables actually into the Indian market. North America was flat for the year, but it was very different H1 over H2, so H2 was up 10%. We think that was in part due to the sort of settling of the stabilization after the introduction of tariffs at the beginning of the year and sort of settling down in the customer base. Asia up 2%, but actually very much second half driven again. China up strongly.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Sorry, India up strongly because of that production transfer. China up, again in the second half with the sort of global industrial recovery. Overall, a pretty broad spread recovery. Actually, by the end of the second half, all of the regions were in growth, and you can just see on the right the gradual development of the sales through the year. The M&C division, I think really just to sort of bring out a couple of points, there's been a lot of talk over the last year about the Controls unit and its de-stocking. We have seen two things in M&C. We have seen strong growth in the Magnetics division, and we saw the de-stocking in Controls. We are pleased to say that the Controls de-stocking has well and truly finished. By H2, orders in both units, Magnetics and Controls, were in double-digit growth terms.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

We are sort of back to the races. We are seeing recovery across most market sectors. We saw a bit of a delay due to some of the commercial security delays in the U.S., slowed down some of the programs there, somewhat, we think, influenced by the U.S. shutdown. That seems to have now passed. EBIT down slightly. Of the 2.2 additional cost investments that we have made during the year, two thirds of that was into the Magnetics & Controls division. Obviously the other third into the Sensing & Connectivity. Of the three acquisitions we have recently announced, the Storm business goes into Controls. Sensing & Connectivity, so that's 40% of group sales, slightly higher than average margin. What we saw there was orders were down organically for the full year, but that was principally off a strong prior year comp.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Actually, this time the year before, we had quite a strong pickup in that area. It's really as much to do with that as it is anything else. Europe was up 2%, led by Germany again. We had quite a big recovery in Central Europe, in Germany, Slovakia, some of our fiber businesses, and some of our other connectivity businesses doing quite well. In the U.S., we were up by 4%, led principally by some of our sensing businesses. Just lots of different moving parts. Operating profit up 7%, margin at 17.8%, which was down 30 basis points. Recent acquisitions, both Trival and 3Gmetalworx will go into the Connectivity division. Our existing wireless cluster with 2J and Antenova is in the Connectivity division.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Trival will sit alongside that, and 3Gmetalworx will sit alongside MTC Micro Tech Components, which was actually the second acquisition we made 15 years ago, the other electromagnetic shielding business. This chart shows the order book sort of over the last 10 years. You can see the spike post-COVID. You can see the resettling, and then just towards the end of the year, you can see the recovery in the second half. That recovery in order book is continuing in the first quarter as orders remain ahead of sales. Mathematically, the order book goes up. That will continue. We have about 4.5 months sales coverage, which is plenty. What we are seeing with the growing order book is we are seeing actually similar proportions going into both short term, six months or less order book, and longer term, sort of seven to 12 months.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

We are not seeing any great sort of divergence in the pattern in the order book, which is a good thing 'cause that will drive short to medium term growth as well as later in the year. Excuse me. This is Trival. This is the antenna business that we completed on in April. It's based in Slovenia, just in between the airport and Ljubljana. It's a terrific little business that makes antennas and antenna masts for principally defense applications. The manpack radio, they call it, antenna that, there's a big antenna you can kind of fold over. They make bits of kit like that, and various other antenna, simple and complex. They also make antenna masts, which is what you can see in this photo.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

The photo on the left is of up to an 18 m mast, and the photo on the right is the mast mounted on the side of a vehicle. They're very lightweight. Those masts are very lightweight and very quick to deploy, and the whole thing is entirely designed and made by the team in Trival, along with the antennas that go on the top. High margin, good growth, great customer list. Low customer concentration, high margins. We see a very good pathway to further growth over the next three years with that business. Well, more than three years, but at least three years. 3Gmetalworx. This is the electromagnetic shielding business. Electromagnetic shielding is basically bits of bent metal that need to shield electromagnetic interference in every bit of electrical and electronic kit.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

There'll be tons of it in this room, in all of the speakers and all of the kit that the AV guys have got. It will be full of electromagnetic shielding. For those of you old enough to remember it, when you used to have to turn your car radio on, your car on, and you had your mobile phone in your pocket and the interference would pick up on the radio, that's because in those days, car radios didn't have electromagnetic shielding. These days, it's one of the regulatory requirements, every bit of electrical and electronic kit has to have it. It's varying complexities of bent bits of metal. From the simpler products on the bottom left there, where that's just a standard form sheet of metal with holes punched in it, to the piece just above it.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

That is a milled piece of aluminum in that case, with separating regions on the case, then bits of conductive foam. The black bits are conductive foam and gaskets to provide an absolutely tight seal and shielding in a very complex environment. Those complex environments might be aerospace, commercial space, military, where any kind of even tiny emission is an absolute no-no. They make, as well as some of the simpler stuff, 3Gmetalworx makes very complicated, highly bespoke bits of kit. That's why we're so excited about it. With our existing business, MTC, which we've owned for 15 years, that's been a very, very successful acquisition for us. They have similar products and some overlap, very minor overlap. We see great opportunity for cooperation between those businesses. Indeed, the ongoing management in 3Gmetalworx have known the management of MTC for many years.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

There's a good platform for cooperation. In fact, there's a conference just next month to kick off all the synergy activity. It's a good business based in Toronto with production sites in Florida and California. We're acquiring 90%, the ongoing management retain 10%, two key managers, CEO and the head of ops. They retain 5% each on a three- to five-year put call option arrangement. We're currently waiting for regulatory approval. We've applied for all the approvals in the U.S. and Canada, and we expect, hope, that they'll come through over the summer. I'm not going to go through all of this. There's a lot of detail. This is just an example of the activity and the scope that we have to supply into the defense markets. This is for UAVs and UAS, unmanned aerial systems, the kind of component capability that we have.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

You can see Trival on the middle left. You can also see businesses like CPI is one of our sensor businesses based in North America. Makes very rugged thermal switches. FOSS on the left is a European fiber optic producer. Cursor Controls, human-machine interface. Hectronic, bespoke embedded computing controls. Silvertel, Power over Ethernet modules for drone docking stations. MTC, that I just talked about, thermal management, and so on. There's a whole raft of products, this is just for the UAV, UAS marketplace. We have similar broad portfolios of product capability for other sort of defense-based application areas that we're marketing quite heavily. We recently hired a business development capability that is working across the group who put this data together with Lili, establishing our product offer into the defense space in a very sort of coordinated and, we think, quite compelling fashion.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

So far, we've only been doing it a few months now, but we're getting a very positive reaction. Indeed, our design opportunities and design win register, you won't be surprised to hear, is growing quite rapidly. Just lastly, this is an example. I talked a little bit about fiber optics. We bought, 10 years ago, a fiber optics business based in Norway with production and development facilities in Bratislava, Slovakia. Since then, we've made two small bolt-on business acquisitions for this business as well. This is just a snapshot of how this business has developed over the last 10 years. The key points are 6% CAGR revenue growth with 10% CAGR operating profit growth, delivering now a ROCE of 53%. This is the key strengths of the model playing out.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

If you just get even just moderate compounding organic growth with a couple of small bolt-ons, and you keep doing that for long enough, the returns really start to take off. That's what all the businesses that we've owned for these kind of periods of time are doing just that. The more recent acquisitions that we've been making, we expect fully the same kind of thing to happen. On the right, you can see just a quick summary of the things that we've done. When we bought FOSS in 2015, it was very much focused on the fiber to the home market, principally in Norway. Our reason for acquiring it way back then was to move to a more industrial and now defense-based marketplace, where that same capability can be offered into a more industrial and defense-based marketplace.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Over the last few years, we've developed sales into that security market segment, to the extent that it now accounts for 13% of revenue. At the same time as that, we've diversified revenue beyond just Norway, which is where it was when we acquired it. Over a quarter of sales are international and most of the future growth we expect, well, not most, half of the future growth will come from international revenue. It's a really good example of us building a cluster of fiber optic businesses. That really sort of wraps up the run-through the results. Just a quick summary and the outlook. Q1 trading has started very well. We have got very strong growth in organic orders. That is delivering good sales growth momentum coming through into organic sales. We're very pleased with that. Our order book is growing well.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Our orders are well ahead of sales. That leaves us in a very positive mindset for the outlook for the rest of the year, in line with the board's expectations at this early stage in the year. We expect the H1, H2 split to be fairly even as normal, just sort of marginally H2 loaded, pretty even overall. Of course, we've got in the next few months, hopefully, the completion of the 3Gmetalworx acquisition to bring into the numbers as well. The growth drivers are in good shape. The organic design wins and the opportunities are as strong as ever. We've delivered further good growth during the year, which is exactly what we need to be doing. The security market exposure is looking good, both organically and acquisitively. A la the 3Gmetalworx and Trival acquisitions.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

When the funding allows, we've got a very active pipeline of other acquisition opportunities that we'll bring in as and when it's appropriate to do so. We feel that we're in good shape and we've got a good outlook for the year ahead. Thank you. That concludes the presentation. I'll now go over to Q&A. Henry, you are first up.

[Henry Carver, Analyst at Singer]

Do we need a mic or are we good?

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Oh, you'll sit down, yeah.

[Henry Carver, Analyst at Singer]

Thanks. Yeah, morning, guys. It's Henry Carver from Singer. First of all, in Controls, now back in growth, can you just confirm that the first two months of this year, that has continued within Controls? Which business is driving that? Is it primarily defense or is it anything else?

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Yeah. Controls is in growth, yes. It is defense, medical, and industrial. Yeah.

[Henry Carver, Analyst at Singer]

Brilliant. Thanks. Just secondly, the OpEx investment, the growth investment, GBP 2.2 million. How much of that is into Noratel? I get the sense that quite a lot of that is going into the renewables, sort of in anticipation of some growth there.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Yeah, a chunk of it's into Noratel. Yep. It's a meaningful chunk of the two-thirds. Yes.

[Henry Carver, Analyst at Singer]

Understood. Brilliant. Thanks.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Yep. Hi, Andrew.

[Andrew Humphrey, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Hello. Morning. Andrew Humphrey at Peel Hunt. I've got three, if I may. One is just following up on Henry's question on the investment in resources to support future growth. You sort of mentioned the geographic areas of the business that you're investing in and kind of some of the product groups. Are there any kind of particular areas of expertise in terms of products that you think that investment relates to, that you'd highlight?

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Well, they're all very specific. I mean, they're engineers for a certain product in a certain country. Most of our engineering investments are in Europe and the U.S., and as indeed are our sales. We also have in the U.S. made a couple of more senior or high-level finance appointments. In Europe, we've also added a couple of senior commercial leaders. There are also the value, the sums of money involved are smaller, but we've also expanded our engineering capacity a little in China and India.

[Andrew Humphrey, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Great. Thank you. A couple on acquisitions, if I may. On the sort of more recent group of acquisitions, clearly we've sort of started to factor those into estimates at this point, I think in a relatively conservative way. I'd appreciate any kind of shorter-term commentary on how those businesses have been growing compared to the historical financials that you disclosed on announcement.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Yeah. The three acquisitions, two, we have the trading data, live trading data, and they're trading very, very well. Very, very well. Very good growth. 3Gmetalworx, I haven't seen the latest numbers for the month of May, but up to April it was doing very, very well indeed. Yeah.

[Andrew Humphrey, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Great.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Yeah.

[Andrew Humphrey, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Thank you. Then on, given the sort of higher level of activity on M&A that we've seen recently, that there's maybe a risk that we sort of overlook the development of the last wave. I'm thinking about kind of Burster and Hi-Volt, and clearly those are kind of in the zone now in terms of how much time has elapsed that you'd be looking at product synergies-

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Yeah

[Andrew Humphrey, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

areas where they can work with some of the other businesses in the group. Appreciate any color you can give on that.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Yeah, that's a good question. Burster, we acquired in February 2025. It's had a flat year. We thought it could be fairly flat, and actually it was, really more of a sort of a German market economy thing. We'd actually seen that pick up in the last few months, pleased to say, as sort of things have turned more generally and as Germany, at least for us, has turned positively. They're seeing that. Yeah. It's lower than the sellers wanted it to be, but it's kind of where we sensitized that it might be. The HiVolt business is going like a steam train, actually. We've expanded the business, put a small expansion on about a year ago. We bought that in August 2024. We're now looking at a larger scale expansion.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

We have some large medical and industrial customers that have got some very strong demand growth, and we need to enlarge the facility for that. The absolute numbers in our investments are actually pretty small because it's a relatively small business, but the growth is quite healthy. Yeah.

[Andrew Humphrey, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Great. Thank you.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

It's James and James.

[James Bayliss, Analyst at Berenberg]

Morning, guys. James Bayliss from Berenberg. Two, if I may. You've obviously started using case studies on defense a bit more to show your exposure to the market, and two of the last three acquisitions have focused towards that thick of the woods. Can you give us an idea of where the portfolio is in terms of revenue focus, or sorry, revenue split on defense now? Should we be thinking about that growing faster than the rest of the group, given comments around business development and acquisition focus?

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Clearly the defense market is a good growth market for what seems like a good long road ahead of it. The ideal for us is that we have these five blended markets that provide smooth and steady growth without the downside cyclicality over a sustained and long period of time. Defense fits in that well, but defense is still not a large market in our overall revenue. The other markets have got to still keep delivering. At the moment they are. In terms of absolute quantums, they are the largest part of the delivery of the numbers in the recovery that we've seen towards the end of the year. The industrial automation market, the renewables, some of the transport, some of the medical, have all picked up very significantly.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Of course, defense will be a higher growth market for the foreseeable future, but the other markets have got to keep growing. It's that blend of growth that should produce this consistent above average growth rate organically. That's what we're aiming for.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

We've obviously enlarged it quite significantly this year because Trival's 100% focused on defense and 3Gmetalworx is about 50% focused on defense. That does, to Nick's point, just gives us some decent critical mass in that area and in security alongside the other ones.

[James Bayliss, Analyst at Berenberg]

Thanks. Second one from me on pricing. You've previously talked about the fact that part of the journey's been optimizing the kind of the pricing muscle and function of businesses you've acquired. Where are you on that journey? Should we think about the companies that have been in the group for a few years now running at proper pricing levels? Is the journey now more about optimizing the more recent acquisitions, or is there still more to be done across the whole portfolio?

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Well, there's always more to be done on pricing, and we're in a period of inflation at the moment. Raw material inflation, we need to be sort of managing that as we've done before and making sure that we're pricing appropriately as those effects come through. As Simon said, when you take the mix effect out, our gross margin was up 20 basis points. The core margin activity in the businesses is very strong, and I would say particularly in the longer-standing businesses, we have a relatively well-defined view on pricing and how to manage it appropriately. You can't treat every customer the same. You have to manage the pricing according to what you're providing and the value you're creating, or we're creating. With the newer businesses, there's work to do. Some of the more recent acquisitions have got more to do.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Inevitably, some manage it better than others. Some of the very recent acquisitions manage it very, very well. Yeah, it's very much a case by case.

[James Beard, Analyst at Deutsche Numis]

Morning. James Beard at Deutsche Numis. I've got two questions, please. Firstly, on S&C. Organic revenues went backwards in the second half. Just wondering if you can talk through where you saw negative growth impacts in that side of the business. Secondly, on orders. Obviously, very strong group organic order growth in Q4. When you reported that at the trading update a few weeks ago, you said you want to sort of wait and see whether that's pull forward of demand or whether that's genuine firm ordering. Can you, with a bit more of the elapse of time, give a little bit more color on what you're seeing from customers and how strong and firm that order growth is? Perhaps also give some color on which parts of the business are seeing particularly strong order growth.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Yeah. The first one, why did S&C go backwards? Part of it was the strong prior year comp, but also in S&C, we had one customer that supplied a production site of theirs into Ukraine, and that was damaged in an attack there. That led to the demand from our customer then dropping, which is not huge in the numbers, but it does partly explain the negative. We also have actually quite a large defense contract that we are expecting to replace a previous piece of revenue that hasn't yet come through. At some level, in both cases, it was ever, thus was always a project we're waiting for, and there's always something moving that we need to move more quickly. That is actually, those two were part of it.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

As I say, it also relates to a stronger prior year comp as well. That was the prior year that operating division had quite a strong second half in the prior year. That was also in play. It's just nothing really more than that to it. On the issue of orders, the orders have continued to grow strongly in the new year. Our orders are all firm. The orders customers place with us are all firm orders, so they're not the kind of orders that we just don't accept cancellations. An order is a firm order. They may be allowed to reschedule it once or twice, but when they order it, they've got to take it, because this is a bespoke manufactured product.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

We're seeing the orders coming in for both short-term demand, which is typically three to six. It's nearer four to six at the moment, months. Also, we're seeing a similar proportion going into six- to 12-month order book. We're seeing the balance of order book waiting isn't actually changing as much as we perhaps might have thought it would. We might have thought more would be going into the second half in the short term, but actually that's not the case. What we're seeing is, and all of the customers are telling us that this is firm short-term demand, and they're firming up their order books. No customers are telling us that they're building stock just in case or anything like that. The message is very clear. This is for real demand. They have firm demand.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

The industrial cycle has turned and therefore they're getting orders in place. Now, the order book is building and probably going to build quite strongly. There will probably inevitably be a bit of stocking up again, but it's very difficult to actually quantify that.

[Joel Spungin, Analyst at Investec]

Morning. It's Joel Spungin from Investec. Simon, I'm going to try one for you because you've said nothing. I'll give Nick an opportunity. I was just wondering if you could help with the just think about the margin development through 2027. Obviously we know that you've got the acquisitions coming in, that they're high margin, they're going to help enrich the mix. If I think about your chart on, I can't remember which page, it's page eight, where you show the bridge, which is very helpful. Do you expect in 2027 it'll look similar? How do you think mix, for example, might develop given what you know about the order book? Will there be some annualization of the incremental investment coming through? Maybe if you just give us a bit of color around that, it'd be helpful.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

I think the chart you refer to, I think if you look back, it does give a really good reflection of how things move depending on the cycles. I certainly expect we're going to be seeing organic growth at this stage. Obviously, it's very early, but we're hoping to see some reasonable organic sales growth, and that will contribute to organic profit growth. On top of that, we've got the two acquisitions which will give quite a big spike from an acquisition point of view. In terms of margin, those two deals on an annualized basis will be lifting margins upwards of about 0.8 percentage points quite quickly. Where the dip we have now, which as I say was to do with the investment, if you annualize the acquisitions that we've got, we're sort of ahead of where we were last year anyway.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

There's more to come. As I said, we're very comfortable we're going to be able to get to that 17% target in the next four years.

[Joel Spungin, Analyst at Investec]

You'd expect that growth to be fairly broad-based. We're not going to have a situation where maybe, say, Magnetics, which is lower margin, is a leading.

[Joel Spungin, Analyst at Investec]

Therefore you get a negative mix effect or anything like that?

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

No, I think that was a particular one-off this year where you had Magnetics were particularly strong. They'd come out of their position, they were particularly strong, and Controls was the opposite. That was a particular year. I think they'll both, as we said, the order books very good for both and we'd expect both to grow well from now. Just to, in terms of that margin bridge, we talked before, but we do expect, historically we've delivered 50% from operational improvements, organic improvements and 50% from acquisitions. In terms of going forward, we expect two thirds from acquisitions and a third from organic, and I think that's where we expect it to be.

[Joel Spungin, Analyst at Investec]

Great, thanks. Nick, maybe one for you, just thinking about your sort of M&A pipeline and where you are now, maybe if you just sort of give us an update, in terms of what's going on, how much sort of dry powder you feel you have, and at what point might you sort of consider potentially using equity if need be?

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

The pro forma gearing 2.2, which will be down to 1.8 by the year end. We've got capacity for a small bolt on of the sort of Storm Interface size, plus a bit, one of which is in the pipe and may happen sooner or later. Then behind that there's a whole raft of opportunities, and it's just the rate at which we progress them. That will be driven largely by how quickly our gearing comes down, the timing of the deals, and how we sort of feel about various forms of funding. It's kind of all in there and we keep it under constant review, but certainly the pipeline of opportunities is there. We're ready to go. We're dealing with the ones we've got, then we'll bring the others in as and when we're ready.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

There's an awful lot there to do.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

We're just reminding that when we renewed our bank facility at the half year, our bank covenant was increased from three to three and a half, that gave us scope to move our target up, to say that we're happy to go above two. We're comfortable taking the gearing over two because of that extra half a point on the covenant, with an expectation that it will come down quite quickly. That is exactly what you see with 3Gmetalworx.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Yeah. The other point, just to build on, what we've shown over the last few years and indeed in previous cycles is the operating profits, the EBITDA, the gearing is we can manage our cost base so that when volumes come down a bit, we don't get this massive drop-off in profitability and a gearing spike. We've demonstrated over more than a decade now that we can manage that whole element quite smoothly, quite effectively.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

Which came out from that cash flow chart that when things do dip down, we do release working capital and actually you get quite a lot of cash flow coming out. Higher cash flow two years ago than we've got now. Just purely because of the benefits you get from working capital release.

[Luke Ahern, Analyst at Investec]

Nick or Simon, it's Luke Ahern from Investec. Just a couple of case studies from end customers that you are proud about that illustrate maybe cross-selling or medical orders coming back. What are you seeing at the customer?

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

We've got a terrific project that has recently been won in the Nordic region. It's on a I won't use any sort of commercial names, but it's an item that clamps onto the hull of a ship and it a bit like a sort of robotic lawnmower. It goes around and cleans the barnacles off the ship when it's in port. We provide the fibre optic communications interfaces for that. That's a very exciting project because it reduces fuel bills on large shipping by between 10% and 20%. As it comes into port, the little sort of robotic thing starts up and goes round under the waterline, sort of cleaning all the barnacles off. That has potentially very wide rollout opportunity. Developed by our fibre optic business in Norway. Just early days in terms of commercial revenues, but just starting to get going.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

We've got quite a lot in the defense space you won't be surprised to hear. There's another fiber optics, we supply, again, fiber optic comms for drone stations, drone comm stations and actually some of the even fiber wire drone fiber optic cables which is unsheathed or very lightly sheathed fiber optic cabling with connectors, for defense drone based applications. There are a lot like that. Hey, Mark. I've got no signal.

[Lacey Midgley, Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence]

Sorry, I've stolen your mic.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

You've got the mic.

[Lacey Midgley, Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence]

Lacey Midgley, Bloomberg Intelligence. Thanks Nick. Simon, just two from me. Firstly, following on, I think there was an earlier question on the defense market and the revenue share. I understand, Nick, the broader point that I think you were making on the mix of the target markets. Maybe asking it slightly different way, is there an internal ceiling that you kind of see for defense as a proportion of the revenue?

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

No. It's smaller than it can be. I think it will probably grow as a proportion over the next sort of three to five years. Well, it will, as organically and by acquisition. We don't want to get it to being the dominant business, part of the business. We don't want it to dominate everything else, we want it to make a meaningful contribution. A balance. If we've got five markets, if they were all 20% of revenue each, that would be the perfect balance. It's going to always be around the 20 ± a few points, I would imagine, that we'll try to get it to.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

We spent a lot of time trying to generate a developer model which is sort of de-risk. You don't have big exposure to big customers or big areas. A lot of what we've done is focused on that de-risking into sort of different technology areas. To an extent, we just don't want to end up getting hot in one particular area, which, at some point, will go down. You need the counterbalance from other areas.

[Lacey Midgley, Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence]

Sure. Thank you. On 3Gmetalworx, I think obviously all of the last three acquisitions were very high margin. I think 3Gmetalworx, obviously, we need to wait till it gets approved and everything, but I think that one was particularly high. Obviously, founder-led, and they're staying within the business. The deal was structured slightly differently to previously. I'm just trying to think on maintaining that margin. Do you see an added sort of integration risk with 3Gmetalworx, assuming it goes ahead? Obviously, hopefully it does. Just given that pricing model.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Well, it's going to sit alongside MTC. MTC is based in Germany, and 3G is based in North America. They'll sort of coexist. The management have known each other for many years anyway, so there's a sort of natural communication flow because of that. We will see benefits through being able to potentially produce each other's of those businesses products by the other one. Yeah, well, in both cases. That would only be margin-enhancing. In the case of 3G, they're going to put in, as part of the business plan, some more resource in certain areas. We're beefing up the finance function, for example. That's all within the existing margin plan. We kind of do that with most of our acquisitions. No, we don't expect the margin to go down at all. It's high margin. We expect to maintain the margins.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

If we do that will have a very accretive effect on the overall group margins, as Simon said. The two acquisitions add 80 basis points on an annualized basis to our group margin, which, given the size of them relative to the group, is quite a chunky number.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

It is a technology area we've known for a long time. MTC was our second acquisition. We've had 10 years of MTC.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

15 years.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

15 years. Which has grown significantly in that time. It's now making more profit than actually we paid for the business in the first place. Quite a lot more so. They're now similar size. MTC and 3G are very similar sort of size businesses. We know that this sort of area will grow. It's a really rich seam to go after. I think together it's only going to be additive.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Several, yeah. On like several of our businesses and in some of the acquisitions, we're increasing our exposure, not only in defense and aerospace, but also into the low-Earth orbit satellite space, where we've got a number of projects and already revenue coming through. That's a very, very exciting market space as the world becomes populated with these low-Earth orbit satellites. We have products designed into satellites and satellite comms stations. That potentially is quite interesting. Just recently, I think Starlink applied for a license to put up 1 million of those satellites. It potentially could be quite exciting. We think those areas should provide us Well, we're already seeing a little bit of it organically coming through anyway, but we think some of the acquisitions should help accelerate in those sort of spaces.

[Lacey Midgley, Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence]

Perfect. Thank you. Just to check on the annualized margin for the two acquisitions, you say 80 basis points?

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Yeah.

[Lacey Midgley, Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence]

Yeah, perfect.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Yeah.

[Lacey Midgley, Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence]

Thanks very much.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Yeah. Mark, there you go. If you just reach back.

[Mark Fielding, Analyst at RBC]

Hi. Mark Fielding from RBC. Just touch a bit more on the sort of OpEx growth investment and, I suppose the level of sort of one-off step change versus something that could be a feature at different points. I suppose I'm thinking not so much necessarily 2027, but looking out in your business, do you see places where you think actually this area's coming up against capacity issues, either in manufacturing or people or investments you might need to make, say, for the driving of cluster synergies or that sort of thing? Just what's the thought process there?

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Yeah, we're always looking at that. We're just in the process this week of approving, or hopefully approving an investment into one of our new European facilities because we've got booming marine demand. We're kind of running out of space, and if we don't make that decision in the next few months, then we're going to run out of capacity in 18 months' time. It takes six months to build a shed to put the production equipment in. That kind of planning ahead is underway. That's what we were doing with India two years ago. We're now, this summer, we're going to formally be opening a brand new facility in Bangalore, which is over 100,000 sq ft. It's two and a half times the existing facility. We did a greenfield start-up in Bangalore eight, nine years ago.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

We built out this, what we thought was a very large shed at the time. That's now full to the rafters. Now we're going 2.5 times larger than that again. In that case, that's a two-year planning cycle. To, in that case, identify a piece of land, buy the land or get someone to buy the land, design the unit. In that case, it's a facility for one of our businesses, but it will have a facility within the building for other discoverIE Group companies. Planning of production capacity is an ever-present consideration.

[Simon Gibbins, Finance Director at discoverIE Group]

It doesn't have to be new facilities. We do all the time look at expanding shift numbers. It could be one shift, you take it to two shifts. There's lots of that that goes on. Ultimately, it's an exciting point to be in, that we're actually looking at facility expansions. That obviously is a good sign of growth.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

That's a good point on the shift point. The sort of rule of thumb is you want to run on a two-shift basis that's most efficient, and that gives you room capacity to go up onto a three-shift basis if you get a demand spike. You can do that for a period, but we don't like to do it longer term. It gives us the flex to be able to deal with short-term demand while we work out what the longer-term solution to that capacity is.

[Mark Fielding, Analyst at RBC]

Thank you.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Okay. Great. Okay, well, I think if that concludes the questions, thank you very much for coming and for your questions and good to see you. Thanks again.

[Mark Fielding, Analyst at RBC]

Thank you.

[Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive at discoverIE Group]

Have a good day.

Participants

Executives

• Nick Jefferies, Chief Executive
• Simon Gibbins, Finance Director

Analysts

• Andrew Humphrey, Analyst at Peel Hunt
• Henry Carver, Analyst at Singer
• James Bayliss, Analyst at Berenberg
• James Beard, Analyst at Deutsche Numis
• Joel Spungin, Analyst at Investec
• Lacey Midgley, Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence
• Luke Ahern, Analyst at Investec
• Mark Fielding, Analyst at RBC