The Alumasc Group plc (AIM:ALU)
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Sep 11, 2026, 3:38 PM GMT
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Transcript

Aug 31, 2026

Summary

Record results achieved across all divisions, with revenue up 13% and profit before tax up 9% year-over-year, driven by organic growth and the ARP acquisition. Strong cash flow, robust balance sheet, and continued investment position the group for further growth as market conditions recover.

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Alumasc Group plc annual results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review your questions submitted today and publish responses when it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the final poll, and I would now like to hand you over to CEO Paul Hooper. Good afternoon.

Paul Hooper
CEO, Alumasc Group

Thank you very much, and welcome everybody to the annual results of the Alumasc Group to 30th of June 2025. My name is Paul Hooper. I am the Chief Executive. I am joined by Simon Dray, the Group Finance Director. We will start our presentation on page four, where we describe the divisions of the group. Sustainability drives our future growth. We have three divisions. I will give a quick description. First of all, the water management division, which is involved in water and stormwater management. Many of our systems are specified. We manufacture circa 70% of products, 70% are sold to merchants, 30% direct to contractors approximately. Moving into the building envelope division, which consists of our roofing systems company. This business gives technical advice, for instance, by taking core samples from current roofs and then advising what the solution is. This is not just a distributor.

Occasionally people think it is, but it does a lot more than that. It really is adding value. We supply premium roofing systems from Derbigum, Hydrotech, both global leaders, and our own brand, Euroroof, plus other brands. We are also involved in other niche areas such as blue roofs, green roofs, and biosolar roofs. This division does not manufacture, and it imports its products from Canada and Europe, from suppliers who it has had a 35 - 40 year relationship with. It supplies its systems directly to contractors, so no merchants involved in this business. Our third division is housebuilding products. It operates under the Timloc brand, which it has recently developed by giving an outstanding next-day service and 100% record for on-time in-full delivery onto the trucks at the plant. If an order is received by midday, it will be delivered often in small quantities the next day.

And actually, as merchants have reduced their stocks in the last year under some pressure, this has worked very well for Timloc. Above GBP 100 is free of charge into merchants, above GBP 150 onto site. We bought it for just over GBP 3 million 20 years ago, and it makes more than that, as you will see shortly. Let us go on to page seven, if we could please. These are the FY 2025 highlights. We outperformed the market again with a record performance in challenging end market conditions. For instance, in the U.K., the overall construction market moved up in 2024 by half of 1%, according to the CPA. And actually, in terms of house building starts, they went down by 29%. That is a big number. So our revenue increased by 13% to GBP 113.4 million. UPBT increased by 9% to a record GBP 14.2 million.

What I really appreciated in this year was that each of our divisions had a record performance. It wasn't just one that was outstanding. Three of them had record performances, which I think is very healthy. We benefited from the ARP acquisition performing well, and we have further synergies we expect coming to the new financial year. Our operating cash conversion was good at 102%, despite the CLK, that's Chek Lap Kok in Hong Kong project, having some payment timing issues, all insured, and they're starting to come in. We expect them to be cleared by the first quarter of the new financial year. We were delighted really that with the pension fund, the requirement reduced to GBP 500,000 to be put in by ourselves each year to GBP 977,000 annum. Big improvement, a reflection of the improvement in that pension fund situation.

We have a strong balance sheet with 0.3 x leverage, and that gives us opportunities, as you can imagine, including inorganic ones in terms of acquisitions. The proposed final dividend, ticked up by 4% to GBP 0.076 and the full-year dividend has increased therefore to GBP 0.111. Moving on to our next page of highlights. We continued the execution of strategic commercial priorities which resulted in organic revenue growth of 7%. Bear in mind, the overall growth was 13% with ARP. So this was healthy, having organic growth at this level. Underlying operating margin was 13.7%, a little bit down on the prior year due to the mix on U.K. and export revenue. But we're taking actions which we'll come on to start to lift that up again. More than 80%, to remind ourselves that the portfolio is aligned with strong environmental growth drivers.

We've made further progress on net zero initiatives. Simon will cover those a bit later. We have significant capacity and investment headroom to support future growth. We're ready for the turn when it happens. We have a clear line of sight on delivering growth ambitions, continued outperformance of the U.K. construction market, and the margin growth through demand recovery and self-help initiatives. Moving on to the final slide of my first section here before Simon runs through the financial review. I think it's worth looking at the outperformance of the U.K. construction market and actually on the left-hand side, the inset bullet points, as I've touched on the fourth one down there, the private housing starts falling by 29% in 2024 is really not good. The overall market there was 0.5% forecasted in 2025.

Bear in mind, we straddle across two calendar years, is anticipated to tick up a bit to around 1.5%. Still quite low improvements, but at least it's not negative. Whereas the house building output for two years has been, as you'll see below. Sustainability drivers remain strong. We expect more resilient demand through the cycle. Affordability is obviously important, mortgage rates coming through. We have had issues earlier in the or coming through, particularly in the second half year on National Planning Policy Framework, which has been given to local authorities, seems to have slowed things down. The Building Safety Act, which we're all very positive about, but its enactment or the way it's operated has caused some delays.

As I say, the building in terms of legislation, regulations, we like those because normally we can bring new products in around them, including building decarbonization, urban water management and greening, and building safety all give us opportunities. We like that and it appears, and we will give examples later as to where they have helped us, to bring in new products mainly. Now, if I may, I will hand over to Simon for the financial review, please.

Simon Dray
Group Finance Director, Alumasc Group

Thank you, Paul. As Paul mentioned, we had a robust performance against a tough backdrop, with organic revenue growth of 7% and organic underlying profit growth of 5%. That was supplemented by an incremental 6% of revenue growth and 3% of underlying profit growth from our first full year of ownership of ARP. Gross margins were 10 basis points lower than the prior year at 37.9%. Increases at building envelope and house building products were offset by a reduction in water management driven by mix, where lower U.K. sales were offset by a growth in exports. Their export projects tend to be larger but lower margin than regular U.K. business. That mix impact feeds through to operating margin, which is just over 60 basis points lower than last year at 13.7%.

While improving U.K. sales will sweeten that margin, as we will discuss later, we have also taken some steps to structurally improve future margins and our medium-term target operating margin range remains at 15%-20%. Underlying profit before tax was 9% ahead at GBP 14.2 million. Our underlying tax rate was a little lower than last year due to higher profits taxed overseas and our underlying earnings per share grew by 11% to GBP 0.299. After GBP 1.5 million post-tax non-underlying costs, statutory profit before tax was GBP 9.3 million, 7% ahead of FY 2024. The Dover property, which was vacated by the move of covers manufacturing to Halstead, was sold after the year-end and GBP 0.4 million of non-underlying profit and GBP 500,000 of non-underlying proceeds will be realized in FY 2026.

As Paul mentioned, the board had proposed GBP 0.076 final dividend, which, if approved, will bring the full-year distribution to GBP 0.111, 3% higher than last year, and covered 2.7 x by earnings. Our revenue bridge shows the GBP 5.7 million incremental contribution from ARP, complemented by organic growth across all three divisions. Building envelope and house building products achieved 11% and 9% organic growth, respectively. The water management division saw softer U.K. demand offset by stronger exports, which grew by GBP 4.2 million, somewhere around 2/3 of which was from year-on-year growth in our large contracts at Chek Lap Kok Airport in Hong Kong. Our underlying profit bridge shows that the ARP acquisition, after attributable interest, delivered GBP 0.5 million of incremental profit contribution.

Cost inflation was a small drag on profit due to timing. We expect cost management and other operational efficiencies, together with price increases where appropriate, to mitigate this fully next year, including the GBP 600,000 impact from the increase in employers' National Insurance contributions and National Living Wage increases. The volume growth across all three divisions delivered GBP 1.4 million of profit after the associated overhead investment. However, as mentioned previously, the higher proportion of overseas sales and water management reduced profits by around GBP 600,000. Underlying profit before tax closed at GBP 14.2 million, with an operating margin 60 basis points lower at 13.7%.

Our cash flow performance was reasonably strong despite receipt of around GBP 1.5 million of receivables from the CLK project falling into FY 2026. Our cash conversion, which is a measure of our conversion of operating profit into cash, was still above our 100% target at 106%.

The Chek Lap Kok receivables, which are fully insured, are expected to be collected over the first quarter of FY 2026. We continue to invest in future growth with GBP 2.6 million capital expenditure. Just over GBP 1 million of this was to complete the investment in the Gatic manufacturing facility, which totaled GBP 3 million across FY 2024 and 2025. Much of the remainder was to support house building products, new product development activities, and improving capacity and agility ahead of the anticipated recovery in new build house building. As I mentioned earlier, we have now sold the vacant Dover site, and the GBP 500,000 of proceeds will be recorded as a non-underlying receipt in FY 2026. After payment of the final GBP 750,000 earn-out for ARP, net bank debt closed at GBP 5.8 million.

We continue to create value with strong returns on our invested capital, well in excess of our weighted average cost of capital, which we estimate to be around 12%. We have retained significant capacity for investment. Leverage at June 2025 was 0.35 x, compared to a covenant of less than 2.75 x. Our facilities are committed through to August 2027. As Paul mentioned, we have also concluded our 2025 pension triennial valuation, which will see contributions reduced by GBP 500,000 from GBP 1.2 million to GBP 0.7 million per annum from September 2025. We expect these contributions to get the scheme to a low dependency position, where the scheme has sufficient assets to meet its liabilities and fund its running costs with a low expectation of requiring further contributions from the company.

We expect the scheme to get there at or before 2030. Meanwhile, we continue to monitor further de-risking opportunities, and will take action should they be both affordable and represent value for shareholders' money. I can pass back to Paul now for the business review.

Paul Hooper
CEO, Alumasc Group

Thank you, Simon. We will start with water management, the biggest division that we have. It had a record performance, and it grew its revenue by 15% and its profit by 4%. Actually, our exports have moved to account for 25% of the overall revenue versus 20% in the prior year. We grew the exports by GBP 4.2 million, 44% within that. The majority of the Chek Lap Kok Airport project has now been shipped in. The other areas of interest and quote activity was very exciting. Latin America, we put a fellow sales guy, very successful person into Colombia, Bogotá, and he has come up with GBP 500,000 order in Suape Port in Brazil for our Gatic covers and slot frames. Fantastic achievement. He is also working in other areas like Peru.

You can see a picture on this page of Lima, Peru, of the Jorge Chávez Airport there. He was a French Peruvian pioneer aviator, sadly killed in his Blériot biplane in 1910 and had crossed the Pennine Alps. You can see there our slot frame has been put into this airport. So this has traveled from Halstead in Essex to Peru to Lima. There it is with its white cover fully intact, running along the side of the airport. So very exciting. We have been also doing work in Bogotá, Colombia, and Mexico. There are further opportunities in Chile and further ones in Peru. There are also some military airports that are of interest. At the same time, we supplied slot frames in the big Neom project, city project in Saudi Arabia. Also defense, we know that is going up as a percentage of GDP in Europe.

Well, we have benefited from that because NATO has put an airfield into Slovakia, and it has included 12 km of our slot frame going into that. So very exciting, and I think there is more work to come through the defense increased spending. In terms of U.K. sales, they had a net increase of GBP 3 million, and this was via a GBP 5.7 million contribution from ARP. But a bit of a reduction, GBP 2.7 million there in like-for-like sales, in the U.K. from the underlying business. We had soft demand, particularly coming into H2, some planning delays, which were unhelpful. Margins reduced by revenue mix, U.K. versus exports, where exports having slightly lower margins. The actions being taken to improve our margins are that Covers manufacturing has relocated to Halstead from Dover in December 2024.

We previously indicated we expect an overall GBP 800,000 benefit coming out of that, and we have the contribution from ARP synergies, which we expect mainly to come into the new financial year. Moving on to the next slide, which is Building Envelope, AKA roofing. This is our roofing company. They did really well here. Bear in mind, it is against a background of 0.5% of growth in the market, while they grew their revenue by 11%, operating profit by 14%. They leveraged the investment in technical sales. They hired very good technical salespeople, and they also grew their own, as it were. We have had two or three people coming through from being apprentices, and they give great customer support.

Some people have said, "Oh, you're just a distributor." As I mentioned earlier, we're not, because we're going onto roofs, taking core samples, et cetera, and making recommendations on what products of ours to install. We have also carbon-absorbing membranes. Derbigum Olivine is the brand there, and that's an innovative, interesting area. We've been involved in photovoltaics, not actually in the hardware there, but really in terms of supplying the green roofs that we're experts on that go underneath photovoltaics and actually keep them cool, which makes them operate better. Relationships are important in this type of business all around with specifiers, surveyors. We've been developing multi-site property owners like BT, et cetera. Contractors, very key, and suppliers. Our suppliers have been supplying us the Derbigum number one brand on refurb, global brand, really, and Hydrotech out of Canada for circa 40 years.

These are important relationships, and they will continue as far as we can see, and our focus is on high-end specification work with low carbon systems. We would say now we can see from checking our competitor accounts as they get put into Companies House, et cetera, that we are the number two player now. The big player in this, which is probably more than double the size of our division here, is Bauder, which is a German company. We offer excellent customer service and warranties, and there are new areas of interest for us as data centers start to come through, and they're sometimes being put into very cold countries.

We are working with a particular contractor that's been involved in those to supply a warm roof using our own brand here, which doesn't limit us to the U.K., and that's Euroroof, which was a clever bit of branding because that's the name of a company we bought around 30 years ago. U.K. contractors know the name, but we've now converted that into a brand of product of supply to the marketplace. That's also being used for potential export sales. I don't want to overhype it, but it's the start of some interesting areas where data centers are being put in. We have a warm roof solution that can assist in that area. Finally, our third division shouldn't really be called third division. As I always joke, it's Premier League, really, this one, House Building Products.

Look at its margin there, 25.9%, and that's grown from 25.3%. More amazing to me, anyway, is that against this 29% new start of houses reduction in 2024, it's grown its revenue by 9% and its operating profit by 11%. How has it done this, people ask. Actually, on page 23, we cover one of the products that has assisted, which is the roof vent. This is by going into an adjacent market where we believe we can manufacture on the lowest cost basis, and we can give competitive prices. We reckon we've taken around a 10% market share in a couple of years from nothing. This has helped to keep our sales up. We've also, without doubt, been taking market share.

We know that, where we're offering this great OTIF of 100% out of the plant, delivery next day, minimum GBP 100 requirement for free delivery to the merchants, GBP 150 to site. This resonates, particularly as I mentioned earlier, I think when merchants are having to destock a bit, they're very happy for us to be helping them on this basis. It's a very efficient operation, highly automated, a lot of robotics in the plant, and this helps us to be the lowest cost manufacturer. Yet we still have 50% capacity in here. So we're making 25.9%, and we have 50% capacity. This makes us think, well, we need more products. We were already quite good in this area, launching them, but we can bring acquisitions in. There are some areas that we're looking in for those where we think there are opportunity.

This is a well-invested company in terms of CapEx and machinery. Our reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that Simon will touch on a bit later is in the order of 76% over the last six years. That's a good effort. In the last year alone, we've been down by 20% to zero. Again, a good effort. It's coming from new, more efficient equipment mainly, and this has been at the forefront of assisting. That was a group figure that I just gave. So we believe we're well-positioned when the house building market recovers. We love the legislation of Approved Document L on Future Homes Initiative, Approved Document F. So the first one is energy, second one ventilation. We produce new products on the basis of these, sometimes with more insulation attached to them, and it gives opportunities without doubt.

I will now turn, in terms of the strategic delivery, the pillars. We have four pillars here. You're probably relieved to know I'm not going to grind through each of them. In a quick summary, these are growth strategy pillars. So it's a summary for reference. We're championing sustainable building products. We will accelerate organic growth, make very selective acquisitions, and drive operating margin improvements to achieve the 15%-20% operating margin that we're targeting. We will also invest our capital and revenue to enhance future growth. If I may, I'll hand back to Simon for the next slide, please.

Simon Dray
Group Finance Director, Alumasc Group

Thank you, Paul. Just taking the first pillar there. We look to champion sustainability in each of our markets. Over 80% of our product portfolio helps address our strategic focus areas around building decarbonization, managing rain and storm water, and providing urban green areas which improve biodiversity and provide occupant utility. We believe these areas to be supported by long-term growth trends that will allow them to outperform general market growth. During the year, our first tranche of Environmental Product Declarations, which are independently verified statements of a product's environmental impact over its life cycle, from extraction to end-of-life processing, were launched in the year. While these aren't mandatory for the majority of projects, they do help bolster our environmental credentials and help our customers get environmental accreditations, including LEED and BREEAM, for their own projects. So they will become, I think, increasingly important over the coming years.

We are also continuing to minimize our impact on the planet. Our products generally lead their market in recycled content, and over 80% of the materials we use are recyclable at the end of their life. We are underway with our net zero pathway. Our controlled greenhouse gas emission intensity, that Scopes 1, 2, and business travel, so it covers the energy that we consume within Alumasc Group, reduced by a further 20% in the year, and are now over 70% lower than when we— 76% lower than when we began measuring them in 2018. Our Scope 3 calculations covering our whole value chain are well underway, and we expect to publish these together with our net zero roadmap later in the year. Back to Paul now for sales growth.

Paul Hooper
CEO, Alumasc Group

Yeah. Thanks, Simon. We are touching on the accelerating sales growth here. We have seen an increase in our organic sales growth of 7%, which we think is pretty healthy, and it has been partly through moving into adjacent markets, new products. Not being satisfied with the markets we are in. We have opportunities to go outside, and that includes export markets. We are very focused on taking market share, and we believe that has been achieved in all areas. The U.K. sales were resilient. We had strong overseas sales growth as well. There is no doubt the long-term housing undersupply that is there, despite the government’s attempts to improve that, and I am sure there will be some benefit of that coming through over time. The aging U.K. building stock does give opportunities. We love building regulations. Changing, especially decarbonization ones, climate resilience and safety. That gives us opportunities.

As you will have sensed, I was thrilled to see the Brazil and Peru work, and Mexico and Colombia success, and also into Saudi, et cetera, and Slovakia. We have opportunities where we have not really spent a lot of time developing a market like Thailand and Philippines. We need to get going. That brand, Gatic, the acronym is Gas and Airtight Cover, will be 100 years old in three years’ time. It is starting to get going on the export market, so it is interesting. We will have further new product launches into adjacent markets, and as I have touched on, we want to expand that geographical sales team to benefit the export side. How are we going to improve our margins? It is interesting to note that we have really moved by 3.9 percentage points over the last six years. Volume growth has assisted on that.

Efficient, flexible manufacturing capacity. We have also reduced the number of facilities and investing in capability for the future. All of this is helping us. As we move forward, we will get the benefits from the investment into Halstead. The efficiencies that will come out of there in the move of Dover from closing Dover to moving into Halstead, and that will all assist the future, and we will have the ARP benefits coming through in terms of synergies. At the same time, as the volume starts to pick up again, all of that will assist us to get to the 15%-20% target range. That covers that slide, I feel. Let us move into the next one, which is, we have got two to go. This one is value-enhancing investment. Where are we going to be investing? Where have we been investing?

Well, sales and marketing capability has really worked for us. So increasing the number of salespeople and the quality of them. R&D and new product development has served us very well, so we will continue that. We have spent GBP 2.6 million, of which nearly half of that has gone into the automation of our covers manufacturing, which is giving a much better product. Going into the airports that we shipped into straight out of the move to Halstead, they were delighted with the end product. It is such an improvement, and at the same time, we will be making our cost reductions out of that. Further NPD will take place, and particularly, investments at housebuilding products on agility, flexibility, ability to really ramp up when markets pick up again.

Or we might, at the same time, and/or rather, be bringing potential acquisitions into that for its 50% capacity that it has. As I say, inorganic growth we are keen on, but we are very fussy about what we would acquire. The last acquisition was ARP, which is in the metal rainwater market, competitor really to our Alumasc range of products. We are continuing to review acquisition opportunities. There are some serious opportunities out there. I am not saying we are about to sign for any of them, but we are looking in a serious manner at them. Our final slide is covering the outlook. We have demonstrated our track record in outperforming the markets. We have been able to progress in uncertain markets. We were able to respond quickly to demand increases. There is a continuation of the support of environmental building safety regs that will help.

The undersupply of new houses and age of the U.K. building stock helps as well. We are very thrilled with the inroads into Latin America, with opportunities we see coming through in areas like the Philippines and Thailand to follow. We will have further in terms of strategic commercial objectives. We will have further margin improvements from the Dover closures, closure ARP synergies, and leveraging ERP, CRM platforms. Those will help us to sell more efficiently, amongst other reasons. We have strong cash flows, and the balance sheet provides significant capacity for further investment in both organic and inorganic growth. We have an opportunity to really deliver on significant shareholder value as markets recover. So we are well invested, we have a strong balance sheet, and we are ready to go to grow further. That is us. Thank you.

Operator

That is great, Paul. Simon, thank you very much indeed for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab situated on the top right corner of your screen. While the company takes a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Paul, Simon, as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. Simon, if I may now hand back to you to chair the Q&A and read out the questions where appropriate to do so, and I will pick up from you at the end. Thank you.

Simon Dray
Group Finance Director, Alumasc Group

Thank you very much. Perhaps this one is one for me, Paul.

Paul Hooper
CEO, Alumasc Group

Okay.

Simon Dray
Group Finance Director, Alumasc Group

What are you doing to improve the sustainability of your operation?

Well, I covered on one of the slides about our 76% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions since 2018. That was driven really by efficiency improvements, investing in more efficient plants, consolidating our sites, moving from smaller, less efficient facilities into larger, more efficient ones, and sourcing all our electricity from renewable sources. That has gone hand in hand with our 400 basis point improvement in margin. These are financial and environmental improvements for the business. Looking forward, as well as continuing with our own efficiency, and continuing to move those greenhouse gas emission intensity down, we are also looking at our supply chain through our Scope 3 emissions calculations. The two big elements of that are distribution and extraction sourcing of the raw material.

Distribution, we will certainly be working with our partners to understand their net zero pathways and making sure that their decarbonization objectives match our own. On the extraction sourcing side, the single thing we can do to improve and reduce our Scope 3 emissions there is to maximize the use of recycled material. Again, we will be plotting a path to net zero through both of those.

Well, let's see. Two related questions. Are you comfortable with consensus market forecasts for the current year and in the first couple of months of the current year? Are you trading ahead of 2024? We obviously have our own internal forecast that we are required to confirm that they, or at least announce if they diverge from the market forecasts that are out there. But at this stage, we are comfortable and the board is expecting another year of growth. The consensus market forecast is consistent with that. In terms of current trading, as Paul mentioned in the outlook, we are likely to have an H2 weighting this year, primarily because of the timing of overseas contracts in FY 2024. Sorry, FY 2025, particularly. While our internal forecasts show another year of growth, the half year on half year comparisons will skew towards the second half.

Hopefully I have answered that one sufficiently. Are there contractual arguments on Hong Kong receivable, or is it just slow payment?

Paul Hooper
CEO, Alumasc Group

Just slow payment. It is coming through. There is a lot of goodwill there, and they will pay. Those payments are insured as well, so that gives a lot of comfort. But we are seeing the payments coming in. The fact is that they are paying them. It is just a bit slower than we would have wanted, to be honest, but we are insured.

Simon Dray
Group Finance Director, Alumasc Group

Reported profit in H2 was down 12% on H1 or around 20%, adjusting for the profit from ARP. Should we expect similar trends going into 2026? I am not quite sure I follow the numbers. I think on an underlying profit basis, we were about 4% behind H1, adjusting for the contribution from ARP. But I think as I mentioned in the previous answer, we are expecting an H2 weight of FY 2026. The year-on-year growth will disproportionately fall in the second half, should particularly overseas contracts timings go the way that we expect. The large CLK contract that we had with the bulk of that, the original order was for about GBP 7 million. The bulk of that, or a large part of that at least, shipped in FY 2025.

But we are carrying about GBP 1 million of remaining order from that contract into 2026. We are likely to see other work from that and from other overseas opportunities as well. So it is a little tricky to be absolutely categoric on timing. One for you, Paul. Are you seeing a good pipeline of potential acquisitions?

Paul Hooper
CEO, Alumasc Group

Yes. I think it would be fair to say that, as we have always said, we are very fussy. We are going to stick to the knitting. We want to only acquire in areas of markets that we understand and that give synergy. There are a few out there, let us put it that. I am not saying 10 or 15, but two or three that we are pretty interested in. I cannot guarantee that they will go to completion. But some of them can take a while. That ARP one took two years, to be honest, and it had to go through the CMA in the end as well.

These things are not always fast, and often they are owned by entrepreneurs who are very attached to them and want to be responsible and to make sure it is important that they trust us as well on what we are going to do with the business or what they think we are going to do and what we will talk about doing. So yeah, it can be quite complicated, but we would rather spend the time to get the right ones than go off at a tangent.

Simon Dray
Group Finance Director, Alumasc Group

Okay. Exceptional restructuring costs jumped in FY 2025. What level of ongoing exceptional restructuring costs should we expect going into FY 2026 and beyond? The restructuring costs in FY 2025 were largely to do with the closure of the Dover facility. They were a little higher than anticipated at the half year, mainly because the equipment commissioning took a bit longer than anticipated. But also because the profit on the sale of the property was originally forecast to be realized in FY 2025, but that is now going to hit FY 2026. So, in terms of restructuring costs going forward, we are not aware, and we have not announced that there are any projects that will incur any restructuring costs in 2026. So the only thing that you would expect to see would be the circa GBP 400,000 profit on disposal of the Dover facility, the Dover site.

An exceptional income in 2026. As well as, of course, the ongoing IAS 19, sorry, the acquired intangible asset amortization , which is around about GBP 400,000 a year, which is a non-cash accounting adjustment. Housebuilding products delivered a 26% margin despite sector headwinds. How scalable is this level of profitability, Paul? And finally, Simon, I think would we expect to see margin reducing as volumes go up within housebuilding products?

Paul Hooper
CEO, Alumasc Group

No. Well, I almost dare not say that it costs go up because of the drop-through when it is running at such a respectable level. But I certainly do not see it falling. You could argue that there should be the opposite situation. But when you are getting to this sort of level, I would be hesitant to forecast really a lot on that. But I do not see any reductions. They are continuing to work hard on their pipeline of new products, and the theory is absolutely true, that you get better margins on new products. Over time, they get whittled away a bit by the competition. You have got to keep the pipeline going of new products, and they have been very good at doing that.

Simon Dray
Group Finance Director, Alumasc Group

Thank you, Paul. And one final question here. Where is the venue this year for the AGM on the 24th of October? That will go out with our annual report when it is released a bit later this month. But the AGM will be held at our Alumasc Roofing site in St Helens in Merseyside.

Paul Hooper
CEO, Alumasc Group

Very good.

Operator

Perfect. That's great, Paul, Simon, if I may just jump back in there. Thank you for addressing those questions from investors today. The company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Before I redirect investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, Paul, could I please ask you for a few closing comments?

Paul Hooper
CEO, Alumasc Group

Yes, thank you very much. I think it's fair to say that we've demonstrated our track record in outperforming the markets now over several years. I'm particularly pleased in the year under review that each of the divisions has had a record performance against some quite difficult markets. We feel that we're in a strong position now to continue that growth. We're in a good area in the environmental products, et cetera, environmental markets, where regulation helps. We've got ourselves in good shape in terms of capacity, and we're there and ready and well invested, strong balance sheet to benefit from the turn that must happen at some point in the U.K. market. We will benefit both in organic sales, both from self-help, and we've touched on many aspects of that today, and particularly NPD, particularly in hiring good salespeople, et cetera.

We've been reducing our costs by moving into fewer sites. Then we have the inorganic growth in which we have a strong basis, a strong balance sheet to make some acquisitions, but we'll be very fussy about the ones we make. I hope that we've covered that successfully for everyone today, and that we will continue to move this business further forward. Thank you very much for attending our presentation today. It is much appreciated. Thank you.

Operator

Perfect, Paul. Simon, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the board can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Alumasc Group plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation and good afternoon to you all.

Paul Hooper
CEO, Alumasc Group

Thank you.

Simon Dray
Group Finance Director, Alumasc Group

Thank you.