Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Alumasc Group plc annual results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab that is just situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today, and will publish our responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we would just like to submit the following poll, and as usual, if you would give that your kind attention, I am sure the company would be most grateful. I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Paul Hooper. Paul, good afternoon, sir.
Good afternoon. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the annual results presentation of the Alumasc Group plc for today, by Simon Dray, our Group Finance Director. We have in front of us the presentation, and within there, we have two slides. The first sets out how sustainability and strategy are driving future growth, and the second one is summarizing the environmental growth drivers behind each of our three divisions. These are all covered later in the presentation, so just really a summary here. We will start the presentation on page seven, and this is covering the highlights, and this is the delivery of the strategic products that are driving the market outperformance that we have. Our revenue grew by 13% to just over GBP 100 million, and that was against a very challenging end market, and the conditions were not that brilliant.
The underlying PBT grew by 16% to around GBP 14 million. We are pretty pleased with that. We acquired ARP, which came in really for the second half year, and we benefited from that across those six months. We expect further synergies to come into FY 2025. The acquisition itself has been performing very well, and it sits within our water management division. We have a strong cash flow performance with 120% operating cash conversion, and we have a strong balance sheet that gives us firepower. Our proposed final dividend is ahead by 6% to GBP 0.073, and the full-year dividend +4% to GBP 0.1075. How did we achieve this? It was really through the successful execution of strategic and commercial priorities. Although the U.K. construction market was down by 2.9%, the organic revenue growth within Alumasc was 6.5%.
We outperformed the market, and we grew our underlying operating margin by 50 basis points to 14.1%. Our target is in the 15%-20% range, so we are knocking on the door. 80% of the portfolio is aligned with strong environmental growth drivers. We have had further progress, which we will come on to our net zero initiatives. There is significant headroom to support future growth, and yesterday we announced the closure of our Dover site, with its movement into our Wade facility at Halstead in Essex, and this follows a very similar process to when we moved our Slotdrain business into there, saving around GBP 900,000, three years ago. This particular move would actually save in the order of GBP 800,000 for our covers manufacturing.
There is a constant focus on efficiencies, reducing the number of sites, which will be now down to five, and all of this helps our performance. We have a clean, clear line of sight on delivering growth ambitions, and this will include the continued outperformance of the U.K. construction market. Much of our improvements have been through self-help and project-based demand. Through demand recovery will also help. If we stand back and summarize this, over the last five or six years, we have performed pretty well, we feel. All divisions are ahead in this year under review, and we expect a market recovery coming into 2025 with the efforts that continue to be made in all areas to improve margins, to improve sales, et cetera.
With an uplift in the marketplace, which we have not had for a while, we expect an acceleration of this performance with an increase drop through from it. If we move now to page eight, we have been outperforming the U.K. construction market. We have a couple of charts here that show that it has been a little bit grim, really, in 2023 and 2024, but particularly for the housing outputs, which are in negative territory here. There has been a lot of pressure on public finances, political macroeconomic uncertainty, and it has subdued the markets. Also, inflation, high mortgage rates, particularly for house construction, has had an influence, and those starts have fallen by 17.9% in 2023 and forecasted to fall by 11% in this year. But we all know there is a latent housing demand out there remains strong.
The new government appears to be determined to increase the number of houses being constructed. We see an improving outlook, and that will be through many factors, including speeding up local planning, and that is starting to happen in areas. Anecdotally, interest rates have begun to be cut, and those obviously improve mortgage rates, and that leads to further demand. Sustainability drivers remain strong. Legislation, we love legislation. That usually helps us with our launch of new products. They are things like the Future Homes Standard and Document L, which is focused on energy, Document F on ventilation, and O on overheating. These are all areas of great interest to us. If I may, I will hand over to Simon to cover the financial review now, please.
Thank you, Paul. As Paul mentioned and highlights, FY 2024 saw group revenue increase by 13% and underlying profit before tax by 16%. This growth came from both acquisitions and from organic growth. ARP contributed 6.5% to the growth in revenue and 5.5% to the growth in underlying profit before tax after interest on the acquisition consideration. We also saw 6.5% organic revenue growth and 10.6% organic profit growth. Good cost and price disciplines saw gross margins 130 basis points ahead of FY 2023 at 38%. Underlying operating margins were also ahead of the prior year by 50 basis points. This was a result of both the increased volumes and also the investments in capability, which are improving our manufacturing efficiency. The operating margin of 14.1% is progressing towards our medium-term target range of 15%-20%. Underlying profit before tax was GBP 14 million, which is a record for Alumasc.
After tax, the rate of which increased in line with a higher U.K. corporation tax rate, underlying earnings per share was just under 8% above the prior year. We propose a final dividend of GBP 0.073, which will take our full-year dividend to GBP 0.1075 per share, a 4% increase on the prior year. This is covered 2.5 x by earnings, in line with both our progressive policy and our desired dividend cover range of 2.5x- 3 x. Moving to the profit bridges and revenue bridge. In the first six months of ownership, ARP sales were GBP 5.8 million, and operating profits were GBP 1 million. The interest on the acquisition consideration, their net contribution to profit before tax was GBP 0.6 million. This year, price inflation was not a significant factor. Most raw material prices were stable or declining.
Wage inflation is also reducing, and any increases in the year were largely offset by efficiency improvements. The remaining growth, GBP 5.8 million of sales and GBP 1.2 million of profit, was all organic. Pleasingly, all three divisions this year contributed. Looking at cash flow performance this year, there was a GBP 900,000 inflow from working capital, despite some pressure from our organic growth rate and also some disruption due to the Red Sea crisis in terms of both shipping costs and times, all of which were well managed.
Our underlying cash conversion, underlying cash generation before non-underlying cash flows, was 120% of operating profit, compared to 105% in the prior year. These strong cash flows allowed us to continue to make investments that underpin future growth. Capital expenditure was a little higher than usual at GBP 3.6 million. I will cover some of the larger items later in the presentation.
Despite the market headwinds, we have continued to invest in the business. The net cash outflow to date on the ARP acquisition is GBP 8.5 million, which comprises the initial consideration, plus the cash we acquire, less debt and working capital adjustments, and first earn-out payment, which we made in January 2024. The final earn-out payment of GBP 750,000 is payable in January 2025, subject to ARP's performance in the year to November 2024. We have accrued that within these numbers as we expect it to be paid. After these cash flows, net bank debt closed at GBP 7.2 million. Looking at our balance sheet, our returns on capital remain strong and well above our weighted average cost of capital, which is an indication of how much it costs to borrow money, both from equity and from debt, which we estimated around 11%.
We retained significant capacity for further investment with our gearing, our leverage at 0.5 x, and facilities committed through to August 2027. The position of the group's legacy defined benefit pension scheme, calculated at IAS 19, moving from a GBP 4.3 million pre-tax liability at June 2023 to a GBP 800,000 at June 2024. This reflects the work we have done with the trustees to both improve and to de-risk the funding position. Annual contributions remain at the GBP 1.2 million level agreed with the trustees at the last triennial valuation, and our next formal review is due in March 2025. We are continuing to progressively reduce the scheme's volatility, particularly to fluctuations in bond yields, and to plan the end game scenario, which takes into account the needs of both pensioners and shareholders. Finally, on finance, I have set out here the allocation priorities for the group surplus capital.
We aim to maintain debt leverage at a prudent level, which for us means below the level of 1.5x EBITDA, and we prioritize organic growth where we get the best returns. We also seek to provide a progressive return to our shareholders, increasing dividends with profit while looking to maintain a 2.5x-3 x earnings cover. We will continue to seek M&A opportunities where they meet our acquisition criteria. We look for bolt-on businesses operating in our existing markets or close adjacents. I will now pass back to Paul for business review.
Well, thank you, Simon. As Simon has touched on, we have three divisions, and actually each of those, they have all been very encouraging because they have all moved ahead of the prior year. We will start with the water management one, which is the biggest division, and this grew its revenue by 21%, GBP 48.3 million, and it grew its operating profit by 31%, GBP 7.6 million. Underlying operating margin percentage grew to 15.8%. We have touched on, we had the benefit of the six months of contribution from ARP. This has been a great acquisition. It has been very well run. It fits in well. We have had an integration team that has been finding a lot of synergies that will mainly benefit coming into the new financial year.
In terms of organic growth in this division, the revenue grew by 7%, overall operating profit by 16%. We had strong growth in export sales. We grew by GBP 5 million. We doubled the exports to GBP 10 million for the group. Most of this came out of this division. We put representation into Colombia and Latin America.
We are coming into the Philippines. We put it into Dubai, and India is to follow. Sales really throughout the world, including into Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Dubai, New Zealand, Australia, other parts of the Middle East. So it is growing, and we want to keep that going further, and we will continue to invest in sales resource. You may recall that we have had a significant airport order at Chek Lap Kok in Hong Kong. Embarrassingly, this has run across a couple of year-ends because the product has not been pulled through yet.
I am very pleased to say that it has started to be pulled through into this new financial year that we have just come into. Overall U.K. sales in this division have been resilient with strong access cover demand, mainly from government bodies, helping to offset reductions on the drainage side, project delays on Slotdrain, which are now starting to happen. We have touched on the Dover site closure, which is planned for the end of this calendar year, and manufacturing moved to an automated state. We have invested in two significant Amada machines, which will very much assist in this, and that will be relocated to the Wade in Halstead facility, and we anticipate GBP 800,000 of savings from this. So this is an opportunity, all of these actions, to accelerate our growth further. Now, moving to page, sorry, the building envelope page.
We are moving, and you can see that the growth in the revenue here has been 9%, GBP 37.6 million, and we grew the underlying operating profit by 2%. You may recall me saying that I cited an uplift in the second half year, because in H1 we have grown the top line, but we are slightly down on the profit, only slightly, and now this, as I anticipated, has come back. There have been some good activities there. 9% overall revenue growth, resulting in a 13% operating profit. So we have been taking market share here, and we have been hiring some very accomplished technical sales people and giving good customer support, and this has really benefited us. We have also been involved in sustainable roofing systems, such as carbon-absorbing membranes. The brand Olivine has been very helpful in that respect.
We have launched Biosolar systems with a partner who supplies the solar side of that. We are doing the bio, as in the green. The green area actually helps to keep the photovoltaics cooler, and they function as a result of that much better. We have, in terms of strategic focus, long-standing relationships with specifiers, surveyors, multi-site property owners, which is an evolving theme. We are now getting more of these as customers, and that is great because you get a line of sight into one or two years further forward, where properties need to be refurbished, and then we can really benefit from that. Contractors and supplier relationships are also very important. It is mainly high-end specification work. With low carbon systems, have a reputation for excellent customer service, and we give very good warranties. Let us move into the final division, which is housebuilding products.
This was a remarkable performance, really, because we have touched on the reduction in activity of 18%, more or less, from 2023, 11% reduction forecast this year. The team has managed to achieve flat revenue. It is very slightly ahead, but that is a huge achievement in those circumstances, and then to also lift its operating profit by 9% to GBP 3.8 million is a great effort. This was partly assisted by a product that I will show you shortly, which is a tile vent that took it into a new distribution area. That has been very successful, and in two years, we reckon it has taken around a 10% market share. It has done very well to bring its operating margin up to a record 25%. This has been through efficiencies, cost controls, making sure that costs get passed through, and giving outstanding customer service.
If you order by midday, you can get a shipment the next day. We have got a record of shipping out, at least from the plant, of 100% OTIF. There has been a continued investment and focus on sustainability. We will continue to automate, bring in new products, and we have a good and complete external sales resource now. It is worth mentioning that Timloc is the first carbon neutral building products manufacturer in the U.K. Several of the large merchants have invited them along to discuss that and how they achieved it. The business is well-placed to benefit when housebuilding activity recovers. It has done an amazing job to bring its profit ahead against such a background. When we have the volumes assisting and picking up again, which we anticipate into 2025, this will be a significant event for the housebuilding products division.
We should also remember that it's got around 50% capacity. This means there are further opportunities within that division. Moving on into our strategic delivery, the first slide that we're going to cover on this is championing sustainable building products on page 21. Simon is going to cover this.
Thank you again, Paul. Our first and probably our fundamental strategic pillar is championing sustainable building products. Over 5% of our sales derive from products which address our strategic environmental priorities, which are underpinned by long-term growth drivers around building decarbonization, urban water management, and urban biodiversity and occupant well-being. In doing so, we also seek to minimize our own environmental impacts. We use recycled materials. Our products generally have the highest recycled content in their markets to create products that are themselves recyclable at the end of their life. Coupled with their durability and low maintenance requirements, creates products that are resource and energy efficient. We continue to invest in our net zero pathway. Our greenhouse gas intensity, measured per million of revenue, reduced by a further 4.7% in the year. This has reduced by over 70% since we began measuring it in 2018.
Interestingly, this progress has tracked our operating margin improvement, which back in 2018 was mid-single digit, and is now up above 14%. Our medium-term targets are being recalculated for the addition of ARP, and we'll get them accredited by the SBTi once they're complete. We now have full scope three emission calculations covering our entire value chain from sourcing to delivery for around 75% of the group. We'll use this data not only to plan our net zero pathway, but also to inform our decisions around product design, sourcing and distribution. I'll pass back to Paul now for the sales growth.
Thanks, Simon. Another important part of the strategic delivery is accelerating sales growth, which has assisted us so far, and we're going to continue to do that. There is a photo there of the inventive new profiled roof tile vent. It's been such a success for the housebuilding products division with 100 SKUs, five colors, and this has assisted very much. An example of a great product launch. If we take the sectoral outperformance, U.K. construction market down by 2.9%, but we've grown by 6.5%. So we have outperformed. The U.K.'s been resilient in terms of its sales, and we've had strong overseas sales growth. The significant long-term drivers are the building regs, et cetera, legislation, Document L and F that I touched on earlier, all play a part.
As does the fact that we have a housing undersupply, aging U.K. building stock that in some cases needs knocking down, other cases needs refurbishment. The legislation will really play a big part going forward as well, and we will target export opportunities into certain markets. The growth initiatives that are targeted will be assisted by the investment that we have already made in technical sales capability, new products, launches into adjacent markets, of which the profiled roof tile vent is an example, and the expansion of the geographical sales team, which is very important as well. We are running with three slides left, and I will cover a further strategic delivery one. Very key margins. We love margins, we love improving them. And actually, if we take the last five years, we have improved the gross margin for the Group's companies by 4 percentage points.
Very important that we continue to do that, and we have been successful over that period of time. We are getting towards our target of the 15% operating margin. We are at 14.1%, but we will be driven further towards that by volume growth and hopefully through it, and the efficient and flexible manufacturing capacity, and leveraging what we already have invested in.
The future improvements will be driven by the market recovery, which we expect next calendar year. Export sales growth, increasing that, as we have touched on, we have already doubled it in the year under review. ARP synergies, not to be underestimated, the value of those coming through. It takes a while because you have got to move from some of the contracts you may already be in to more beneficial contracts. NPD, without a shadow of a doubt, very key area, and we need to be doing more of it.
The automation of the access covers manufacturing will take place because we planned it, we have got the equipment, it is already being tested out, and that is going to be a good opportunity. Plus, it will bring a higher quality product that will be more appreciated by our customers. As always, further efficiency gains will be sought, and that goes without saying. If I may, I will ask Simon to cover the final strategic delivery slide, please, which is value enhancing investment.
Thank you. Our strong financial position, as mentioned, allowed us to continue to invest in future growth. As well as investing in our organizational capability, particularly sales, marketing, and product development, we spent GBP 3.6 million on capital items in the year. This included around GBP 2 million of investment at our Halstead site in buildings, machinery, and tooling to automate the manufacture of our access covers. This is currently a largely new process taking place at our site in Dover. We today announced the planned closure of this site, scheduled for December 2024, which will save approximately GBP 800,000 on an annual basis. Capital cost to complete the project of around GBP 1 million is scheduled to be incurred in the first quarter of the current financial year.
Site closure costs of around GBP 800,000 this year are expected to be largely offset by the proceeds from the sale of the land and buildings in Dover. We also invested around GBP 400,000 in our ERP systems. ERP or enterprise resource planning systems are the accounting systems that also integrate our purchasing activities, our warehousing, our manufacturing, and our selling and distribution. We have about 80% of the Group now on a common ERP platform. As well as planning to move the remaining sites over, we are using the better data the systems provide to improve our customer service and to inform our commercial decision-making. We also completed the acquisition of ARP in the year. Based on their extremely successful start within the Group, we expect to pay the final earn-out in full in January 2025.
We expect synergies, principally around procurement, cross-selling, and organizational capabilities, to bring the effective acquisition multiple below 5x over the next year or two. As I mentioned, we retain significant headroom, around GBP 18 million based on current committed facilities at June 2024, further investment to continue to underpin our ambitions for the business. I will pass back to Paul for the outlook.
Thank you, Simon. This is our final slide on page 26. It summarizes that the medium-term drivers remain strong. Building safety regulations supportive environment are assisting. The undersupply of new houses and the age of U.K. building stock, which means some of it will have to be knocked down, some refurbished. We have the capability to exploit further our export opportunities, and we continue to invest in there. We have a clear line of sight on further delivery of strategic and commercial objectives. The higher growth environmental markets and export potential will be absolutely focused on. We expect further margin improvements from the Dover closure, ARP synergies, and investments in ERP and CRM. We will continue the strong cash flows and the balance sheet provides significant capacity for further investment, both organically and inorganically.
The positive momentum that we finished our financial year under review will continue and has continued into the new financial year. I am very pleased to report that. The board is confident of another year of growth and an opportunity to deliver significant shareholder value as markets recover. To conclude, we have had five years of consistent growth, mostly through self-help. With forecasts for market improvements coming through in the next calendar year, we anticipate the ability to be able to accelerate our performance. Thank you very much, and we will now move to questions, I believe.
Perfect. Paul, Simon, if I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab that is situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions that were submitted already, I would just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can all be accessed via your investor dashboard.
Simon, Paul, as you can see there in the Q&A tab, we have received a number of questions throughout your presentation this afternoon. Thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. Simon, Paul, if I may just hand back to you just to read out those questions and give your responses, where it is appropriate to do so, and then I will pick up from you at the end. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Yes, I will read the first question out, which is asking for an update on the buyout position of the pension liabilities and the group's thoughts on that. I mentioned earlier in the presentation we had a GBP 0.8 million IAS 19 surplus, just for those who do not know. That is the accounting method of calculating pension liabilities. It is not the basis for our funding discussions with trustees, nor is it representative of a buyout valuation, which is affected with the cost of paying an insurance company to take the liability on. We are looking at two scenarios for the pension scheme. One is around self-sufficiency, which is getting the scheme to a position where it can invest in assets which hedge its liabilities. So there is very little likelihood of further support required from the parents, Alumasc.
All we would need to cover then is the cost of operating the scheme itself. That is still on balance sheet. The alternative there is to, as I say, buy the scheme out. The valuations that we have done, and it is very difficult to give valuations at a single point in time because they depend on investor appetite as well as bond yields, interest rates. But the conclusion of the board the last time we looked at this was that it would not represent good shareholder value to look to buy the scheme out. It is one we keep under review. Plan A is still self-sufficiency, but it is not mutually exclusive with buyout, and we will continue to review the position as the market develops and we will take action either to fully or partially buyout the scheme, if we believe it represents good shareholder value.
Thank you for the question. The next one is, "From your anticipated synergies from the ARP acquisition, what value was reflected in this year's results, and how much more do you expect to realize in FY 2025?" Do you want me to cover this one, Paul?
Yeah, please.
If you recall in this presentation, we saw the principal synergies from the acquisition from three categories, operational, procurement, and cross-selling. Cross-selling, we saw limited synergies in the year just gone, FY 2024. There was some cross-selling activity, but obviously we only had six months to start realizing that, but it was starting to happen. Operational as well, we saw some sharing of best practice. It's very difficult to quantify that, but there was some exchange of manufacturing techniques going on. I think in FY 2025, we're going to start to see some of the procurement efficiencies come through. They take longer to realize because you've generally got to exit an existing contract, and you've got to wind down any inventory that you hold. But I'd expect to see those start to come through in 2025.
And I'd expect to see more of the cross-selling and more of the operational capability potential coming through. If I had to put a number on it, I'd be disappointed if we got less than GBP 300,000 , GBP 400,000 out of the synergies in addition to the ARP baseline business, which should help underpin our growth ambitions for next year.
Thank you.
This one's for you, Paul. "How much additional capacity is available for growth in the remaining five sites?
It's a good question. It's interesting because I was up at our house building products company, Timloc, last Thursday, and I was talking to them about capacity because we've always said, "Well, we've got about 50% capacity there if you take the shifts, et cetera." But actually, we've got more than that because if you look at the tooling, the tooling can significantly increase the capacity by having the ability within each tool of producing, say, I don't know, 20 rather than 10 components. So there's a lot of capacity that can be put in by adding new tooling, and it isn't all about going onto shifts and employing more people or running over weekends, et cetera. We think we've got at least 50%. It would be more.
At the house building area, we've probably got I would guess within water management, maybe 30%, 30%-40%, and again, we can run onto shifts. Then it's an interesting one within our roofing side of the envelope side, because we don't actually manufacture that, and there is therefore no capacity constraints with manufacturing. It would be limited to warehousing, being able to technically support customers, and sales order entry and all the rest of it.
So we believe that we've got fewer constraints there. It would require some more warehousing. But I would say we could easily manage maybe another 20%-30% capacity there. So we feel we've got a reasonable amount, if needed. Well, it will be needed because we're expecting an uplift in the markets, in particular from next year, next calendar year. We don't think we're capacity constrained, and there's a fair bit to run out there before we get into that position.
Thank you. A couple of related questions around M&A strategy, what the broader acquisition strategy is, and are there plans for further acquisitions in the near future?
You want to take that.
If so, in which areas of the market? Yes, we definitely do aspire to do more M&A. We have capacity to do so, both in terms of the balance sheet, facilities, and also management and organizational structure, both of which have got capacity to run more businesses. In terms of hard and fast rules, it is difficult to be absolutely prescriptive. We would be looking for bolt-ons, which means less than GBP 20 million probably enterprise value, so consideration pre-debt. They would have to be operating in something that we are very familiar with, and ideally, ticking an environmental box as it is slotting into the long-term growth drivers that the rest of the business is. Areas that we are looking in within roofing division, I think there is opportunities there to add products to the range to improve their capabilities and their offerings to their customers.
Water management, I think there are definitely some scale and consolidation benefits you can realize within that market. You can also add technology, or further technology to the offering there, and parts of the water management systems that we do not currently offer, but sell into. Timloc, I think there is opportunities there to add volumes and more brands into a very successful model. Use their spare capacity, use their know-how, and the customer service that Timloc have got to help another business grow as fast as they are. So I think we are fairly agnostic into which division it might go into, but we have some criteria that we have to be firm on because we do not want to dilute the portfolio, and we do not want to bring a bad one in.
Correct. Agree with all of that. Thanks.
Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Just scroll down. A couple of questions around Dover. Freehold property to realize at Dover. Yes, all the property that we have in the Dover site is freehold, so there is nothing leasehold to exit there. Are there any legacy liabilities related to cladding from Levolux?
No. I am not aware of that.
No, we do not believe there is any continuing liabilities from the Levolux business. Cost benefits from the next year with the recent acquisition. Can we expand on this? I guess one thing I did not touch on in my earlier answer, Paul, was around the operational capability side and the opportunities from having two sites in Burton Latimer and Leicester.
Yes. It could allow us. We are reviewing that at the moment, so I would not really like to say what we might end up doing. But yeah, it is part of the ongoing process, and we will have a sensible outcome from it in terms of some specialism in there. I know we have had it six months, and we have got some pretty firm ideas now. But we will also spend a lot of time on integrating the sales and also the sourcing and making sure we are going to get some really good synergies out of that. But the manufacturing response should not be ignored because there are possibilities there, too. I don't want to comment any further than that.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Are there any other airport opportunities out there, such as the new Dubai Airport expansion?
Yes, quite a few. Sorry, let's be careful there. There are one or two very large ones in the Middle East, including into Saudi Arabia. These are at an early stage, though, so it could be several years before they come through. But they're going to be large airports with several runways, and we would be definitely bidding on those and would hope to win at least one of them. So yes, there are opportunities out there.
Thank you. Very impressed by your hard work and success. Last term, I suggested the market will eventually recognize your performance, and I'm pleased to see it finally does. Congratulations.
Oh, that's most kind of you.
It's very kind, yes.
Yeah. We've noticed the share price has gone up GBP 0.13 today, and we're at 266 from what I read before we came on this call. It's moving in the right direction, it feels, and we're getting a bit of recognition for it.
Yes. Our job is to manage the business and to make sure we're growing as fast as we can, and as consistent as we can, and share price is a factor of that. But it's nice to see some recognition there.
Yes. Thank you very much for that comment, too.
What is the value of the Hong Kong airport contract for FY 2025? I think that is quite a tricky one to-
Yes. The overall contract at the start was GBP 7 million. We had a 10% deposit paid on it. We have come into this new financial year with around GBP 6 million, I think, Simon, of the contract to run. They have started pulling the product in, but we cannot say whether it is going to be half that. We just do not know. It has gone on for several years now. But at least we have made a start. We would hope to have some of it come through in the year, but other than that, I cannot really say. Can you comment any further, Simon?
No. I think having sat through two year-ends trying to guess when the contractors might call off the product. I am just relieved that they are starting to do so in some volume now.
Exactly
But it is beyond our control, so it is not one that we can manage.
No.
I think that is it. I think that would be the pension scheme.
Did you say on the pension scheme?
No, I think we've covered the-
Okay
the last one. I think it relates to an earlier one.
Okay.
Paul, Simon, if I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this afternoon. If there are any further questions that do come through, we will make these available to you immediately after the presentation has ended, just for you to review to then add any additional responses, of course, where it is appropriate to do so. We will publish all those responses out on the platform. Paul, perhaps before, really just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company. If I could please just ask you for a few closing comments to wrap up with, that would be great.
Yes. The main comment is to thank everybody for coming on today and for listening to our presentation, for your patience, and for the great questions that have followed it. Really to conclude that we have had five years of consistent growth, mostly through self-help. We have improved the margins. We have improved the sales. We have improved the exports. We are going to continue to do that. We have moved on to fewer manufacturing sites, and we will continue. It is a continuous process.
There is not a silver bullet here. It is grinding it out, and we will continue to do that. I think the difference coming into this new financial year now is that the markets are looking to be improving, and the forecasts are indicating that from the CPA, et cetera. We would expect, really, an acceleration in performance from that background. I think that is probably all I want to say at this stage, other than again, to reemphasize the great thanks for your interest in Alumasc today.
Perfect, Paul. That is great. Thank you once again for updating investors this afternoon. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you will now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can really better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I am sure it will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team with Alumasc Group plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session, so good afternoon to you all.