Good afternoon and welcome to the Alumasc Group plc investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via 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 it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to the management team. Vijay, good afternoon, sir.
Thank you very much. To reiterate Simon Dray and my own welcome to the one just given by Investor Meet Company. Thank you, Investor Meet Company, for hosting today. We are delighted that you have all joined us to talk about Alumasc, to hear about Alumasc results to 30 June 2026. Those of you who know us and have attended these before will recognize Simon Dray, our CFO. You probably will not recognize me. I am the interim executive chair, and I am here because, as you know from our RNS at the end of August, that we terminated the employment of our CEO on that date, and I was asked by the board to step in on an interim basis. I will say more about how we are running the business, the management team that is running the business in one of our slides later.
I just wanted to reassure everybody right at the beginning that we have a very strong executive and wider management team that is running the business, and in fact, the business is doing quite well for the first 2 months of the year to date, and we will say more about that later as well. This afternoon, what we would like to cover on the next slide is just go back one slide. Thank you, Simon. Just one more. One more. We are going to introduce Alumasc because I am conscious some of you will be hearing about Alumasc for the first time. I will also give you some very high level of highlights of what happened in the year that has just gone and an overview of some of our opportunities and business, including that management structure that I have mentioned.
Simon will then come in and provide a more detailed review of our financials for the year that just went, and a bit more detail on each of our business units, our divisions. We will then talk about our strategy and what we are doing to deliver our strategy before concluding with our outlook for what is our financial year 2027 to 30 June 2027. Thank you, Simon. For those of you who do not know us, we have three divisions. One is water management, that produces very basic metal rainwater goods, so gutters and downpipes, but also includes products like fascias and soffits that go into the commercial built environment. The second division is building envelope, which is mainly supplying commercial roofing to the commercial sector, focused very much on environmental efficiency, and helping urban diversity in the urban built environment.
The third division, housebuilding products, is focused on, as it suggests, residential housing products and focused on energy efficiency in the home, airtightness, and management of ventilation. The common theme across all of our three divisions is that we produce products that are focused on environmental sustainability and meeting or exceeding the increasing level of building regulations to help combat climate change, whether that is flood risk in water management, urban biodiversity in building envelope, or energy efficiency in housebuilding products. More than 80% of our products that we make and sell meet or exceed these environmental and building regulations. So that is a bit about our division. Simon, did you want to just cover the next slide?
Thank you, Vijay. You have spoken about the strategic environmental growth markets, so I do not need to cover that. But our products are high quality, which means higher initial cost is offset by lower maintenance and longer lifespan. We do this using energy and resource-efficient materials, maximizing recycled and recyclable content, and environmental performance declarations are one way that we can demonstrate this to customers. We now have EPD certified for 34% of our revenue.
Thank you, Simon. So what happened in the year to 30 June 2026? Well, actually, the market backdrop was very challenging. As you will see from a slide we have got later, the Construction Products Association, the CPA, estimates that construction output in the U.K. is falling by 3%- 4% this year, and private housing starts declined by 12%. Our revenues went down by 6%, from GBP 113 million to GBP 107 million. But within that, there were some real bright spots. Firstly, housebuilding products. The revenue there grew by 16% compared to that 12% reduction in private housing starts compared to the previous year. In our building envelope roofing division, the revenue was level with the level we achieved in 2025, despite overall activity dropping by 3%- 4%. So both those divisions outperformed the market and have taken market share. What is their secret?
Well, their secret is innovation, making sure they develop environmentally efficient products, which is what customers demand and the regulations demand. Having great customer relationships and understanding what customers want, and then providing really fantastic service. Our housebuilding products business, Timloc, which is the brand, has next day delivery and consistently achieves 100% OTIF, i.e., 100% on time in full delivery. It is those sort of factors that have enabled those two businesses to take market share year-on-year. The disappointment was in Water Management. Overall decline of 16%, although 4%, if you exclude a large contract in Hong Kong, what we call the CLK contract in Hong Kong in the previous year. But nonetheless, disappointing, although that division does represent the biggest opportunity for us in terms of improvement, and we will say more about that later in this presentation.
As a result of all of that, our underlying profit before tax changed from GBP 14 million to GBP 10 million. However, again, a bright spot was our operating cash conversion, which was more than 100%, despite us having to invest in more inventory in the year due to the Middle East conflict, to make sure that we did not run out of inventory and stock for customers, and Simon takes a lot of credit for driving that. Simon and I also work very closely with our defined benefit pension scheme trustees, to help manage the pension scheme position in terms of their investment strategy and management of costs with their advisors. The surplus in that scheme on an accounting basis increased to almost GBP 6 million compared to GBP 5 million last year, so that is positive. The other positive is that our bank facilities, we have renewed those.
Simon has renewed those in the year, so thank you, Simon, and increased that from GBP 25 million to GBP 30 million. We also have a GBP 20 million accordion facility, which gives us plenty of firepower to go and invest in our business organically, but also to make acquisitions where we find the right ones. Our approach to this is always to only do this on a disciplined basis and only buy businesses where we can add value to them, but very importantly, that they can add value to our shareholders. While he was doing that, he also managed to reduce the margin on our borrowing facility by 20 basis points, which is some achievement in today's market. As I say, tough backdrop, disappointing in Water Management, but actually some real bright spots, so we are confident about the future.
As a result, we have held the dividend, provided our shareholders approve that, at 11.1p, the same as last year, which was a record level we set last year. Moving on to the next slide. In terms of our strategic priorities, what we want to do is outperform the market in all of our divisions. I have mentioned already that we are putting a lot of focus in helping our Water Management division do that to match what our other two divisions have been doing, both by growing volumes, but also margins by operational efficiency, and we will talk more about that later on. We will continue to invest in our well-performing businesses, and Simon will talk about some of the investments we have already made very recently in our housebuilding products division as an example.
As I said earlier, we will continue to look at acquisitions but follow that disciplined approach that I mentioned. I mentioned the leadership changes right at the outset, and there is a slide coming up to show what we are actually doing in the business. Looking forward, and we will say more about this later on as well, our June order book at the end of the financial year closed up 49% compared to a year ago. Some of that order book has started to convert into sales. As a result, the revenues for the first two months of this financial year are 5% ahead of last year.
Those of you who know us pretty well will know that we won a contract at Changi Airport in Singapore a few months ago, which we let our shareholders know about, and deliveries on that should start going out later in this calendar year. So reasonable outlook going forward. I mentioned a couple of times that I would come back to this slide. It shows how we are running the business at the moment and how all of our executive team, Simon, Gilbert, and Michael, are contributing to helping drive the business forward. Sir Gilbert Jackson, who runs the roofing or building envelope division, continues with that responsibility. He is also, however, overseeing our Covers and Drainage business, also known as Gatic and Wade, which are the brands there.
The reason Gilbert has been asked to do that is that in our roofing and envelope business, a lot of the products are specified by people like architects, designers, civil engineers, and actually, the Covers and Drainage business has a similar go-to market approach, so he can help support that business. Michael Leaf, who runs our Timloc housebuilding products business, has kindly agreed to support the Rainwater Products business unit within Water Management, what we call the AWMS, Alumasc Water Management Solutions, based near Kettering. ARP, the Rainwater Products business, which is similar to that one that we bought three years ago, based in Leicester, 30 miles away, and we have also got a small distribution business called Rainclear there. Michael has been fantastic at driving operational efficiency in the Timloc manufacturing business and is sharing that expertise, that experience, with our Rainwater Products business.
However, we have also put in place business unit MDs at these two units. As you will see on the bottom right there, in the Covers and Drainage business, a chap called Peter Blanchard, who used to work for a competitor some years ago, joined us to help drive that business forward, and he is settling in really well. We are very pleased there. In Rainwater Products, which is where the operational efficiency opportunities are greatest, we have had a chap called Mick Love, who has joined us actually this week, working closely with Michael. Just wanted to reassure everybody that the business is in good hands, being well run, and of course, there are teams within each of those three divisions who continue to drive the business forward on a day-to-day basis.
They have asked for stability, which this team is providing, and continuity, which also helps them then do their job to the best of their ability and provide a great service to our customers. So that is a bit about the team. Just going to say a couple of words before handing over to Simon on the market backdrop. There are three points really that are in the main subheadings on the left. The first one actually is best illustrated by looking at the charts on the right. This is the CPA data which I referred to earlier. Overall construction declining by 3%-4% this year. Overall U.K. private housing starts declining by 12%, or and I should say, let us be positive about it, forecast to increase next year, which I think will then give us some tailwinds.
As I say, despite those statistics, two of our divisions outperformed the market this year, which we are pleased with. We want the third one, would imagine, to do the same for next year. The second bullet, the second main point on the left though, is that the affordability and stability in the economy is going to be critical to this. A lot of this is outside the control of John Healey and the government, but they can help with that in the October budget. When I say outside the control of those individuals or the government, obviously the Middle East situation, the oil price hike, and the potential for interest rates therefore to rise in the U.K. could have an impact on both residential and the commercial market in the U.K. So we will obviously deal with that. Our job is to go and take market share from our competitors.
Two of our divisions have done that. We want the third division to start doing the same. Whatever happens there in the short to medium to the long-term structural drivers for Alumasc, the final point on the left there remains very strong because there is a bill of legislation around environmental efficiency in the built environment. Our products, more than 80%, are designed to meet or exceed those requirements, and help our customers to meet those requirements. Those of you who are familiar with TCFD, the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, know that every significant company has to report on that. Our products help customers to do that. The longer-term tailwinds for Alumasc are very positive, and we remain confident in our strategy. Simon.
Thank you, Vijay. I will take you through some financial slides before we move on to the divisions. As Vijay mentioned, our revenues declined by 6% year-on-year. A large part of that relates to the Chek Lap Kok Airport project. Excluding that, revenues were broadly flat, with a 2% decline in U.K. revenues offset by 36% growth in non-Chek Lap Kok Airport export sales, which we were pleased to see given the investments we have made in overseas technical sales resource. However, this volume reduction and a smaller mix variance has impacted margins. Like many manufacturing business, we have fairly high contribution margin. That is revenues less variable costs of sales. Gross margins were 150 basis points lower at 36.4%, and our operating margin fell from 13.7% last year to 10.5%. As a result, underlying profit before tax was GBP 10 million, compared to GBP 14.2 million last year.
The board proposes, however, to keep the final dividend level with the prior year at 7.6p, with a total distribution for the year of 11.1p, same as the prior year. We are confident that future earnings growth will quickly restore the dividend cover back to our medium-term target range of 2.5 to 3 times. On our profit bridge and income statement bridge, three things I would pull out here. Firstly, we were able to introduce some targeted sales price increases that will recover cost price increases that we saw, both raw material price increases and employee cost rises. As I mentioned before, that GBP 8.4 million, GBP 8.1 million, sorry, volume reduction was responsible for a GBP 3.6 million profit reduction, which represents a drop through a contribution margin rate of around 44%, which is fairly typical for the Alumasc Group.
And finally, we have a small adverse product mix variance, which was partially offset by some cost efficiencies, the majority of which we will benefit from next year. Our cash conversion, the ratio of operating cash generation to operating profit, was above 100%, despite some inventory investment to mitigate cost and supply issues arising from the Middle East conflict, and also the timing of some shipments into the Chek Lap Kok project around year-end, where we carried them through as trade receivables and expect to collect them in the early part of this year. Our payments into the pension scheme were GBP 800,000, compared to GBP 1.2 million last year, reflecting the reduction agreed with the trustees to GBP 700,000 per annum from September 2025. Our cash flows meant we were able to continue to invest for future growth. Capital expenditure of GBP 2.6 million was level with the prior year.
Some of the bigger ticket items were two further injection molding machines at house building product site in Timloc, in Goole, apologies, to add capacity and support product development, and a further CNC machining center at Water Management in Halstead to in-house some component manufacturing to reduce product costs and inventory levels. Our balance sheet. First point is the return on investment, despite the dip in profits, remained above our weighted average cost of capital, which we estimate is about 13%. Vijay has already spoken to the bank facility refinance, so I will not cover that one again. Final point I would like to make is our pension de-risking continued. Our accounting surplus under IAS 19 increased to GBP 5.9 million. We have two targets in mind. Firstly, the self-sufficient target, where that is the point the pension scheme is able to manage itself without further contributions from the company.
There is probably about a GBP 1 million to GBP 2 million deficit against that funding target, and we expect to get there over the next few years. However, we also have one eye on our buyout target, which at the end of June would probably require a further contribution of around somewhere around GBP 7 million to GBP 9 million. The buyout represents the amount that we would need to pay to an insurance company to take the scheme off our hands and remains the gold standard for pension scheme de-risking. We may, once we reach the self-sufficiency target, keep some further contributions going into the scheme to take advantage of any opportunities to fully or partially buy parts of the scheme out. Turning to the divisional review. Water Management was the chief disappointment this year. Revenues declined by GBP 8.9 million, GBP 6.8 million of which related to the year-on-year drop in contribution from Chek Lap Kok Airport.
Excluding that, the decline was 4%, with planning constraints, affordability concerns, and fragile confidence levels pushing U.K. revenues 6% lower. This was partially offset by an increase in non-Chek Lap Kok exports following the investments made in local technical sales resource. Underlying divisional operating profit fell to GBP 2.5 million, reflecting the lower volumes and the division's high operational gearing. The division is focused on self-help. Actions were taken to reduce costs with a further GBP 900,000 benefit expected to hit the bottom line next year, FY 2027. We are also focusing on improving inquiry to order conversion rates and lead times. Supply chain rationalization opportunities are underway, and we are looking to optimize manufacturing processes, particularly between our rainwater product sites in Leicester and Kettering. However, the order book at the end of August was 68% higher than a year ago, providing some early signs of improvement.
This includes the GBP 2 million Changi Airport project, won last year, where deliveries are expected to start in the first half of FY 2027. Subsequent phases of that project are potentially worth a further GBP 10 million to GBP 15 million when they come to tender. Our building envelope division suffered from planning delays in the early part of the year, and in the second half, the Middle East conflict, which created a very volatile supply and demand environment. They navigated this very well with revenues level with last year's record and margins only slightly down on some investment in product certifications and support. This is testament to the strong customer relationships they've developed with architects, designers, contractors, and increasingly with blue-chip landlords who wish to have a preferred supplier to manage the refurbishment programs on their property portfolios.
It also reflects a growing interest in their sustainability-led product offering. The building envelope division's order book at August 2026 was 39% higher than a year ago. While we continue to see some volatility in demand, there were some signs of improving rates of conversion of pipeline into order book and order book into revenue. Our standout performer in the year was the housebuilding products business, Timloc. Revenues were 16% higher than FY 2025 against the backdrop of low housebuilder volumes. Since COVID, Timloc's achieved a remarkable average annual revenue growth rate of 11% per annum, despite an average 2% annual decline in U.K. housebuilding starts. It's quite an amazing record. This is founded on customer service. They have guaranteed next-day delivery, and low carriage paid order values with 100% on-time in-full delivery, supported by a relentless focus on efficiency and new product development.
Their latest launch, the Loftite loft door is shown on the right-hand side. It's a good example of their innovation, with improved air tightness and insulation and a patent-pending installation bracket designed for one-person installation. We've added further manufacturing capacity and capability in the year, and Timloc's very well placed to benefit from any recovery in housebuilding volumes. I'll pass back to Vijay, the strategy.
Thank you very much, Simon. For those of you who know us, you'll know that we have four pillars to our strategy. For those of you who are new to this, I thought it would be useful just to run through this. We try and keep things simple in the business. The first one is we continue to be focused on environmentally sustainable building products, because that's where all the legislation is, that's where all the expectations from construction companies and their customers are, including in housebuilding. So we will continue to target new product development or enhance product development on that part of the market. As I mentioned earlier, more than 80% of our products are environmentally sustainable or meet or exceed building regulation standards.
This commitment, this delivery to this commitment has been recognized by the London Stock Exchange, awarding Alumasc the Green Economy Mark, which is only awarded to companies where the majority of their revenues come from sustainable activities. Second part of our strategy, the second pillar is accelerating organic sales growth, trying to outperform the market. As I've said, two of our divisions have done that. We want the third division to do that, which is why we've put quite a lot of focus on that division this year with extra support from the executive and management team. In that division, water management, we have some great brands.
I've mentioned Gatic and Wade earlier, but also within our rainwater products business, some great brands that we just need to make more of by making sure that our operation efficiency allows us to optimize our opportunity in that market. Of course, overseas as well. You've heard us talk about Paul Hooper and Simon Dray talked about our track record overseas, including Hong Kong and latterly Singapore, but also we have been growing in other markets as well. If you take out the Hong Kong airport contract, our revenues up from exports actually grew by 36% in the last year, showing that the investments we've made in overseas technical sales resource do bear fruit. We've done even more of that towards the end of last year and are driving for that growth as well. The third part of our strategy is to drive margin improvement.
We were disappointed by the 10.5% we achieved, largely because of the performance in order management in the year just gone. The reasons for that have been explained by Simon. With the effort we're putting into improving performance there, and trying to realize the acquisition synergies between ARP, the Leicester business and the Kettering business that we already had, we would hope to improve margins in this year and remain committed to our medium-term target of 15%-20% operating margin. The fourth aspect of our strategy is to continue to invest in the business. Whether that's in new product development, strong technical resource, overseas capability, or new CapEx, like the ones that Simon touched on earlier, then we'll continue to do that, to provide capacity to grow our business, particularly when markets recover.
We will also look at selective bolt-on acquisitions, where they make sense for the business. There is a question, and I'll deal with it now, in the chats that says, "Would it be sensible to pursue acquisitions under the current executive leadership team, or do we need to wait until we've got a different position?" The answer is we will continue to look at acquisitions and undertake acquisitions because if they make strategic sense, and the board as a whole will review that, then actually execution of the transaction or any acquisition and integrating is the responsibility always of the operational teams. The operational teams haven't changed. In fact, if anything, they've been strengthened by what I described earlier. Hopefully that deals with that question. Yes, Simon, I think if I go back to you to talk about the next section.
No problem, Vijay. I think we've covered the first couple of points on here, but our own greenhouse gas emissions, you see the chart on the right there, they ticked up ever so slightly this year. These are scopes 1, 2 and business travel. So the emissions we cause directly ourselves ticked up very slightly, but they still represent an over 70% reduction since we started measuring them in FY 2018. We have now calculated our full emission, or our full carbon footprint across what are termed scopes 1, 2 and 3. That is everything from extraction of our raw materials through to delivery at site for our customers to use. As you might imagine, for a business like ours, the majority of those relate to the carbon embodied in the raw materials and when we use them.
Also our transport, freight, logistics operations and we will be engaging with our suppliers to reduce those going forwards. We have Science Based Targets in place now for reducing the emissions, and we will be getting those, or in the process of getting those accredited by the Science Based Targets initiative.
Thanks, Simon. This next slide, again, we are now going through the strategic pillars. This is the second pillar, bit more detail on that, which is all about organic revenue growth. As I mentioned earlier, we exited the year with an order book 49% higher than same time last year, which is obviously quite encouraging. That included the Changi Airport contract. Actually it is probably instructive to look at the charts on the right there, which show that in recent years our order book has been dominated by that CLK or Hong Kong contract. While that is now tailing off, our order book with other customers is actually the highest it has been for a number of years. So that is quite positive because while we will never turn away those big orders, in terms of the quality of revenues, it is encouraging to have the sort of order book we have now got.
At the bottom left, what that is showing, and the bottom right, is that order book we had at 30 June 2026 has actually converted into sales. So, we had 15 and a half of orders, and this only relates to Water Management and the Building Envelope business, by the way, because Timloc house building folks, their next stage delivery, so they do not have an order book. That 15 and a half veneer converted into sales. I mean, we obviously had new orders in the period, so 18 and a half were shipped in the first two months, but then the order book was then added to by 18.6, which meant that by the end of August, it was back at the same level as at June. But that is 56% higher than at August 2025.
As a result, revenues for the first two months of the year have been 5% higher year-on-year, which in the current difficult market, we are pretty pleased with. Not complacent because we have got another 10 months to go. However, our teams deserve some thanks for what they are doing and how they are responding.
Yes. A snapshot of our opportunity pipeline at the end of June. We do monitor this. I will just point out a couple of points on it. Firstly, over 75% is Alumasc specification product. So, we are right in the game for when these come to tender. Dominated by the U.K. because it is our biggest market, but we have a good split within that, private and public opportunities, including ones supported by rise in government spend, like defense, like prisons, like transport infrastructure and, to an extent, data centers. So we have got a good spread of opportunity within the U.K. The other point I would make is, increasingly we are getting more and more overseas opportunities. That overseas pipeline is far, far stronger than it would have been three, four, five years ago.
The local technical sales resources is helping to build that, get the specifications recognized in territories, especially territories where Alumasc has not been traditionally strong. In the past, Asia and the Middle East would have dominated the chart, but we are seeing some good opportunities in the Americas, Africa and Europe as well, where we just added at the end of FY 2026 a further technical sales head. So, we look forward to bringing some of those into the order book soon, but also to keeping the pipeline stocked up with new opportunities as they come. The margin improvement slide really is just to illustrate the dilutive effects of price passing through cost increases without, it is marginally dilutive to our operating margin, and also the mix variance dragged margins down a bit, but particularly the volume side illustrating our operational gearing.
We do expect improvement in FY 2027 centered on the water management division, both volume recovery and the efficiency measures taken over the second half of FY 2026, but also in that FY 2027 timescale, some rationalization benefits from the supply chain. We are seeing some encouraging early signs, and the board does reaffirm its medium-term target range of 15%-20% operating margin. I think we have covered most of the investment slide already. I would just say, referencing M&A opportunities, we do continue to review them. We are disciplined. The ability to add value post-acquisition is paramount. They need to be complementary products, services, customers. They particularly need to align with our structural growth drivers. We quite like those, and we see them as a big contributor to accelerating our revenue growth. We need to be confident that there are available and addressable synergies coming from the acquisition.
As we mentioned before, we have significant headroom to accelerate strategic delivery through targeted investments. Back to Vijay for the outlook.
Yeah. Thank you, Simon. This is our final slide, which is really to talk about the future, the outlook. As I mentioned, we've had a positive start to the year, notwithstanding the difficult market. However, we mustn't get carried away. There's a long way to go in the year still, although we are encouraged by also the strong order intake and the order book being 56% higher than it was a year ago, and also that we should start seeing some of the product going out to the Changi Airport in Singapore later this calendar year. As a result of the actions being taken in our water management division, we would hope and expect to improve the operating margin for the year as a whole.
Longer term, nothing has changed here, which is that the tailwinds are very strong for Alumasc because of our focus on environmental and products that meet regulations or exceed regulations. There remains a chronic undersupply of new housing in the U.K. As we all know, the government appears to be committed. Angela Rayner indicated the other day that they still think they could meet the 1.5 million target for this parliament, and we really hope they do, even if they don't, even if they get a high percentage towards that will be helpful to our business. More generally, the commercial building stock, whether that's hospitals, schools, prisons, they are aging. So there's a big opportunity once the spending opens on those, but also new areas. Simon mentioned data centers earlier.
We already supply data centers in one of our divisions, so we have some track record there, which we can then build upon. Thirdly, despite the challenging circumstances for our industry in the last few years, we've continued to invest, as we've shown, in our capabilities and our capacity, including overseas, and therefore, when demand as a whole does recover, and surely it will, then the future for Alumasc is pretty positive. I'd like to thank our leadership team who continue to provide stability and continuity to our business and are now really focused on helping all of our divisions grow. As a result of all of that, the board remains optimistic that we can generate further growth in shareholder value in the time ahead. So thank you very much for joining, and I think that brings to the end our presentation.
Shall I hand back over to you, Simon?
Sure. I think that we will now happily take Q&A.
That's great. Thank you very much for your presentation this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab situated on the top right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via Investor Dashboard. Guys, as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. Simon, could I please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I will pick up from you at the end.
Thank you very much. I will just read them from the top, Vijay, and we will decide who is best placed to answer them. Firstly, have there been any developments with the new Dubai Airport?
Yeah. We are pitching for some work there. We have actually had a change in our sales team over there, and actually, that is helping us. The revised team is focused on that, including Peter Blanchard, the MD that I mentioned earlier. With these contracts, you can never win them straight away. You have to put some investments in the relationship and understanding what the customer is looking for. But we, as Simon showed on that roadmap earlier on, we are investing in this area.
Yeah. Their team is based out of Dubai, so they are very close to that, as well as port opportunities where they are expanding ports in the U.A.E. and also the Saudi airport is another one that we are staying very close to. As things come to tender, we will be right there. Another one for perhaps you, Vijay. Can the board pursue acquisitions responsibly,
Yeah
while operating under interim executive leadership, or will transactions be deferred until a permanent CEO is appointed?
Yeah. Sorry, this is the one I was trying to cover earlier on.
Okay
because it didn't pop up on the screen while we were talking. Absolutely, strategically what happens is that the board looks at acquisitions, the board as a whole rather than one individual. If the board decides that it is something we want to do, it authorizes that to happen. Then the execution of the transaction, and then importantly, the execution of the integration of any acquisition is very much left to the operating team. Nothing has changed on the operating teams. As I said earlier, if anything, they're much more focused on issues that, given the extra resources we've put in. In a word, no, that doesn't change our acquisition capability nor appetite.
Thank you. Is the revenue from new products rising and can you quantify that? If so, do you want me to cover this one?
Yes. Do you want to cover that one?
Yes. It has risen. It's not a particularly useful indicator, the percentage of revenues from new products. It's very backward-looking. Operationally, I prefer to focus on the pipeline of what's coming through rather than what's already happened. We do calculate a percentage of revenues from new products launched in the last three years, and it is ahead year-on-year. How should we think about the margin profile of overseas projects relative to the U.K. business? I'll happily do that one. Generally speaking, the overseas work in total is slightly lower margin than the U.K. work because they tend to be bigger projects. The smaller you get, the closer to U.K. margins the projects are. At the other extreme, for things like the CLK work, that is going to be at the lower end of the sort of margins we charge as an organization.
I don't want to go into too much detail by project and by customer, but the bigger the project, generally the lower the margin. Do you see opportunities for consolidation within housebuilding products with the current market challenges?
Yeah. Although we've got a very successful business there's actually room for growth rather than consolidation. I think there may be some, it's not really my business to say anything about the housebuilders. Everybody knows about Barratt and Redrow, that they merged not long ago, have released their results this morning. I think in terms of the products we supply, there's probably room for growth and if the right type of deal comes along, yes, we will look at it. But actually there's plenty to go for even as we are, as a standalone business. Because as we've said, we've got a great business, very good at spotting opportunities to develop new products and very good at servicing customers. Hopefully that helps.
With revenues up 5% in the first two months of FY 2027 and the order book 56% ahead, which part of the business is showing the strongest momentum and what gives you the greatest confidence about the year ahead?
Do you want me to pick it up? Would you mind?
Yeah, I'll happily do that. Yes. Overall group revenues are up 5%. Actually, the strongest growth year-on-year is within water management, pleasingly. That's why we're confident of seeing some margin progression within the business as volumes recover within that business. But all of the divisions are ahead year-on-year, pleasingly. The order book, recognizing there's no order book within housebuilding products because it ships that day what it receives that day and what orders it receives. But the order books are ahead in building envelope and water management. More strongly ahead in water management than building envelope, but they're both ahead. They're going well at the minute. Are there any plans or aspirations to move to the main market? If so, what timelines are you looking at?
Yeah, I think the short answer is no. We're really focused on just running our business. We moved, for those of you who know Alumasc, we moved from the main market to the AIM market, just before I joined the board about seven or eight years ago. So I think we'd rather just focus on running the business and, hopefully, we'll get recognition for that and the investors will show confidence in us.
Airport drainage, is there a global common design spec? Can you supply to any effectively around the world?
We can supply to any, but surprisingly, there isn't a global just a single standard, which is why we're putting in place feet on the ground in some of these countries that we've not previously been in. But the one good thing about Gatic and Wade, Gatic is a 100-year-old brand, very well respected. We just need to remind people who may have forgotten about us that we're still here and that we've got fantastic products there. So, in one sense, this is a great question because could we do more? We feel we can, and that's why we're putting quite a bit of focus on it. What shifts are you working in your manufacturing facilities, and what spare capacity is available? It's probably easier to talk to the spare capacity than the shifts because they will vary-
They might
factory to factory and sometimes time of year to time of year. So there's plenty of spare capacity. Building Envelope is in essence, it's a warehousing. It doesn't do any manufacturing. It buys in product, designs roof specs, and then ships the product out in accordance with those specs. So it has a lot of spare capacity and at some point, we might need to put more warehousing space in, but we're a long way from having to do that yet. Water management. Most are doing a shift and a half, I think, or possibly two shifts. So there is more to do there and also changing the manufacturing process within the Rainwater box division that I touched on there will help to drive capacity without necessarily driving an increase in shift patterns or investment in equipment. And the house building products business, Timloc, has got plenty of capacity.
It is within injection molding, the easiest way to add capacity. They're only working, they change a shift pattern. But the easiest way to do it is to add more tooling. So if there are, for example, there's a 6 impression tool, you can quite easily scale that up to a 12 impression tool and double capacity without any large investments in labor or capital expenditure. So there's plenty of headroom within all the businesses to grow.
That's great. Thank you for answering all those questions you carry from investors. And of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and will publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, Vijay, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?
Thank you very much. Firstly, I will repeat my thanks to Investor Meet Company for hosting this session. Much appreciated. Thank you more equally importantly, very importantly, to all of you who have taken your time today to come and join us. For those who are shareholders, we appreciate your support. For those who aren't, we hope that you will decide to become shareholders. A final thank you on all of your behalf is to our managements and employees who, in very difficult circumstances, market backdrop, have produced what is a resilient performance. On your behalf, in case any of those are on the call, I would like to also thank them. Thank you all very much. Have a good afternoon.
That's great. Thank you for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session, as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete and I am sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team, good afternoon.