Welcome, everybody. Franchise Brands results for the year to December 25, 2024 , those were our first mistake, right? Just introducing myself, Executive Chairman, Peter Molloy, CEO. We'll talk about that a little bit more in a second. Andrew Mallows, newly appointed as a permanent CFO, and Beth Peace, just appointed as Group Finance Director. We'll skip the introduction. Just very briefly, because the way we're going to structure today is I'm going to do a brief introduction and the conclusion, and Peter is going to introduce himself and then go through each of the businesses from an operational point of view, and then Andrew and Beth will do the financials. Really, just to remind you, Franchise Brands focused on developing and growing organically franchise businesses. We are described as a buy and build, but our key strength is building franchise businesses organically.
We look for market-leading franchise businesses. We do not really do start-ups. What our key strength is, is taking franchise businesses from good to great. We develop those really in conjunction with our franchisees. We really do believe that a franchise business is a partnership between corporate and the franchisees, because fundamentally, if they grow, we grow based on a royalty model. We are doing everything in our power to help those franchisees grow their business. To some extent, when they do not want to or they are ready to move on, we help them do that and recruit new franchisees and fresh blood into our various systems. We are now seven different systems in 10 countries, so we have a wide international reach, which gives us very good diversification across the range of businesses we have. 2024 was a challenging year.
We're blessed with very resilient underlying businesses where the demand for our services is largely emergency-driven. If drains block or plumbing bursts or hydraulic hoses break, they must be repaired there and then. They don't have to be repaired by us. Our job on behalf of the franchisees is to make sure that those customers in those emergency situations come to us. Those businesses are supported by more planned maintenance work where demand is more driven by the state of the economy. To give you an example, if a drain blocks, we can unblock it. The reason it might have blocked is it might have collapsed or it might have root ingress in the root. Really, what you've got to do to stop that drain blocking in the future is repair it.
What tends to happen when the economic situation is a bit quieter is people do not do the underlying repair. They say, "Well, you have unblocked it. It is still running two weeks later. I am not going to spend the several thousand GBP it is going to cost to do the permanent repair." They know it will block again in a month or two or three time, and they will get us in then to do another emergency repair. However, eventually, they will have to repair it. What we have to make sure is that when that larger planned job comes along, we are well placed to do that. Macroeconomic conditions this year have impacted our results, but nevertheless, I think the performance has been resilient. Not all our markets have suffered the macroeconomic headwinds. The U.S., in particular, was very strong last year.
That business in the U.S. Filta suffered massively during COVID because the hospitality sector was shut down. Since then, it's really been booming. Underlying sales in Filta were very strong last year. Small headwind with the price of used oil, which Peter will come on to talk about later. In the European markets, again, demand somewhat affected by the lack of demand for planned services. A key part of the Pirtek business, particularly in Germany, is this planned maintenance. Again, people marginally cutting back on that and relying more on the emergency repair. We took a lot of actions in 2024 to make sure our overhead structure was right-sized. We have taken out a certain amount of duplicated overhead and streamlined the business.
Again, Peter will talk more about our One Franchise Brands initiative, where a lot more work is going to be done on that this year. We remain a very cash-generative business. All franchise businesses are cash-generative because the underlying CapEx is undertaken by the franchisees. Franchise Brands, even though we have a number of DLO direct labor businesses, we're highly cash-generative. Debt was, again, reduced significantly in 2024, such that we finished the year with leverage below two times. I will come on to talk about how we're going to do this year, but we should be less than one and a half times by the end of 2025. That is it from me at the start, I think, because I want to introduce you to Peter and have Peter talk about the business.
I'll hand over to Peter now, who will introduce himself and then undertake the operational review. Thanks, Peter.
Thank you, Stephen. Good morning, everybody. Was ever Stephen pinched about three or four of my only good lines?
Oh, I've forgotten a slide.
I'll come back to that later. Just really to introduce myself and give you a bit of my background, I think I've met most people previously. I've effectively been in franchising for about 23 years. Joined Metro Rod in 2002. When Metro Rod, I joined the business, sales were about GBP 9 million. I think this year they'll be just shy of GBP 80 million. Now, that's clearly not all down to me. That's down to a lot of good people and a lot of good franchisees working alongside me over that period. When Franchise Brands bought us, I became Managing Director of Metro Rod, then subsequently CEO of the Water and Waste Division, which was Willow Pumps, Filta UK, and Metro Rod. In October last year, I was promoted to Group CEO.
As Stephen often says to me, I was delighted to accept that rapidly and take it as a great opportunity. Just a couple of things in terms of what I've tried to do. As I say, I was promoted in October. The first thing I sort of did was work out how we could connect the group much more than we'd been previously. This is where the concept of One Franchise Brands came from. It was sort of a tried and tested model in terms of One Metro or One Filta or whatever. It's not completely revolutionary, but it's worked for me in the previous guys. Effectively, what it is, is people often talk about integration with systems and processes and all the rest of it. That's absolutely fact.
That's the journey we're going on, and we can see all the benefits coming into the future. I'm much more about in terms of connecting the people. How do we take the expertise from the people across the group to be able to learn what we're doing best in one part of it, translate that into another part, and get the advantages without reinventing the wheel? We're doing lots of things really well across the group. That led me then to say, what does our management board need to look like? I think it's fair to say that the management board pre-October, be careful how I say this, was probably not that effective. What I wanted to do was to make that a much more dynamic environment with people that will make things happen. Equally, much more of an international flavor as well.
Not all the best ideas come from the U.K. The management board, and there is an appendix, I think, that shows the management board in the doc, has much more of an international flavor. That has really enabled us to sort of connect the group very rapidly. What I am really pleased with now is the dialogue and the cooperation going on internally in each of the divisions, but cross divisions as well. Just touching on the opportunities, all of our businesses have got a relatively modest share of pretty big markets and fragmented markets at that. We use the maximum potential model that shows us the realizable value of a particular market. We have still got a long way to go. That is the exciting bit in terms of how do we go and unlock those opportunities.
I'll talk about one or two things as we go through this. Fundamentally, delivering for our stakeholders. I go back a little bit in terms of One Franchise Brands. There are only three key things that we really want to do, which is increase our sales, spend our money smartly, and collect our cash. If we do all of those three things, then I think we can add shareholder value. I think we can help our franchisees grow their businesses profitably. I want an environment where the people that work for us are proud to work for the organization, have a sense of purpose. I want to deliver great service to our customers. Because if we do not do that, nothing else flows from that, and we do not keep any of our customers. That is just a brief introduction as to where I am.
I want to take you through an overview of Franchise Brands. I think the slide is fairly self-explanatory. Who are we? Stephen's already talked about this in terms of seven brands across 10 countries. We are a business of scale, GBP 400 million plus of system sales, doing almost 1 million jobs across 65,000 business customers. That's not a small business. That's a business of scale. I think one of the other things in that is that within our brands, we've got brands that are highly regarded and well recognized in each of the markets that we operate in. Again, our focus is building franchise businesses. We're not a franchise audit. It's all envious of our franchisees and their development. If they're growing, if they're making more profit, then guess what, so are we. Yeah.
That is why in the majority of the countries now, our head offices are no longer head offices, they are support centers. Our job is to support our franchisees to grow, because unless they are delivering the work on the ground, then we have no business. How do we grow? I touched on the maximum potential model. In isolation, that is just a dumb document. What we have to do is do something with it. We still identify the opportunities, doing the best of the best, and make sure we can share that across the franchise communities, but importantly, again, across the group. Just going through briefly, Andrew and Beth will do a bit more on the financial highlights later on in the presentation. I think the first thing to say is that all of these numbers are record numbers for the group.
If you look at the chart up there, everything's going in the right direction. Is it going as fast as we would like it to do? Probably not. Against a backdrop of really challenging markets, probably with the exception of the U.S., I'm pretty pleased that the majority of our businesses produce record numbers. System sales growing by 20% to GBP 418 million and generating GBP 35.1 million of adjusted EBITDA. Again, one of the really pleasing things is, and I'm sure Andrew will be pleased with this, is the adjusted net debt reducing by GBP 9.6 million. I think, Stephen, you'll talk later about what we're going to do in terms of capital allocation. Mrs. Hemsley will be delighted with a 9% increase in the dividend. All in all, against a backdrop, as I say, of challenging markets.
I said at the Capital Markets Day, I don't want to get defensive about the markets. I want us to control what we can control. I can't ignore the fact that it's been tough, but I am really pleased with the performance of each of the businesses in the last 12 months. You've probably seen this slide before, but I think one of the things that's important in this slide is really we talk about resilience and the resilience in the markets that we're in. We've also got geographical resilience. If you look at the split in terms of EBITDA across the group, 15% coming from North America, which is a fairly buoyant market at the moment, 58% from the U.K., and 27% from Europe. Our overall ambition is to get that to a third, a third, a third.
I think that geographical spread helps us in terms of the market that we operate in. As you can see, we've got four key divisions. Pirtek, the most recent acquisition, is now the largest part of the group at EBITDA of just under GBP 20 million. Water and Waste made up of Willow Pumps, Metro Rod, Metro Plumb. I should know this off the top of my head. I used to run it. And Filta UK. Beth will talk in much more detail about that in a few minutes. Filta International, a little bit of business in Europe, but primarily in North America. B2C, how the business started. I think back in the day, I can't remember the 2016, I think it was. Sorry?
2008.
2008? Good Lord. Yeah. That's how the business was formulated. Without Stephen doing what they did with Julia at that point in time, we wouldn't be still here today as a Franchise Brands business. That just gives you a quick overview in terms of how the business is built up. Just talking a little bit in more detail about Pirtek, it's mainly a franchise business in our major markets. In France and in Sweden, that's DLO at the moment. They're embryonic businesses and the plan there is to expand those to get them to a franchise business. There is good demand for our reactive essential services, although there has been a slowdown in the project work and the discretionary spend. It's important to remember that project work will need to be done. At some point in time, those hoses will need to be replaced.
They would need to be checked. It's more of a deferred income as opposed to lost. The really key impact with that for us is making sure that we stay close to our customers. I look at the other markets where in construction, for example, or in plant hire, the demand is depressed at the moment. What it does, it illustrates the need to reduce our sector dependency. We talked at the CMD about saying, it's a cyclical business in terms of construction, plant hire, etc. That's true. If we expand our market sectors into marine, pharmaceutical, etc., and we retain those construction customers, as that market comes back and we've already developed into these other sectors, we're in a really strong position. The really important thing for the businesses is to stay really close to those customers as that comes back.
Our retention rate is pretty strong, and we've got to maintain that. I think the other thing within Pirtek and one of the things that I've been really pleased with since October is the better integration into the group. The involvement from Pirtek in certainly some of the working partners that we've got, possibly a change of mindset in terms of, dare I say, getting with the Franchise Brands mentality, which is to try things. If it doesn't work, fail fast. We are certainly seeing more of that energy coming through at the moment. In terms of the financial results, and I'll talk about the pro forma numbers because I think they're a better comparison. System sales grew by 2% to a record GBP 183.5 million, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA of just under GBP 20 million, with an increase of 8%.
Although you can see on here the gross margin reduced, it was compensated for two reasons, really. A reduction in the admin expenses of 9% and improved performance in both Sweden and France, eliminating some of the losses in those two countries. Overall, resulting in an increase in the adjusted EBITDA to system sales of 10.9% compared to the pro forma of 10.2%. Again, I'm going to repeat myself a little bit. From my perspective, in the markets that we're operating, that's a pretty strong result. It gives me confidence that we've got a business that's well regarded, brand that's well regarded, and management that can take the business forward. The next slide just talks about where we really make our sales.
What you can see here is there are three key markets: the U.K., Germany, and Austria, and Benelux and smaller markets in terms of France and Sweden. In the U.K., 45% of the system sales come from the U.K., Germany, 37%, Benelux 13%, and, as I say, a small proportion, 5% across France and Sweden. I touched on the fact that the French and Swedish businesses are DLOs. They create a challenge for us in terms of a fixed cost on a DLO basis. We have not got the same fluidity and flexibility that we have in a franchise model. All of the businesses grew their sales on a pro forma basis, with the exception of Sweden. Sweden is a small business, but with big ambitions. We have great market opportunity there. It is embryonic. I think the management team there are really good.
I think the opportunities, as we start to invest and help them in sales, I think we can rapidly change that business. I think the other point really to make on this slide is Benelux. If you look at the 8% increase in system sales at Benelux, they were the early adopters of change. They were the early adopters that looked at different market sectors. They were the early adopters of changing the sales emphasis, early adopters in terms of integrating systems and getting data to drive them in the right direction. We are taking a lot of lessons out of the Benelux that we can take right the way across Europe. It is a proven concept that actually works for us. Stephen did say I was going to do all of this, but rank as its privilege.
I'm going to ask Beth to just do the Water and Waste division, if you don't mind, Beth.
Perfect. Thanks, Peter. Looking at the Water and Waste division, we had a good year in 2024. We focused on our primary objective of diversifying our revenue across the group. This was across all businesses, particularly looking at Filta. We continued to focus on our expansion of pumps and tankers. Tanker sales grew by 10% last year to a record-breaking GBP 13.5 million. This helped drive up the average order value in the team or in the business. This also was driven up through our growth of local sales, which grew faster than our national. Local and regional sales are a really attractive proposition for us. They require less administrative overhead for us as a franchisor. Also, from a franchisee's perspective, the sites that we visit are usually more densely populated.
There is less travel time, there is less downtime, and therefore it is a more profitable revenue for them as well. This was really encouraging. We saw that as well in our Metro Plumb area, where we moved into more profitable revenue streams. We focused last year on air source heat pumps and gas. That was a real big driver for us to move into different markets, as Peter already mentioned, in different sectors, away from our dependency on these low-value insurance work. Again, these are really beneficial to both us and the franchisees because they have a higher average order value, but they have a higher lifetime value as well. You get the installation, but then you also get the continued service throughout the life of that asset. That was really positive.
We also continued to move to franchising, and this helped accelerate the growth in Metro Plumb, which was up at 16% last year. We sold off a couple of our DLO operations there, our territories, and we expanded our coverage from a franchise business as well. That was really positive. Looking at Willow and Filta, again, a very similar story. Willow, we continue to drive our new revenue stream of special projects. That went from a zero base in 2023 to over GBP 1 million of system sales in 2024. This is a really capital-light revenue stream for us. We are using an established supply chain and, again, a really profitable area that we are going down. We are also between Willow and Filta driving the integration and looking to optimize the service delivery.
All of the FOG work previously done in Willow is now done in Filta, and all of the pump work previously done in Filta is now done in Willow. This not only is the most efficient service delivery for us, but what it also does is it allows us to upsell the services or the more specialized services that Willow can offer in pumps to these customers and vice versa for Filta. That is continuing down our integration route. For Filta, that was a big part of 2024. We moved much more to a franchising model in Filta. Now 100% of the FOG service work is delivered by our franchisees. We have now moved the transactional finance element of Filta to our shared service center in Macclesfield. This was done in Q4.
It has allowed us to really optimize that service delivery and reduce that administrative burden. You can see this in the numbers. System sales grew by 3%. Our statutory revenue fell by 2%, and this is purely due to the selling of our corporately owned franchises. Previously, that revenue was 100% DLO revenue, and it has now moved to the MSF basis on a net recognition. This was then offset by a significant reduction in our cost of sales, again, coming through that franchising element and driving those longer-term benefits that we know franchising will bring. The administrative expenses rose slightly, and that is simply because the cost saving and the efficiency measures that we put in came through in Q4. We are expecting to see an annualized impact of that in 2025.
Overall, our adjusted EBITDA grew by 2% last year across the Water and Waste division. I'll hand back over to you now, Peter.
Thank you. Currently, the jewel in the crown, Filta International, as I said earlier, which incorporates the Filta businesses in North America, Canada, and Europe, a small piece in Europe. As you can see from the chart, system sales increased by 8% to GBP 94.5 million and 12% in local currency. As we know, part of the business in Filta is used cooking oil. If we exclude the used cooking oil and we look at the underlying sales, they increased by 14% and 17% in local currency, which is a really creditable performance. One of the keys to this is the strategic growth initiative that the guys introduced probably now 18 months ago, Filta Max. Filta Max is really looking at the 50 metros and how we can best leverage the sales in those metros.
That's swapping franchise in, swapping franchise in and out to get the best result that we can. I think, and I've spoken to the guys, I think we've still got more opportunities. We've got more opportunities in some vacant territories in North America as well, which I think can accelerate our sales. Again, about, I think it's probably two years ago now, we started going down the royalty model route. 25% of the franchisees now are on the royalty model. I think that accounts for 50% of the system sales currently. That will continue to roll out as we go through the next couple of years as we get to renewals with some of the franchisees. Just on the used cooking oil, we saw a 23% reduction in price from 2023 to 2024, but a 15% increase in the volume collected.
That's a great example of controlling the controllables. There's not a lot we can do about the used cooking oil price, but what we can control is the volume and penetration into our customers. As used cooking oil accounts for 15% of the system sales, as we expand our range of services, particularly into Filta Clean, our dependency on the used cooking oil price starts to reduce. With the same strategy, slightly different, but expanding our range of services to make sure that we're even more resilient than we have been in the past. Just quickly in terms of the results, system sales increased to $97.8 million by 8%, and $94.5 million of that comes from the U.S.
Although the chart shows on here a 7% increase in admin costs, actually we invested quite a bit of money in the U.S. by getting a new COO, John Michael, who was an ex, but he still is a franchisee. We brought him into the franchisor part of the business to try and accelerate our development and take the opportunities that we can see in front of us. The overall increase was 14%, but offset equally by some savings in the EU in terms of their costs. Adjusted EBITDA fell primarily as a result of the price movement in used cooking oil, but a super business that has performed really well in the last 12 months.
I think the only other thing to add to that is that the European business, we will probably master franchise that within the next few months, hopefully by the end of the year, which allows management then to focus on our core businesses. Finally, the B2C division. It's a tough market in terms of franchise recruitment at the level that B2C operate at. As a result of having 29 fewer franchisees in the system, system sales reduced marginally by 1%. Again, with the GP impact of 3% of the impact of lower recruitment, as we find it more difficult to get recruits into the business. The result partially offset by good cost control, resulting in, I think, a pretty creditable GBP 2.2 million return at EBITDA level. Just to wrap up my section, just to give you a flavor as to what we're trying to achieve.
If you look at here, it says a truly connected group operating under shared values, common systems and platforms deployed locally. As I said at the CMD, it's effectively marketing speak. What does it really mean? What it really means is that we start to work more smartly. We start to connect the business and leverage our relationships with our customers. One of the things that we're accelerating at the moment is a group-wide CRM that I think will assist us doing that. Reducing duplication across the group. That process is ongoing as we speak. Talking about what can be done centrally and locally. Not all things make sense to be done centrally. Marketing, for example, needs to be done locally, in my opinion. I think some of the finance functions we can do centrally and do that much more efficiently.
Then maximize those synergies as we standardize our businesses. Sorry, standardize our processes, but recognizing again that one size doesn't fit all. For example, the pricing system in Germany for Pirtek is different than that of the U.K. That is a market-driven requirement as opposed to our requirement. We just have to be conscious of that. Preserving all the benefits of those local businesses as well. The brand equity of our local business is really valuable. We have no intention of losing that. We will never be Franchise Brands Pirtek, for example. We will be retaining those names. My favorite question with all of the things that we do is, so what? Fundamentally, all of this has to lead to really the bottom three icons. We have to enhance our sales. I think we have opportunities to do that.
I talked a lot about diversifying into different market sectors. We're pushing as hard as we can in terms of cross-selling. The CRM is being accelerated so we can take advantage of that. We've got to create an efficient overhead structure. We've got to reduce some duplication. We've got to become more efficient in that area. Ultimately, driving the operational gearing for the business. All of the strategies that we've got effectively end up on the bottom three icons. Thank you for listening. I want to hand over to Andrew, who will take you through a financial review.
Thank you. Oh, Beth as well. Apologies.
Beth, I'll hand over to you. For a certain privilege, and we'll be offsetting some of this to Beth. There we go.
I think we've discussed system sales, and we understand what has happened. Effectively, 2024 was a flat year, but grew by GBP 5 million in adjusted EBITDA level as we integrated the full 12 months of Pirtek. Pirtek brought a significant number of additional costs with it. The annualization of all of those costs are reflected in both depreciation and amortization of software, finance expense. Finance expense is slightly interesting. At the time we acquired Pirtek, SONIA was 4.2. It rose a full point during 2024 and then fell modestly by half a point in 2023 and then fell by half a point in 2024. Our job, as Peter said, our job is to control the controls. I can't set the interest rate.
I wish I could. I know where I'd set it. What we can do is work hard to reduce our debt. Our cash conversion figure, which was on an earlier chart of 94%, is a very strong way of helping us reduce our debt, reduce our leverage, and enhance our EPS. The one standout number on the chart for me, and it's very, very dull, but I am very, very dull, is the tax expense. We have a 22.3% effective tax rate for 2024 on an adjusted level. As we analyzed the Pirtek acquisition, we found a deferred tax asset not previously recognized. It's a one-off benefit, but it's very, very helpful in this year. I think that's me now. Adjusted in statutory profit. Again, it's the annualization of the full effect of Pirtek.
The share-based payment expense rose because we gave out significant awards to both existing management and new Pirtek management at the time of acquisition. Non-recurring items, obviously, we did not have an acquisition in 2024. We did in 2023. Tax on adjusting items, again, it is 23.4% of adjusting items. We received another benefit as a result of an over-provision in previous years on the deferred tax asset on the share-based payments. All in all, statutory profit after tax rose by 144%, a very solid result. Adjusted earnings per share and dividend, I think it is thank you. Adjusted EPS grew from 8.4 to 8.6, again, helped by the tax rate. The board is pleased to propose an increase in the dividend, the final dividend from GBP 1.2 to GBP 1.3, making the full year dividend up 9% from GBP 2.2 to GBP 2.4%. Sorry, GBP 2.4 pence.
Now over to Beth, who will give you a run through the cash flow.
Thanks, Andrew. As we've already mentioned, we had a 94% cash generation in the year, and this has come from a strong performance within our working capital. Trade debtors, as Peter and Andrew have touched on, had a really good performance. At the end of H1, trade debtors had increased GBP 3.7 million year on year. However, by the end of the year, we were able to get that down to a reduction of GBP 500,000. It was a really strong H2 performance for our trade debtors. What we're doing is trying to accelerate that momentum throughout the year with the shared services within the Water and Waste division and the integration of NetSuite. We're expecting to continue to see that benefit. The offset of that was through a reduction in our trade creditors. This came from two large non-recurring items.
We had a deferred payment on a customer rebate within Water and Waste, and we had deferred consideration for a previous acquisition in Benelux. Now moving forward, we do not expect to see them again, and we continue to grow that cash generation rate. A couple of big outflows in the year was our software purchasing, which is the three major projects in the year. That is, again, driving the integration through our consolidated works management and our finance systems. We maintained our progressive dividend policy, and we did see an increase in our leases, but this is purely due to the annualized effect of Pirtek. Overall, a net cash inflow of GBP 700,000. This cash generation allowed us to maintain our ambition of repaying the term loan with a repayment of GBP 10 million in the year and a modest drawdown on our RCF overall.
Thank you. Now back to Stephen for summary.
Given my enthusiasm a little earlier to delegate to Peter, I missed out a very important slide. I'm just going to go back. You've now met and met at the CMD, our new Chief Exec. I just really want to give you a bit of background on why we've done that. With the acquisition of Pirtek, the size of the group doubled. A year later, we doubled it again with the acquisition of Filta and then of Pirtek. We are four times the size of that in early 2022. The time arrived to split my role from Executive Chairman to appoint a Group CEO. As I say, I mean, when I asked Peter to take on that role, he was absolutely delighted to do so. We worked together since the acquisition of Metro Rod in what year was that?
'17.
'17. We worked together quite a long time. We worked well on developing the Water and Waste division and growing the franchise business of Metro Rod and developing the then embryonic business of Metro Plumb. We worked well together. Splitting the role now between Executive Chairman and CEO has proved, from my point of view anyway, a fairly painless one. Now Peter runs the business. He runs the four divisions. He is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the group. That allows me now to focus more on the strategic development of the business. As you will have picked up in various things we have done, we would like to go to the full list. We will make further acquisitions in the future. We are developing, for example, with NetSuite, a worldwide accounting system. This needs some strategic focus separate from the day-to-day operation of the business.
That's what I will be responsible for going forward. Indeed, on the acquisitions, every acquisition we've done has taken me a modest five years to put together because I like to identify a business. I then like to stalk it. I then like to talk to the management, see how they perform against their budgets over the longer term before we spend shareholders' money on another acquisition. That stalking is currently taking place. There'll be nothing in the short term. My next slide, I think, is capital allocation. I'll talk about that more there. That's how the Chairman-CEO role has been structured. On the finance side, I guess partly as a result of splitting my role, we looked again at how we should structure finance. As you know, we've not had a wonderful track record in recruiting and retaining CFOs.
We absolutely had to get it right this time because you guys would lose patience with me otherwise. Andrew was the Commercial Director. When the last CFO departed, I asked him to be my CFO for the fourth time in his career because he started off being my CFO at Domino's. He made a very good job of it. However, we missed the Commercial Director bit. What we have done is combine now the CFO and Commercial Director role, but appoint a Group Finance Director in Beth, as you will be seeing increasingly more of over the years to come. Beth has done a fantastic job for us in pulling together the Water and Waste division.
Now moving up to a group role, I think she will now lead the charge on bringing in the NetSuite across the group, which will generate some very significant efficiencies for us and a lot better management information across the group. I think Beth is now well placed to do that. That allows Andrew to undertake a pretty commercial role as CFO. In addition to that, we have recruited Louise George as another independent non-exec. Louise, as some of you may know, has long experience in franchising as a CFO. She will be guiding particularly Beth in developing the career and helping at board level to make sure we stay on the straight and narrow on the finance side. As you can see, it's already working. We've got the results out this year in three months rather than six months last year.
We are making progress. That is really where we're going on the corporate governance side. Right, capital allocation. Almost done a fair bit of that. The capital allocation strategy of the group is number one, degearing. We're a highly cash-generative business. We want to use that cash flow to degear. We would do that through Franchise Brands, driving that operational gearing and turning that net profit into cash. We do not expect to make any acquisitions in the short term. Indeed, because the scale of the next acquisition will be significant, I really want to get the debt down to next to nothing before we go again. I do not want any residual debt from the last deal before we go again for the next significant deal. I think you'll see 2027, 2028, most of the Pirtek debt will be repaid by then.
Provided we have identified an opportunity that makes sense for us, we will be ready to go again with a significant deal. In the short term, the capital allocation decision would be based on debt reduction, progressive dividend policy, continued investment in the organic growth of the business. We still have DLOs which do have a capital CapEx requirement. Indeed, some of the infrastructure spend, like NetSuite, like the rollout of Vision, that IT spend does involve us in some CapEx. We will continue to invest in that. Finally, we will be recommencing share purchases into the EBT. We have more or less suspended those for the last couple of years as we took on a lot of debt for the Pirtek deal.
As we're coming out the other side of that now, we will start a regular share purchase in the EBT with the objective, as it always was, which is to cover the dilution arising from the issuer share options. In the medium term, two strands to this. We will look at disposing of non-core businesses, particularly where both franchise businesses that don't fit in with the overall van-based emergency service ethos of the main group, so B2C, and also non-core or DLO businesses that aren't contributing to the development of our franchise businesses. All the DLOs we have, for example, Willow Pumps, was bought with the intention of enhancing the Metro Rod and Metro Plumb businesses, which they're still doing. I mean, they're frustratingly slow, the growth of the pump business in Metro Rod, Peter. Sorry. I still think there's a lot to go for there.
We've just moved, for example, pump business from Filta into Willow. I think we should have moved it from Filta into franchising. The franchisers haven't yet got enough of the skills they need to undertake all of that business. There is still work to do there. Whilst we can grow our franchise channels using DLOs, they will remain core parts of the business. When that stops happening, they will be considered for disposal. Those processes will accelerate the reduction of the debt. It probably won't necessarily accelerate the move to another acquisition because, as I say, these take time to put together. We will be very well placed to go again with the overall ambition of developing a group, as Peter said, nicking some of my best lines, generating our profits of third, third, and third in North America, U.K., and Europe.
Finally, summary, I think Peter's done it extremely well. Challenging year. The macroeconomic situation for us in 2024 was not great. The type of business we had proved to be very resilient. Probably did not quite get to where we wanted to because the planned work did not materialize. Our diversified geographical base served us well. North America was great. As Peter pointed out, a great management team in Benelux, diversified early. That is a lesson for all the other businesses to learn. That really supported us. Current trading remains constrained. Macroeconomic situation in a lot of markets is still more or less the same as it was at the end of 2024. We are seeing some green shoots. I think there has been a noticeable pickup in sentiment, for example, in Germany since they announced their half a trillion spend there. No money being spent yet.
In fact, our German MD does not think any of that money will start coming through into real spending until Q3. Actually, one of the key things that drives business is sentiment. Sentiment has improved noticeably in Germany over the last few weeks. I cannot say the same for the U.K. after the announcements yesterday and Trump's announcements overnight. The U.K. is, as I say, bubbling along about where it was Q4 of last year. As Beth has pointed out, the cash flow of the business remains very strong. Deleveraging is going well. We expect to be well below 1.5 to EBITDA by the end of this year. The one Franchise Brands initiatives again will drive the efficiency of the overhead structure. I think the underlying profitability for the current year is secure.
It would be good to have a few tailwinds to build our confidence of delivering the analysts' expected results for this year. All still to play for. I think we do need a couple of tailwinds to get there. That is it for me, really. Oh, and that actually is my last point, a very strong point, actually. On the EPS this year, the degearing and the reduction in interest rates we expect this year will drive EPS this year really quite strongly. If we get those tailwinds, I think we could look for quite a significant increase in earnings per share in the current year.