Welcome to the Franchise Brands 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 appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. Now I'd like to hand you over to Stephen Hemsley, Executive Chairman. Good morning, sir.
Good morning. Thank you very much, everybody, for joining us. I just clicked through the slides. I'd like to introduce my colleagues here: Peter Molloy, CEO; Andrew Mallows, our CFO; Mark Boxall, our Chief Operating Officer; and Beth Peace, our Group Finance Director. Looking at the first half of 2025, it was a resilient performance despite geopolitical uncertainty and some challenging macro-economic conditions in the markets we operate. We have seven businesses in ten countries, so the economic conditions are many and varied. For example, in the U.S., the booming economy over there has contributed to a pretty stellar performance of Filta International. By contrast, in Germany, the economy has been struggling over there and indeed periods of recession as we await for the benefits of the half-trillion infrastructure spend to come through.
That has resulted in adjusted EBITDA for the first half of the year being broadly flat on last year, where the modest growth in sales has been absorbed by some additional costs. However, the savings in interest that we've made as a result of the reduction in the debt, the reduction in base rates, and indeed the reduction in our margin as our leverage percentage comes down, has allowed us to increase EPS by 8%. As a result of that, we are proposing to increase the dividend by 5%. Peter will talk later about the integration, which is one of our key objectives. We've made two very substantial acquisitions over the last couple of years with Filta and then Pirtek. One of our key objectives is to integrate that into one Franchise Brands.
Peter will go through some of the initiatives there and Mark will go through the investment we're making in technology because key to that integration is developing group-wide platforms. I'm very pleased to say that those platforms, that IT spend is on time and on budget, which is pretty extraordinary for IT projects. Moving on, I just want to talk about capital allocation, which remains the same as it has previously: debt reduction whilst maintaining a progressive dividend policy and investment in the organic expansion of the group. We're not planning any acquisitions until the debt is substantially repaid, which we now expect to be in 2028. We're also considering the disposal of non-core businesses where they don't support the growth of the franchise channels, and any capital we generate from those disposals will be used to accelerate the debt reduction.
Finally, we have restarted our share repurchase program through the EBT as debt levels now are down to a given ratio of under 2x EBITDA. We've recommenced that at GBP 100,000 a month, hence GBP 600,000 in the first half of the year. The purpose of this is to mitigate the dilution of the share option scheme and also improve shareholder returns. We hit a couple of milestones in the first half of this year. We moved the company's trading platform from the quote-driven platform to the order-driven platform, which is a requirement to join any of the indexes and indeed a requirement to move up to the full list. As a result of that, we entered the AIM 50 index and are somewhere around the 35th biggest company on AIM at present. The technology initiatives I referred to earlier are also a requirement to comply with the regulations.
It's called an FPPP memo, which we need to complete for prospectus to move up to the full list. Preparations of that are underway, but realistically, we're not expecting to move to the full list until 2027, maybe Q3 in 2027. There is a while to go yet, but we want to give notice, particularly to IHG investors, that that is the road we're on. That's it for me for now. I'd like to hand over to Peter.
Thanks, Stephen. Thank you, Stephen. I just want to take you through an operational review. I'll cover Pirtek and Filta in the U.S., and then I'll introduce Beth to talk us through the Water & Waste Division. Overall, in terms of the business, as Stephen said, it was modest in the first half of the year. I think what we've got to remind ourselves is that a GBP 5.2 million increase in System Sales might be modest overall, but each of our key businesses had record System Sales in the first half of the year, which is encouraging against that macro-economic background that we see, particularly across Europe. Stephen again referenced the strong performance of Filta in the U.S., which was standout in the first half of the year. I'll talk in more detail about that as we get to Filta.
I think one of the things that we saw, a phenomenon that we saw in the first half of the year, was a small decline in job numbers, but compensated by better quality work, which ensures that we get a better return from our valuable labor resource. In part, that decline in job numbers, some of it was strategic, where we want to exit some maybe high volume but low value markets. Equally, we're much more rigorous in putting customers on stop. As you do that, then clearly you lose the business for a period of time. Even if they come off stop, historically, we don't get back to the pre-volumes because they find a secondary supplier to de-risk their situation in terms of having supply suspended.
In the earlier part of the year, we saw some green shoots, and a lot of that was around sentiment, particularly in Germany, where the half-trillion pound of investment in Ministry of Defence, construction, and infrastructure was announced. Up until yesterday, that hadn't really come to fruition because it wasn't signed off in the federal budget. My understanding overnight is that some of that has now been signed off. It has delayed that, and we won't see any benefit of that coming through in real terms until 2026. Just talking through Pirtek a little bit more, 96% of the adjusted EBITDA in Pirtek comes from our franchise businesses, with the balance coming from France and Sweden, which currently are direct labor organizations. We do have one or two direct labor depots in Austria, in the Benelux, and in the U.K. as well.
As I say, the majority of the business is carried out by franchisees. Modest growth in System Sales to GBP 93.7 million. That was influenced to a degree by the direct labor businesses in Sweden and France that both had a struggle this year. One in France because we didn't get the uptick that we saw last year at the Olympics and the Grand Prix. In Sweden, a very, very poor economy. One of the things that we identified at the end of last year and started to implement in terms of our strategy for this year was we identified that we were a bit too dependent on some of our key sectors in terms of plant hire and construction. What we're starting to see is some progress now in that sector diversification. Services are expanding across Pirtek, and we can see that in each of the countries.
I'll go through some of this in a bit more detail. One of the things that is really pleasing in the first half of the year, and Mark will talk about integration in terms of systems and processes, is it's a bit more than that. What we've tried to achieve is to get some integration in terms of sharing best practice and ideas. I think what we've now got is a much more cohesive management team where we've got closer cooperation between each of the businesses, sharing that best practice to be able to accelerate the development of the business. Pirtek, as I say, System Sales increased by 1%. That's brought down U.K. and Ireland at 44% of that, Germany and Austria at 37%, Benelux at 14%, and there were smaller earlier businesses in Sweden and France contributing 5%.
I referred to earlier the impact of those smaller businesses, and in real terms, in System Sales, they were about GBP 425,000 behind last year. What we can see also across this analysis is the admin costs increasing by about GBP 600,000, but that is essentially a further allocation of the IT costs as we spread that around the business. Particularly impacted in that was Germany and the U.K.. That's sort of distorted their numbers a little bit. Austria and France in 2024 benefited from the release of an unrequired provision. Again, pleasing in here is the divisional overhead reduction of 29% as we start to drive efficiencies and restructure the business. Overall, what we saw was a slight decline in EBITDA, primarily as a result of the increase of the GBP 1 million in admin expenses.
I'm going to take a short break, and I'm going to introduce Beth to talk us through the Water & Waste Division.
Thank you, Peter. Within the Water & Waste Division, we'll look first at Metro Rod and Metro Plumb, a resilient performance by the Metro businesses with a 1% increase in System Sales. This was despite a 4% decline in Metro Plumb. The decline in Metro Plumb was driven by one high volume, low average order value customer who we supported in the past on an ad hoc basis for some of their overflow work. This was reduced so far in 2024. However, across the Metro businesses, we continue to expand our range of services, particularly within Metro Rod, Tanker & Pump works, with our fastest growing revenue stream for this side of the business, growing 8% and 9% respectively. Similarly, within Metro Plumb, we saw an expansion of our gas and air source heat pump services, with now over half the network offering this.
In both areas, this allows us to focus on more project or planned works within our customer base and drive greater customer penetration across the business. Another highlight from H1 is in Metro Rod. We have now sold our final corporately owned franchise within the Metro Rod network, and it means that that business is now fully franchised for the first time since acquisition in 2017. In addition to this, we've managed to reduce our overhead expenditure by 6% in the period, and this is due to spending smartly and matching that overhead with the incoming demand. Overall, a resilient performance by the Metro side. As we look then towards Willow and Filta, Willow, we see a similar story, and we saw 1% growth in System Sales in Willow. This was with the addition of the Filta Pump business at just short of GBP 1 million in System Sales there.
This was moved over to Willow at the end of last year as part of our integration efforts across the Water & W aste Division, and it's allowed us to have the most efficient delivery method for that service. We have, unfortunately, seen the loss of a big service customer during a very competitive tender process, but we have been able to replace this more recently with a large public sector contract that we're now starting to see come through. Unlike some of the other areas of Water & Wa ste, we've seen a slight slowdown in higher value project work, and this is particularly because Willow is, particularly in its supply and install department, more reliant on the construction sector.
However, despite this, our Special Projects division, which was a newly formed division at the end of 2023, continues to grow at pace and is up 49% year on year and is the fastest growing area for the Willow Pumps business. Now, Filta has seen a slight reduction in System Sales with a particularly large FOG Install customer slowing down their national rollout scheme and a slight reduction in discretionary spend from our Filta Seal business, which supports supermarkets and kitchens for their fridge seals. However, we continue to move Filta to a franchising model, and now we have 100% of our FOG service delivered through franchising, and over 50% of our FOG installs are delivered through franchising. This not only allows us to provide a better service to our customers, but it also allows us to optimize our overhead and create the most efficient structure possible.
As a result, we've seen a reduction in Filta overhead exposure by 23%. This is in part because of the organization moving to franchising, but also the integration efforts within the group. If we look at the picture as a whole for Water & Waste, there is a really solid performance across the business. We have seen flat System Sales, but we've managed to, particularly in the Metro Rod area, replace some lower value work with that more planned maintenance. We've really seen an impact of our cross-selling objectives within Water & Waste. We saw an 81% increase in the period of customers who buy from across the division, and as a result, over $15 million of our System Sales came from customers who buy one or more services from multiple companies in the Water & Waste Division.
We have seen a slight reduction in revenue, and this is purely due to the recognition of revenue within Filta. As we move to a franchising model, we now only recognize the MSF on sales rather than the third-party sales to the end customer. This is consistent with the model or the accounting treatment across the group, and that is causing a slight reduction in statutory revenue. As I've already mentioned, administrative expenses were managed across the period and are down 7%. This comes from the streamlining of the Filta organization, but also the integration efforts across the group. As a result, we've seen a 5% increase in adjusted EBITDA for the Water & Waste Division. A really solid performance for this part of the group. I will pass you back to Peter to talk you through the U.S.
Thanks, Beth. Filta International, as we referenced earlier, is operating in the strongest economy in which we operate at the moment. What we can see is a 13% increase in System Sales and that's 17% in local currency. One of the things that's starting to gain real traction in the U.S. is the expansion of the range of services. This is a playbook that we use across all of our businesses to get a greater share of customers' wallet. Filta Gold and Filta Clean, so Filta Gold being the supplier of new cooking oil and Filta Clean being the cleaning of commercial kitchens, represent almost a quarter of the business in the first half of the year. Encouragingly, we now have 77,000 gal new oil tanks in each of the franchise, sorry, across the franchise network.
If you recall, we embarked on a strategy called Filta Max, which is to ensure that we've got the best franchisees in each of the metros. That's worked really well for us in the States, in the latter part of last year and the early part of this year. That has resulted, as we anticipated, in a slight reduction in the number of franchisees. This is without really starting our strategy of our tier two franchisees, where we've got some vacant territories that are smaller. They're not in the metros, but we think we can expand our franchising network as we start to fill those vacant territories over the next few years. The Filta US businesses have transitioned to a royalty model, and 54% of System Sales are now driven through the royalty model. One of the key constituents of the Filta US
business is the sale of used cooking oil. In the first half of the year, the volume was up by 8%. That, combined with a 13% increase in price, resulted in a 22% increase or growth in revenue. Interestingly, buried somewhere deep in Trump's big bill, tax credits for imported used cooking oil have been removed. That only applies now to domestic cooking oil, which gives us confidence that as the supply and demand equalizes, that price will be maintained in the short to medium term. As I referred to, a 13% improvement in System Sales, in part as the result of expanding the range of services. Admin expenses did increase marginally by 3% due to a combination of inflationary pressures, but also our investment in preparing the business for the future as we expand. As we indicated at our CMD, we have disposed of Filta Europe.
Filta Europe is now a franchise business, sorry, a master franchise, where we will simply benefit from the management fee that that generates. I guess the most important thing about this slide is it's a great illustration that because across our businesses in franchising, we have a relatively fixed cost base. If what we can see here, if the System Sales grow, then that flows straight through to the EBITDA level. The System Sales improvement of 13%, but a 23% increase in EBITDA. That's clearly what we're trying to achieve in the rest of our businesses. Just touching briefly on the B2C division, franchising recruitment, retention, and as I say, recruitment remains challenging. Sales and gross profit reduced by 7% and 4% respectively, due entirely to the reduction in the number of franchisees in the system.
Good cost control by management resulted in a 4% reduction in overheads, producing an adjusted EBITDA of just under GBP 1 million for the first half of the year. You will have heard us talk about integration and systems. What I'd like to do is to hand over to Mark, who can talk you through where we're at and the developments on that side.
Thank you, Peter. My role at Franchise Brands is to be responsible for driving integration with a particular focus in the short term on the rollout of standard group-wide IT systems. As Peter mentioned earlier, integration is more than just technology. We're looking for opportunities to improve and harmonize, reduce duplication, work more smartly, and spend more smartly. Our integration strategy has been to look at all the group-wide initiatives and use our internal governance process to determine the priority with which we tackle each one. From this slide, you can see the breadth of initiatives ranging from finance through to procurement. Using our One IT initiative, we're managing the initiatives in parallel to each other using a combination of dedicated internal and external resources. This will speed up the integration and ultimately the benefits to the group.
The focus of today's presentation are the key technology initiatives supporting the One Franchise Brands, which are One Finance, One Works Management, One Reporting, and One IT, each of which will help us drive efficiency across the group. As we have made good progress on these initiatives, we've been able to accelerate our One CRM project that has been brought forward from next year into this year and is very closely aligned with our One Sales initiative, which drives cross-selling across the group. The objective of One Franchise Brands and integration is to enhance our sales, create an efficient overhead structure, and drive better operational gearing. The One Franchise Brands initiative will also be an enabler for AI. With our new simplified technology estate, our landscape will be easier to be consumed by AI, delivering efficiency benefits faster.
Let's now look at the year-end targets for this year and the H1 progress. To start with, we'll look at One Finance. We will be go ready for the core franchise of businesses by the end of 2025. What have we achieved in the first half? We've harmonized our process to ensure consistency, and our core solution build is in progress and has been demonstrated to the core finance functions. On One Works Management, we will be deployed for our core franchisor and franchisee businesses in Q4 2025, with a full adoption anticipated in Q1 2026. Our progress this year has been focused on adding some key functionality to the product. The management of stock and the Pilot, UAT, and rollout are all now in planning. For One CRM, our goal is to build a group template and commence our onboarding in Q4 this year with a full adoption next.
Our core solution build is now in progress, and the training and rollout plan for the remainder of this year is in planning. For our One Reporting initiative, we will, by the end of this year, have our core operational reports available. To achieve that, we have completed the architectural design and are currently planning the initial data load. As mentioned previously, these initiatives will drive efficiencies across the group. In particular, the One CRM initiative will support our One Sales initiative and accelerate cross-selling across the group. The One Reporting initiative will deliver actionable reports, helping us focus on the areas that will enhance and improve our performance. I'd like to hand you back to Peter.
Thanks, Mark. What I'd like to just give you an update on is the One Franchise Brands strategic initiative. When I was appointed late last year, what we came up with is a very simple strategy where we were trying to get a more cohesive business with three key elements, which were growing sales, spending smartly, and collecting our cash. I'm going to cover the growing sales and the spending smartly, and then I'm going to hand over to Beth and Andrew who will talk you through working capital, etc. One of the things that we, one of the elements of our strategy was to reduce our sector dependency, particularly in Pirtek where we are pretty reliant on the construction and plant hire business, but again across Water & Waste where we do touch on construction, but in facilities management in Metro Rod, etc.
What we're seeing is some penetration into some of our underrepresented sectors. In Pirtek, for example, increased penetration in mining, quarrying, waste, agriculture, and as Beth referenced earlier, you know, some expansion in Metro Rod on the back of the expanded range of services on pumps and tankers. The flip side of the sector expansion is to ensure that we retain our existing customers in our core markets because inevitably those core markets in construction and plant hire, for example, will return. It's pleasing that we have strong customer retention rates with all of our national accounts ranging between 85% and 100% depending on which company it is. One of the things we're keen to do, again, I referenced it earlier, is to expand our range of services, and we're seeing that again across all of the businesses.
For example, in Germany, total hose management, which is in very simple terms, we manage the hoses in either an industrial plant or a cargo ship. We inspect them annually and then replace as necessary. Total hose management now represents 18% of the System Sales in Germany, but that's usually underrepresented in, for example, Pirtek UK. There's a significant opportunity for us to grow that service level. Introducing additional services, for example, hydraulic accumulators, oil heater, which is an environmentally friendly cleanup program, runs and cylinder repairs. Runs and cylinder repairs are a great opportunity to increase our customer, sorry, take more of our customer wallet, but also increase our counter sales in Pirtek where it's an expansion of the services that we can deliver.
As I referenced earlier, the pumps and tankers and air source heat pumps in the Water & W aste Division, one of the areas that we wanted to look at was the group-wide cross-selling, and that's starting to gain some traction. We have a group-wide steering party now on cross-selling. That's got a particular emphasis at the moment in Pirtek where we're exploring how we can open up some pan-European customers. We're starting to see some success with that. Customers, for example, [Collé Lifts] that the earlier part of this year only bought from Benelux are now buying from the U.K. as well. Colas Plant Hire are buying from multiple businesses across Europe. SEMA Transport, a Benelux-based business, are now buying in Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, and France.
They're just good illustrations of where we're starting to share that information amongst the sales directors, but equally incentivizing the sales directors to deliver those cross-selling opportunities. In terms of spending smartly, our salary costs have shown a decline, notwithstanding the increase in national insurance in the U.K., but also some union-driven increases in other parts of Europe. We talked about controlling the controllables, and some of the admin expenses have declined in the first half of the year as a result of some efficiency gains across the group. For example, insurance down by 9%, professional fees down by 8%, and travel expenses reduced by 21%. Some people misinterpret spending smartly as stopping spending money, and that's not entirely true.
For example, we're maintaining the IT budget because what we see is that that's smart spending because what we will see there is that investment will result in future benefits and efficiencies. We're also looking for the first time at group-wide procurement, the initial actions in Pirtek to get a reduction in our material costs for our franchisees to ensure that they remain competitive, but also open up new markets, particularly in project work where it's much more price sensitive than the reactive business that we undertake. That's an update on One FB and I'd like to hand over to Andrew and Beth to talk you through some of the more financials.
Thank you, Peter. I'll give you a quick run-through of the group results and the cash flow before handing over to Beth to run through net debt. As Peter and Stephen have mentioned, System Sales for the group rose by 3% to GBP 209 million with a very modest rise in statutory revenue. Cost of sales decreased by 1% in the first half of the year, and therefore, gross profit at GBP 42.5 million was 1% ahead of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA fell modestly. As Peter and Stephen have alluded to, we continue to spend on our One FB strategic technology initiatives and the absence of the exceptional credits which occurred in the first half of 2024.
EBITDA to System Sales fell slightly, but we remain absolutely committed to continue our technology initiatives, which will support both longer-term efficiencies and create a scalable and robust platform in readiness both for the move to the full list and also the swift and seamless integration of our next acquisition. A positive is that our finance expenses fell by GBP 800,000 year on year, which is 21%. They fell as a result of repaying our debt, reductions in base rates, and also as the margin we pay reduces, which is based on leverage. During the year, we've entered into a U.K. group pooling arrangement with one of our primary lenders, which is effectively what I'd refer to as an offset mortgage. Cash balances go against the overdraft, reducing our interest cost.
We're also entering into an agreement with our primary lender to take the full debt, removing the other three members of the bank syndicate, which will have an immediate impact on our margin. It'll also allow for international group pooling, maximizing the benefit of our cash balances, which are held in both the U.S. and Europe. There's a small increase in our tax rate as a result of higher tax rates in our European operations, but a result in profit before tax 8% ahead of 2024. As a highly cash-generative business, it's great to see our cash conversion increasing to 83% from 71% last year. Working capital used GBP 3 million in the first half of this year compared to GBP 5 million in 2024. Tax payments rose as a result of us paying two quarterly installment payments this year with only one such payment in the prior year.
As a capital-light model demonstrated in the franchise business, we have modest purchases of property, plant, and equipment, which is really encouraging and enforces the fact that franchising and the capital-light model benefits our cash flow. As we've said before, software capitalization continues as we invest in our vision rollout. We've paid bank loans for GBP 9 million in the first half of the year compared to about GBP 3.5 million in the previous year. The interest costs, as I spoke to recently, reduced significantly. As Stephen mentioned earlier, we've recommenced our share buyback program through the EBT to cover option dilution and pre-shareholder value with a contribution of GBP 600,000 in the first half of the year. The final thing to bring to your attention is that in the first half of this year, we paid a dividend of GBP 2.5 million, which relates to the final dividend for 2024.
As you'll remember, we announced our results rather later last year, and therefore the payment of dividends for both the final of 2023 and the interim of 2024 were paid in the second half of the year. Now I'll hand over to Beth to give you a quick run-through of our debt.
Thank you very much, Andrew. If we look at the debt, as you will see, during H1 of this year, we reduced the term loan by GBP 5 million and the RCF by almost GBP 4 million. However, if we look from this point last year, we have repaid almost GBP 15 million of our loan facilities, which is in line with our objective to accelerate the debt repayment so that we can have this substantially repaid by 2028. This acceleration, as Andrew's mentioned, is largely possible due to the nature of our business being highly cash-generative and seeing further improvements in that cash generation so far this year. Overall, adjusted net debt has fallen GBP 6 million year on year down to GBP 62 million, and we have seen a reduction in our leverage to 1.8x , remaining comfortably within our banking covenants.
You will also see that our cash has fallen by GBP 5 million, and as Andrew already mentioned, this is due to us utilizing that new overdraft facility as part of our group pooling arrangement and has allowed us to take advantage of effective interest rate offset to help see those finance costs come down. Overall, a strong performance from the net debt perspective. I'd like to hand you back now to Stephen for a summary and overview.
Sorry about this, folks. Fat fingers. I don't know what's happened to that last slide. Can anyone help me? Oh, the fact is the last slide hasn't gone into the deck. Let me tell you what I was going to say. Outlook and summary. Resilient performance in H1. The green shoots we thought we saw sort of round about the time of the AGM statement didn't materialize, and that has impacted the growth in sales. There's a really good question that I will address in more detail and what the impact of that has been on profit. As Andrew and Beth have said, strong cash generation, reduction in interest rates allowed us to increase earnings and EPS. Outlook for the second half of the year, we are somewhat cautiously saying the same again, which will result again in profits for 2025 being similar to 2024.
There's a great question coming up, and I'll go through the dynamics of that in a second. As has been said earlier, we're a highly fixed cost business. Overheads don't move very significantly with turnover. Should we see a pickup in demand in the second half of the year, that will flow through to EBITDA really quite quickly. One Franchise Brands initiatives, as you've heard, are key to the integration of the business and the maintenance of that flat overhead structure as we go forward. I feel that the first half of this year, we put some really good work into creating a fitter, leaner business that would be well prepared for the growth opportunities in the future when demand in some of the key sectors we operate in returns, which inevitably will.
Construction and plant hire have hit us in the first half of this year, but they will come back. All the money that's allegedly going to be spent on infrastructure and defense and facilitating defense, as I think the U.K. is calling road building or whatever, will help us. That's it from the formal presentation, and we'll move on now to the Q&As.
Guys, thank you very much for your presentation. 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. While the company takes a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via Investor Dashboard. As you can see, we received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. Stephen, could I just hand back to you to share the Q&A with the team, and I'll pick up from you at the end?
Okay, thank you for that. The first pre-submitted question is a cracker, and John M. has also asked more or less the same question. I'll read out the pre-submitted question and tell you how it works. You had a CMD earlier this year when you provided minimum guidance for 2025 of System Sales of GBP 436 million and revenue of GBP 38.5 million and provided an optimistic update in May. It looks like those figures were unachievable, although the economic situation for your major markets hasn't materially changed since February. It's pointed out that U.K. Q2 GDP figures are actually higher than they were in February. Can you help us understand which assumptions in your forecast were incorrect? It looks like Pirtek is underperforming, but it would be helpful to get the internal view. Not incorrect assumptions are what they say they are. They're assumptions.
The way it works is that our business is highly geared to System Sales. Hence, our objective is driving System Sales and maintaining as flat an overhead structure as we can. In the CMD, we were forecasting a 7% increase, and I'm looking at half year here. Just take the 2025 CMD numbers and divide by two because our business isn't terribly cyclical. Water & W aste are slightly better in the winter. Pirtek does slightly better in the summer. It's pretty flat across the year. In 2024, we achieved GBP 204 million of System Sales in the first half. We forecast effectively GBP 218 million in the first half of this year, a 7% increase. What we actually achieved was a 2.5% increase. We were about 4% short of System Sales in the first half of the year.
If you look at our marginal market, if you look at our overall margin, the best way of understanding what our margin is is to compare our gross profit with our System Sales. Statutory revenue is not a particularly interesting number because there's all sorts of things in there, like NAF contributions and other things, and product sales in Pirtek, for example, where we make no margin. You can't really use that as a barometer of the business. If you look at gross profit, which is the gross profit achieved on the franchise businesses and indeed the DLOs, that gives you a fair indication of what our marginal margin should be. We were GBP 9 million, and that overall is around 20%. I mean, different in different businesses. It's about 11% in Filta. It's about 23% in Pirtek. It's probably around 24% in Water & Waste.
If you said take a 20% average, which is what the group average was, we were GBP 9 million short in System Sales. At 20%, that's GBP 1.8 million. You extend that to the year, that's GBP 3.6 million. We made GBP 35 million last year, +GBP 3.6 million, which would have been the margin, takes you to GBP 38 million, or GBP 38.5 million, which is what the bottom end of the CMD forecast was. My conclusion is that the assumptions of the forecast are all good. The difference between what we were forecasting at the CMD and what we've actually achieved is just that loss of sales.
I don't particularly accept that the economic conditions are the same now as they were earlier in the year because we did see that we thought that that spending on construction in the U.K., on the half trillion of infrastructure spend in Germany, would start coming through by the half year. It hasn't. We're not now forecasting, but we are being cautious in our outlook for the second half and saying it won't materialize in the second half of the year. We think we're going to have to wait till 2026 now for that. Hence, we're saying this year's adjusted EBITDA will be the same as last year. Have a long answer to a pre-submitted question, but I hope you get that. I'll crack on now and give the next one to someone else. Second pre-submitted question, you referenced lower value jobs.
Lower jobs saw a small decline in H1, while higher value jobs increased. Can you help us understand the margin impact of this? Peter, do you want to go for that one?
Yeah, I'll compensate for your very long answer by giving a very brief answer. Essentially, because of our royalty model, the impact is negligible because we just take a percentage of the sales value. I think the only time that that might be effective is there's very, very big project work where we have to work closely with the franchisees, but that's not what we're seeing. What we're seeing is that the mid-range jobs have increased as opposed to the very, very big jobs.
Thank you. Cash flow benefited from late payments of suppliers year on year. Can we expect this to revert in H2? Better, Andrew?
I mean, if we look back at last year's full result, I can't actually see an expectation. What we can see is that debtors at the half year took GBP 4 million of working capital as we took in the previous year. By the time we got to the year-end, the debtor result improved working capital. I think creditors will remain as they are, but debtors should improve. Thank you.
Andrew M., live question. Can you provide more detail on which customer segments or verticals you expect to drive medium-term growth given continuing weakness in construction and plant hire? Peter?
Yeah. I covered a little bit of this in the presentation. There's a wide range of sectors where we're underrepresented. If I think of Pirtek particularly, injection molding is a good opportunity for us. Marine, quarrying, mining, and then across the Water & Wa ste Division is expanding into local government, continuing to work in our hospitality sector. As Beth alluded to earlier on the special projects, he's looking for work outside of our traditional market. Special projects, for example, would be M&E work in airports and ports where we're starting to see some penetration there. It varies across each of the countries. Manufacturing, for example, in Germany is strong, but it's weaker in the U.K..
It's an area that we can expand in the U.K. Pirtek market. It's any number of sectors that we're operating at the moment.
Construction and plant hire will come back with a vengeance if it's money that's being spent.
Yeah, I mean, it's inevitable. I know there's a lot of government rhetoric around Europe at the moment in terms of where they're going to invest, what they're doing about construction and infrastructure. Eventually, you've got to come up with the goods, and you've got to start spending that money.
Thank you. John M. has asked, you mentioned some possible disposals of non-core. How much non-core is there in the group? How material might the proceeds be? And have you a timeline in mind for this? All a bit sensitive, really, John. We can't really name businesses until we've spoken to our people. I guess if you go through the pack, the accounts, understand that we are a franchise business and look at what isn't franchised, it might give you a bit of a clue. I think the other thing I would say is that where we run corporate franchises, we're always looking to franchise those. Metro Rod in the U.K., for example, is now entirely franchised. No direct labor corporate franchises there. We've started a master franchise for Filta in Europe. That will very much be the direction of travel. Some of those generate capital returns for us.
Some of them don't. What we generate is enhanced NSF. There are other businesses that will generate significant capital inflows, tens of millions of pounds, which, as I say, will be used for debt reduction. I've got to be a little bit cagey on that at the moment. Someone else asked later, I can't see the question, and then, have we had any approaches for any of our businesses? The answer to that is daily. We're receiving approaches for individual parts of the business, the whole business. You know, do I want to take it private? It's a very, very active M&A market, particularly in some of the sectors we're working in. These infrastructure sectors are very popular at the moment, none of which have developed into any firm offers. Certainly, in respect to the whole group, no interest in those. I've done John M. setting the forecast for...
It's an interesting one. What is the forecast IT cost for One FB project? And what are the perceived benefits from this division? Mark, do you want to tell us about the cost and the benefits? If there's any more color you can put on that, I think you've done it pretty well in the presentation, but any more?
Only that we've got an approximate GBP 8 million of a P&L budget, which we're looking to come in under this year. I think both that will continue. As we look at the dual running of the initiatives over next year, I think it will be into 2027 that we'll really see the financial benefits when the dual systems get switched on.
Thank you very much. Anything else, Pete? You're on mute.
I think Mark's covered it really well. I mean, I think the one thing that we probably haven't explained as well is the operational benefit for the franchisees using the new works management system, which will give them greater visibility over labor productivity and should enhance their businesses. We're really keen that whatever we do in technology flows right the way down to franchisees and to technicians so that they can benefit from it and subsequently the franchisees. I note a question on here that talks about, you know, what do Franchise Brands do when the franchisees pay for it all? I'm not entirely sure that's correct. The point is that we will put market-leading technology in each of our businesses for them to benefit.
Equally, 50% of the sales for the franchisees comes from the people that we employ in the center working on national accounts to open up opportunities that they couldn't do locally and in isolation. I've covered two questions in one, but I'm just conscious of time that we're getting towards the end.
Okay, great. Adrian's got a cracker here. Why has Andrew talked about the next acquisition when you have not proved that you can manage acquisitions effectively? I would think to differ. You go back on our track record. Metro Rod, we've tripled sales, quadrupled profits. Filta, almost doubled sales, at least 3x growth in profits. Willow Pumps, more than doubled profits. And Pirtek, we've only owned for a year and...
18 months, isn't it?
18 months, something around there. That's work in progress. That's double the size of the group. That's work in progress. You will see the benefit of the Franchise Brands approach to running franchise business coming through in years to come. I don't really agree with you on that one, Adrian. Lee, Share Price is currently trading at the same levels as October 2021, with many more businesses being added on, net debt sitting at a reasonable level. Could share repurchases be accelerated to take advantage of market undervaluation to enhance long-term shareholder value? It's a good point, Lee. I think our view is at the moment that whilst debt is coming down very nicely, we would like to see it fall further. It's definitely on the agenda. We have started very small share buybacks at the moment.
I think if that was the best use of the capital, that is what we would do, balanced with continuing dividend. I think, however, that probably the best use of the capital for shareholders in the end is going to be developing franchise businesses. We will look, as Andrew Mallows said, for further acquisitions. I think the valuation will come back. At the moment, small cap valuations are very depressed. I think it will recover. To be honest, I went through this period with Domino's. Eventually, the market correctly valued that business. Maybe it isn't actually at the moment because even Domino's market valuation is looking pretty light at the moment. We will bear it in mind. Adrian, why is Metro Plumb not growing at a much higher rate given the highly fragmented market? Yeah, that's a good point. Peter, you're on mute again.
I knew I couldn't multitask. Yeah, I mean, it's a question of scale. We have expanded that network fairly significantly, but still got some gaps in it. It is still a fairly embryonic business, so there's still work to do there. As Beth explained earlier, you know, when we can get into some of the major contracts that we operate in, we deliver that very well. We're doing a lot of work in terms of that brand awareness at the moment in terms of the domestic market. Equally, what you see, and the fragmented market also presents challenges with us. We're manning van and quality. People make buying decisions for different reasons. There's still some work to do there, but we're still convinced it's a good opportunity for us.
Thank you. Lee's asking, how would you describe competition in terms of a factor in achieving medium-term sales targets? I've one for you, Peter.
I think what we're seeing is some increased competition, particularly at the lower end. We talked earlier about a reduction in the smaller value jobs. We determined that we're not going to have a race to the bottom on price. We indeed have walked away from a number of opportunities where it doesn't suit our franchisees. I think one of the strengths of Franchise Brands is that we don't make decisions in isolation. We consider the impact on our franchisees, and that's the right thing for us to do at the moment. What we're not seeing is that increased level of competition in the areas where we've got the coverage, the equipment, the knowledge, the skills, which is much more difficult to compete with us against that criteria.
It's a little bit easier for a man in a van locally, but not when you talk nationally and some of the sophistication of the work we carry out.
Thank you. Adrian asks us when we're expecting to go to the full list. We are going to give some more guidance to the market on that. We're being asked by a number of shareholders to look at that. As I maybe indicated earlier, I think it's 2027. I think we'll probably be saying around Q3. There will be some more news on that coming out shortly. The last two questions on the list here are what net debt levels are you looking at at the end of 2025, and what is your two to three-year debt target? That's from Lee and Mark. Andrew, do you want to...?
End of 2025, GBP 55 million is the target. We intend to substantially or completely repay the debt by 2028.
Yeah, three years, it'll be gone. That's the end of the questions. Unbelievably, bang on 10:00 A.M. So...
Thank you for answering all of those questions you have from investors. The company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, Stephen, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?
Thank you very much once again for everyone attending. I hope we've given you some more insight into the company and the dynamics this year. We look forward to doing this all again in six, seven months' time. Thank you very much.
Perfect. Thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close the session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This may only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Franchise Brands plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. Good morning to you all.
Thank you.