Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for taking time to join us today. You have myself, Geoff Rowley, CEO, Jeremy French, our COO, and Gavin Jones, our CFO. About FRP, just to reconfirm our value proposition, we are a specialist advisory firm delivering services through five core pillars, with a strong track record of profitable growth. Our strategy centers on organic growth, bolstered by strategic acquisitions, all underpinned by a collaborative, entrepreneurial, and meritocratic culture. Amidst increasing market activity and demand for advisory services, our client base is diversified both across geography and sectors and continues to expand. The business has an experienced management team, a growing reputation, increasing profitability, and strong cash generation. Our five specialist service pillars are restructuring advisory, in which we have 63 partners, and that covers the complete spectrum from solvent reorganizations through to administrations and complex investigative-led liquidations.
Our corporate finance offering, which now has 18 partners, and that fundamentally is driven around M&A advisory, strategic valuations, and raising capital for clients. Our debt advisory team, which both supports M&A activity as well as corporates who are addressing their funding needs. Financial advisory, which has seven partners, and that covers a range from C-suite, board advice, transaction services, both vendor due diligence and financial due diligence, advising lenders, financial modeling, valuations, and pensions, and lastly, but not least, our forensic services, which now has five partners, and that covers across investigations, disputes, compliance and risk advisory, and forensic technology. As of today, we now have 102 partners, a total team of 750, and we're operating across 30 office locations, 28 of which are in the U.K. and two outside the U.K.
We continue our membership of Eight International, which primarily is around restructuring and forensics on an international capability. We're members of the Institute for Turnaround. As regards our corporate finance activities, we're members of the BVCA, and we are a member of the Alliance of International Corporate Advisors. As hopefully everyone's aware, fundamentally, we are an organization that seeks to deliver specialist services to support throughout a corporate's life cycle. Starting with corporate finance and debt advisory, during the year, the average deal value was approximately GBP 20 million, which maintains FRP Corporate Finance's position in the heart of the lower mid-market. Just under half, 43% of the deals in FY 2024, involved private equity. As you will have recently seen, post-year-end, we acquired Lexington, giving ourselves a corporate finance footprint in Wales. U.K. economic conditions have stabilized and market sentiment improved.
Our corporate finance, including debt advisory team, are cautiously optimistic with a good pipeline and momentum as we move in and through FY 2025. Heightened demand for pre-deal due diligence and debt advice is extending completion timelines as investors are making sure they're transacting on appropriate deals. Within financial advisory, this was the first full year of trading for the combined financial advisory pillar and has been a positive one. There's been high demand for independent business reviews, pre-lend reviews, transaction services such as FDD and VDD and valuations, and that reflects the current risk environment. Within forensic services, we had a busy year across a multitude of investigations and litigation/arbitration disputes. There's been an increase in contentious insolvency projects requiring our forensic accounting and forensic technology input.
And then finally, but not least, within restructuring advisory, we've remained active across the country, across different sectors, and notable high-profile assignments have included The Body Shop, Wiggle, Inland Homes, Just Cash Flow, and Reader's Digest, and many mid-sized high-quality projects throughout the U.K. Despite positive signs in the economy, we do continue to believe that many businesses will continue to face challenges in the current year and beyond as they navigate their way through an increased cost base and higher cost of borrowings, with lenders' appetite for risk changing.
In terms of the financial highlights, the key thing are reported results are in line with the trading updates we gave in mid-May, and we are pleased with this strong set of results. Revenue growth was 23% year on year, and the vast majority of that, 19%, was organic growth. Adjusted EBITDA, which is the profit metric we invite people to judge us on, grew 37% year on year to GBP 37 million. I've always said FRP strives for a high 20s margin, and we were pleased to report a profit margin of 29% for FY 2024. In terms of cash, cash at year-end was GBP 29.7 million. Above and beyond that, we have an undrawn GBP 10 million revolving credit facility, and we had an acquisition facility, which we drew down for the Hilton-Baird acquisition. This highlights we have a very, very strong balance sheet.
Adjusted total EPS grew 27% year on year, and in line with our dividend policy, we pay three smaller interim dividends and a larger final dividend. Dividends grew 9% year on year, and with this final dividend that's recommended to shareholders, dividends will be 5p for the full year. This graph shows FRP has a strong track record of growth. Over FRP's history, revenue growth or compound annual growth has been 15%. However, when you look at growth since IPO, when you compare 2020 to 2024, when you look at revenue, the number of partners, the team size, profitability, the business has approximately doubled over those four years. We would argue that this chart shows that FRP has a track record of growth regardless of the economic conditions.
In terms of operational highlights, FRP has an administration market share of 16%, which is the leading market share by volume in the U.K. We are particularly strong in the mid-market. However, FRP continues to serve the full spectrum of cases, from personal SMEs right up to high-profile cases like The Body Shop. To underpin our position in terms of restructuring, we are very active in thought leadership, and we run various campaigns. This year, we did a campaign in fintech, manufacturing, retail, construction. During the year, the team grew 19%, a mixture of demand-led lateral hires and acquisitions. We did two acquisitions in the year and two post-year-end, and Jeremy will give you further details on that later on. We're also pleased with our work in progress. Our WIP days were approximately five months.
The work in progress or unbilled revenue you see on our balance sheet is our net recoverable work in progress. I always mention that we've got a monthly diligent process to the extent that we ever have any concerns about recoverability, we provide immediately. Anything that is contingent, we carry at nil. Back to Geoff in terms of a few words on our strategy.
Yeah, so fundamentally, we're looking to support clients around preserving and creating value. We'll just touch upon a couple of projects from here, but in the year, we undertook a value preservation exercise for one of the U.K.'s largest direct mailing businesses. We've been advising a listed retail business. We facilitated the sale of one of the U.K.'s largest seafood producers. We supported a premium health club through a complex debt restructure to ensure its survival. We sourced additional funding for a major U.K. distribution, and we supported the sale of the Trafford Centre to the mezzanine lender following the collapse of Intu a few years ago. One of the things we've always commented upon, which we see as a strength of FRP and sort of intangible value within how we operate, is our cross-pillar activity.
We continue to encourage for people and our teams to think across what we do rather than having a silo mentality of just their individual specialism. And here's a range of projects that have all involved more than one service line. I think it's fair to say that in the main, it's a pretty straightforward position that if we've got more than one service line involved, our financial opportunity in a project tends to increase. So it's not only good in the context of making sure that we're delivering for our clients, but it's actually good for FRP in the context of our ability to generate revenue.
I'm not going to go through all of these, but one that does stand out was AMTE Power, which was, actually, I think, from a renamed listed business that had eight of our offices across multiple service lines supporting them as they went through consideration of their options and ultimately a formal restructuring. But that whole cross-pillar piece remains key to making sure that we are properly serving our client needs, but also maximizing our opportunity as a business ourselves.
A quick walk through market and team growth, and starting with the market, these two graphs. This is restructuring-focused market. The graph on the left is all insolvency appointments. I think I'll probably just highlight the fact that we're at 5.5% of all insolvency appointments. We're slightly ahead of the position in 2021, but obviously, the number of appointments out there over the last 12 months is considerably higher than during that COVID period. The place that we hopefully excel at in terms of the administration market on the right, up to 16%. You can see that sort of 1,600-1,700 appointments across the nation is not yet back to pre-pandemic levels. And actually, if you go back beyond the start of that chart, those were some of the all-time lows in terms of where administrations have been.
We're hoping that with interest rates where they are and more normalized market, that there would be upward trend within that market. On acquisitions, four mentioned two post-year-end. Wilson Field. And we went into Wilson Field because we had to decide whether we were going to develop or buy into direct inquiries from a digital platform, a website, and Wilson Field. We are retaining the renowned Wilson Field within that marketplace. And they are an excellent performer, and indeed, some of their systems are being more widely embraced. And I think we'll see as we talk about utilization in a minute how we're looking to improve there. South Yorkshire-based physically. We've gone to market in the South Yorkshire Sheffield area. As FRP, Wilson Field is the web presence, and they have already seen strong growth through their on-the-ground presence. GWC in the Isle of Man, one partner.
A quality business, but this also gives us much stronger links into some of the work we're doing in the Channel Islands, Cayman, and the BVI, and the ability to service clients with international and offshore exposures considerably enhances our capabilities. Hilton-Baird, just post-year-end, this definitely deepens ties with asset-based lender client relationships. This is a supplier of choice to the ABLs. You can probably take the view it's a supplier of first choice to a lot of ABLs. Their clients include independent lenders, banks, SME, and corporate businesses, as well as other insolvency practitioners across the U.K. We haven't seen any fallout from other insolvency practitioners continuing to need their service, but again, it's important because for most things we do, we are FRP, but we will certainly be maintaining the Hilton-Baird brand because it is a brand of excellence in that environment.
Very recently, as already mentioned, Lexington, one partner, into Cardiff with corporate finance. We will certainly be looking to add additional service lines within Wales to broaden local services offered to clients in that arena. The team growth chart almost speaks for itself, but 80% increase in partners over those four years, 87% increase in fee earners. We're at a point where actually our utilization is 68%. That is a long-time high for FRP. Just commenting on the bar chart on the right, it looked like a cliff edge fall-off in utilizations in 2022, but utilization is a lot about the mix and type of work. There's not an ongoing drop-off percentage-wise across those years, but certainly up to a new level and hoping to push on from that new level.
In terms of colleague update, we are a people business, and people make such a business succeed or indeed splinter and fail, and you have to focus on your people. Majority if not all of the time. In terms of internal progression and promotions, we promoted 15 colleagues to partner during the year, 13 to director, and announced a further 72 promotions across a wide range of senior and specialist roles. Immediately following year-end, we promoted another 7 directors to partners, and that really does show the strength of our internal leadership academy. New talent and evolution. 2 new board members, 2 retirements, and we welcome a new chair in Penny and a new chair of Rem with Louise. We've got a new people director, Claire Dale, who has already fitted in supremely well. We push on. We push on there. We're launching a new podcast series, Mindset. The Save As You Earn was launched in June 2024, and a very, very good take-up. Apart from the fact I didn't take up because I thought the three of us were excluded when we weren't.
Two out of three.
Yeah, and secondary placement in SAYE partners, 25% sell down in June 2024, which now gives us a very comfortable lock-in on all relevant partners to July 2026, and those partners collectively still own 30% of the business. Recent colleague engagement survey results, 84% of employees say they were proud to recommend FRP. That's an excellent result. At the other end of the spectrum, 13% of respondents said they felt they could not openly discuss mental or physical health and well-being with their manager or any other senior representative, and that is obviously an aspect we really do need to and are focusing on.
Some of the actions in that regard to implement a business-wide personal development strategy, continue rollout of well-being activities in partnership with the mental health charity, the Charlie Waller Trust, extend the London Balanced Mind Group nationally, and undertake a review of our approach to equality, diversity, inclusion, and develop a strategy therefrom.
In terms of our P&L, a couple of things to call out. I've already touched on revenue growth year on year. In terms of personnel costs, overall, it's 106 new colleagues. That's a mixture between acquisitions and lateral hires. I think it's worth calling out, we gave blended pay rises, including promotions on the 1st of May 2023, of around about 5.5%. The rollover point here is where people have joined us and had an element of the year in the previous year and a full 12 months in the current year. Equally, and I'll talk about it on the next slide, in terms of share-based payment charges. So in our reported P&L, we do have an offset here where we've got lower share-based payment charges in our reported P&L. They've halved from over GBP 8 million to just under GBP 4 million.
We exclude those in the profit metric we invite you to judge us upon. In terms of operating expenses, we had general increases across a broad range of categories, slightly higher legal costs in 2024, but everything else you would sort of expect of a business like ours. Continued investment in business development, etc., etc. On the tax side, the charge is higher year on year. One, we were more profitable, but secondly, corporation tax rates changed in April 2023 from 19% to 25%. So in the prior year, that impacted one month, and in this year, it impacted the performance. In terms of the profit metric, we invite you to judge us upon, and I believe this is officially called an APM, an alternative performance measure. We go by underlying adjusted EBITDA.
The two key items that we adjust for are share-based payment expenses, which arise due to two things. One, consideration, which is deemed remuneration, and employee incentive plan option awards, which were funded by the partners on IPO, so there's no future dilution. Both of these items are non-cash and non-operating. In terms of the balance sheet, again, in terms of work in progress, this is our net work in progress, and we won't cover this in this presentation, but there are a few slides in the appendices of this deck that talk about WIP in more detail. There's also some slides on our competition and our referral network, and all of this whole deck will be available on our website. In terms of our balance sheet, in terms of goodwill and intangibles, there's a slight increase year on year due to the acquisitions.
Earlier on, I mentioned strong net cash position. We have a really good track record of turning our net work in progress into cash. The WIP primarily relates to time and cost assignments, where we have an expectation that we can convert that WIP into cash. To the extent there's ever any doubt over recoverability, we've got a robust monthly provisioning process where we would write down that work in progress. In terms of liabilities, the key things out there are partners' profit. So partners get several forms of profit share. There's an element that's paid monthly, and there's an element that's paid subsequent to the year-end, which has shown us a liability here. In summary, it's a strong balance sheet.
In terms of the cash flow, you can see here from profit before tax to net cash from operating activities, we've got a really strong conversion of profits into cash. I will say that in terms of our work in progress, we do have slightly stronger cash collections in the second half as opposed to the first half. So I do anticipate as we go into FY25, our WIP will build slightly for the first half. Also on the cash flow, the other big thing to call out is there was a slight timing difference in terms of the payment of tax, which is why there's a difference year on year in terms of the tax paid. That's pure timing. In terms of capital allocation, this is rather simple. I guess our main thing is to continue to invest in the business to drive organic growth.
Supporting that, we are very selective in terms of our approach to acquisitions. We do have an active pipeline at the moment, but we are very selective subject to the following criteria. The cultural fit of the individuals, the strategic fit, both geographically and within our service pillars, and making sure the economics are right for both sides. We also have a quarterly dividend policy, as I mentioned earlier on, three smaller interim dividends and a larger final dividend policy, and that has been progressive since IPO. Any other forms of distribution of capital, we would take advice at the time, and we would determine what we would do. Back to Geoff for our outlook statement.
Thank you, Gavin. So to reconfirm, our strategy is built around steady and sustainable growth, both through organic initiatives and selective acquisition opportunities. Part of the organic growth strategy is to ensure that FRP's offices across its 28 locations in the U.K. and two international locations are connected and work well together. This supports our delivery of sustainable, profitable growth by drawing on specialists from our five service lines as necessary in order to provide each assignment with the right team to deliver the best possible service and outcome. Our M&A pipeline remains healthy, and we are in active discussions at varying stages regarding a number of opportunities that will potentially further enhance our ability to support clients through their entire corporate lifecycle. Trading the first few months of the current financial year has been positive with good activity levels and is in line with the board's expectations.
This includes the financial contribution of recently acquired businesses where integration is progressing as planned. We remain fully committed to retaining our healthy collegiate culture where we promote the development, health, and well-being of our colleagues. As demand for our services continues to increase and as a people business, this approach will be critical to meeting our goals.