Good morning and welcome to the FRP Advisory Group plc analyst meeting. Throughout this recorded meeting, attendees will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated in the right-hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your question and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. And now I'd like to hand you over to Geoff Rowley, CEO. Good morning, sir.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to FRP's full-year results presentation for FY 2025. As is customary, if I can just make some quick introductions. My name is Geoff Rowley, CEO of the group. To my left is Jeremy French, our Chief Operating Officer, and to my right is Gavin Jones, our Chief Financial Officer. Delighted to go through a couple of highlights for the year under review. We've been able to continue our execution of growth strategy, delivering revenue growth of 19%, EBITDA growth of 11%, and a team growth of 21%. We've had a number of additions in the year in terms of our M&A, including Hilton-Baird, Lexington, WilliamsAli, and Globalview. We also opened an office in Belfast. We ended the year with a strong balance sheet with net cash of GBP 33 million.
And as is key to our overall strategy, all of our pillars continue to be connected and collaborate, and the majority remains in restructuring in terms of what we're doing of circa 75%. To recap in terms of our five specialist complementary pillars, as I've just referenced, Restructuring Advisory is the largest part of our business, accounting for approximately 70%-80% of revenue, and includes 65 partners, as you will note from the deck, we cover the full range of restructuring services both across the corporate world and indeed the personal world.
We have a Financial Advisory team, which is around 10%-15% of revenue, which is supported by seven partners and includes transaction services, lender services, increasing amount of activity in relation to valuation, and we'll talk a bit further about Globalview as an acquisition during the year, along with board and C-suite advisory, ESG, and pensions. We also have our Forensic Services team, roughly about 5%-10% of our revenue, six partners, and that covers the full range from forensic investigations, disputes, compliance and risk advisory, and forensic technology.
Working with companies that are achieving great amounts of success, we have our Corporate Finance team accounting for about 10%-15% of our revenue, 21 partners, and that will cover a range from selling a business, buying businesses, raising capital, special situations, which works closely with our Restructuring Advisory colleagues, supporting private equity, management advisory, EOTs, transaction tax services, and strategic reviews. We also have our Debt Advisory team, which accounts for about 5% of revenue, has nine partners, and that includes leveraged and corporate financing, growth financing, asset-based lending, and amendments, extensions, and special situations. And as you'll see from the sort of diagram in the middle there, this is all about being connected.
While we set out that broad range of turnover by service line, it remains incredibly important to us that we have all of those service lines because they are complementary to each one being able to achieve the results that they do.
This graph highlights that FY 2025 was another year of profitable growth for FRP. While there was a slight increase in revenue per partner, you can't quite see it here due to the rounding, but good progress in terms of revenue per partner. You can also see the fact that since IPO, our rate of acquiring business has increased slightly to the extent that we've done 14 acquisitions post-IPO. The other key thing to highlight in terms of this slide is that FRP's profitable growth has been regardless of the economic background, which we regard as us being quite a resilient business.
We've further expanded our national coverage, but very much ensuring that we have local contacts wherever we have feet on the boots on the ground. At the end of April, 108 partners, 795 team members, 33 office locations. Bringing that right up to date, 103 partners with further promotions and some retirements, which we will discuss later on. 855 team members now in 34 locations. On the location map, we opened in Belfast in H2 of FY 2025. The other new locations are from acquisitions during H1, which we have discussed in presentations before, but I'll go back to the detail further on in the presentation, and we maintain our international and appropriate market memberships and allegiances.
In terms of the financial highlights, total revenue growth was 19%, of which organic growth was 11%, an 8% contribution from the acquisitions. Jeremy's going to cover some of the acquisitions in more detail later on. In terms of profit growth, or the metric we invite you to judge us upon, adjusted EBITDA grew 11% year-on-year. The margin at year-end was approximately 27%. We target high 20s margin, and so this was in line with our goal. One thing to point out, we did have a slightly stronger first half than the second half. Typically, we often have a stronger second half, but we did notice that there was some pause in activity in Q4 due to some activity going on with tariff noise around macroeconomic uncertainty. But overall, we typically have a stronger second half. It's just that this year we had a stronger first half.
In terms of our balance sheet, we've got a strong balance sheet. We closed the year with GBP 33.3 million net cash. Typically, we have our WIP build in our first half and typically stronger cash collections in the second half. We saw that trend continue this year, and therefore going into FY 2026, we might see a slight WIP build as we go into our first half. Adjusted EPS grew 8% year-on-year from 9.94p to 10.7p. The main thing that we adjust for here is share-based payment charges, which I'll talk about later on. In line with FRP's dividend policy, we've got a quarterly dividend policy with three smaller interim dividends and a larger final one. If the final one is approved at the shareholder AGM, it will be 2.55p, and that will equate to 5.4p dividend, which is an 8% increase year-on-year.
On the operational highlights, five acquisitions completed during the year, and we opened an office with a forensics team into Belfast. Again, the acquisitions are mentioned in more detail in the latter slide. All acquisitions are in line with our strategy to generate sustainable profitable growth by combining a focus on organic growth with acquisitions that meet the group's selective criteria. And again, we'll reinforce that selective criteria later on. All five acquisitions have integrated well. We've got some relocation into existing locations coming up, which I'll talk through, and they're all performing in line with expectation. 21% team growth. Competitive environment. We've continued to recruit talented individuals to join FRP, help us grow in targeted areas, and our team grew to that 795. And I've already explained that we've had significant further growth since the end of the year.
Footprint at year-end: 31 offices, including the two international offices in Cyprus and the Isle of Man, plus one more since, and a consistent high level, truly high level of staff retention. On infrastructure, we have invested significantly in our people HR team. Our CRM system switched to AD integration to better support business development and marketing. We have expanded our several key roles as we grow, and we've hired a dedicated Money Laundering Reporting Officer and a dedicated Legal Director . We have several ongoing systems and process changes to improve at an operational and efficiency level.
We obviously continue to have specialist services to support our clients throughout our corporate life cycle. Corporate finance and Debt Advisory , we had positive momentum in the prior year, which continued through FY 2025, despite persistently challenging economic conditions generally on a macro, but equally on a home level in terms of change of government. It's been pleasing to see consistent CF activity levels over the financial year, but Q4 did see geopolitical factors, including tariff uncertainties, impacting business confidence, which caused for delays in decision-making. The U.K. lower mid-market in which we primarily operate remains resilient, underpinning cautious optimism for FY 2026 despite continued geopolitical uncertainty. Within our Financial Advisory team, we've had positive trading with strong demand for all of our services. Growth in transaction services as buyers and lenders are increasingly active in response to market changes.
Our valuation team doubled and now comprises 15 professionals via a combination of strategic hires and the acquisition of Globalview. Within Forensic Services , there's been multiple investigations, litigation, arbitration, and matrimonial/private client disputes. We've been instructed on several investigations with an element of alleged fraud or misappropriation. We've also seen an increase in private equity firm mandates with demand for contentious insolvency assignments requiring forensic accounting and technology expertise. Last but not least, within Restructuring Advisory , we continue to be a market leader of administration appointments in the U.K. by number. We've been active nationwide across all sectors, and U.K. companies, particularly those with large workforces and tighter margins such as retail and hospitality, are expected to face further financial difficulties as a new minimum wage and increased employers' national insurance take effect during the course of this current financial year.
As we've mentioned on many occasions, cross-pillar activity for us is absolutely key to how we continue to evolve and succeed as a business. And there are a few selected matters here which demonstrate where we've worked across pillar. Probably one of the most notable last year was The Body Shop, which had significant input from both Corporate Finance , Restructuring Advisory , and in fact, our forensic team as there were a number of investigations that were taking place as to what had happened prior to failure. On International Decorative Services Limited, that was a really great project covering both our Financial Advisory , our Debt Advisory , and restructuring. And then the other ones just set out quite clearly where we've worked across pillars. In terms of our medium-term guide rails, we continue to have a focus on organic growth and seeking high single-digit growth in that manner.
We will continue with selective M&A subject to our criteria, which remains fairly clear but important around a cultural fit, a strategic rationale, and the economics of the same working for us in terms of our allocation of capital. As has been demonstrated through the life of FRP as a listed company, a strong balance sheet and good free cash flow conversion, a disciplined capital allocation policy. I think that's best demonstrated by the discipline we've maintained on M&A matters where we have stuck within the guide rails around what we are prepared to pay in the context of businesses that we would like to acquire, and then overall, seeking high Adjusted EBITDA margins in the high 25% plus arena.
As regards our organic growth strategy, that will be around increasing partners, and that's both through the ability to undertake lateral hires, but also developing our own talent and seeing colleagues come through to taking the role of partner and being able to maximize their potential. Increasing the share of the wallet in terms of what the market opportunity is, and I'm comfortable that we continue to do that across our service lines. In the context of the quality of projects that we are able to undertake, seeking to increase our revenue per partner. Looking at our overall market share across all of our service lines. Making sure that we are pricing appropriately.
We are certainly not the cheapest in the market, and we are not the most expensive, but we are looking to be value for money with regards to making sure that we serve our clients' needs, but also delivering on our own aspirations in terms of our profitable growth. And then all of that cumulatively coming together to deliver wider market growth as we progress as a business.
So Just on to just point on growing profitably, we spend a lot of time and effort looking at how the business best does that, whether it's the return on our marketing spend, which could include business development activities, how we use data, how we're connected internally on using CRM, and how we are hungry in terms of going to market in order to win work. We also monitor many KPIs. For example, we target utilization in the high 60s, although we do always have capacity that could go slightly north of that. In terms of our platform and operating model, we're always looking at operational efficiency, and I don't think it'll ever be fixed. It's something that we're always continually working on. What can we do better?
We've got various working groups looking at how data flows through FRP and also whether AI could be of use to us in terms of making sure we're leveraging the best technological tools out there. In terms of upskilling the internal workforce, we alluded to earlier on our investments within our HR and people team, and we recently ran our first partner development thing for new partners who've recently been promoted. So we're spending a lot more time and effort in terms of developing talent within FRP. And while we do continue to serve the full range of clients, from SMEs to mid-caps, we also get invited to tender on the larger, more quality mandates. It's not always the number of projects we're working on. It's the quality of those mandates that we're working on.
We have continued to gain restructuring market share in terms of all insolvency appointments, and the chart on the left, we've moved from a 5% share of market to 5.5% share of market from 2024 to 2025. When you look at administration-only appointments on the right, we continue to take more administration appointments than any other firm. I think that's the fifth year running there, but we accept that FY 2024, that was 16% of the total number of cases, and FY 2025, that's 13%. We do not strip out group appointments. You might have 10 companies in a group. It doesn't necessarily mean 10 appointments. It doesn't necessarily mean there is 10 times as much work, and actually, that's the main differentiator between those two years. On acquisitions, we achieved a lot in H2. Hilton-Baird came on board in May 2024.
Four partners, 36 colleagues, improved the size of our Debt Advisory pillar and its skill sets, and considerably deepened our asset-based lending client relationships. Clients include independent lenders, banks, SMEs, corporate businesses, and restructuring. We are in the process of Hilton-Baird, based in Southampton, relocating with our existing restructuring team in Southampton into one location over the next six months. We brought Lexington Corporate Finance into Cardiff in July. One partner, 14 colleagues, Corporate Finance. Wales has been a target of ours for a considerable time, increases our Corporate Finance offering, and hopefully gives us the ability to think about what further service lines we can introduce into Cardiff. WilliamsAli, September 24, 2024, into Newcastle. Two partners, five colleagues. Corporate Finance, market share gain, expands the service offering certainly across the Northeast, complements very strong existing relationships in the Northeast.
Again, over the next six months, our restructuring teams already in Newcastle are in a different location to WilliamsAli, and the two of those will be combining at the earliest opportunity. Also within H1 of FY 25, Globalview, October 24. One partner, eight colleagues, Financial Advisory , very much increased the abilities of our valuations team and enhanced our ability to serve our clients more effectively. They very quickly located into our 110 Cannon Street offices. Since year-end, in May, we acquired ONE Advisory, three partners, Financial Advisory , broadened our transactional service offering, and added new governance advisory capabilities. It will enhance our ability to serve our clients more effectively. All of these, it's an inorganic growth strategy to acquire small partner teams. The cultural fit just has to be right.
The strategic fit has to be where we want it, and then the economic fit needs to work for both sides, and we continue to make sure that we work within the constraints that we believe we should, and they're all deals structured with retention and similar lock-in to IPO partners. On the team growth and utilization, seven colleagues were promoted to partner on the 1st of May 2024 and a further three on the 1st of May 2025. The updated partner numbers I gave you included the ONE Advisory, and we did continue to have a reasonable number of partners either retiring or moving from partner to consultant, where they still have a role, but perhaps a reduced role to play in the business.
We took on a new People Director to lead on our people proposition and future talent acquisition, and it's great to see the way our HR function is expanding and what we are looking to achieve. So the national HR team has increased by seven colleagues. We continue to have and hopefully will even improve where we are, the level of colleague retention. And I've always commented that actually from 795, we're at 854 people today. And we do accept that actually the utilization, the Trump effect and what happened from where we were sitting at the end of January through the February to May period, our utilization, yes, it did fall off a bit, but we're very comfortable with the way that June and July are progressing, and a lot of the world has re-stabilized itself.
So in terms of our financials, this is our reported P&L. Just a few things to highlight from this. As we mentioned earlier on, we had a slightly stronger H1, and there was a little bit of impact of the U.S. tariffs and business uncertainty in our Q4. However, we've started this new financial year on a solid basis. As you'd expect, the largest cost in the people businesses are personnel costs. There is just one thing to call out here. Within that personnel cost line, we do have share-based payment charges, which I'll talk about on the next slide. But we've got a growth of about GBP 1.8 million year on year in terms of share-based payment charges. And of that, the highest growth is in deemed remuneration linked to the acquisitions. So the team grew, personnel costs increased.
That was due to a mixture of pay raises, promotions, but also hiring new colleagues, etc. In terms of OpEx, all the normal operating expenses that you'd expect of a professional services firm. Very often now, when you hire a colleague, they need licenses for various things. So our licensing cost goes up. With greater business activity, there's also data storage costs. We've added new locations, plus also some of our offices have needed larger premises. So there's been investment in our establishment or property costs. I'm pleased to see that some of the bad debts that we had provided at year-end due to their aging have been collected post-year-end. So nothing that's necessarily concerning there. And in terms of our effective tax rate, for those that you've done the calculation, some of our deemed remuneration is not deemed tax deductible.
There is a slight increase year in year in terms of our effective tax rates. In terms of the next slide, which is Adjusted EBITDA, this is the profit metric we invite you to judge us upon. There's two main drivers to the things that we adjust for, and it's the share-based payments that relate to the employee incentive plan. That plan was funded by the partners on IPO, and the shares that are given here that are back options are still from that. So there's no extra dilution. The shares do exist in a trust, and we adjust for that. And also, when we do an acquisition, it's normally structured with an element of cash and an element of shares, which lock in those people for a period post-acquisition. That is reclassified from consideration to what's called Deemed Remuneration and expensed over the lock-in period.
So we do adjust for those two non-cash items. However, when we have national insurance linked to the options, because we see that as a real cost, we do take that as an operating cost. In terms of our balance sheet, as ever, the most important asset on our balance sheet is our work in progress, and we've maintained our diligence in terms of how we value our work in progress. As I mentioned earlier on, typically we have a WIP build in our first half and typically stronger cash collections in our second half. And I'm very pleased that we had particularly strong cash collections this year. In terms of the balance sheet, you'll see that goodwill intangibles grew linked to the acquisitions. Equally, we issued some shares as a result of that as well.
We did draw on our accordion acquisition facility way back in May 2024, at the start of this financial year, in order to complete on the Hilton-Baird acquisition. Our WIP at that year-end was approximately 4.7 months. We would say anywhere within the four- to seven-month range is completely typical for our industry, and we are very happy with the way that we value our work in progress. So the WIP that you see is our net WIP that we would always expect to convert pound for pound into cash. In terms of our cash flow, you can see here, and I use the word deliberately, I think it's an excellent conversion from profit into cash. So we were really happy with how we collected our WIP towards the end of the year. Really, really strong conversion.
You can see a profit before tax of GBP 31 million, net cash from operating activities just under GBP 31 million. So really, really strong conversion from profits into cash. In terms of our capital allocation, our structure is very much to invest in the business to drive organic growth. That could be a mixture of activities. As Geoff mentioned earlier on, we're very disciplined in terms of how we deploy that in terms of acquisitions, making sure we do not overpay in terms of the multiple, etc. And we've kept a progressive dividend policy where we pay three smaller quarterly dividends and a larger final one that we recommend to shareholders. Anything else that we would do with capital, we would take advice here at the time. Back to Geoff for our outlook.
Thank you, Gavin. So in terms of our outlook for FY 2026, our strategy is built around steady and sustainable growth through both organic initiatives and selective acquisition opportunities. Trading in the first few months of the current financial year is positive and in line with the board's expectations, with good activity levels across all locations. The financial contribution of recently acquired businesses are performing and integrating also in line with expectations. Post-year-end, ONE Advisory Group who provides financial reporting, transaction advisory, and governance services was acquired, complementing the group's existing service pillars and broadening its offer. The M&A pipeline remains healthy, and we are in active discussions at varying stages on several opportunities. We remain fully committed to retaining our healthy collegiate culture, where we promote the development, health, and well-being of our colleagues, an approach which is critical to the delivery of our goals. Thank you.
At this time, I'd like to invite any questions that anyone.
That's great. Thank you very much indeed to you all for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of the screen. Just let the team take a few moments to review your questions submitted already. I'd just like to remind you that recording this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessible via your Investor Meet Company platform. If I may, Gavin, hand over to you to moderate through the Q&A. If I could ask you to just read out the questions, and I'll pick up from you at the end.
Thank you very much, so the first question, I think I will answer first, and then I'll hand over for Jeremy to comment. The first question was, "Does the ONE Advisory acquisition signal a wider move into the quoted PLC space?" so I'll give my view, and then I'll pass over to Jeremy. One of the things the ONE Advisory deal does, it supports one of our strategies, which is direct to corporate, where from our perspective, we want to be that trusted advisor to clients, so we do have various initiatives underway above and beyond getting business from our referral network, be that lawyers, accountants, etc. We do have various initiatives underway to get closer directly to corporates, but I would say, yes, we are keen to help PLC sort of listed clients, but equally, our core mid-market is unlisted business.
So we're keen to explore growing in both areas. Jeremy, just on that point, is there anything else you would add?
Yeah, clearly, they already do a lot of Financial Advisory activity, which is not dissimilar to what's out there, and we are keen on the direct-to-corporate and the fact that non-execs of potentially quoted entities might wish to react to the vibes that companies are facing somewhat earlier than the average director in this country, so it's an extension of what we do. It's not new to us.
The next question is two questions in one from Sam. Thank you for the revenue split by pillar. Would the profitability be broadly similar? Is there anything else to pull out there? To answer that, Sam, in a normal year, absolutely yes. All of our five service pillars are high margin, high 20s. However, in any year, you do have an element of volatility. For example, within Corporate Finance , depending on when deals close one side of the line or the other side of the line, they could be above or below the normal. However, in a normal year, we would expect all of our service pillars to be high margin. The next question that came from Sam, I could answer, but I'll let Jeremy answer. The next question Sam asked, our Q4 had some issues with some Corporate Finance deals delaying.
Did they come in the first quarter so far of FY 26? And how is our Corporate Finance pipeline, Jeremy?
Yeah, we're really pleased to say they didn't fall away. There was genuine delay. And in terms of, I'd say, a number in terms of what probably I expected would fall into FY 25, but at least 75% of those that didn't come in have since completed. Actually, other transactions that, because you never quite know when Corporate Finance is going to fall in, other transactions have completed. And we consider the pipeline is very strong at the moment. But it wasn't just Corporate Finance in that last quarter. Our utilization in restructuring amazingly went downward with all the headwinds. I know the employer's NIC increases is probably something for the autumn and winter, but Donald Trump standing up had an impact or lack of impact in terms of people's ability to react in a whole host of areas. Currently, we're comfortable.
The next question I'll take is a question from Arthur regarding our organic growth in our first half. I'll deal with observations. If I look back to FY 2025, we had a slightly stronger first half and a slightly weaker second half, particularly coming from Q4. In our first half, you might remember we had a particularly strong contribution from The Body Shop and a large Corporate Finance project. Now, if you invert 2025 as we go into 2026, that means 2026 has a slightly tougher comparable for the first half and a slightly easier comparative for the second half. What I would say is that we started the year strongly. We're only sort of almost three months in, so we've had a really, really strong start to the year.
Exactly what will happen at the end of our first half or indeed the second half, it's hard to call. However, we've started the year with good momentum and would expect to make good progress. So I'll just deal with facts and leave it at that. Jeremy, is there anything else you would add to that?
No, I'm fine, you covered that, Gavin. Thank you.
Brilliant. Right, the next question from Peter. This is one for Jeremy. Looking five years ahead, how do you see FRP's presence in Europe evolving?
Thanks, Gavin. Thanks, Peter. We've always been reticent about putting forward five-year plans because on close working clients, we react instantaneously. And the question in hand, it's different regimes imply, different processes, procedures. The offshore places we've gone is because it's U.K., effectively it's U.K. jurisdiction inspired. In Cyprus, you might need to take your insolvency exams in Cypriot, but apart from that, it's U.K.-based business culture. I can't comment on what the next five years holds for Europe. We might surprise me and all of you, but today is dealing with the present in the U.K. and assessing opportunities when they present. We have got one thing at the moment that we're looking at that is overseas. I'm not sure it will go anywhere, but we're not restricted to just looking at the U.K.
The only one thing I would add on that is in terms of different regimes, we'd spend an awful lot of time and effort making sure before we made any sort of bold moves into sort of mainland Europe to give it that perspective. Because very often it's under a different regime and we spend a lot of time and effort on culture. What I will call out is we have a partnership with Eight International that do have local boots on the ground in Europe. And at the moment, we very much work in partnership with them where we would do the U.K. leg of a transaction and we would use firms in Europe who would do the other side of the transaction. But from our perspective, our focus is on having strong links to the U.K. at present.
So with that, I think that's the end of the questions that have come through. I think we've answered all of them. May I pass back to yourself, Mark?
That's great. Thank you very much indeed. And ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much indeed for your time this morning. We'll redirect you now so you can provide your feedback to the company. Thanks once again for your time and wish you all a good rest of your day. Thank you.