Well, good morning, everybody, and warm welcome to HSS 2023 Results Presentation. So, my name is Steve Ashmore. I'm joined, as ever, by Mr. Quested.
Good morning, everybody.
We have a new person, David, who's gonna be pushing the buttons and helping us get through the presentation. So with that, we'll crack on. As you probably noticed, we made two announcements this morning. One, we'll go through in some detail, which is the 2023 results, but the other one was with regards to Mr. Quested. So after nearly eight years in the business, Paul, let's say for family reasons, Paul has decided to resign his office and leave the business as of the 1st of September. So I want to officially record it that you broke the partnership, Paul, that we've been doing over these years. I mean, I think we always thought of ourselves as a dynamic duo, Bodie and Doyle or Starsky and Hutch.
I think all the people on the call think of us as the Two Ronnies. With that, it's good night from him. On to more serious matters, which, and that is very serious, I think, Paul, but, wishing you all well with the future. And I'm sure you're gonna reappear stronger and better into the new year. As regards to the results presentation, if you just flick forward for me, David, on to the highlights. The last time we addressed you was back at the end of September. We updated on the half year numbers, and the two key messages from that were challenging markets, which we were facing into. And the second thing was we wanted to continue, and we did, investing behind our strategy.
So fast-forward six months, more or less to this point today, and we're gonna update you on the results. I'm gonna do that, as you can see on this chart, by three sections. One, I'm gonna summarize the financials, then we're gonna look into a little bit of an update on the strategy, although I'll cover that in a bit more detail later in the deck. And then we're just gonna talk about the outlook, how we see the market and what we're seeing at the moment. So in terms of financials, we call it a resilient performance, because we delivered a 5% growth versus last year.
Within that, when you pick it apart, Paul, we'll break this out in more detail, but we saw our services revenue, remember, that's rehire and training, grow double-digit 12%. I will come back to that stat a little bit later. And so when we compare against the market, I think that was decent growth from where we were. The second point I wanted to raise is that none other than just to say mathematically, that this is our second highest Profit Before Tax that we've recorded in the group's history. So post all the investment we made, post the challenging markets, I think that's just a decent record.
The next two lines, I talk about the usual bits, was EBITDA, EBITA, margins, when you normalize for that investment of, just north of 20% and 8.5%, respectively. And the final piece, which completes the set, is return on capital employed. Paul insisted I put it down as 19.6%, but to me, that is a 20% delivery. We talk about the balance sheet. We say pretty strong at 1.2x . Of course, we've got in mind that we sold the power business, and so we are below 1x, as it stands right now. So decent set, resilient numbers, I think is the best way of describing those in the conditions which we found.
In terms of the strategy, it's summarized in, in sort of five points there, but, I'll whistle through it. We do see momentum building, and we have seen some thousand customers, I'll talk about this more, start to self-serve. Remember, we talked about the marketplace platform. When I spoke to you in September, we were talking about 63 customers self-serving. So there is momentum building, and those customers that are on the platform as a stat, you know, are achieving 30% revenue growth year-over-year. And that's the important thing. When we get them there, and they are engaging on it, we see much, much broader growth. 24% of group's transactions are now through self-service technology platforms, whether it is our marketplace or hss.com. And that will step up as we go through the year due to seasonal peaks.
But when we look at that, if you remember, we always talk about 30%. We're not saying that as a limit, by the way, but if we can get to there, we're in really good shape on that one. We've complemented this by the work we've been doing in variabilizing our cost base, moving out of fixed sites, which has obviously an impact on our ESG plans as well, because instead of dedicated sites, absorbing energy, et cetera, et cetera, we're now in somebody else's site, but also accessing that customer base. So we've expanded that. If you remember, we were working through the last 16 of last year. We've now delivered those. We're now in 89 locations, and those sites are seeing 21% same stores growth. So final piece on the strategy is the work we do in the ESG.
We're just talking here about accreditations. I'll give you a little bit more on that later on, but we've got the gold standard. We SBTi approved in terms of our plans to get to net zero by 2040, and we've got the cybersecurity accreditation on top of all, all some other bits. In terms of outlook, we spoke last time about the challenging market. We are seeing signs of recovery, so I just wanna pick up on that a little bit. So in quarter one of this year, we've seen revenue growth of 3%. To be noted, that that includes a March where the Easter was early. So we're still seeing growth despite that, and Easter being early means a bunch of bank holidays, I think, were brought into March.
We're still seeing that services segment, rehire and training, remember, growing at a double-digit rate. It's worthwhile pondering that for a second. Why? Is because when you see the platform on which our guys sell now, on which our customers self-serve. It is just a broader product that they are selecting from, and hence we're seeing that convert into positive sales. Yes, it was a challenging half two. However, we are seeing some sentiment change. I think the PMI index is sort of dotting around the 50%. Obviously, more than 50% is growth, indicates growth. So it's nearly there, and I think it was slightly, it was 50.1% the previous month. I think it's maybe just bits of slightly under, but we're tracking that through.
We have seen markets such as FM start to show positive signs of growth. Look, we talked about the marketplace and the builders merchant, so I won't go into that. If we look at the full year ahead, as it stands at the moment, we're confident that we're gonna deliver an EBITA in line with the expectations in the market. Now, all this mixed together, the board feel confident in recommending a final dividend of GBP 0.38. So for the total, that moves to GBP 0.56, which is an increase, which we planned a 4% versus 2022. So that's kind of the report card looking overall.
So if I hand over to Paul, who will take you through a little bit more of the details, over to you, Paul.
Good morning, everybody. Thank you, Steve. I was trying to think of a Two Ronnies joke of hairy legs or something like that, but I decided the time is lost. So just before we go into the financial detail, one bit of housekeeping. As you all well know from our meetings last year, we've changed our operating segments and built them around our ProService and Operations businesses. Because that change was made at kind of partway through 2022, not all financial metrics we have the comparators for. So for ease, we've included both our old segments to show the comparability, and we'll give a little bit of snippets on the new segments where we can actually show the comparison. And as we go through time, we'll migrate to purely on the new segments. So you can see the financial summary slide.
A lot of this I'm gonna cover in later slides, so I won't go through all of this in detail, and Steve's already touched on some of the points. Just to draw your attention to a few. One, as Steve said, 5% revenue growth, which is ahead of the market, and there are various stats out there, ranging from decline to +3%. In all measures, we're outperforming the market, which we're delighted on. The second piece is, as Steve has also said, we've made strategic investments in the year. We shared that with you, back in the results that we did for the half year, and spent GBP 5.1 million on OpEx and some CapEx, which is non-recurring, all about setting us up for future growth.
Now, clearly, that has an adverse impact on the 2023 results, but sets us up for future years. Where that had an impact on metrics, as you can see on this slide, we've just shown that so you can see and clearly understand the underlying performance, which was resilient. The margins on EBITDA and EBITA, in line with where our framework has always been on performance, particularly EBITDA, where we've said our goal is to be above 20%. And the final point to note on this slide is interest. I think we all know that the base rates have increased. I think we've had our head in the sand and missed that one over the past, month.
Now, the impact on us is a GBP 3 million increase, but really, GBP 2 million of that is what I would call real external debt impact, and GBP 1 million is our favorite accounting standard, IFRS 16, and discount unwind. So moving on to the next slide, which is around profit before tax. As we've said, our second-highest profit before tax in the group's history, whether on a reported basis, which is what the chart shows, or on an underlying adjusted basis, which the data underneath it shows. And that flows through into the right-hand chart, which you can see on earnings per share. Now, clearly, we're really pleased with the way the performance has changed through execution of our strategy. And if it wasn't for FY 2020 and the COVID year, you would see that steady progression in terms of the profit.
And equally, this is against the backdrop in FY 2023 of a more challenging market and rising interest rates and the impact that has on PBT. But it's the underlying strength of the business which has given the board the confidence to place that investment in the strategy and invest for the future. And the light blue chart bars on the top will show where our performance would have been had we not made that strategic investment. So you can clearly see where the underlying performance is. And the other point to note, I've not adjusted or normalized that for interest. If I was to do that, then the FY 2023 number would be very close to our record performance of FY 2022.
The final point in terms of this underlying strength, it has given the board the confidence, as part of our progressive policy, to recommend a final dividend of GBP 0.38, which ultimately is a 4% increase year-on-year. Continuing our progressive dividend policy that we've set out. Going on to the next slide, which breaks our performance down into the old segments and gives a bit of color underneath the group headlines. As a reminder of our old segments, rental is revenue generated from the assets owned within the group, and services is revenue generated from the rehire of third-party fleet and our training business. Starting with rental, solid growth, 1% in the year, and that's been driven a lot through our low-cost builders merchant model.
We've expanded it from 63 up to 89, so increase of 26. That's including the announcement we made at our half-year results to shut 16 traditional branches and convert them, which was saving us GBP 1 million worth of cost savings. Cost savings that we are seeing flow through into 2024 as expected. Well, what's really pleasing, not just about the expansion, is the same store basis growth, where we're growing at 21%. So real strength, both in the model and giving us confidence to expand that as we move forward. We've already approved and well on the way to opening 10 new branches this year, and we're, Steve and I, will be looking at more opportunities as the year progresses.
Now, that has been offset by the demand softness that we highlighted in certain end segments at our half-year results, and as well as that, the impact of extremely mild weather on our strong seasonal product range. And that was reflected, and you can see through the utilization, which has fallen slightly in this segment, reflective of that. However, despite all of the headwinds, we've continued to maintain our contribution, managing inflationary pressures with price management, and that's evidenced through strong and resilient underlying margins. The only reason the reported margin in rentals dropped is all around product mix. If I go back to services, I think I'm repeating what I've said in the last couple of years.
It's a copy and paste, double-digit services growth, as our customers value and demand the one-stop shop that our proposition offers, and our training business, which has delivered record revenue and record contribution again. It sounded like that was negative, I don't mean it to be. They're just continually delivering. And that's underpinned by two kind of core components. The first one is our expansion of our seller network, whether that be rehire partners, training partners, the building material suppliers. That's all moved forward, and we've increased, from around about 650 up to 950 in terms of the sellers that we now have operating with us to offer that one-stop shop for our customers. And the other clear part that we've continued to invest behind is technology, and Steve will bring a bit more on that, later on.
That really shows how we are improving the experience for both, buyers and sellers on the platform to make it easier and create that stickiness as we move forward. If we move on a slide, as I said, we can't give you all of the financial metrics for our new segments, but we can show the revenue performance. ProService, our capital light, technology-led marketplace business, has delivered 5% growth. That's really underpinned by the performance in services, where that, that comes to a head through the marketplace. And it's through this business unit that we've invested, in terms of the strategic investment for the future growth, we see the big opportunities here. Operations, our asset-owning U.K. business, which is obviously focused on fulfillment and service and safety.
Now, in the reported numbers, this includes power, but for the purposes of revenue, I've stripped this out to the power performance out, so we can see the underlying Operations performance, given power was sold, as you know, in March 2024. And that shows a good solid growth of 2.6% with a strong first half and a bit more softness that we've faced with the headwinds in the second half of the year. And finally, if I take Ireland, it's our self-contained business in the Republic of Ireland, where you've got sales and Operations combined. It's a leading proposition, which is enabling us to have real success with contract wins, particularly around end buyer segments of data centers and pharmaceutical. And we're continuing to invest around exploiting that opportunity within the region.
So if I can move on one more slide, please, David, to the balance sheet. So this is something that as a team, we're really proud of in the transformation of the balance sheet since we came together. So as a reminder, we had net debt of pushing GBP 250 million and a leverage of 5x. And since then, we've moved to a net debt of just over GBP 50 million and a leverage of 1.2x. So a huge, big transformation from where we've been before. And the leverage would be around about 1x if it wasn't for the strategic investment. So again, well within our range, even with the investment of 1x-1.5x.
That's been really underpinned by a number of areas, the strategic moves, which Steve will touch on later on, where we've focused the business on moving away from big, heavy asset owning business units that we had, but also good, strong underlying cash flow conversion. On the right-hand side of the chart, you can see that our cash conversion of profit into net operating cash flow is over 100%. The only reason that the cash flow, excluding exceptionals and that strat investment has dropped slightly, is purely because of the interest rate increases I referred to earlier. A good, strong balance sheet from which to build upon.
And lots of liquidity headroom, and the balance sheet gave GBP 57 million in terms of cash and undrawn facilities, and that's been improved by a further GBP 20 million with the disposal of our power business in March 2024, where we received GBP 20 million in net cash proceeds, of which we've already used GBP 12.5 million to pay down debt and reduce our ongoing interest charge. This gives us the remaining balance of cash continues to give us money to invest in the strategy, and the balance sheet strengthened again. It's now below 1x in terms of the leverage because of the actions we've taken. And finally, moving on to returns, and I will round up to 20% just to please Steve.
Excluding the strategic investment, returns of 20% are, in our view, market leading and well above the group's cost of capital. That continues to be driven by growth in our capital light services business, accretive at profit, but not having to invest on the balance sheet to deliver. And where we do invest in the fleet, it's using our insight capability to focus on where there's demand, where we can get profitable returns, and making sure our investment is geared towards that. If I look during the year, we invested GBP 4.3 million in the continued development of our marketplace platform. In addition, there was GBP 1.3 million of non-recurring investments, which was to buy the thin sliver of IP that we didn't own on the Brenda platform.
We now own all of the source code IP, so that is fully owned by the business, which is the right thing to do, underpinning our strategy. In terms of the ongoing CapEx on technology, our run rate will be around GBP 3 million, and as we go through into the more medium term, we expect that mix to change as the type of investment changes between CapEx and OpEx. But for now, in the near term, it will be CapEx driven. And the final point, our fleet investment in the year was GBP 31 million, of which around GBP 3 million was on power. So taking those two together, we expect, and we're giving guidance, that our total CapEx for FY 2024, in both fleet and technology combined, will be between GBP 26 million and GBP 29 million. So just to summarize, a resilient performance in the year.
We've got a strong balance sheet, market-leading returns, and we've invested behind our strategy to set the business up for future growth, which Steve will cover off in more detail.
Thank you, Paul. So if you step on for me, David. Just thought I'd pick up on one of the points Paul raised about the power sale. On the left-hand side, you can see the business as it was in 2018, actually, but in the box, bottom left quadrant, you can see the businesses that we've sold since then till power in March this year. The one thing you'll notice about all those, they're big machines. I was gonna say big machine businesses, but bad English, but you know what I mean. But high capital intensive requirements. So if you look at them, not only did it cost a lot to replace the machine, as is, those a lot of those businesses are facing into legislative challenges as we step forward.
So we managed to find good partners for each one of those, and in the case of CES Power, who are using this as a good bridgehead into European development. These guys really know the business, really know, are leaning into it, and are really prepared to invest behind it, which is what we need in a partner, as opposed to owning those assets, 'cause quite frankly, we wouldn't invest behind them as they require. So we've completed those, and as I said before, our leverage as a result sits below one. On the right-hand side, we've simplified the organization, therefore, almost by default, really, but into two areas. As you know, we launched this in 2022, the top being that asset-light, tech-enabled sales team called ProService, based on a marketplace platform.
At the bottom, all our assets in the business, HSS Ops, where have all the, the equipment, the sites, the vehicles, et cetera. So what I wanted to do now is probably just explode those two, a little bit more, and then give you a little bit of more detail about what we've done and the results we've seen. So in simple terms, on the left, ProService vision, we laid this out, I think, at the beginning of 2023, when we did the, the full year for 2022 presentation, but it's to become the leading marketplace for building services. Three key elements to that is driving this self-service adoption, expanding the buyer and seller networks, and getting after enhancing our proposition.
In simple terms, we want all buyers to see the platform and have the potential to serve off that. I'll go into a little bit more to explain what that might look like. Number two is the buyer and the seller. As I said before, the more buyers we can get to the platform, the more sellers on the platform, the more sellers, the better breadth and depth of products we offer, the more buyers will come to the platform, and away we go. So driving that is part of our is one of our key building blocks. And the final piece is about enhancing the proposition. So we talked about the verticals. I'll show you those in a second, but we're evolving all the time and adding new verticals to that proposition. You see the KPIs, they're very traditional KPIs.
That's the ones we work off today. They will be evolving as we travel through the next year. But in terms of those digital usage, I've spoken about that, 24%. In our mission, we want to get it up to 30%. There's not a limit. If we can go beyond that, fantastic, but we just want that self-service, that target at that level. Paul's talked about the boosting of the seller base 950. It's interesting, our inquiry conversion rate stays the same year-on-year, and we implemented January a 7% price increase. So we've put the price increase, and it's stuck, and still we're achieving the same conversion rate. So that is a good conversion by the teams. On the right-hand side, the Operations, simple terms, we wanna be that most efficient, high-quality rental operator.
The focus is on three elements again, service, majority of the assets being there, so it's got the majority of the influence as far as our ESG strategy, so with that in mind as we travel. And finally, finally, finally even, optimizing our web network, which is driving that efficiency. So you know, I shall bring out what we're doing behind those in a second. But again, then keep the KPIs at the bottom, high level of delivery performance at 99%. A really, really strong mindset around safety, which is quoted the RIDDOR rate here. And then finally, Paul mentioned this, but the utilization, as we said, you know, anything 55% upwards, we're in a good space, so 56%, will always work to, to better, but is in a good space.
So if you step on for me, David, oh, I've got two slides now on ProService. So on the left-hand side is just a quick reminder of what it is. If you see the brand of technology, that's the glue that keeps everything together. So suppliers enter all those information into that. Previous diagrams, we've had suppliers on the right feeding in, and then customers on the left-hand side. And we've all these instances by which customers communicate with us. One is through our colleagues. We've got circa 900. Two is, it's more the B2C, but the smaller, generally, smaller customer generally uses the hss.com, the website and that. And then we've got our big interface, which is our platform, we've gloriously called our marketplace platform, but we've blown it out onto the right-hand side.
So the mission here is that as you, as a customer, you log on to it. This is your landing page. And if you are, I don't know, a fit-out customer, electrical or fit-out mechanical, this page will start to build a community around you as a customer. What you expect to see, industry trends, things that matter to you. But as a customer as well, when you look on this, we talk about self-service because you can manage your whole experience. We're booking, on hire, off hire, for the invoicing, everything in one place. So your organization has everything it needs to manage the interface with HSS. If you see the bottom third, you see three tiles there. The hire, we've got equipment sales, and we've got building materials.
Now, the mission about this is it making it easier, making it easier for the communities that come on to just shop and acquire or hire or whatever, for their particular project or need. And it's been reasonably successful, so we're pretty pleased with that. So this is the landing page. You click on those, it takes you into further, but it's of that design that you see there. Now, we know that this has been well-received. This is pretty similar to what our teams use when they go out and sell. So what they're selling now is: What do you want to hire? Oh, press hire, put the poor product in, we match the supplier, and it might be ops, or it might be another. And we see the breadth and depth now being sold a lot wider.
So you can see at the bottom there, 12% growth in services, which is the rehire and the training proposition. So if you step forward for me, David, if we looked at the three elements that drive the strategy, the self-serve, expanding the network and enhancing the proposition. What we've seen the last time I spoke to you, September time, we had 63, I believe it was, on the platform, and the mission was to get to 90 by year end. What the team have been doing is, what we had is a select band of customers, but we've now been going out to different cohorts of customers, smaller spend, medium spend, large spend, and just finding out, is this attractive and useful to them? And the answer has been a resounding yes, a very positive uptake.
As you can see, you know, we expected a slow climb. In the last month, it's really accelerating. We've got 1,000 buyers that have gone on and traded. And of those buyers on there, if you look before and after in terms of sales performance, we've seen a 30% year-on-year growth, delivered through those customers. Why? Because they're just seeing a broader product range that they can access, and actually, the ease of managing their accounts is all adding to the plus points. I've talked about 24%. In terms of expanding our network, I think, Paul, you've touched on it. Our mission is to, with quality suppliers, expand that. We were at circa 700, and we got up to 950 now, and you can see the sort of areas.
In terms of proposition, I spoke about this before, but we've got equipment sales and material sales. So regularly, 150 a week now, which is ahead of where we thought it would be. But we wanna add to that with putting on, as I said to you on the previous time, the training, the fuel management waste, and more as we step forward. Really creating that community as a customer, you just get what you need to do the job. So in terms of pro, we think that momentum is... Well, we see through the stats, it's starting to build quite nicely. In terms of ops, if you move on for me, Dave, what you've got is three elements there.
The focus on the customer service we just highlighted. I've talked about the digital service portal before. Just as a reminder, this is where our technicians go onto that. They'll log either repair or just general maintenance, T&R, and they go. And it's step-by-step instruction that they have to take photos, load up, and it just controls the process and makes sure that when we get an audit, we've got an audit trail of the photos of what's been done, where, and the ambition on that is to improve equipment quality. The top one there is bar coding. So down in our Bristol CDC, we've been rolling out this, testing it out as would it work, the scanners, then attaching it to products. Does it stay? What sort of stickers do we need?
We've found a process now that works well. This is just gonna enhance our mission to get to that paperless business. Because QR code, we can then scan stock in, stock out at the CDCs, then in onto customer site, off the site when we're collecting it, so we've got accuracy in terms of stock management, but also just in terms of operating guides, health and safety, maybe how-to videos, whatever for that product type, is gonna be held within that so the customer can scan, and you get everything. But it's just driving towards that paperless business. With ESG, we step forward. We've quoted electric vehicles. We had 7seven of those vehicles that you see there. We've doubled that. They are good on the CDCs, so one of these vehicles has a range of about 100 miles.
Our delivery, generally, about 48 as an average, so the drivers are very comfortable going in, doing the journey, coming back, overnight charge, ready for the next day. The biggest challenge with this actually is establishing charging points across our network, just working with landlords to do that, and total charging points, all electricity is now renewable. We just actually just changing at this very moment that. But we're looking at other angles as well, as we talked about the miles saved by using Satalia. The other side of that is looking at Satalia in terms of regions, as opposed to just sites now. So we've got ourselves up to speed on that, and we're looking to drive further the optimization. So ESG is about efficiency and about converting and about delivering on our plans, which so far, so good.
Network, I think we've really touched on that, but that's the expansion of the merchant. The 16 we were talking about led us to 89. As Paul said, we've gone after the other, the next nine, and we keep looking at those in the right areas, as opportunities with current partners to expand further. And I've spoken about the growth performance there. So the last slide in this section is about ESG. We have a. It's, I lead the committee which drives this, but we have a team dedicated to this, working within all our aspects of our business. But we have ownership of this at every single business, at every single level. First and foremost, the health and safety side.
You know, our mission is the zero harm, and it's something that we, as a team, management team, passionately believe in. We wanna keep driving this, and we, by doing that, we'll create the safe environment. So we want people to be owning of their space and looking at other people. And we call it safety observations, where you see something not done quite right, bad English, but you know what I mean? We therefore get after it and correct it. Near-miss reporting, ditto. We're encouraging that right across the organization so that we can prevent an accident before it happens. And the complement, we just keep driving that training agenda, and you've got some stats there. In terms of engagement, the middle bar, it still remains high. Came off a little bit.
Made a lot of feedback, last year's about the, you know, the mental health challenge for colleagues. So we're stepping up that. We've got Wellbeing Wednesdays. We've got another where we just take time out in the CDCs for the guys just to ask the questions. If it's about benefits, it's about financial stress they might be under. If it's about just mental health, you know, in their own life, how can we help? And we have various expert advice that we can add to and help them and point them in the right directions. So we're really driving that hard.
All the other committees that we're working through, we had, you know, a successful meeting of what we call the Women's Forum, where we just want them to have a community where they can talk about, you know, what is it like to be a female in hire, and the challenges it brings, such that we do something ultimately about it. We start with how we recruit actually, and the face of the websites and how we communicate and how we describe ourselves in the industry. The final thing on there, the right-hand side, this is the other benefit of the platform we've created. It also gives options to customers on reducing their carbon footprint. So the left is a traditional lighting tower. Sorry, I'm referring to the photo that's on there, in the top right.
And then you've got options that reduce the carbon footprint. You could choose those, and those are the prices to hire those. So as a customer, we're then giving them information about, you know, how they're improving and getting after their own ESG delivery. So we've got all the recognition. I've been through that, and our impact report is available, following the tag that's on there. So just bringing it all together, four key points. As Paul summarized at the end there, resilient trading performance. You know, we did have a challenging second half, not least of which, because it was a very strange season. It was just very wet and very damp. You know, and that just adds to it.
But, besides that, I think the general economy, as we said in September, was challenging, so we saw resilience there. We've shown you through the strategic progress, sorry, that we've been making around the key elements. When we look at the market, you know, if we can get an election in the bag early, Rishi, that would be helpful. Because if we could do that, I think we'll start to see those green shoots start to really take hold and grow well. So I think the summary at the bottom there, we're in good position for market recovery. I think all our plans are playing out. And so with that, I'd like to just hand back to you, operator, I think, for questions.
Thank you. So if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure your line is unmuted locally, as you will be advised when to ask your question. So our first question. It comes from the line of David Brockton from Numis. Please go ahead.
Good morning, both. Could I ask two questions, please? Just in terms of the strategic investment, can you just sort of touch on sort of your expectations for any future strategic investment that may be required for the platforms that you've built? And then related to that, clearly, it's a significant, almost sort of exponential process, progress that you can see there in terms of the number of buyers. How should we think about that evolving over the course of this year, and where ultimately should that, those, you know, that thousand buyer go to, and how easy is it, would you expect to convert as you work your way across the bigger customers? Thanks.
Okay. Thanks, David. I will answer the first question, and I'll hand over to Steve for the second one. So in terms of the investment on the technology platform. The key point is on the CapEx. So as you can see, we spent GBP 4.3 million on developing the platform and GBP 1.3 million on the code IP acquisition, so GBP 5.6 million in total. The run rate from this year, so in 2024, is GBP 3 million, and that's what we'd expect to see an ongoing level of investment in the platform. As we progress beyond this financial year, I would expect the mix to change between CapEx and OpEx, because obviously the level of maintenance versus development will change to keep the marketplace going. But fundamentally, think of it at that level of spend.
In terms of the other OpEx that we spent during the year, that's kind of in our run rate base as we go forward, around the technology, but also around our central sales team, which has delivered growth over and above the kind of customer portfolios that they were managing, they've delivered 16% growth, particularly a big driver behind our services performance, and that's a huge big delta versus the portfolios they were managing. So that's given us a lot of insight as we go forward in terms of how do we drive growth and how do we reach more customers through a centralized team to broaden the proposition within those customers.
David, onto the second question, it's been really interesting just seeing how the different cohorts have reacted when we, you know, we've talked to them about the self-serve. You know, the larger customers. When we started, if you remember, we picked on quite a number of significant players for us. And as time has gone on, they've really embraced the platform. And I think, you know, once you get into it and start operating it as a customer, you start to see the benefits that, you know, I've just whistled through, really, which by no means do it any benefit.
We've always said in our mind, on our current customer base, and remember, we're 6% of the market. We kinda wanna move that up to around, you know, 30%, which is about 7,000 customers, really. And you know, what we've seen, which has been really good, is we tested out different cohorts, and every cohort responded positively. There was not one that we thought, "Okay, it's not appropriate for the large customer market because they're not picking up." They did. They loved it. When we went to the small customer market, it was the same. And so, you know, we've seen that exponential path. But the two, the two points I wanted to raise is that I, I think we've got no limit on what we can do here.
But sensibly, I think if we can step forward through the year to get to that 7,000 on current customers, that'd be great. But then, there's the market outside of our base of customers, because this is a good product, and does solve a number of challenges that the industry faces.
Thank you very much. Very clear.
Thanks, David.
We currently have no questions in the queue, so as a reminder, please press star one if you'd like to ask a question. The next question comes from the line of Robin Speakman from Shore Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hi, Robin. Hi, Robin, we can't hear you.
Robin, please unmute your line. Your line is open to ask a question.
Can you hear me?
We can now. Hi, Robin. Morning.
Apologies. Yeah, morning. I just wanted to ask about the ongoing plans for the sort of rental network. You're down to about 16 sites now. So is the ultimate objective to just move to a model where you're just servicing entirely through you know, merchant partner locations, just utilizing regional distribution hubs?
Yeah. So to answer the question, Robin, we've got 38 CDCs across UK and Ireland. In the CDCs, we do all the transport, so we're basically hub and spoke it. Within the CDCs, we have all the equipment, so we'll do maintenance and test and run, by and large, in those locations. So you know, the spine of our delivery is very much there and enhanced. What we decided to do was to change from the format of having a traditional branch set up, so we had hundreds of branches right across the UK. But you know, they were completing low contracts per day, contract as a sale for us. And so it didn't make sense, just having them sitting out there, absorbing all the heat, power, all the costs of running those.
So we found a better model, which is moving to the merchants. We have our guys that are on-site with a token range, we call it. And so we've moved all the sites through COVID, when we started, through to where we are now. We've got 16 left, and probably for different reasons, the core of those 16 that will remain, and we will just expand our merchant network, if you like. So we talked about a further nine to be added to that. Today, actually, we are at 90, 98. But we will be looking at selective opportunities to move further, and to your point, therefore, strengthen our relationship with the merchants, because within the merchants is one of our key customer groups operating right there. So our mission is to do exactly that.
Just as a reminder, Robin, 'cause it's been a while since we kicked this strategy off, the cost of running a builders' merchant versus a traditional branch is about 50% of the cost, and it's turning it from fixed to variable. So there's a lot of merits in terms of both cost reduction and changing the profile of the cost base. And the second key area within that is that it gives us access to more customers because the footfall into a traditional branch was quite low, whereas builders' merchants can be anywhere between 1,000-4,000 people going into that location on a day. So you've got access to a much wider customer base.
And the other point, I think just to complete, when we shut the 16 branches, which we announced at Q1 in our H1 results, which were closed in Q4 last year, that saved us about GBP 1 million with that change. The good news is that we retained, I think, all but one colleague by moving them into the new network. So it really enables us to keep the experience, the customer relationships, but doing it through a lower cost model.
Right. That is understood. Many thanks.
Okay. Thank you, Robin.
We have no further questions in the queue, so I will turn the call back over to your hosts for any closing remarks. My apologies, we have just had one last question come through from the line-
It's too late now, Jess, too late.
Our last question comes from the line of Simon Dunne from Miro Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Hi, Steve. Hi, Paul. Simon here.
Hi, Simon.
Hi there. I had three quick questions, if you don't mind. The first one was on Slide 7. If you could just explain how we interpret the data in the change underlying columns, just how we, how we sort of process that. Second question was on the consolidated income statement in the RNS announcement. Revenue is up, but cost of sales is up as well, leading to a broadly flat gross profit. I'm just wondering if you had any comment on sort of the, if that points to any underlying change in the cost structure of the business. And finally, last point, there seems to be a large-ish income tax charge this year, but it seems to be deferred tax related. Sorry for the three questions.
Okay. So, I think Steve at this point is pointing at me for all three questions, so let me go for it, Simon.
Well, it's your last gig, so yeah, thank you.
Yes, we got it. So on Slide 7, the underlying, what we've done there is we've taken out the strategic investment, which has had limited financial benefit in the year, but obviously has been an investment for future growth. So there's the GBP 5.1 million that we've taken out from a cost perspective, and we've also, when there's anything which is impacting the balance sheet, we've taken out the GBP 1.3 million of non-recurring. So those are the adjustments that we've made as we've gone through on that piece. And that's not to shy away from the fact that even with that investment, it's the second highest PBT in the group's history. We've just done that to try and show what performance would have been had we not done the strategic investments. So that's the first one.
In terms of the consolidated income statement, there very clearly there is a mix change in the business because as services grows at 12%, the, we do have third-party, costs of goods sold, because obviously it's a model where we are paying the third party, provision of the goods to us. We then pass it on to the customer and make a margin on top of it. So with services growing at 12% and rental growing at 1%, that is driving a mix change when you look at a gross profit level. However, I would point out that when you look at a contribution level, the contribution of our services segment is, range, kind of fluctuates between around about 13.5% and 15%, which against our EBITA of 8.5% is accretive.
So whilst it might have an impact on gross profit, that means change is still accretive come the EBITA and lower profit levels. And finally, in terms of income tax, you're quite right. We, if you were to go through the tax note in detail, which we've had the pleasure of doing as we've been going through the audit, there's a lot of detail there in terms of brought forward losses, and that chart that we showed on the profit before tax clearly highlights this on a reported basis, that the group, when we came together, did have a loss before tax, which had built up quite a lot of tax losses.
What we have done is when considering deferred tax, we have reappraised and taken a more prudent view, given the market conditions, of how much of those tax losses are gonna be utilized over the next three years, which is our time horizon we look at. So it is purely a more prudent view based on a more conservative market recovery. Clearly, that we review that on a regular basis, and as the market recovers, as our strategy kicks off and takes effect, we will always look at our long-term projections and then take a different view on our deferred tax. But that's the only reason on there, Simon. It's nothing untoward other than it's reflecting the market conditions and how quickly we can use our losses.
All right. Thanks, Paul. That's very helpful.
Okay. Thanks, Simon.
We have no further questions in the queue, so I'll now hand the call back to your hosts for some closing remarks.
I'm gonna quickly dive in before we get another one. So thank you very much for attending the call today. If you do have any questions, please feed them through to us, and we will answer them and feed back. No doubt, we will bump into some of you on our travels as we go. It just remains for me to say thank you, Paul, for your time with us, and thank you all for being on the call, and no doubt, speak later. Have a great day.
Thank you.