Morning, everybody, and welcome to our results presentation for our full year that ended in September 2025. In terms of format of the presentation and what we're going to cover, I'm gonna start by picking out some highlights of our year and provide a quick reminder about our differentiated business model and the strengths of our investment case. Sean will provide a commentary over the financials and picking out some of those key financial metrics. We'll then provide an overview of each of our markets and a reminder of some of those levers that we're utilizing to underpin our model supporting our resilient performance, which summarize the continued progress that we're making on our sustainability and ESG journey.
I will conclude by providing a reminder of the parameters of our compounding model and by providing an outlook, and we'll be sure to take questions at the end of the session. Turning to slide one of the deck, we're very pleased to be reporting another set of record results for the year, set against a backdrop of some specific challenges in our largest sector, rail. Our navigation of these headwinds included taking advantage of some growth opportunities elsewhere, and this is testament to our increasingly diverse exposure to our target markets. Additionally, we've delivered a number of our key strategic objectives during the year, including the disposal of building and making the most of our recent entry into the two new markets of electricity transmission, distribution, and renewable energy.
Of course, post-period end, we further strengthened our position in T&D with the acquisition of Emerald. This really is an exciting growth sector. I'm delighted to be reporting record levels of training and talent development in our various programs. These are key ingredients to our growth ambitions. The order book remains at record levels, yet conservatively and consistently reported and reflecting the confidence in our momentum and prospects, we've increased the full-year dividend. It's up 5.3% to 20p. Turning to slide two of the deck. Here are our 10 principal brands, and now I provide a summary of our key differentiators. We remain focused on markets that are underpinned by highly visible and committed funding. Our services remain mission-critical and increasingly in demand.
Our highly skilled, directly employed resources are deployed in some very complex, demanding, regulated environments that present very high barriers to new entrants. Task sizes are small and execution timeframes are short, which dramatically reduce the risk profile of the company. Our compounding growth and cash generation evidence the resilience in our model. We remain committed to adding value through innovation and collaboration, and all of these are ideal characteristics as we face into markets with significant tailwinds. Turning to slide three, it's here that we summarize the key pillars of our attractive and reliable investment case. We've established market-leading positions, and we're now deeply embedded in critical infrastructure programs. Our track record of compounding growth speaks for itself. Our strategy has delivered very reliable earnings over a long period. Our markets exhibit very long and attractive growth drivers.
We have a much lower risk profile, given the nature of the services we provide and our direct delivery model. And finally, we believe we're ideally poised to take full advantage of the tremendous long-term infrastructure investment that's simply vital for decades to come. Sean?
Thanks, Paul. Despite challenges in our rail market, 2025 has been another successful year in which we have delivered record revenue, operating profit, EPS, and order book, an operating margin within our 6%-7% range, and a 5% increase in our full-year dividend. 2025 saw record revenue of GBP 1.1 billion, which is up by 6% on the prior year. Operating profit is also up at GBP 72.1 million, which is 1.7% higher than last year. Our margin, at 6.5%, is an improvement on where we were at the half year, as I indicated at the time, and I've consistently guided to a margin range of 6%-7%, and I'm pleased that despite the deferment of some high-margin rail renewal schemes, we have delivered within that range.
Our focus, as always, is on our EPS growth, and I'm pleased to report record EPS of 67.1p, up by 1.8% on the previous year. As Paul has already mentioned, we're going to pay a final dividend of 13.33p, which brings our full year dividend to 20p. Our return on capital at 22% is slightly lower than the 5-year average, primarily as a result of the acquisition of Full Circle at the start of the year and the reduction in profit due to the deferment of rail renewals programs. Having said that, our asset-light operating model means that our returns remain excellent and are significantly higher than our cost of capital.
Our pre-IFRS 16 net cash is GBP 6.2 million, down from GBP 25.7 million last year, mostly due to the acquisition of Full Circle for circa GBP 50 million at the start of the year. Our net debt on an IFRS 16 basis was GBP 21.5 million. We refinanced our debt facilities after the year-end. We now have a GBP 140 million RCF secured until October 2029, which provides us with significant balance sheet firepower to deliver on our M&A strategy. I'm delighted to announce that the buyout of the Amco pension scheme completed shortly before the year-end. The work continues on the true-up calculations for the Lovell scheme, and we're hoping to complete that process this financial year.
We have maintained our provision against discontinued historic liabilities in total at GBP 10 million, and there have been no new material developments during the year. On this slide, we bridge our opening net cash position on the first of October 2024, to our closing net cash position on the thirtieth of September 2025. The first bar is our EBITDA, which is the profit we make in the year. We have working capital outflow, which reflects the growth in the business. Next is our net CapEx, which is our CapEx less sale of fixed assets. We have our dividend, which is this year's interim dividend of 6.67p, and last year's final dividend of 12.67p. Next, we have our cash tax paid in the year of GBP 10.9 million, and HP and interest of GBP 3.1 million.
The discontinued activities is the actual cash outflow in the year relating to Allenbuild, and then the next bar is the impact of the acquisition of Full Circle. All of this brings us back to our year-end net cash position of GBP 6.2 million. Our free cash flow conversion of 63% in the year is consistent with the last year, and demonstrates our cash compounding model. We continue to expect to generate free cash flow of over 60% over the medium term. This slide really represents our long track record of value creation. We are proud of our track record of having maintained an EPS CAGR of 15% over the last 15 years. We have managed to achieve this growth whilst consistently maintaining our net debt to EBITDA ratio at less than 1x.
These graphs show us where our growth has come from since we acquired Amco in 2011. As you can see, it is fairly evenly split between organic and acquisitive growth. I think this slide really nicely demonstrates our model, whereby we reinvest the cash we generate into earnings enhancing acquisitions, which grow our capability and our geography.
Thank you, Sean. So let's take a closer look at each of our market areas, and I'll illustrate some of the tools that we're using to take market share, and how we're consolidating our position, where we are operating. On slide 13, our pure play engineering services continue to be described across these four sectors. Rail represents about 40% of total group revenues, infrastructure, around 15%, energy, similarly 15%, and environmental services have grown in their contribution to around 30%. In terms of the operating margin profile, I would summarize to say that the 7%-8% range in rail is a little stronger than the 6%-7% range in the three other sectors.
For each of these sectors, we've illustrated the annualized addressable market, together with details of the very specific programs where we are engaged or have targeted. We couldn't be accessing these funded work streams via 240 long-term frameworks. We've assessed our total annualized addressable market at around GBP 30 billion, presenting plenty of headroom for continued expansion. On this slide, well, this tracks our capabilities expansion, as well as the tremendous growth in our addressable market opportunities since 2015. Over this period, we've dramatically grown our market exposure, now covering five specific market areas from only two in 2015. Across these markets, there's been a tremendous increase in the prioritization of funding for both renewal and maintenance activities.
We anticipate that this trend will continue, as evidenced by the latest control periods through rail, road, and water. And as you can see from the illustration on the top right of this slide, our activities remain high volume and low value, reinforcing the lower risk profile of our model. So here's a simple bridge to illustrate the key pillars of our growth strategy. Our markets are growing overall and quite naturally. We are seeing that incremental RISE in asset renewal and maintenance expenditure. Our M&A record speaks for itself, and we have a really healthy pipeline of opportunities to complement our organic growth ambitions. And in addition to that backdrop, we're able to pull on a number of levers to take greater share of our markets and our clients' wallet.
On the point of organic growth potential, clearly, the headwinds in rail this year have impacted revenue progression. However, we point to the 40% organic growth in the last 5 years, reflecting the longer term potential through our various economic cycles. Turning to slide 16, looking at a number of those levers, I would firstly point to our program for people retention and attraction. Our plan is multifaceted, as illustrated here. Staff retention is the starting point, and we remain very pleased with our sector-leading turnover rate, which remains below 15%. Staff attraction involves early careers opportunities, and we have a numerous, number of career early entry points.
We currently have 378 people participating in training and development programs, and in addition to that, over 130 of our staff have been supported through our RISE and Purposeful Leadership programs. There is simply no question that local delivery by high quality, stable and responsive teams, improves customer relations, leading to greater market share. Turning to 17, another important lever, maintaining an entrepreneurial spirit with the objective of improving service efficiency, has been and remains an important ingredient of our success. This slide sets out a number of our live innovations, from predictive maintenance to remote inspection and monitoring to bespoke plant solutions. As well as operational benefits, these innovations are improving the safety and carbon footprint of routine, renewal and maintenance activities. These are important differentiators when renewing or extending existing or, for that matter, targeting new frameworks....
Helpfully, our work in this area also attracts relief via RDEC, the Research and Development Credit Scheme, which is fairly helpful. Slide 18. We are actively leveraging broader service capability via our cross-group collaborations. All brands are collaborating more effectively, and these partnerships are presenting a really compelling case to clients who see the value, advantage in our complementary joined-up capabilities. The examples on this slide cover rail, highways, the distribution grid, and water. There are many other examples across the group. We're delighted that GBP 625 million worth of potential framework value has been secured using this collaborative approach over the last three years. And importantly, brands have accessed new markets at a much faster pace than would have been possible without collaboration. Sean?
Yes. Well, this slide summarizes how we think about M&A, and we continue to actively pursue M&A opportunities, subject, of course, to finding the right businesses that meet all of our criteria. Our most recent acquisition was Emerald Power in October, which broadens our route to market in the electricity transmission and distribution market by giving the group overhead line capability, which complements our existing expertise in underground cables. Our focus continues to be on widening our capability and increasing our capacity across our existing markets. On this slide, we have illustrated how we enter into a new market with an initial acquisition, in this instance, Excalon in June 2024. We then look to broaden our route to market organically, where we can, or through additional bolt-on M&A, like Emerald Power.
In the electricity T&D market, we are continuing to actively pursue additional capabilities like design, substations, cable jointing, and directional drilling, all of which will enable us to better access an annualized opportunity of circa GBP 3.8 billion per year. This graphic sets out our M&A track record quite nicely. Of the 8 principal brands that we've acquired since Amco in 2011, our average FY 25 EBIT ROI is 34%, and our total EBIT ROI is 25%. Just to be clear, this does not include the bolt-ons we've acquired because their contribution is not separately reported. Through all of this M&A, we have maintained a net debt to EBITDA ratio of less than 1x, and we've only raised GBP 60 million of the total GBP 268 million deployed into acquisitions through equity, thereby protecting shareholders from dilution.
Again, this demonstrates the highly cash-generative nature of our business model. We've made good progress on our renewed resilience plan over the last year, in particular with regards to our carbon reduction targets. We remain recipients of the London Stock Exchange's Green Economy Mark, and we continue to work toward our longer-term ESG targets. ESG continues to be an important part of our customers' procurement strategies, and therefore remains high on our agenda.
Thank you, Sean. In bringing the presentation to a close, on slide 25, here's an illustration or a flywheel of the characteristics of our compounding model. To provide a guide to how we are thinking about the typical parameters of growth include a disciplined approach to organic and acquisitive expansion, a focus on reliable quality operating margins with good cash generation, and a fundamental focus on our return on capital employed. Our disciplined approach to these metrics has served us very well indeed, and we're seeing opportunities across our sectors, which by their nature remain very fragmented in terms of participation, and therein lies further opportunity for compounding our model. And finally, as an outlook, we are now a pure-play engineering services provider with a resilient and increasingly diverse model. Our reliable end markets present compelling long-term growth opportunity.
The demand for our renewal and maintenance services has never been stronger, fueled by regulatory drivers, increasing demand, and of course, climate resilience. We're delighted with the progress that we're making in our relatively new markets of T&D and renewables. We have an active M&A pipeline and our record order book, and incredibly strong framework foundations underpin our confidence as we head into 2026 and, of course, beyond. Thank you for listening to the presentation.