Hello, everybody, and welcome to our prelim results presentation for our year that ended in September 2024. I'm Paul Scott, and I'm here today with Sean Wyndham-Quin, our CFO. In terms of format of this presentation, I will start by picking out some highlights of our results and to provide a reminder of our differentiated business model. Sean's going to give us a commentary over the financials, and then we'll provide a review of our markets, and we'll highlight some of the levers that we're using to deliver this outperformance. There's a reminder of our M&A criteria, as well as the attributes of our recent acquisitions, which summarize the progress that we're making on our ESG and sustainability journey, and we'll conclude with a reminder of our compounding growth model, and an outlook.
We're making time at the end of the presentation to take any questions that you may have. Turning to slide 1 of the deck, we're delighted to be presenting yet another set of record results. This is an excellent performance for the group. Organic revenue growth was particularly strong at 17%. The operating margins are within our range at 6.7%. Earnings has increased up 6%, up to 65.9p, and the full year dividend has increased by 6%, up to 19p. I would also highlight that during the year we made 3 acquisitions, and in October, post year-end, we announced the disposal of our last remaining building brand, as well as the acquisition of Full Circle, and a little bit more on that shortly from Sean.
In terms of people, our overall headcount improved by around 7%, and crucially, our staff turnover rates have improved again. They're reduced now down to 13%. We currently have 326 people in various training and development programs, and importantly, our order book is at a record high of GBP 889 million. Onto slide two, we see that we amplify the differentiated nature of our high quality, low risk business model. We remain focused on markets underpinned by highly visible, committed funding. Our services are mission critical and increasingly in demand. Task sizes are small, and execution time frames are short, which dramatically improves the risk profile of what we do. Our directly employed resources are deployed in some complex, very challenging environments that present high barriers to new entrants. Our compounding earnings growth and cash generation clearly evidence the resilience in the model.
And finally, we remain committed to adding value through innovation and collaboration. Sean?
Turning to the highlights. Thank you, Paul. 2024 has been another record year, with all of our key metrics improving or remaining within our stated ranges. It's worth noting that despite selling Walter Lilly after the year-end, the accounting standards require that we treat it as discontinued in 2024 and 2023. So the figures for those two years throughout this deck do not recognize any contribution from that business. However, on this page, the figures previous to that do include Walter Lilly. 2024 has seen record revenue of GBP 1.06 billion, which is up by 19% on the prior year, and pleasingly, nearly 17% of this is organic growth. Operating profit is up to GBP 70.9 billion, which is 14% higher than last year.
A margin at 6.7% is an improvement from where we were at the half year, as I indicated at the time. I previously guided to a margin range of 6%-7% for some time. However, that has now changed following the disposal of Walter Lilly and the acquisition of Full Circle post year-end. I now expect our margins to range between 6.5% and 7.5% going forward. Our focus, as always, is on our EPS growth, and I am pleased to report record EPS of 65.9p, up 6% on the previous year. This is despite the increase in corporation tax to 25% from April 2023, which we are only getting the full impact of this year.
As Paul has already mentioned, we're going to pay a final dividend of 12.67p, which brings our full-year dividend to 19p. Our return on capital at 25% is slightly lower than had been previously, primarily as a result of the acquisitions made during the year. We've had the full impact on the balance sheet, but not the full impact of a year's worth of profit. Having said all of that, our returns remain excellent and reflect our asset-light operating model. Our pre-IFRS 16 net cash is GBP 25.7 billion, down from GBP 35.7 billion last year, mostly due to the acquisitions made during the year. So we acquired TIS last October for GBP 5 billion, Route One in April for GBP 5 billion, and Excalon in June for up to GBP 26 million.
Our net cash on an IFRS 16 basis was GBP 1.1 billion. It's also worth pointing out that following the acquisition of Full Circle post year-end, for just over GBP 50 million, we have now moved into a net debt position. There's no update on the pension schemes. The work continues on the true-up calculations of both schemes, which is required before we can move to a full buyouts. The whole industry is moving slowly because of the volume of schemes looking to do a similar thing. We've continued to increase our provision against discontinued historic liabilities in Allenbuild. This provision now stands at GBP 10 million, which is up from GBP 8.8 million at the half year. I can confirm there have been no material developments in any of the claims.
Here, we bridge our opening net cash position on the first of October 2023 to our closing net cash position at 30 September 2024. The first bar is our EBITDA, which is the profit we make in the year. We have a small working capital outflow, which reflects our strong revenue growth. The next bar is the impact of the acquisitions of TIS, Route One, and Excalon. Next is our net CapEx, which is our CapEx less the sale of fixed assets, and we have our dividend, which is this year's interim dividend and last year's final dividend of 12p. The growing cash tax outflow represents our increasing profitability and the fact, as I've already flagged, that our tax rate has now increased to 25%.... The discontinued activities relate to the disposal of Walter Lilly, as well as the cash outflow relating to Allenbuild.
Finally, this brings us back to our year-end net cash position of GBP 25.7 million. Our free cash flow conversion of 63% in the year remains strong, albeit it has been impacted by our ongoing investment in innovative plants and machinery, as well as the increase in corporation tax. This slide really represents our long track record of value creation, and we are proud of our track record of having maintained an EPS CAGR of 16% over the last 14 years. These graphs show us where our growth has come from since we acquired Amco in 2011. As you can see, it's fairly evenly split between organic and acquisitive growth. I think that this slide really nicely demonstrates our model, whereby we reinvest the cash we generate into earnings-enhancing acquisitions, which grow our capability and geography. Paul?
Thanks, Sean. So let's take a closer look at our market sectors. You see that we've taken a slightly different approach to our results deck by providing more granular detail on our, addressable markets. There's an illustration for how we've expanded our range of services and some examples of the growth levers that we're using to good effect, to deliver outperformance. So on slide 12, with the disposal of Specialist Building, we are now a pure-play engineering services group, where our activities are described across these four, specifically, different sectors. Rail represents about 40% now in terms of revenue, with margins in the range of 8%-9%. In infrastructure, these activities include our highways, telecommunication, and aviation activities. About 20% of what we do in terms of revenues and an operating margin range of around 6%-7%.
In energy, which now clearly involves renewables, specifically onshore wind, this represents about 15% of total group revenues and operating margins there in a range of 7.5%-8.5%. Finally, our environmental sector. This involves our water activities and our more general environmental services, about 25% of total group revenues dedicated to those activities. Operating margins from that specific segment, 6%-7%. For each of these 4 sectors, we've provided an illustration of our annualized addressable market for each of these, with specific detail on the programs where we're either engaged or where we have targeted for future opportunity.
We currently access these reliably funded work streams by 246 long-term frameworks, noting that in the past, in 2015, we had less than 100 frameworks, so phenomenal expansion of the framework picture. We've assessed, putting this lot together, our annualized addressable market across these four sectors at about GBP 31 billion. In the context of our GBP 1.2 billion worth of revenues, clearly, there's a lot of headroom to go out, to expand further into these market areas. Underpinned clearly by government's expressed decade of national renewables programs supporting each of these. Turning to Slide 13. Well, this slide tracks our capabilities expansion, the two blue shaded vertical columns, as well as the tremendous growth in our annualized market opportunities since 2015.
As you can see, over this period, we've dramatically grown our exposure, now covering five specific market areas from only two in 2015. So the colored blocks on the left-hand side, these are all of our current market areas, and you can see we only covered three of those. But actually two of those in water and rail, expanded into roads more recently. Since 2015, we're now in all five of these sector blocks. Phenomenal expansion into these new sectors. We anticipate this trend will continue in terms of expanding into new markets, but more importantly, these markets are presenting increased expenditure focus on renewal and maintenance activities, specifically where we want to be, particularly in our bigger areas of rail, road, and water.
Inherently, these activities are high volume and low value, and this dramatically reduces the risk profile of what we do and the company overall. You can see the data sets across our bigger blocks of road, rail, and water. The task sizes are incredibly small for a business of the scale of Renew. And I think as a final point, looking at this slide, I would point to the tremendous growth that we've delivered at the bottom of the sheet in both framework foundations, really strong framework foundations since 2015, and of course, the corresponding revenue growth from GBP 0.4 billion to GBP 1.1 billion last year. A phenomenal story of Renew taking advantage of growth in its markets. Turning to Slide 14, here's a simple bridge to illustrate the key contributors to the growth plan. Starting with our infrastructure markets.
Well, these are growing overall, there's no question of that. But importantly, the second block, the proportion of expenditure on renewal and maintenance activity, is also proportionately increasing, and this directly presents opportunity in our addressable work banks. In addition, moving along this chart, we have numerous levers to pull to enhance the success in this growing market backdrop, and I will elaborate on some of these levers shortly. And finally, we've a very successful M&A record, as Sean has just illustrated, and this remains very much a key aspect of our future growth ambitions, complementing this target that we have to deliver at least 5% organic growth on an annualized basis. So let's take a look at some of these levers that I referred to.
Starting on slide 15, I would firstly point to our plans for people retention and attraction. As a direct delivery organization, this is absolutely crucial to our growth ambitions. Our plan is multifaceted, so it's rather a busy slide, as illustrated here. I think as a starting point, the staff retention rate, something we work really hard at, and we are delighted to be able to report at the year-end, this has improved again, now down at an industry-leading rate of around 13%. A phenomenal achievement and reflective of how an attractive employer we are. We also need to attract new staff. Staff attraction involves early careers opportunities, a whole range of those you can see at the bottom of the mountain here.
As an inclusive employer, trying to reach out to a wider, more diverse cohort of potential employees, something we're working really hard at, and it's working. I'm delighted to report a year-on-year increase in entrants. We currently have 326 people in various stages of training and development. In addition to that, on the right-hand side, the blue vertical column is a representation of our staff going through the RISE and Emerging Talent programs, with about 124 staff either in or have completed programs in terms of professional development in those internally delivered programs. I think as a final point, local direct delivery by high quality, stable, and reliable teams really does give us access to wallet share of our customers.
We're more responsive, for starters, to our customers' needs, including in the event of emergencies, as we've experienced in the last 24 hours. We're busy overnight actually responding to events. Of course, owning our own people, we become intimate with our customers' assets, and the complexity of their networks. A really important point, as we move to secure frameworks in the future. Turning to slide 16, maintaining an entrepreneurial spirit with the objective of improving service efficiency has and remains an ingredient of Renew's success. There is no question of that. This slide lists numerous examples of innovation, including predictive maintenance to remote inspection and monitoring, to bespoke plant solutions, many of which have been featured over the years.
As well, of course, as the operational benefits, these innovations are improving the safety of operations, as well as the carbon footprint. I would point on this slide to specifically the reduction in carbon through the use of our StoneMaster technology. It's very bespoke, it's put to work by National Highways, and in the context of filter drain management, we are saving 7.1 tons of CO2 emissions per kilometer of drain managed. A phenomenal improvement, not for just ourselves, but clearly for our clients and all of our stakeholders. If you were not at our capital markets day in June of this year, or you've not seen the coverage, please go and have a look at it. Go and find it out. It's easy to find on our website.
Many of the innovations listed on this sheet are actually demonstrated on that day. Turning to slide 17, the third lever I would point to is the strong organic growth that we're driving from leveraging the broader range of service capability we have now across the group through group collaboration. We started talking about this about three years ago. All brands across Renew are now collaborating more effectively, and these partnerships really are presenting a compelling case to our clients who see the value advantage in a wider range of services and complementary capabilities that we can provide as a group. The examples on this slide cover our biggest sectors of rail, highways, the distribution grid, and water. There are many more examples across the group.
Picking out a couple, I would say that Excalon, introducing us to a new market, really has accelerated access to, three of our other companies looking at frameworks in the transmission and distribution electricity network. We have Excalon now working with AmcoGiffen on a new framework, and we're equally making propositions now with, Involves and Seymour, both working closely with Excalon. That is ahead of our expectations, and it could not have happened had it not been for these effective collaborations. Our evaluation of what this adds to the group, over the last three years, GBP 165 million worth of new framework value has, been secured as a consequence of stronger group collaboration. We're super proud of that achievement and more, to go at.
Importantly, brands are accessing new markets at a much faster pace, hopefully, as I previously illustrated. Sean?
Yeah. So on to M&A. I think this first slide really just summarizes how we think about M&A. And I guess my first point really is that despite our recent M&A activity, we continue to have an appetite to do more deals, subject, of course, to finding the right businesses that meet the strict criteria that we have set out on this page. Our main focus is on widening our capability, increasing our capacity, and growing our geography across those existing markets. Excalon is, if you just flip over the page, thank you. Excalon is the business we acquired in June of this year for an enterprise value of GBP 24 million based on an 8x EBITDA multiple.
In addition, there is an earn-out of an additional GBP 2 million to be paid should the business increase EBIT by GBP 1.5 million by 2026. Excalon provides us with direct entry into the electricity distribution market, providing high voltage and extra high voltage infrastructure services. We hope this business will ultimately provide us with a route to market into the electricity transmission market. Both the transmission and distribution markets require billions of pounds of investment over the next couple of decades in order to meet the needs of the energy transition as we move towards net zero. We believe that this acquisition is the first step in allowing us to gain access to this area of spend. Post year-end, we acquired Full Circle for GBP 51 million on a 10x EBITDA multiple.
Full Circle is our first entry into the exciting onshore wind energy market in the U.K. and Europe. While the business is based in the Netherlands and has operations in France, Italy, and Greece, around 75% of its revenue is derived in the U.K. The business maintains onshore wind turbines for wind turbine park operators, ensuring that they remain operational on an ongoing basis through a long-term service agreement. We believe that this business will provide us with the platform to consolidate this highly fragmented market. The acquisition was immediately earnings enhancing, and with a sustainable EBIT margin of 14%, will be accretive to the overall group margin. It's also worth noting that both these acquisitions are integrating well. We've added in a new slide here, which we thought sets out nicely our M&A track record.
Of the 6 principal brands that we've acquired since Amco in 2011, our average FY 2024 EBIT ROI is 50%, and our total EBIT ROI is 36%. Just to be clear, this does not include bolt-ons that 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 192 million pounds deployed into acquisitions through equity, thereby protecting shareholders from dilution. On to our ESG slides. As we've promised, and as we do every year, we have set out our performance against our ESG targets below. We are particularly pleased with the reduction in our lost time incident frequency rates.
However, it's also clear that we need to work a little bit harder to transition our fleet to electric vehicles. I'm also pleased to note that we maintained our Green Economy Mark with the London Stock Exchange. Paul?
Thanks, Sean. So in bringing the presentation to conclusion, looking at slide 25, here's an illustration or a flywheel of our compounding model, to provide a guide to how we're thinking about the typical parameters of growth in the group. They include a very 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 on these metrics has served us very well indeed, as Sean has previously illustrated. And to provide an outlook, as I declared earlier, with the disposal of Specialist Building, we are now a pure-play engineering services provider. Our markets remain reliable, with growing emphasis on renewing and maintaining critical assets.
We are delighted to be moving forward into two new exciting market areas of onshore wind and transmission and distribution. The growth prospects in both of these are tremendous indeed. We have a very healthy pipeline of M&A targets and, of course, a strong balance sheet to support our ambitions in that regard. The order book is healthy, and we look forward to utilizing some of those growth levers that we illustrated earlier, to take full advantage of the vast opportunities that are ahead of us. Thank you for listening.