Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Restore Plc's 2024 full-year results. I'm Charles Skinner, the CEO, and you'll also be hearing from Dan Baker, our CFO. I think our summary of the year to date is it's been a solid year, and we've made progress, which both Dan and I are very comfortable with. Looking at the first slide, I think we've made good progress on what we'd set out we were trying to achieve in 2024. First priority was to improve operating margins across the businesses, make sure that we can show that we are a cash-generative business, that we've achieved high cash conversion with our debt coming down in the course of the year, which Dan will go into in more detail.
I think when I talk about rather dramatically unleashing the potential of the business units, really what that's about is making sure that our businesses can get on with what they do best. I think probably an illustration of that is when I came into the business 18 months ago, we had 58, what I would call, senior posts. We've now got 41 of those, and in those 41 people, there have been 22 changes. The real focus, particularly early on, are types of business that are about having the right people in the right frame of mind, in the right place, in the right structure. I'm very pleased that all of that stuff is sorted, and we're seeing real energy in the businesses, people knowing what they're doing, getting on with growing the business, making sure that as a group we're moving forward.
We will talk about how we're now presenting all four divisions' details, which I know many analysts and investors have always tried to unpick where it is, so now you're actually getting it put straightforward. The key thing really was moving our digital and records management businesses into one business. They've got a very similar customer base, particularly in the public sector, and we're finding that increasingly people want us to help them work out what should we digitize, what should we store, how can we do that most efficiently. I'll talk slightly more about it, but it's ended up in significantly reduced cost, and it's given us a lot of focus in what we're pitching to our customers. We set out that our property portfolio was really deriving from the acquisitions that we made in the 2010s.
It has been quite ragtag, slightly inefficient, and over the last year, we've taken on two new facilities, both of which can take more than 1 million boxes over the next year or two. We expect that entire project will be about 4 million boxes, the impact of that being far more efficient, but most importantly, we're taking these boxes to places which are much, much cheaper. The two dynamics you want in the box business is, what do we get paid per box, and what does it cost for us to store per box? Very pleased with that development, and I think many people have seen our new site in Markham Vale, just off the M1, and we've got another one coming along in Durham. That is all good progress on that front. We won some really good contracts.
I think it's the biggest mailroom in the U.K., Department of Work and Pensions, which will start to go live in April. It won't really kick in in a big way till H2, but we're very pleased to have won that, and it establishes our business as the preeminent mailroom business in the U.K. by quite a long way. Also really pleased that we mentioned to our people in data shred that our investors quite rightly didn't really understand our shredding business because the profits seem to be all over the place. Actually, it's an unbelievably steady business. We know exactly how many visits we're going to do. We know what our margins are going to be.
The issue with it was really that the paper price has been particularly volatile, which meant that in terms of our presenting our numbers, what you saw was a pattern which did not look like a really steady, strong business. Having mentioned this to our people in data shred, they got on with it, spoke to U.K. mills, etc., and we have now hedged half of that price at a fixed price. People want the product. On that, there is a bit of flex so that we are not completely out of touch with the rest of the market, but that gives us the ability to say how much money we are going to make in data shred this year, how much greater it is going to be than last year, and we can be pretty comfortable with that now.
I was really pleased with our people in data shred because we gave it to them as a wish list, and they came back and said, "We've got it sorted." Really excited about that and pleased with that. It's really important to us, and this isn't just verbiage, that we want to be a decent, sensible citizen, the sort of stuff we do, the customers we deal with, and this is a genuine priority. Health and safety is my top priority across the group, but when we talk about our ESG stuff, it is we are spending GBP 750,000 of our shareholders' money on converting to CVA. We are moving some of our warehouses at decent cost to LED lighting.
We are a sensible bunch, and this is not just I would have one paragraph describing our ESG that we're good citizens and we really believe in it. It's not just sort of we're not greenwashing anybody. I think, yeah, I think we're really pleased with where we are, and I think also the confidence that the board, I, our senior leadership team have in the business is such that now is a good time for us to look around, and I'm delighted that today we've announced the acquisition of Synertec, which is, I think, it was very little to do with me. It was sourced by Dan, executed by Dan and our team, but I'll take the plaudits if anybody wants to give them to me. We're really, really pleased with that, and I'll talk about it later on.
In terms of the divisional performance, as I say, we've now got four segments so everybody can see exactly what's going on. Information management, the box business continues to be a really, really strong business. Performs really well. We're really good on costs. We're rationalizing our costs. We're doing a lot of good stuff in that. In these numbers, it was dragged down by what was a weak performance in what was our digital business, which was really around two things. One was poor bulk scanning sales. We had far too much capacity, and we weren't winning enough business in that area, which we are addressing. Also, we had some difficult onboarding costs. Digital mailrooms are quite complex, and I think that what we've been we had been offering really quite complicated services to our customers without fully understanding what our costs were in that sphere.
This is now being, it's very steadily being addressed. We haven't absolutely nailed it, but I'm really pleased with what the new team has done in making this business simpler and better. The cost savings we're generating out of that, the last look, the previous overhead in our digital business was GBP 1 million a month. That has been reduced by over a third, and I suspect that that is the direction of travel there. A bit of a curate's egg in information management, but do not underestimate the power and strength of our records management storage business and the fact that bringing it together with digital, aka scanning and mailrooms, is increasingly going to be a real force in this market. Data shred, really pleased with.
I think we're looking at the number of visits per vehicle per day as a key dynamic in this, and everything that I can do when I look at our competition, we are well ahead of anybody else in the U.K. on that. If you're doing that, your costs are much lower, your efficiency is much greater, and we're really pleased with how that's done. It has been reflected in the fact that although what we got for our paper in 2024 was less per tonne than we got in 2023, both revenue and profit increased there. Harrow Green is a business which I personally like. It's been tough out there. There's been particularly both in terms of the public sector not knowing whether it's coming or going. We've also seen fewer big moves. We've had to take out quite a lot of cost from that business.
We are hopeful that we're in the right place there, but when Dan goes through the segmentals, you'll see that it's had a pretty tricky impact on our business. Technology has been a great joy. We've got a really good management team in there. We've done everything right. We've got out of all the rubbish poor quality business, and I don't think we really declared that we lost money on it in 2023. This year, 2024, we started making money, and 2025, we're feeling really good about that space, and we're seeing a lot more activity there. That's my overview, which I am actually on time for a change. Dan, tell us about what's really going on.
Thank you, Charles. Good morning, everyone. Yes, you are on time. Very good. I'll take you through the finances. I'll start with this slide. It will be familiar to a few of you, especially those that have been on our site visits. It was probably its last outing, but what it effectively does is it says what actions we've undertaken during the year to drive the margin, and that's what we said we would do. We've split it out. What have we done centrally and what have we done by the four divisions? I won't pull all of them out, but just to pick out a few. Decentralisation and right-sizing the head office. Charles has mentioned the number of roles we've reduced. Seventeen fewer roles in the year of senior people. The head office is down now to 11 people.
It was 50 or so when Charles came back. Taking the head office back and giving the power back to the businesses, and that's working really well. Second thing to pull out is the property consolidation. Charles has mentioned that. Some of you have been to our Markham Vale site. That's 100,000 sq ft, a box capacity of 1.4 million. The new site that we've signed a lease on just before Christmas and are now racking out is in Durham. That is 84,000 sq ft, capacity of about 1 million boxes. Those two new warehouses is effectively a rent arbitrage, so cheaper rent in larger, more efficient boxes. We've got one more to do that we're looking for. We don't know exactly where that will be, but one more to do towards the end of this year.
All told, that will be around 4 million boxes that we've moved into the new sites. It's roughly five to one, so five sites exited into one big one. In the two we've got, that's 10 sites into two and probably another five sites into the new one. That'll be 15 sites down to three. That's working really well. Operational efficiencies in shred. Charles has mentioned the paper contract with the paper mill, but we've also been running that business really, really well. Some of you have met Natalie, the MD of that business. It's all about incremental benefits. The KPIs she's looking at are visits per day, mi per day, volume of paper per truck. It's all in the small things, but they're all moving in the right direction. That's what we've done. Here are the results.
Revenues broadly flat, GBP 275.3 million. Operating profit, which we said we would work on, up 170 basis points, 10% in actual terms to GBP 48.8 million. The operating margin, we've said the target here is 20%. The operating margin is 17.7% for the full year. Profit before tax, that's up 14%, helped by lower interest costs. EPS up 12%. Dividend matching that, up 12%. The total dividend for the year is GBP 0.058. High cash conversion. We said we would keep cash conversion high. We've previously said at least 80%. It's over 100%, so 107% this year. Good cash conversion, and that means net debt's down and leverage. The end of the year was 1.6 times EBITDA. We said we had a preferred range of 1.5-2 times. Started the year at 1.9, so towards the top of the range.
Ended the year at 1.6, so towards the bottom of the range. Really pleased we've delivered during the year. Charles doesn't like bridges. He said I was only allowed one, so I put lots on here. This goes through profit before tax from last year to this year and the different blocks of the different businesses. As Charles mentioned, we now report the divisions standalone, so we don't have the secure life cycle services. Just walking left to right on here. Profit before tax up 14%. I will call out share-based payments. We don't adjust for this, but the share-based payment charge we've had this year, we did not have last year, so GBP 1.7 million. If you exclude that, the profit before tax is up 19%. Really pleased with the trajectory. Just to call out a few things. In information management, good pricing.
Most of those box storage contracts are now linked to inflation, CPI or RPI. That is driving on a stable number of boxes, good revenue growth. The digital integration we announced at the half year, we said it would save about GBP 3 million annualized, cost about GBP 3 million. That is broadly now done. The GBP 1.2 million we got in 2024 was principally all the second half, obviously on a ramp up. The run rate is now pretty much at GBP 3 million savings annualized a year. We have also had, aside from the integration, good efficiencies in that business. Nigel, the MD, runs it really, really well. Just like Natalie in shred, he is all about incremental benefits. Strong savings in that business in addition to the digital integration. As Charles mentioned, slightly weaker activity in scanning. Within the scanning business, we have got the mailrooms.
DWP, as Charles has mentioned, we've got HMRC. They're good steady revenue. We've also got the exam contracts, which are good steady revenue. Where we didn't do so well last year was in the bulk scanning. This is things like NHS records, Lloyd George records were weaker than we'd hoped. In shred, you can see these incremental efficiencies starting to come through. Year on year, the paper price is slightly lower, but the cost savings have more than offset that. Harrow Green is the other big red block on there. As Charles mentioned, a very slow relocations market. Technology moved from a loss to a profit, which we're very pleased with. Just taking them in turn. Information management, this is the combination of the records management business and the digital business, so the boxes and scanning. New division this year.
Broadly flat number of boxes, just over 22 million. The price rise is coming through in terms of revenue. Property consolidation, as I mentioned, is underway. The warehouse in Markham Vale is now over half full. The racking in the new site is half of it filled up, and we're starting to get boxes in. Very, very strong performance from information management despite weaker scanning, so margin moving in the right direction. Now moving on to data shred. As I said, this is all about incremental operating efficiencies. A high proportion of recurring customers. As Charles mentioned, this business is really, really predictable. Natalie can tell you pretty much where she's going to go and what date, so she knows how many visits she will do. We've made small gains in a number of places which have added up to good margin improvement.
As Charles mentioned, half the paper is hedged for 2025. That is a contract direct with a large U.K. paper mill. For 25,000 tonnes at a fixed price, which is broadly around half of our volume. Harrow Green, this is the relocations market. Slow year, as Charles mentioned. It started slowly with people worrying about the election. It was slow as people worried about the budget, and it was slow as people were reflecting on the budget. A slow year for office relocations. 2023 was a very strong comparator. We had a large pharmaceutical move, the biggest in the U.K. in 2023, when I say last year. A strong comparator. They did cut costs wherever they could, so they mitigated some of the lower activity. There are some reasons to believe that 2025 will be better, but let's see. Then technology.
This is our IT recycling business. What we said we would do there is focus on better quality customers. If you look at the KPIs in there, we're actually processing fewer assets. You might say that's a bad thing, but I would argue we're actually busy fools. What we're doing now is processing fewer assets, but each asset we process is worth more. Although we've processed just over 20% fewer assets, the value or the revenue per asset is up 40%. What we are processing is worth more. Very strong second half of the year, certainly compared to the first half, and we move into 2025 with good momentum. We've talked a few times before about outsourcing life cycle services. What that means is large, mainly public sector companies or departments have outsourced their in-house IT function to a value-added reseller.
That value-added reseller then contracts with us to do some of the recycling and in-life services as staff leave and join. We are seeing good traction there, and hopefully that will continue into 2025. Those are the four divisions. Just touching on cash. As I said, strong cash conversion, above 100%, closing net debt of GBP 89 million. Leverage down to 1.6 times. Just to remind, leverage is calculated on EBITDA excluding the leases. Down to 1.6, which is at the bottom of our range. Slightly higher CapEx than normal during the year. We spent GBP 3.9 million on Sittingbourne in Kent. That is a freehold site. We do not have too many freehold sites, but we put an extension on to put boxes in as part of our box move, so that was relatively unusual.
As part of the property consolidation, we also had CapEx in relation to the racking and the fit out of those new sites. Adjusting items had a number last year. We are down to a more normal level, I would say, this year. Excluding the amortization, which is a recurring adjustment, relatively stable. Cash items were GBP 5.2 million. A chunk of that was the integration that we announced at the half year of digital information management. Largely done. Some of the costs will move into 2025, but largely done. We then got costs in relation to the property consolidation, and that is dual rent and moving the boxes. Broadly, it is about GBP 1 a box to move them. Lastly, we had the completion of the IT program upgrade that we had during the year. My last slide.
I'm going to stick to time myself, Charles. My last slide is a refinement on our capital allocation priorities. I talked about these a year ago. We've refined them to reflect us moving into the next stage of our strategy. Effectively, we are maintaining our preferred range of 1.5-2 times net debt to EBITDA. We've split them into two categories: either invest for growth and, I should say, deliver shareholder return. Invest for growth, what we've now done is added in organic growth as well as organic growth, and hence the Synertec acquisition. In shareholder returns, we'll keep the dividend policy. We'll keep a progressive dividend policy, consistent cover. To the extent we have excess capital, we'll think about how to return that potentially in the form of buybacks. That's it from me.
I'll pass to Charles.
Thanks, Dan. What I'll do is I'll just give a bit of information on the Synertec acquisition, and then I'll do a roundup on how we see things get, how we see the coming years. Strategically, we know that as a group, we've got a lot of very, very nice things about our, which apply to almost all of our business. Predictable, persistent demand. Leadership where scale is highly beneficial. Markets, very high barriers to entry and long-established customer relationships. Probably the area which Dan and I and the team are focusing on more is how do we actually, how do we move the business forward, which we're very comfortable we can do. We think that we will increase market share in what we're doing. We think we'll continue to drive up margins.
We are also looking around for opportunities, both for bolt-on acquisitions and in areas which we are really, really comfortable with. I think that in our records management business, we know we have 22 million boxes. Do I think that is going to be 28 million boxes organically? No, I do not. We are interested in looking at areas where we can really generate some serious growth. That is where Synertec comes in. We have paid GBP 22 million and taken on up to GBP 11 million of debt, so all in, maximum GBP 33 million. We did this deal quite quickly, primarily so we could announce it today rather than have our results and then months later have this announcement. I would like to thank people at the banks who are here today. Everybody, all of our suppliers, everybody fell into line really quickly.
We did primarily internal due diligence, but it was a very, very slick operation. I think if you spoke to the lovely people at Synertec, they'd say we were really, really good people to deal with. What does Synertec do? It's a document management company. Its main thing is sending out letters and texts to the most typical example of their work is alerting patients to NHS appointments. Very, very slickly automated. Lots of scope for growth. You will have a department inside a trust. They say they'll go from their diary straight into a letter or a text sent by us. Predominantly letters at the moment. It was founded business has been going about 25 years. In fact, the current Managing Director's father was one of the original founders, based near Taunton, actually Wellington. Three print facilities, Bristol, Milton Keynes, and Warrington.
I'd really like to take you around one of those facilities because it's quite remarkable. There's nobody on the floor apart from people putting in blank envelopes and at the end taking things off. Everything is done automatically. Hopefully we'll have a trip to, it's quite close to our flagship IT recycling site at Cardington. Hopefully we'll do a trip to Milton Keynes and Cardington in the not too distant future later this year. Revenues were probably GBP 70 million this year. It looks a bit scary when we're trying to drive up margins. The fact that GBP 70 million was delivering this year about GBP 5.5 million. We have a lot of, it has a lot of postage costs, which we pass through to the customer. I view this as a 20% margin business.
If everyone can get their heads around that, 70 million revenue, 40 million postage costs. What I would call the gross margin is really what you want to be focusing on, looking at the operating margin. Over 85% of the revenue is from the public sector, most typically NHS trusts. Within those trusts, what you'll find is that they will have quite a few NHS trust logos, and then they'll be doing certain departments within there. A bit of history, this business did very well through COVID. There's all of the communication going through. What's been interesting, if you look at their non-COVID related business, it's going like that. There is, I'm not quite sure whether we give out details of that, but basically you need to, so they were quite a small business doing pretty well. COVID comes along, boosts them significantly.
The lines which we were interested in was the non-COVID related stuff where you've seen it going up. Actually, if you look at the last five years history, you'll see a huge bump, and then it looks like it's been flat. Actually, the business which we're interested in there has been growing very, very dramatically. Very strong management team, pretty young. They're going to be staying with the business. They're excited about working with us. In years three and four, they get an earnout equivalent to the amount of profit which the business makes in that year. It's one times. We're not on the hook. I think if we were to achieve the, if we were to pay out the earnout, which they're hoping to do, we will be extremely happy. Strategic rationale for the business, very complimentary.
We are the sort of mailroom people. This is outbound stuff, so we understand it. It's a very strong fit. Customers very, very similar to ours. We will be in some NHS trusts, which they're not in. They're in some NHS trusts, which we're not in. Similarly, within the departments, within the NHS, there's there. I think the real hope is that given our customer base outside of the NHS and the sort of people who need these bulk mail outs and digital notifications, we think we can really introduce them to some great places, and they can introduce us to others. There's a big opportunity here. There's still a lot of public sector people who are sending out their own letters. You just have to turn up and see a Synertec site and go, why would anybody do this in-house? We are really excited about this.
These revenues are recurring. The operating margins, once you take the post out, are really attractive. It is a great way for us to deploy capital, to accelerate our growth. Also, we are pretty good. We really understand our businesses. We understand the related businesses. This was a very, very slick deal internally. This is part of what we do. I mean, I can do the sort of fact packet about how it all works, but this is part of the sort of, I will not use the phrase Restore's DNA, but this is a really attractive space. I would probably also note that we have obviously got a view on our share price. What is extraordinary about the knock-on effect of that is buying a quality business like this, these sort of multiples, it does not come along the whole time. There is a very interesting opportunity.
I don't think that people like us should be hoovering everybody up, but there is a knock-on. Our rating is low, but the knock-on effect is that they're very high quality private companies. In other areas, there are retirement sales in this space. This is a great opportunity for us when we find the right deals. I'm just about to overrun. I will be quite quick on the business outlook. We are feeling, we've got the recurring revenues. We're feeling very comfortable with our businesses. Where we haven't got volume increases, we're getting price increases. We think that we're excited about the technology business, particularly in this business channel where we're dealing with, what Dan described, the value-added resellers.
That's your CDWs, your Softcats, Computer Centre do a bit of it themselves, but those type of people, there's about 40 major ones and more others. We're getting more and more tucked in with them. We're very pleased about hedging our paper price. Also in that business, I'm sure everybody's aware of the need to sort your office waste correctly from the 1st of April. We are offering, which will be an offering for the last three or four months, to do things like food waste, batteries, wheat, etc. We've been really successful in gently pushing that onto our customers because they've got to have it. We think that there are signs of the odd straw in the wind around our relocation business.
There seems to be, funny enough, there's quite a lot of public sector work out there, but we've seemed to have gone back ahead of the, whatever it's called, the Chancellor's statement in the next couple of weeks. There are a few government departments who've been saying, yeah, here you go, big job. Not just yet, though. We're feeling okay on that. And Synertec, as I say, we think that's a really, very rarely lose any customers. Once they've got the customers, they're there. The ability to overlay, they're operating well below capacity, and we can really help them with that. Finally, the group outlook, business has been good. I would really like to think that this year, all of our divisions are going to show increased revenue and increased profits. I think that's not a particularly difficult target to achieve.
We've got these great market positions. We've got the recurring revenues. We've got the cash coming out of the business. We set out our stall eighteen months ago when Dan first joined. We're about operating margin. That tells you what, and we are driving those operating margins up, and we will continue to just give us a bit of a break on the costs of what we had to spend with the Royal Mail. Cash generation will be good. We are now feeling very confident. We can see opportunities in our existing business. I'm not offering any hostages to fortune, but there's stuff out there. We really think that both in terms of organic growth, we're in the right place. I hate the word inorganic growth. I mean, that's basically growth by acquisition. There will be opportunities there for us. Thanks very much for listening.
We'll now take questions. I'll point to people rather than identify them because last time I did, I identified the wrong person. I'll point at people, and then if you can say who you are and where from, that would be great. Say where you're from, Greg.
Greg Poulton from Singers. Yeah, thanks.
Greg Poulton from Singer Capital Markets. Just two from me. Dan, I think you said last night that future M&A would likely be focused on data shred and information management. Does that suggest technology and Harrow Green are becoming increasingly non-core of the business? Obviously, restructured technology now, it's back to profitability. Should we be thinking about disposals there? The second one is on the operating margin target. Can you just talk about the main drivers towards that 20%? Thanks.
Thanks, Greg. Shall I start with the margin? Charles, do you want to come back to the M&A?
Yeah, okay. Why don't you deal with the margin?
Moving from 2024 to 2025, you'll have the benefit of the property moves coming through in IM. Continuation of the inflation link price rises on the boxes. We've already notified the corporate customers. The public sector customers will be notified next month in April. That will drive margins through the property consolidation. Full year impact of the digital integration. As we said, we were largely done by the half year. Paper prices is effectively half hedged. You can basically down to a solid number of visits and annualization of efficiencies within data shred. Harrow Green, fingers crossed the market will pick up a bit. Technology has got good momentum. The combination of those things, basically.
Great. Let me talk about the reason why Dan would have spoken less about deals in technology and Harrow Green is they lend themselves less well to acquisitions. When you're buying Harrow Green, buy another removals firm, there just isn't the security of revenues, the low risk on those kinds of deals. Similarly, with technology, where we are at the moment there is a lot of the stuff is around relationships, what you're doing, etc. Acquisitions in that space are not as straightforward as they are in the box business, as they are in the scanning business, as they are in the mailroom business, as they are in the shredding business. We are really committed to both of those businesses. It just so happens that we'll be looking for organic growth there rather than anything else.
I mean, if you look at our business, it is about security of assets, getting our customers to sleep well at night. If we were not in IT recycling and I was a business broker and I thought, oh, I tell you, I would go Restore shred by this. Actually, it is less than ideal, but Iron Mountain, who are our main competitor globally, interestingly, they have taken a leaf out of the Restore book and have started promoting that globally. They are not in the U.K. Their IT recycling activities. We are committed to where we are as a group. It is really about as long as we can get the quality of earnings out.
Great. Thanks.
Great. Thanks. Sorry.
Hi, James Wood from Canaccord. I've got three if I may. Two on Synertec, one on paper. I'll start with the Synertec ones first. Both the existing business and Synertec have got strong NHS customer lists. Just wondered if you could kind of give some more color on kind of the level of cross-sale you can kind of generate across the business from those two. Also on Synertec, freehold property there. Is there an opportunity for a sale and lease back to help reduce debt? Shall I come back on the paper one afterwards?
I know that we can hold three ideas in our head if we write them down.
Sure. Just on the paper, the paper hedge, obviously you've got 50% hedge. Just wondering if that's strategic or if there's opportunities to further hedge.
Yep. The Synertec's penetration of the NHS is, as I say, you can get into the trust, but you can also get in within the trust, you might find you're only getting certain departments. There's also an interesting thing that actually a radiologist in one trust will talk to a radiologist in another. It is really about getting further into that. I mean, interestingly, we've just hired a PR company specializing in health because we believe there is so much which people like us can do for the NHS in terms of the leverage. There's probably about 240 NHS trusts if you include, so not just the acute, but even acute mental health and things like that. We believe we're into about 190 of them. Synertec are into about 30 NHS trusts.
About 100, but within the trust is not all the departments.
Yeah. We see a lot of scope in this space. We also think that we can be really decent citizens for the state here because we can save people a lot of money in their records management, in their scanning, in their mailing, actually in their IT recycling as well. Yes, there is a lot of scope. When we have got a logo, so when we have got a trust and they are not in there, we will not be merging the sales teams in short order, but we feel there is a really big opportunity there. In terms of the freehold, we are not naturally freehold owners. It is not a particularly big freehold. We do have freeholds around the business. Certainly in the Southeast, we quite like the odd freehold to protect us against rents. The mine is freehold. We are not obsessed with doing sales and lease back.
Clearly, if we've got something which is not particularly valuable, not delivering an appropriate return on invested capital, we can address it. I think in this case, to be fair to the previous shareholders, they have actually just bought the freehold. I think it would be a bit tactless of us to say, all right, we're going to bang out the freehold. In terms of the paper hedge, we think 50% is about the right amount. We are hedged at what is currently ahead of the market price. I suspect the price will move up a bit. I think we'd like to see more greater stability in the paper price than we've seen over the last five years. This is just really helpful for us and for our management team to go, right, what margins are we going to get? How do we squeeze it out?
Let's assume this price and that you're not going to get wiped out by the paper price collapsing by GBP 30-GBP 40 or shooting up by GBP 70-GBP 80. Was that about right?
Yes.
Great. We'll work along that corridor.
Morning, Chris Bamberry, Peel Hunt. Three questions as well. Within technology, what's the mix now in terms of revenues between the life cycle business and the end of life cycle and the end of life? Secondly, in terms of developing that life cycle business, how confident are you in adding more significant customers? You've obviously got DWP, but what else could be potential there? Finally, the new records management facility at Durham, how are the savings kind of cost per box relative to Markham Vale? Is it similar, worse, better type of thing? Thank you.
Okay. I'll do the first two, and Dan's probably closer to the maths on Durham. In terms of life cycle, what we're doing is we're tagging stuff when it arrives. We're then during the life cycle, when people throw coffee over their laptop, then it comes back to us and we work out whether they need a new one, etc. Generally, most of the sort of bulk of the revenue is end of life, even in the life cycle activity. You want to do the whole life cycle activity. Generally, most of the revenue comes in on the product resales at the end. Having said that, we've really sorted out our act in terms of being really efficient and hitting our SLAs and things like this in technology, which is an industry which is still a cottage industry.
We have now really got the confidence of the big VARs. Broadly, there was an element of them saying, we like dealing with you, but you're not really hitting the SLAs, are you? We would go, well, nobody else in the industry is either. No, but. What we have established is we are hitting the service level agreements and the VARs, for whom this is a pain in the neck. They really do not, they want us to be selling tin. They really do not want to be fiddling around with picking up a laptop from 17A, Acacia Grove. That is what we do. We see this as a really, really good opportunity in that space. We are also working harder at our direct sales, which I think have been slightly neglected. Customers tend to be very sticky in that space.
The real growth will be with the VARs is what we expect there. And then Durham.
Yes, Chris. On the property consolidation, there are two factors. There is the cost of the site you are going into and the cost of the site you are exiting. Markham Vale is probably about the best we are going to get because what was happening there was we were moving out of sites in the Southeast. Largely, it was Redhill and Paddock Wood into Markham Vale. The differential between the rents was quite high. For the north, Durham, we are doing effectively the northern sites. The differential is not quite as much, but maybe three quarters, three quarters of Markham Vale.
Thank you.
Morning, Sandra from Stifel. Three questions, please. Firstly, on Synertec, obviously, congratulations on the deal. Do you have a sense of the organic growth you think that business can do in the next few years? Appreciate your commentary that it's done very well. More outsourcing opportunities are now part of the wider group. Secondly, on the M&A pipeline, are you able to give any color on what's in there? Do you hope to do a few smaller bolt-ons this calendar year or any sort of thoughts on that? Finally, on technology, given the progress there, I think you've previously said you target a 15% margin, but perhaps that had the greatest variability. Does the progress you've made currently give you more confidence on that 15% going forward? Thank you.
Great. Dan's probably been closest to the DD on Synertec.
If you're happy to deal with the organic growth, I'll talk about the M&A pipeline and the technology margin.
Synertec, if you strip out the COVID impact and just look at the underlying, it's mid to high single digits. The management team are really confident that that can continue. There's opportunity for outperformance, but it should at least be better than inflation.
Yes, I think I would be slightly more bullish than that in terms of where we see the opportunities with their customer base and our customer base. It's because it stands, Dan is sort of talking it down just in case he offers a hostage to fortune. I'll offer his hostage to fortune on that one. In terms of, let me take the technology margin first. Ian, who's the brilliant MD of this division, his ears slightly pricked up when he looked at how we were treating the postage costs in Synertec. And he said, how about me? I'm selling a lot of equipment, so it's really difficult for me to get to 15% margins. Shouldn't you be measuring me against that? To which the answer was, no. Just get on and do 20% margins, which will translate into 15% margins. He sort of grunted a bit.
We think this was not just we were losing money, now we are making money. We were losing quite a lot of money, we are making quite a bit of money, and the next step is to begin to make some serious money. I will be pleased if he does 15%, given that that actually is probably a 20% margin. We will see how it goes over the next couple of years, but I have not written off 15% margins in that business. Although de facto, if he does 10, he is probably doing 15 if you were fair to him on that stuff. The M&A pipeline, we have sort of come through the market as to what is out there. There are interesting opportunities.
It's a funny old time, as I say, valuations are not as high as we've seen them in the past, and it tends to, so we're actively having interesting discussions. Sometimes it's a bit like winking people out. Other times we've got retirement sales where people are saying, please bail me out. And you're sort of going, I know, but you're a pretty rubbish business, aren't you? There'll be stuff going on, and it's stuff which we know how to slot these businesses in. We know what our borrowing costs are, and we know we've got plenty of debt capacity. It's pretty straightforward. We also know that we can't afford to, given the history of the business, say the last two or three years, we can't afford to foul anything up. [Thanks.] James, we'll come back to you.
Hi both. James Bayliss from Berenberg. Just two questions from me. On your information management headcount, it's gone down about 15% year on year. Can you just give us a sense of what's coming through on that and driving it from the kind of integration and site rationalization program versus any reaction to operational challenges and how we should think about that profile going forward? On technology, it looks like your kind of revenue per asset's up about 45% year on year. You talked about that being a product of you historically being busy fools, to kind of paraphrase. When we think about that margin profile going forward, how much is there still to be done on that revenue per asset piece versus it being more about now addressing some of the cost base? Thanks.
Great. I'll take both of those. The headcount reduction in information management, we're consistently in the physical side, we're always looking at cost, but really that's been predominantly in the digital side and the scanning side. It's been a product of lower volumes, greater rationalization of our production capability. Also, as I mentioned, the overhead in that business was running at a fairly unsustainable GBP 1 million a month, and that is down below GBP 800,000 a month now. That's really where the headcount reductions have been in that business. We've now got, and this is Ian's background, he runs that division as an engineer, and sometimes you want an engineering brain to do this. We've now got a really nice pricing model into our technology. We can make estimates of what we're going to sell the kit for.
We've done the stopwatch on how long it takes to process various different things. Having previously had no idea where we were making money, we've now got a really, really good handle on that. Clearly, the rag and bone stuff, which we got into a couple of years ago or two or three years ago, that's all gone. As I've always said, you want blue chip customers, including sort of government departments as well, but the VARs, their customers. Firstly, because they play to our strengths around the ESG angle, they play to our strengths around the security side, but also dealing with those larger customers. Firstly, they refresh their kit more frequently. Your end product, where we give rebates to our customers, but your end product is eminently saleable. Secondly, you get high volumes.
When you're processing, if you're doing that sort of laptop, and then the next one's a completely different laptop, your operational efficiency, which we're all over these days, is much worse than if you're doing, I think we've got a very big product coming up, a very big contract, which keeps on getting for Spain, but is about to come along, which is, I think it's 40,000 units of broadly the same piece of kit. 40,000 units, 35,000 units, which is of the same piece of kit. The efficiencies on that in terms of your operational stuff, and also you can slightly, that's where we're going on that. Great. James, we'll go there and then we'll.
Certainly, equity development. Two Synertec kind of related questions. The first one is, I was looking at what the business did during COVID. You're talking about that spike, but that's a good case study in terms of what happens if you can deliver a step change in volume for that business. Is it as simple as thinking if you can deliver that, there isn't the need to invest in loads more people and facilities, and actually it's all just dropped through, really. I think it was up 50% in 2022 and again, a similar amount probably in 2021. Just public sector customers outside of the NHS, notable ones for you, DWP, HMRC. What do they do with their sort of external communications? There's an opportunity. Thanks.
Great. Do you want to take the first? Do you want to take them both? I'm happy to deal with the second one.
I'll take the first one. In terms of capacity, James, the COVID program that they had was for NHS England. That was all the COVID vaccination communication written in NHS England. The NHS are really keen on disaster recovery, so they had to have as much again, spare capacity. If you look at their capacity now, there's quite a lot of spare capacity. Will we need to invest to achieve their growth targets, which are pretty ambitious? No. The only potential investment that there might be in that site is if we go into Scotland, the Scottish NHS trust may well require a site in Scotland, but that would be it, and there would be opportunity to co-locate with one of our sites.
Yes. In terms of our sort of big customers, with HMRC specifically, we hold the contract for outgoing mail and outgoing messages, texting, etc., as well as the incoming stuff. At the moment, we subcontract that and are contracted to subcontract that. One would hope that there may be an opportunity. I'm not going to take the business away from our subcontractors. They're doing a very good job, but that's a sort of thing around which we should be thinking. Clearly, if you look at the DWP, we're now doing their mail room. We store their documents. We recycle their IT. There will be an element of, there may be an element of concentration risk in terms of the government going, you know, hang on, they're doing everything for us.
On the other hand, what we're doing is quite fiddly stuff, which you're not going to get too excited about. We do see the scalability. It'll be interesting to see how Synertec goes because it should be a slam dunk, but we all know cross-selling is never quite the slam dunk you think it's going to be. I think in this case, it's just so obvious that we will get there. Sorry.
Hi there, Max Hayes from Cavendish. Yeah, just a follow-on question from Synertec. How do you balance your decentralization approach with business development and then with leverage expected to move to the top of your target range after the acquisition? Just wondering if there are any debt covenants to be aware of. Thank you.
Great. Thanks, Max. Debt and stuff is very much in the CFO's zone. Synertec will fit clearly in our information management division. The people who've done the commercial DD are our two most senior people in that division. We will be saying, okay, here you go, chaps, here's your business target. As I say, it fits our decentralization. Actually, in this particular instance, given the skills of the existing management team, we will be quite light touch with that. We will let them get on with it. There are obvious benefits we can bring around lower borrowing costs, insurance costs, things like that. We will go, we're not going in there and saying, this is the Restore way of doing it. It'll be, keep doing what you're doing. Let's get all the obvious synergies. Let's work together on the customers.
Over time, you'll be able to teach us some stuff. We'll be able to teach you some stuff. I'm relaxed about how we're managing that. I expect that Nigel, who runs that business very effectively, will slightly take this sort of approach, which I take to my divisions, which is they know what they're doing, help them wherever they can, but don't tell them what to do.
On the leverage point, we've delevered really quickly in the year. Top of the range to the bottom range, effectively. Given the share price, acquisitions will be funded through debt. The choice of range is really driven by our shareholders' preference rather than the bank's. I think we've got the whole banking syndicate in the room. They'd be happy for us to go towards the top of the facility, which is three times. What happens if we go over two is just like paying more interest. If the deals are right, we would be happy to take a shorter term increase, though, because of the knowledge we can delever very quickly.
Great. Thank you very much.
In fact, the other point about the deleveraging was that we had some exceptional cash costs in 2024, notably building Sittingbourne, which cost us GBP 5 million. There are a few other sort of things. The fact that we delevered in a year when we spent a lot of racketing Markham Vale and VAR, we bought some shares in. The cash generation is understated by that 1.9 to 1.6 because there was probably GBP 8-10 million of cash going out the door, which was not really the normal course of business. Andy, sorry, I can.
Yeah, Andy Smith, Palm New York Library. Just in relation to the margin guidance, the 20% there, now you've got Synertec. On the gross margin, the margin based on the gross revenues is around about 5%, but the operating margin based on the net revenues is 20%. Will there be a dilution this year in the reported operating margin and the 20% margin target that you've got? Does that take into account the gross revenues or the net revenues?
Yep, you'll meet you that. Short answer is yes, there will be a dilution because the reported revenues will include that postage. What we will do is give you that postage number. We won't adjust it formally as a pro forma, but we will give you the postage number so you can actually take that out and look at the net revenue. Historically, it's been reported revenues, and that's the operating margin. Going forwards, because of this postage factor, we'll give you that postage number so that you can back solve to the adjusted operating number.
There will be like a headline number this year of a dilution in the margin just because of the.
Yeah. I mean, I think of this business as 30-odd million revenue making five or six. It would be silly of us to go, oh, we can't do this very exciting deal because it's going to screw up Charles Skinner's 20% margin target. There are optics. I know that Chris and I are co-shareholders in another quoted company where they have a huge amount of pass-through and they don't highlight it. We will have people, you'll just have to do the work on it. We would kind of go, well, actually, given that, the target should be 19% or something because we know we're going to lose something on that.
Our whole business is about driving margins, but it's not about either in technology or in this particular instance, it's not about going, well, we can't go into that business because it screws up our calculation because of something technical. To me, I love high margin businesses, but you've just got to look at it as I look at Synertec as a 20% margin business, full stop.
Very good. I think that's room exhausted. Nick, is anybody online? Are we nearly there?
This is just doing a prompt on the phone line. There are no questions submitted by text.
Okay. That is absolutely perfect because we are bang on time. Thanks, everybody, for coming. It is quite a full room here. We could not afford the video link this time, so you will not be able to see that. Dan and I greatly enjoy presenting these results and say thanks, everybody, for coming. Anybody who is listening, thanks for that. Great. Bye.