Welcome to the SigmaRoc PLC Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in a listening only mode. Questions are encouraged and could be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll, and then I'd like to hand you over to the management team. Max, good afternoon, sir.
Welcome everyone to the 2025 SigmaRoc results presentation. We have a slide deck for you which will run in four sections. We'll give you an update on the group's performance, operationally focused. Jan will take over for the financial section. I'll take over again after that for strategic delivery and outlook. The slide presentation was fundamentally run in two main themes. Theme on the left, integration completed. Theme on the right, ready to scale. What do these mean? Integration completed, we are one group, one culture with, of course, local specificities, with 3,000 people strong, who have contributed materially to the results we post for 2025. The results of 2025 show us that this group can perform, is resilient with whichever market conditions are in front of us.
We have delivered synergies two years ahead of plan, with more to come on that front. We've optimized our portfolio by selling several assets to owners better placed to make those assets work for them. We innovate, we invest, we decarbonize, we find further potential through those levers. With that, we have a group which is ready for the next steps, and these next steps are, first and foremost, our position in Europe. By our position, vis-à-vis reindustrialization, the focus on infrastructure, on industry. We have operational leverage in place for market recovery. That operational leverage, it was built in through our synergies programs and our optimization of our footprint. We have a large number of loyal long-term customers. We look after them, and they help us in our growth. We have obviously a better and new finance facility which Jan will deal with in his section.
All of that allows us to continue our disciplined capital allocation model as we have done over the last 10 years. If we go for the first section again, operational review of the business. A slide with lots of numbers. I will leave you to digest the various individual figures separately, but there's a few points I'd like to highlight. First and foremost, overall green arrows everywhere. Every business progressed from an EBITDA and a margin perspective. Where you see some slight weakness in turnover, you can see them in the Nordics and in Central Europe, these are predominantly to do with us stepping out of certain not optimal supply relationships, where we have reduced volume to those contracts. More on that later on.
Main figures to look at year-on-year, over GBP 1 billion in turnover, GBP 262 million in EBITDA, and 25.34% EBITDA margins. All very nicely ahead of plan, ahead of expectations. If we look at what the business then delivered when it comes to the various sectors, we can look on the next page, by sector performance. Industry, environment, and construction, the three main pillars of our activity. Industry, 7% revenue down, predominantly due to weaker demand in automotive and some construction outputs. Chemicals and mining remained robust and stable. Paper, office paper in particular, saw some weakness as well. That said, those sectors in particular will be the ones benefiting from the German infrastructure and defense spending, which is coming through as we go across 2026. Environment, on the other hand, nice performance, 6% up year-on-year.
Water purification, flue gas treatment, the food and agricultural sector, all of those performed very well. This is a sector which will take more of our focus as we move forward. In construction, lastly, residential construction, generally weaker at low levels across the board. In the infrastructure, however, stable and sometimes growing as we look at the European footprint. Here, as a result, flat turnover for the year. If we take the same revenue, but now broken down by end use. High-grade minerals first, this includes lime, limestone powders, industrial limestone supply. Slight weakness in volume, 400,000 tonnes reduced, which leads to 1% revenue down, but that is expected in the markets that we supply with weakness in steel and weakness in paper. Generally speaking, the resilience and robustness of this subsegment should be noted, and it's also 70% of our turnover.
Aggregates and stone, the middle segment, 11% down. This is obviously the construction exposure and the low-value industrial stone exposure. Here you can see the volume weaknesses or the volume reductions. I will come to those specific volumes on the next page to give you further clarity. Fantastic performance in the last segment, value-added products. Here you will find Dimension Stone, Asphalt, Concrete. Increasing volumes, but most importantly, increase in turnover. We've done a fantastic job in Belgium for Dimension Stone, in Wales for the new Asphalt setup, in the U.K. for Concrete products, where we have taken some market share and driven the performance of that business forward. Now, I mentioned on the next page the volume picture.
2.4 million tonnes of reduced volume overall, which splits down into 800,000 tonnes core volumes, where the market dynamics inform the reduction in that volume, and 1.6 million tonnes of reduction when it comes to us rejigging, reorganizing our footprint. Now, that last point is important. We have shut down certain plant capacity. We have shut down certain supply deals because our resource is precious. We have 2 billion tonnes plus of reserves, but it's still expensive to mine them, expensive to sell. We sell those to the right users. Certain supply deals were simply no longer of interest or in the wrong place. That's 1 million tonnes of the 1.6 million tonnes.
We had also 600,000 tonnes, which was a short-term supply arrangement to help someone, an industry out, where mining permits were removed for a certain period of time. We obviously helped out where we could. That gives you the reduction of 1.6 million tonnes. As you can see, the core volumes and the main reduction in volumes was only 800,000 tonnes on 20+ million tonnes of production. It's therefore not material. Now, there is obviously a series of initiatives we took to even in this slightly weaker volume environment, perform well ahead of expectations. That's the synergies and self-help programs. You see a breakdown on the left where it gives you the year-on-year performance of the synergy program. We came out in 2023 with a target of EUR 30 million as a minimum.
We upped that target to EUR 40 million as a minimum by 2027. Two years ahead of plan, we have delivered that full minimal delivery. That delivery came through in part in 2024, but mostly in 2025, as you see on the left. How this compares to the acquired EBITDA, so the business we had plus the CRH assets in 2023, you see on the right. It gives you a breakdown of volumes and some pricing effects on the lower margin products that we've seen, and then the effects of the synergies coming through. You can see this nice staircase up to EUR 262 million with the full delivery of the synergy program well ahead of plan. Now, there's more synergies to come. There's more self-help to come, as this plan is for sure not yet fully delivered.
That we will talk about in the outlook. Then there's the other lever we use to boost performance, and that lever is CO2 innovation investments. We are switching over our kilns to biofuels to have multifuel flexibility and that we can take advantage of the lower CO2 footprint and the multifuels that we can use in each operation. We are obviously increasing our fossil free electricity consumption to 86% from, up from 71. We optimize our kilns in terms of production process so that we reduce the energy use. We are part of some CO2 storage and capturing programs, particularly in the U.K. We drive our CDP, our ratings, environmental ratings, and have again moved forward to now rating B. We have a very exciting little unit called SkreenHouse, which invests in startups. There's a few investments that we have made across this year.
Most importantly, however, the statistics on the right, 6% reduction year-on-year in total emissions, 10% reduction in emissions intensity, and fantastic performance again when it comes to our CO2 footprint. Now, that gives you a first review of the business from an operational perspective. I'll hand over to Jan on my left to give you the financials for the year 2025.
Thank you, Max. If we move to the slide with all the another set of green arrows, it's the result for the group when you combine all the news flashes that Max walked us through. A billion revenue in the meantime, down year versus the pro forma. These sets of numbers are the actual numbers. You'll see later on in the bridge there is some full year effect of the acquisitions that we did in 2024. They do have an effect on the 2025 numbers. We were able to grow the volumes year-on-year with 4% and EBITDA with 16% year-on-year. Not just year-on-year in actuals, but also on the pro forma side.
The activities and all the efforts that went into the synergy project execution as well as self-help project execution clearly contributed to those. That's not the only thing that moved up very nicely. If you look at the EBITDA margin, moved up year on year with 280 basis points and versus the pro forma, 210. Significant improvement on our execution to upgrade the quality of the portfolio is very visible in this way. That all contributed as well to record EPS for the year, 10.5% ahead of expectation, ahead on last year, basically beating all the comparables. Very well on the operations side and on the results.
If you look at then on the impact on our metrics for returns, 70 basis points up on ROIC. Clear improvement there. The net debt side, cash management also worked out in our favor, as you see on the coloring of the arrows. Net debt is down to GBP 472 million from GBP 510 million, and the leverage is in place where it needs to be based on our cash generation profile, which we said we would enter and have half a point on an annual basis. We're under two in the meantime, 14% year-on-year. Overall, down year-on-year, but improvement. All in all, excellent metrics that we are proud of to deliver over in a year, which was also marked with difficult market conditions.
If we move to the next slide, it is the bridge on the revenue and on EBITDA. They're kind of different in the way they develop from left to right. The left one is revenue. You can see there on the bar on the left, there was an effect on the acquisition side in the numbers. This bundled under the M&A/divestment bar, substantial for revenue. We saw the market effect on Nordics and Central with the shaded cells there in the middle, reflecting the volume effect in these markets regionally. Different story on the right, on the EBITDA side, where basically all regions contributed with the growth in EBITDA. One more than the other, but all contributed in a positive way, finding every means to work the bottom line despite market conditions that do not always help.
Very nice improvement in all regions and everybody contributing. If we look at the bridge year-over-year for pro forma, so not on actuals, excluding the effect of the acquisition, because that's already baked into the starting point of 242. You see there market effect combined on the left. Volume had an impact of minus 17. We were able to offset that with commercial projects as synergies offsetting the volume loss, sometimes by design and a little bit on the core. That helps offsetting those. We had minor pricing effects in low-priced margin business on the Aggregates side that we were also able to offset fully with synergy projects that on the pricing side in different geographies. In all in all, help from the synergies commercially.
Additional help, if you look at the network that we took the actions last year to restructure, a few sites that we closed down to restructure the group on the, on the white collar side as well. All in all, good offsetting mechanisms in place. On top of that, we did extra cost action just on the self-help side. Difficult market, good activity around overall business management that allowed us to deliver improved EBITDA year-on-year up to GBP 262 million. In more detail, the P&L at statutory level. Again, this is on the actuals that you'll see in the RNS, with the effect of the acquisitions in that play a role.
It does play a role in the middle there on the administrative expenses side, basically the full year effect of those costs coming in. Then we were able to grow underlying operating profits up to GBP 282 million. The finance cost is coming down for two reasons, from GBP 45 million to GBP 36 million, because we refinanced the bridge loan early in February 2025 with a low margin profile with the U.S. private placement for $125 million. That drove the interest costs down and Euribor working down during the year. Now, later on, I'll walk you through the effect of the refinancing that we've done recently. That will lead to another interest cost profile improvement for over 10%.
That will be a very nice movement for the scaling that we're going to do in the coming years with competitive funding and capital structure in place, in order to do that. All in all, good progress on the underlying profit and earnings per share, as you can see at the bottom. Then on the right is more for info, how we move from EBITDA to underlying profit. How did we get to good results in the years 2024 and 2025? We benefit from the structure that we have in terms of cost. There's a high level of variability in our cost structure that we utilize to right size where we can in order to manage our bottom line results. That is working. As you can see, there's some turmoil in the world around energy.
We have 26% of our cost is linked to energy, fuel, and carbon combined. Half of it is carbon, so not in energy. We have a safe position there. We're fully hedged for quantity and price up to 80% of our use locally. We always allow for some extra percentages to allow for production losses, drops if we need to. We wanna benefit from opportunistic local sales if we can. It's not always 200%, but 80% is fine, and it works well. Overall, good position to have, and we're using it to make the bottom line numbers. If you look at cash management, we convert our EBITDA to free cash around 51%. Very healthy for us.
It allows us to de-gear, it allows us to operate the business, and it allows us to work ourselves into a position that we will be ready for the next chapter in our history. If you walk through the building blocks, there was a little bit of use in our working capital funding because of some provision that were created last year with the restructuring. They were unwound this year, so it was slightly negative. We of course paid taxes per the consensus, runs at around 22% as a tax charge, so in line with those. We have two blocks of spend levels. CapEx maintenance about GBP 50 million, which is in line with normal guidance of D&A, at around 75%.
On the right we have a growth CapEx, which is basically an investment in Belgium for a new crusher that is coming live somewhere over this summer this year. I talked about the net financial cost coming down from EUR 45 million. It's moving down and the expectation is with the new refi in place, this will come down further with a more than 10% improvement if Euribor stays where it is. All in all, good cash management. Hitting the targets there excluding growth. We have some work to do on the net side, but overall good cash generation and that also helps us on our debt management, which you will see on the next slide.
We were able to move it down from GBP 510 million last year to GBP 472 million with a leverage of 1.8x EBITDA. Good position to be in already. It could have been better even if the Euro didn't depreciate as much to the pound that it did. You can see that on the right there's a large bar, GBP 26 million, where the Euro foreign exchange effect had an impact on debt. Another risk for us, bulk of the business is in euros. The loan is denominated in euros and we pay down in euros. No financial risk, but there's translation impact that we take into account when we go out with numbers in pounds. Overall good management and target levels you can see on the right we're in the middle of it.
We're basically ready to go on the next chapter in our history, where we wanna derive additional value with activity that we do well, which is do M&A and grow the business. In order to do that, we have looked at our financing structure coming from the acquisitions in early 2024. We did some divestments this year, and it was a bit cumbersome administratively just to run the process. The flexibility was not really there that we wanted. The capacity is coming down as we repay the facility. That was potentially, you know, an area where we wanted to improve at. The securities were cumbersome administratively, so we wanted to see whether we had an option there.
We went out with the syndicate banks that we had, and there was a lot of support to create a much more flexible structure that we were able to get commitments for. We're pretty happy to announce that we have something new in place. It's simple. It's investment grade plus facility, higher capacity, interest structure coming down, and there is an ability to absorb some spikes. Flexibility overall is guaranteed in the structure. We're really happy that this will come to signing soon. The commitments are there and it's a big help for us doing what we are good at, do M&A and integrate. That is it for finance or this delivery and back to you.
Okay. Thank you. We'll get into the second part of this presentation, which is to do with the scale-up chapter. First we need to look back at what is it that this business does? Well, first and foremost, we help build infrastructure and homes through the lime and limestone we sell to that sector. We also help to produce basic industrial goods like steel, like pulp, through the lime and limestone we sell to that sector. We help to clean up the environment, again with agricultural liming, lake liming, the treatment of flue gas. Those three big segments benefit from structural and cyclical trends. If you put some numbers to this, these numbers are quite substantial. EUR 500 billion to be spent on the German economy. Steel tariffs and quotas implying much more domestically produced steel.
GBP 130 billion on environmental initiatives as we electrify the economy. 9.6 million dwellings shortage in Europe. Defense, which is clearly the focus of the day. Lithium batteries and other green investments that will further enhance our products. All in all, a phenomenal environment to evolve in as a lime and limestone operator. Within that environment, we look to deliver value for you as shareholders. We have over the next five years, three, four, five years, more than GBP 500 million in free cash that could be deployed.
Deployed in markets which benefit from structural and cyclical trends up. If we then look at our operating model over the last 10 years, we see that the pillars that we have exactly align with those sorts of priorities. We invest well, we buy businesses on good multiples. We improve them both by absolute EBITDA generation and the margins they generate per unit. We are able to integrate them into a group that then subsequently drives synergies. We have a fantastic involvement with our stakeholders in, first and foremost, our local communities and our customers. 90% have had lime supplies from us for over 10 years. We make sure that we look after them. We innovate by investing in a variety of small technology companies, technology and new products within our group.
Those five pillars help us to deliver the midterm targets we announced at the CMD. Good organic growth, good margins, good free cash flow, leverage under control and return on invested capital ahead of 15% safety reductions and improvements year on year. If you then ask as an investor, "Well, what does that imply when it comes to capital allocation?" The capital allocation model therefore basically follows first and foremost organic investment in M&A. If the markets grow, if the industry will benefit from cyclical and structural trends, surely we should expand our footprint to take most advantage of those trends. But we'll do that with responsible leverage. Leverage always kept between 1.5 and 2. When there is either weakness in our share price or excess capital available, we will look at other shareholder returns, buybacks, dividends, as appropriate.
If we execute those as we have executed over the last 10 years, we can drive our profitability, drive our returns, improve our scale, drive synergies, and make this business a better business every year as we progress. Looking forward then to the year ahead. We started the year well. The year has traded exactly as we hoped up to the end of February. Of course, there's winter. Winter happens every year. Of course, there's snow. There was a bit more snow this year, in particular in Poland and in Scandinavia. If you want to build motorways and there's 50 cm of snow, you can't really start. That volume is to come further into this calendar year and started the construction arm a bit slower, but industrially and environmentally, demand were good.
We expect to see recovery in H2 driven by the German stimulus programs, driven by housing, and demand recovery. As a result of that, we think that the operational gearing that we've built in and the vastly drop-through of the additional volumes to the bottom line will be very attractive. We have right-sized our group, we've done synergy programs and optimization programs. For the benefit of additional tonnes will absolutely be crucial and be fantastic for the bottom line. There's obviously the macro trends and developments to take into account. The Middle East and what is happening there needs to be monitored. On the right side of the slide, you can see that we've had this sort of a scenario before. 2022, we had energy shortages and spikes. In that environment, we obviously already had a fantastic setup, but we also learned.
Our hedging is in place. We're able to deal with volatility. We're able to deal with energy shortages. We're able to deal with changing energy use in our kilns. There we do not see much risk. We have our priorities. Improve safety, improve our operating standards across the sites, protect our margins and strengthen them further as we have done every year. Convert the improving environmental and industry setup into further profitable growth. Lots of self-help still available if demand remains a bit sluggish. Grow our business organically and inorganically by taking advantage of both our footprint, our setup, and the M&A pipeline, which is very active.
That gives all of you, hopefully, a great picture on what 2025 looked like in detail, why it was such a successful year, and how our business is very well positioned for not just 2026, but the next decade. Before I leave you to Q&A, I thought it'd be good to show you two rather fun images. This is 1902. This is in Belgium. Our workforce back then leaving site. In the middle, you see the large office building. On the left in the background, you see the production halls. On the foreground, you see the stocking area where stock was ready for delivery. Then we have 2026, our workforce at the same site. In the middle, you see the exact same office building. In the background on the left, you see the exact same production halls.
In the foreground, we have slightly modernized our stocking area. The same business assets which in 1902 were relevant and which are still relevant today to help build Belgium and Europe. Thank you very much for listening.
That's great. Thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via Investor dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number of questions about today's presentation. Can I please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.
Okay. One question from Vishal B. Appreciate 86% of your kilns are fossil-free electricity. Could you please discuss the impact of a sustained rise of oil prices beyond the GBP 120 mark on market capacity? How does this scenario impact the market share of your sites?
Okay. From the input cost perspective first, we have a very active hedging program right across the group. We use different sources of energy in different locations. We have adapted hedges in place there. The full year 2026 is hedged, 2027 is hedged in large parts. This is a learning from 2022, where we had good performance, and it's also a standard practice. We always leave a little bit open so that we can take advantage of some spot opportunities. If we look back to 2022 and 2023, in some cases there, the hedges forward were more expensive than running spots. You always want to have a combination. That's the first thing. The second thing is, our kilns are multi-fuel. Again, the learning from 2022. In 2022, in some cases, coal was no longer available. It had to be gas.
Gas was not available, it had to be oils. Our kilns, by and large, have opportunities to use different fuel sources, and that gives us further flexibility. Second point. Third point, we have contract structures where we allow two things. First and foremost, to pass on spikes in energy, but secondly, also to look after our customers, where they sometimes benefit from a proportion of our hedges. They have learned from 2022 and have hedges in place themselves. From an input cost perspective, there is. We're in a great place. Absolutely great place. Where we need to look at is what does this energy spike do to overall demand in the European economy? That's a question of how long does this trouble in the Middle East continue? If it's short-lived, it will not be a great impact.
If it becomes a larger, longer conflict, the higher energy prices might see economic activity impacted. It's difficult to assess what that looks like and how long and how big that would be. On that point, we've demonstrated in 2025 that we have incredible flexibility in our cost base. Jan has just mentioned the variability in our cost base. We've also got a synergies and optimization program, which was only delivered to the minimum amount. There is still further synergies and savings to come. If you ask us, what do you think your group can do? I think our group can deal with the inputs, and if the inputs start to hamper volumes, we can also deal with the consequence of that. I think that we are just very well-positioned.
A question from Groby N. Will the rebuilding of homes in the Middle East have an effect on the company's markets?
The markets for building products are hyper local, and so any rebuilding to be done in the Middle East will be done from local sources. On the margin, maybe it will divert imported cement from Turkey in other directions, maybe. I do not know. I think that for now, this is a predominantly local effect. Rebuilding in Ukraine on the other side will impact us 'cause that's obviously next door. That will help us.
A question from Steven P. Any plans to move to a main market listing?
We have this constantly under review. As you know, the AIM market has been a fantastic home for our business. Our focus at this point in time is taking advantage of the cash flows that we generate from an organic and inorganic expansion perspective. A main market move would be slightly distracting in that sense. For now, we're happy where we are, but we keep it under review.
Another question from Vishal B. Is there a potential impact to consider on infrastructure projects if the private credit market struggles for momentum this year and next?
Yeah, perhaps. It's hard to assess that one. A lot of the infrastructure spend that we look at in both Germany, Poland and so forth is government-based, government programs. The private infrastructure investments would be, I think, less impacted by this. Sorry, would be less impactful from us, from our perspective. Now, there are obviously private infrastructure-like programs, but those are usually more, the more risk-averse, the more conservative-like type investments. Therefore, I would think that it's perhaps less impacted, but again, less well-placed to assess those sorts of comments.
A question from Ted S. Can you give a bit more color on the supply contracts in the Nordics that you have been withdrawing from? What kind of mismatch prompted this?
Yeah. They're not just in the Nordics. Some are in the Nordics, some are elsewhere. There are a few reasons to exit certain supplies. Reason one is we sell high-grade pure mineral into a contract where that mineral is only used as a fill or a subbase for underneath road construction, for example. That is not the right use for that mineral. A high-grade mineral is highly valuable. It can be used for a multitude of processes, and just to put it as a fill material doesn't help. The customers there are in some way, well, some way also logical. They cannot pay more.
They cannot pay the high grade prices for the material that becomes a foundation. There we just stop the supply and then divert the volumes to other locations and other clients. That's one. There obviously you will see that volume then starts to grow again as industrial demand in Europe starts to grow. That's the first thing. Secondly, it has been the case across the group that we have repositioned our business and exited certain locations where we had a plant and we shut it down. That plant was not fully optimally used. It was running at half volume or less than half volume, and it doesn't make much sense to keep that going. As you do this, your margins and your profitability benefits, but your volumes suffer a bit.
That's just for the overall profitability of the group that made a lot of sense and also in the context of CO2 credits, it makes sense. That's the second one. Thirdly, we've had we've exited or had to exit certain short-term supply deals, and this was at 600,000 tonnes, as you could see from the slides. This is really where we have been a help to some other locally located suppliers of materials who have trouble in their mining operations. You don't leave those people just hanging. You try to be supportive of them because you're also then supportive of their customers. On a short-term basis, we help them with certain local supply.
Obviously when they find or get their mining licenses back or the quarry runs again or is opened up again, then obviously they do not need our supply anymore. That's what the supply arrangements, which we exited, entailed.
A question from Clive O. "Share price has been significantly affected by the current conflicts in the Middle East. What can be done to mitigate the effects, or do you just let it play out?
Yeah, it surprised us a little bit too because maybe there's some overreaction or some nervousness in the share price or in the market with this conclusion. If you don't know our business well, oh, this is a business using energy. Energy is not coming through the Straits of Hormuz, therefore this business must suffer from that situation. As we explained, the hedges that we have in place cover us for the input costs. The contract structures we have in place cover us from a general commercial perspective. Where our customers are in that mix, we pass on either some of the cost or we help them with their inputs too. It seems slightly overreacted from our perspective.
Question from Steven P. "Acquisitions, could you give scale, geography, niche?
We've always said that the target here for acquisition work is internally funded. We have GBP 500 million in free cash over the years. Internally funded, predominantly bolt-ons and additions to our footprint in the places we've already got an established footprint. Obviously, if there's new geographies to be added, we would go into those markets with new acquisitions. The main message is we could fund this expansion, attractive expansion from our internal free cash flow. When it comes to sector, it will be quarries, it will be lime kilns, it will be value-added products. It may be an adjacency to what we already produce, so that we may come out with a footprint and a portfolio which is even more attractive to our customer base when they deal with us as a supplier.
A question from Thomas F. "Could you discuss the M&A environment today? What you're seeing in terms of valuation multiples for potential target companies and how you are weighting inorganic growth versus potential share buybacks given the implied forward valuation for SigmaRoc?
Yeah. The environment is similar to what we've seen over the last 10 years. There's only really been one year where there was significant weakness in valuation aspirations, which was end of 2022 and early 2023. If you remember, we took full advantage of this back then by launching a short-term program to purchase eight or nine small businesses in one go. Now it's just the same as we've had since 2016. Valuations range depending on the quality of the company, depending on the location, depending on the seller. It's just the same sort of thing as before. When you look at how we prioritize organic growth, share buybacks and so forth, if the share price has significant weakness, we will certainly consider buybacks.
Organic growth typically has multiples of 3-4 times EBITDA effective, because you're basically not buying goodwill. The business is being built. You also need to be careful with organic growth. We are a territorial business. The market sometimes sustains four players perfectly fine, five players perfectly fine, but you add a sixth one or fourth one, whichever situation it is, and suddenly nobody makes any money anymore because the capacity is too large for the demand. You need to always be careful how you approach the organic piece. Because as I said, we keep our share price under review to see whether we need to look at buybacks or not.
That's it in terms of questions.
That's great. Thank you for answering all those questions you can from investors. Of course, the company can review all questions submitted today and will publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which we know is particularly important to the company, Max, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?
Yes. First and foremost, thank you very much for joining our 2025 results presentation. I think the main takeaways are on that first page of our slide deck. We've completed the integration. We've demonstrated that regardless of volume outlook or market conditions, this business will deliver. This business is now evolving into a market which has a series of structural and cyclical drivers, which will, for the next five to 10 years, drive the performance of this group. On top of that, we're well-placed when it comes to energy hedging and input costs, which are mostly variable. We are obviously looking to expand our group through some targeted M&A as we have done over the past 10 years. Thank you all for your support, for your continued support, and hope to see you again at the next results presentation.
That's great. Thank you for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.