Morning, and welcome to the Staffline Group plc investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged and can 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. I'd now like to hand you over to Albert Ellis, CEO. Good morning, sir.
Good morning and thank you for that. Welcome everybody. I've got Daniel Quint, as usual.
Morning
P artnering with me this morning, my CFO. Just wanna say thank you to everybody that's logged on. It's precious time. It's your time, and we really appreciate you watching and listening to our results this morning. Daniel, our first slide is an agenda, yes, but the very first slide that we're going to talk about this morning is to restate why Staffline has actually done so well over the last few years and, in particular, 2025. Now, we're going to go into more detail in the rest of the packs. I'm not going to go too much into a deep dive on this, but you can just tell from some of those metrics and stats the size and the scale of the business.
We're focused on the U.K., we're focused on the island of Ireland, and we're focused on blue-collar recruitment with some other portfolio services that complement that core. You can see on the left-hand side, these are substantial revenues in really attractive sectors, and I will go into more detail later on in the presentation. Now, back to the results in hand. Look, 2025 was our best year so far this decade. Gross profit increasing by double digits. Operating profit up 31%, quite extraordinary. Blue-collar temp working hours was what drove the increase in profit, up 7%. Also, quite surprising in this current weak market for recruitment, Ireland, an astonishing permanent fee uplift of 10% in a challenging market. We did actually secure a major new logistics strategic partnership during the year.
That obviously bumped the numbers up, but actually the transition occurred well into the second half, and therefore the effect was muted. We'll get a full year effect of that contract in 2026. Now look, nothing at the moment is right without talking about cost reduction and efficiencies, and the management teams have been extraordinary in the way they faced this challenge and actually met it full on. Implemented a year ago, well ahead of the curve. We're in very good position on our cost base. Then that enables obviously the strong balance sheet with good cash position, and that's obviously enabled the further cash buyback. Daniel will talk about that in a minute.
Just going back to that introductory remark I made about the five-year transformation, and in 2020, just to take your minds back six years now, our number one objective that year was to strengthen the balance sheet. We also wanted to focus on core. We felt that the Staffline Group was well known for its core recruitment activities in blue collar, in public sector, in supermarkets, in retail, and we wanted to focus on that. We wanted to transform the operational and business model from an aging model in the 10 years preceding 2020 to one that's fit for purpose in this decade, digitized using technology with highly efficient operational metrics.
Thirdly, and this at the time was quite a bold statement, but the Irish business said they had a great position in Northern Ireland, but they wanted to enter the Republic of Ireland and grow into a similar position there. You can see the results of that. If you look at what's happened, and those results are simply on the right-hand side of that slide, GBP 62 million in cash in the five years we've disposed of PeoplePlus. The results obviously speak for themselves, that gross profit in the Republic of Ireland doubling over five years. Real congratulations to the team there for achieving that. Thank you. With that, over to you, Daniel.
Thank you, Albert. Good morning, everyone. Thank you. Just to echo Albert's comments, thank you all for joining this morning. Real pleasure to present our results for FY 2025 to you. Just really focusing in on the key driver behind the results of 2025, the organic revenue growth through the market share gains, predominantly driven in our Recruitment GB division. That enabled 11.5% of revenue growth. Of course, what really counts here is the gross profit.
To achieve 10.6% increase in gross profit across the group in a very, very challenging sector or period for our recruitment sector is testament to the effort, the focus, and the delivery of not just our leadership teams, but all the people out supporting our customers through the provision of temporary workers as well as permanent activity as well. Just to focus on the leadership teams, what they've also done in terms of cost focus and cost management has meant that we've increased our gross profit to operating profit conversion from 14% to 16.6%, which enabled that operating profit of GBP 13 million up just over 31%.
I think that's a real testament to the work, not just of last year, but the years preceding that, especially in 2023 and 2024. Additionally, as a group, we focused on keeping control of our finance charges, which has led to profit before tax of GBP 7.4 million, which is up 48%. Albert touched on the records of the last five, six years, 2020 to 2025 transformation. This I see 2025 as part of the crescendo. I wouldn't say the full crescendo 'cause of course we've got a lot more to come, but a really excellent year that these financial results pay testament to. Very, very important. Now coming over to finance charges and the balance sheet.
Our growth has meant that we've invested in working capital, and I'll come onto that in the next slide. We've had an increase in finance charges, but actually that increase year-over-year is actually as a result of the benefit of an interest rate cap which we had in 2024. Actually, if you add back the income from that cap, our underlying finance charges are actually down. Although they're GBP 5.6 million, the preceding year would've been GBP 6.2 million without the income from that cap. A really good performance by our credit control teams and our management teams to really control the impact of the growth, which has been really fantastic. At the same time, really important to be focused on cash collection, cash management on an absolutely daily basis.
Then that led us to generate GBP 1.5 million of net cash, which is down on the previous year. That is as a result of our investment in working capital in our organic growth. I would like to just point out to, and it's the third point on the left-hand side, which is that, towards the end of 2024, when our first interest rate cap hedging product ran out, we actually bought a collar, and we are therefore protected on approximately 80% of our debt exposure when SONIA goes over 4.75 or Bank of England base rate, more or less aligned. I really want to emphasize that because in the current environment, with the fluidity as a result of the geopolitical and macroeconomic consequences of that situation, we are protected above 4.75% interest rates.
That's just 1% above where we are now on 80% of our debt exposure. I think that's a good position to be in in a world which is pretty uncertain. Just coming onto a few final points about balance sheets and financing. We have financing headroom of GBP 61.6 million supported by the disposal of PeoplePlus. Two final points in reverse order from the bottom of the slide. We've got really lots of covenant headroom there, both on our leverage covenant and our interest cover covenant. Finally, something we have been deploying cash to since August 2023 actually. We've reduced shares in issue by 27% from 166 million to 121 million.
This morning we've announced a further share buyback of 4.9 million shares. In summary, on the macros of our balance sheet and our cash position, I think we enter or we've entered 2026 and a few months in a strong position. We've made decisions to grow with the cash that we've generated. I just illustrate that on this slide now on the net debt waterfall. You'll see that we started on the left-hand side with net cash of GBP 9.6 million, and we finished at GBP 1.5 million on the right-hand side. However, that's made up of two stories, and actually the first category of activity, underlying trading activity, actually increased trading cash by GBP 12.2 million, taking our net cash from GBP 9.6 million to GBP 21.8 million.
As a result both of the PeoplePlus disposal and then the share buyback as a result of that, and then our investment in circa GBP 20 million, you can see on the right-hand side of working capital to drive growth, and the win of a large new logistics customer, which has driven our profits and will continue to drive our profits in 2026. Those are strategic decisions we've made, and I think they're very successful decisions. We can see that through the results that we've just presented. Just my final slide, just as a reminder, probably the last time we'll mention this, a reminder seeing as we are looking at FY 2025 of the disposal of PeoplePlus, which has now created a pure play recruitment company and group that we are.
We expect to generate GBP 6.2 million of that after working capital adjustments. Again, I think, aside from the cash generation from that disposal and that supported the share buybacks, very importantly, that has contributed in a sharpness to the group and an absolute laser focus on what we're delivering to the market and also to the outside world, and especially our investors. With that, I will hand back to you, Albert.
Thank you, Daniel. We're moving on to the operational review now. The first slide that we want to look at is just restating what our strategy is for those of you that have watched us for the first time, but also for those of you that just need a quick refresh. The market leadership in the blue-collar recruitment sector, segments of the recruitment sector in the U.K. and Ireland is extremely important to us. We are going to double down on that. We are making sure that in every significant opportunity for winning market share, we will be there, and we will be putting our best foot forward in terms of securing market share. That is based on the excellence of the delivery of the teams. Staffline has got a tremendous reputation for delivery. It's got scale, it's got reach.
It's not easy, but it actually has achieved a tremendous value for customers in terms of its market positioning. We will maintain our market leadership, and we will go for organic growth. Secondly, broadening the portfolio. We've got a number of businesses that are really little gems. Unfortunately, in Brightwork in Scotland and in Omega here in England, they've been affected by the white-collar recruitment decline. I look at those as huge opportunities for when there's a recovery. It's our little recovery story that should the economics become more favorable in the next few years, those businesses will grow dynamically again. At the moment, they are focusing on their own market share, and they're focusing on their own improvements. In future, they will form part of the recovery in any macro improvement.
Now, one of those brands, Datum, has really had a terrific year, and that's because Datum has actually produced audited. They do services, audit customers, look at their supply chains, and that's really very pertinent at the moment with the uncertainty. We will continue to broaden the portfolio and nurse those little businesses and improve their niche positions in their sectors. I've talked about the Republic of Ireland. We've invested in fee earners. We've opened locations. We'll continue to do that. Of course, Daniel has talked significantly about our cash generation and shareholder return. That's in a nutshell our strategy. Simple, but it's very, very effective. Now, looking at the customer, Daniel has been talking about the creditworthiness.
I mean, the key thing here is the size and scale of those customers, blue-chip in nature, well-known brands, where in a market like we get at the moment, there is a flight to quality. There's a flight to quality in terms of, customers, ultimately consumers, and they're purchasing either online or in supermarkets or in retail organizations. There's also flight to quality with procurement. Having the sorts of customers that Staffline has, both in the U.K. but also in Ireland, those blue-chip customers is a real benefit. You can see they are focused on sectors that are really resilient in tough times. Logistics, supermarket, food manufacturing, and also public sector. Particularly in Ireland, we've got a very strong, public sector exposure. Looking at the mainland here and Recruitment GB, you can see the numbers.
Revenue well up on the previous year. This represents more organic growth. This is followed by a good flow-through in gross profit, up 12%, almost 13% on last year. The conversion to operating profit is so important for us. You know, it's a metric that we've been looking at for five years, and we've driven it. For the first time, the business has gone over 20%. If you look at the sector, historically, achieving 20% is very rare, even in good times. To be 22% converting GP to operating profit is a stunning achievement by the team in GB. They benefit from their scale, from their operational excellence and the flight to quality. Obviously, they are obviously well. They've got history in the sector. They know their customers well.
There's an emphasis on relationships, and they've got deep experience and corporate memory. This business really has driven the majority of the profit growth in the last 12 months. You can see in the next slide how that's been achieved, and it's mainly through working hours and temps. If you look at the graph on the left-hand side, you will see that the year has started well. That dotted line is the 2026 year, quarter one, and you can see it's well ahead of the previous three years. Now, market share has come also from our existing customers. Not only new customers, but existing customers, and we've increased that market share by 14 basis points from 35% to 49% over the last three years, four years.
A tremendous effort from the team there, and this really does demonstrate how that success has been achieved. Onto Recruitment Ireland, and this is a really great story as well. They've had a tough year last year in the beginning for the first six, seven months. Ireland, you know, suffered from storms. It suffered particularly from the National Insurance contribution increase that the Chancellor imposed on businesses in the north of—in Northern Ireland last year. Customers didn't hire during that period of uncertainty, and they were particularly affected by that. In the second half, the business really bounced back, and it's really about their focus on public sector, healthcare, social care, security, and of course, they also do HR consulting in the Republic very effectively. Permanent fees up 10%.
That is up on a very, very good year last year, which was a record year, and up double digits on the previous year. Really, really pushing quite significantly the permanent fees in their business to quite a significant proportion of gross profit. As you know, permanent fees are cash generative, higher margin, and they obviously support the main business, which is actually working capital absorbing. Excellent gross margin increase, and this is really about the service mix moving, shifting from temps to perm. Yeah, this is a tremendous result here. If you look at the next slide, you'll see just how the Republic of Ireland has come to be such an important story in Ireland with gross profit doubling over the last five years.
We're looking forward to more growth from there. In fact, in the last six months of the year, the Republic of Ireland continued to accelerate, and we had a very good start in this year as well. Remember, the Republic of Ireland, first of all, it does not suffer from budget deficits as the U.K. does. It has a budget surplus. The public sector is well-funded, and there's demand. The government's actually funding the public sector. The economics, GDP growth, for example, are more favorable than the U.K. Daniel, over to you for a few thoughts around our sustainability and our ESG program.
Thank you, Albert. Yeah, just wanted to just focus for a moment on the manner of our operations and how we've developed over the last number of years. I point to three very important factors there in terms of career development and number of hours and training hours, and we've really focused on leadership and enabling people to have progression within the business. As well as, of course, our temporary workers, where we've placed approximately 100,000 workers throughout 550 locations throughout the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland. That's GB, Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Finally, we've also reduced emissions by 18.5% under the banner of sustainability, environment, social, and governance. These are critical areas for the development of our business that, when we're, you know, delivering results that we've presented in this presentation, that we're doing it in a very sustainable and very responsible manner. Something that we hold very close to our hearts and is very important for us. I would like to at this point, especially as this slide is also very much about people, to thank all of our teams and specifically from me, the finance teams, the central office teams, but also, and I'm sure Albert will do so as well, to thank all of our teams across the group, especially in the front office for delivering.
It's only their work, their hard efforts that allows us to present these results, and the delivery and how they operate with our customers is very, very important towards that. Thank you very much for that. I'll now hand back to Albert for the final slides on the outlook.
Thank you, Daniel. Now looking at the outlook. Look, this is what everybody is looking at at the moment whenever they see results. Yes, the past is interesting, but what about the future? What about the uncertainty? Well, we've had an encouraging start to 2026. As I pointed out and showed you with the graph, our hours are up. In Ireland, we're well up on last year. Last year being, you know, relatively weak comparators. This year we've had a very strong start, particularly in permanent recruitment and particularly in the Republic, as I mentioned in the previous slide. We've had a very encouraging start to the year. Now, the group is well-placed to navigate headwinds. Let me just I will restate them in the next slide, but let me just say that we have seen our business grow in tough times.
We've already been through a number of crises, macroeconomic challenges over the last five years, not least of all, the war in Ukraine and COVID. When those things happen, what we've seen is consumers, and we've seen the general population, they might cut back on luxuries, restaurants, pubs, long-haul travel, et cetera, but then staycations come into fashion again. They spend more money with the supermarkets, and they eat at home, or they celebrate the World Cup, for example, this year with friends and family in their home. We're confident that we're well-placed to navigate the headwinds. There's always gonna be ongoing demand for essential goods. We've also got this tremendous reach into the public sector in Ireland, which are long-term contracts.
On that basis, with what we know, the annualization of our wins last year, the wins that we've had at the turn of 2025 into 2026, we are very confident that we will be in line with the board's expectations this year. I just want to say a couple of things in the current context, and I think these are important remarks, many of which we have both made in the presentation. I want to just restate, in times like this, it's really important to have creditworthy, blue-chip, large, well-known brands as your customers. It's not only good enough to have those customers, as benefits to the group. One's got to have deep and long-term relationships with them.
Many of those brands that you've seen, we have long-term relationships that stretch over years, where we've proved our expertise in delivery. All credit to the management teams and the leadership and the CEOs of both those businesses. They focus on relationships, they focus on people, they focus on delivery. That is their number one focus, and that is what gets you through uncertain times. Because customers, there's a natural flight to quality. Customers are very worried about their supply chains. They're concerned about sustainability, and they want to work with suppliers that are reliable. Now, we are focused on temporary workers. That is a historic strength. That obviously does play quite well in the current market where you've seen those businesses that are focused on permanent recruitment are actually having more challenges.
Temporary workers at the moment is a way customers can work their sort of peaks and troughs without committing to permanent hires. Then Daniel has talked about the thing that's so important to the team, which is cash generation. Genius move number two in terms of at a time when we had falling interest rates, Daniel actually went to the market and secured a five-year collar and cap so that we don't actually suffer when unexpectedly interest rates are rising. I mean, genius move two. Genius move one was when Daniel did a 3-year cap on our interest rates, and we saved GBP millions in interest. We're always trying to protect the business in tough times like we're facing now.
You know, this has resulted in the confidence we have and the cash flows that we're generating to announce this morning the share buyback, a further extension of our current very successful share buyback scheme. With that, thank you for listening. I'm sure that there's some questions that we will be answering. We're happy to sit here for a few minutes and discuss some of your points.
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 your investor dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout 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.
Great. Thank you very much. Just gonna take the first question, which is, you mentioned defensive markets like food and logistics. How resilient are these if there is a deeper economic slowdown?
Well, I mean, my view is, you know, I've been around for a long time, been through four recessions in recruitment. 1993, 2001, 2008, and then 2020. In particular, COVID is probably the most exceptional in terms of disruption. What we saw was, you know, supermarkets benefiting, to be honest, and essential services, public sector continuing. We saw those sectors as very defensive. I, in all of those times and in all of those recessions, those are your sort of go-to defensive sectors. Now, it's not by particular design in the short term that we've done this. We are benefiting from, you know, the past where these relationships have existed for many, many years and we're benefiting from that.
Yes, I'm confident that if there's a deep economic slowdown, and we haven't had the sort of slowdown of 1993, 2001, and 2008 yet, except for COVID, and during those times, these were very, very good sectors to be in.
Well, actually there's no other questions. I think we've had previously quite a lengthy list of questions. I can only assume there's been a post by someone on social media about some events in the rest of the world that means everyone's distracted. I jest. Without any further questions, I think I will just hand to Albert to just say a final few comments. During his comments, if there are any other questions that pop up, we'll cover them. Maybe, Albert, if you just wanted to close off the presentation.
I think there was a little bit of commentary around the sort of year-end and the pre-close and the actual audits of results that have been pre-announced this morning about expectations. We delivered a pre-close trading statement in January, which was significantly and materially ahead of expectations for 2025. That remains the case. Of course, we've had the auditors and we've announced results this morning that are even better than the ones in January. That's how we've sort of doubled the statement of exceeding expectations for last year in January and then, you know, improving those results even through the audits. The concluding remarks, I'll be brief because I think we've been very expansive about that.
The business is in good shape. We are cognizant of all the dangers. We are wary of making decisions that would be wrong in the kinds of environment that we're in. We're experienced. The management in the group and in the business has literally decades of experience in recruitment. They've been through most situations that you could think of in the sector, and I rely on them, and they rely on me, and they rely on Daniel to help guide a safe passage through these current challenges. We're confident. We know that the group's in good shape. Cash is king, as is relationships, strong relationships with your customers, enduring relationships, and making sure that you always deliver. With those sort of truths around the group, I wish you well for the day, and thank you very much.
Thank you.
That's great. Thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close the 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 morning to you all.