Afternoon, welcome to the Victoria PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time by 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 like to hand you over to the management team. Geoff, good afternoon, sir.
Good afternoon. Thanks, everybody for joining the call. We'll get straight into it that we have a little bit more time for Q&A at the end. I'll get Alec to take you through the financial overview of the year, then we'll pick up.
Right. Thanks, Geoff. Great, just to start with a couple of headlines. Obviously, since we updated at the half year, the revenue outlook was probably a little bit softer than we'd anticipated. Revenue for full year 2026 was GBP 1.045 billion. That's revenue down about 6%. Volume was a little bit softer than that, down almost 9%, really reflecting just that tough macro environment. We'll come onto more recent trading, which has been a lot more positive. I think that lower volume has been a main driver of performance last year. EBITDA came in at GBP 92.3 million. That is broadly in line with the guidance that we provided back in February. We have aimed to be relatively conservative on the balance sheet movements at the end of the year, we think that is a good clean number.
A little bit of margin compression there, which we'll come on to explain later. Clearly, financing has been a big focus for the year overall. Net debt was just over a billion at GBP 1.03063 billion. We will spend a bit of time in the presentation talking you through the different steps to refinancing. Obviously delighted to announce the 90% acceptance on our refinancing yesterday. We'll explain that in a little bit more detail. Clearly, kind of leverage also came up a little bit during the year to 11.5 times. Obviously post-refi, we are reducing that. We'll explain that in more detail later. Geoff, just for exec summary.
Sure. As Alec just mentioned, the second half of the year was weaker than we expected. A lot of that was driven from the war in Iran breaking out towards the very end of the year, that caused quite a sharp drop-off in both commercial demand and consumer demand. The final few months of the year were much weaker than we expected. However, the one encouraging factor during that period was that we were able to improve the average selling price which demonstrates the desirability of the group's products for consumers. The main focus of the business over the last 12 months has been executing the various profit improvement programs that we have in place. We have outlined those to you in the half year and also the full year result last year, what those projects are. We've made good progress.
Most are on track or ahead of schedule, although the lower volumes that the market is showing at the present time means that the impact is somewhat dampened, we are very comfortable that the projects will deliver the upturn in earnings in the medium term. Alec is going to take you through the refinancing shortly, the details of it, because I know we want to get a clean balance sheet for everybody to understand exactly what the moving parts have been, I'll leave that to him. Lastly, the start of this year has been very encouraging. We've managed to achieve volume growth. Most of that has been in Australia and the U.K., where some of our competitors have been struggling badly and we've made major market share gains.
Volume's up 3%. We've put prices up as well, we've achieved 7% revenue growth and the profitability for the quarter was ahead of Q1 of last year. That's particularly encouraging because Q1 of last year was the best quarter the company had during FY 2026. Being ahead of that for the first quarter of this year, comfortably ahead of it, is very encouraging. You can take it, yes.
Obviously a lot going on the balance sheet over the last 12 months, I'll step everyone through that. Look, a lot of detail here. We'll try to stay at the headline level. Obviously, we can dip into any further Q&A after that. Two main steps this year. Last summer, we basically refinanced all of our 2026 maturities. That was both our super senior RCF and the 2026 bonds. That was done through an exchange, basically extended out the maturities out to 2029. More recently we announced an extension of those 2028 bonds, which is the next maturity, as well as a refinancing of Koch's preferred equity, which had the option to convert into ordinary equity in November.
Delighted to be able to effectively refinance about GBP 1.2 billion of liabilities, which I think is a great achievement for the team. Both Central and local management. Thank you for everyone's support in that. Yesterday we announced 90% approval from the bondholders. There is still about three, four months before that completes, which we are expecting to happen early in H2. Subject to the shareholder vote, we are now very confident that that will progress. In terms of what that brings to the business, the two transactions in combination extends our debt maturities significantly. Our first maturity is now only in 2029. This gives us a great runway for the operational improvements that we are making. Geoff and I will talk through some of those through the rest of the presentation.
I think we have had good progress this year, somewhat masked by the kind of lower volumes in the market, that is certainly coming through very tangibly. It also significantly reduces our balance sheet liabilities by over GBP 300 million. Both for our external partners, whether that is our customers, suppliers, but also our shareholders, we think that is a great step forward. Finally, it also reduces our ongoing finance costs and PIK dividends by about GBP 34 million. That also includes a GBP 5 million cash interest reduction. Again, very helpful to keep more cash in the business and reduce those ongoing costs. I think overall what this demonstrates is that actually we do have very strong access to finance. We are very lucky to have a diverse capital structure, lots of different lenders of different types.
Actually, what the last 12 months has shown is their kind of ongoing support for the business. Hopefully, their approval of those processes also demonstrate their belief in the recovery profile of the business, which again, we will hope to demonstrate in the coming months. As part of the transactions, Koch will become our largest shareholder. They will take approximately a 24.9% stake in the equity and will be providing an additional board member. I think a couple of points to note there. As part of that process, that has been very fulsome. They have gone through a full diligence process with both Geoff and I and also the local teams. I think I am sure they will agree that actually the local management teams are impressive and kind of key point in their belief in the business.
Going forward, we are looking forward to the additional skills they will be bringing to the board. Very pleased to have them on board for the next phase of the journey. The next page just goes into a little bit more detail on the maths. I think we can probably talk through that in more detail on the next page. Key thing for the 2028, they are exchanging their 2028 bonds into new 2031 maturity notes at EUR 0.75. They are also receiving 34.8 million shares, which is approximately 19% of the equity. There are some work fees as part of that transaction as well. On the Koch side, the balance sheet value of the pref at the end of March was GBP 394 million. In return for that, they are getting just over EUR 20 million of those new 2031 notes.
They're reducing the pref balance down to GBP 50 million of amended pref, again with an extended maturity of 2031. As we touched on, they'll increase their equity stake up to 24.9%. The final piece is that they will receive a contingent value rights. This is a financial derivative that will sit on the balance sheet. We estimate that'll have a value of about GBP 34 million. We are still working through the accounting and tax treatment of that, but obviously taking external advice in providing that number. It has a redemption value of GBP 270 million. That is basically offset against the value of the new shares that they have been given. The way to think about that is it's a value protection mechanism for their equity value. As the share price recovers, the liability comes down.
I think that's a fairly novel and unique way of providing that protection whilst demonstrating their belief and recovery in the business. Now, the CVR has a couple of trigger rights in that. Once we deliver GBP 400 million of cumulative EBITDA from closing, or if the market cap gets GBP 800 million, that has the rights to convert. I think in those situations, I think all shareholders will be very pleased by the progression of the business at that stage. Worth being aware of, but not a particular constraint. Go to the next page. Sorry, I did that on my laptop rather than screen. A relatively busy page. I'll just give you a bit of an outline of what's here. On the left-hand side, that is the pre-transaction balance sheet and interest rate values as at March.
On the right-hand side, it's what happens post-transaction. The key changes are obviously with the 2028s and with the pref, so middle and bottom of the page. I think the key punchlines there are really highlighted in green. The net indebtedness goes from that 1,267, which excludes the lease liabilities, and that goes down to GBP 945 million. That's that broadly GBP 300 million reduction in balance sheet liabilities. Then the ongoing servicing cost of that capital will reduce from about GBP 125 million down to GBP 91 million. At the bottom there, we've also just brought out our maturity profile extension. Left-hand side is how the balance sheet looked, sorry, the maturity profile looked this time last year. Obviously we've now pushed that out again to give that operational recovery runway.
On the interest going forward, something is worth noting, the new 2031 bonds, the interest there is paid in PIK. That will help us retain more cash within the business. The same for the preferred equity. The new lower value has a lower PIK dividend rate of only 8%, the ongoing cost of that is much reduced. Moving on to 2026. This page gives us the usual overview of performance. I think as we touched on at the start, key driver of the year has really been the lower volumes which has fed through to lower revenues. I think in particular the second half was weaker than anticipated. Obviously we're all aware, lots of macro noise, not only reducing economic activity, but also putting a little bit of a dent in consumer confidence.
In the final quarter, we probably were more conservative on stock provision, particularly in our ceramics division. You can kind of see that in the profitability. However, we have begun to see volumes recover, volumes and revenue recover, as Geoff mentioned in Q1. That is the first time that has been consistent since I arrived at the business over a year ago, so really pleasing to see that. We'll come onto the reasons, but it is outperformance of our local peers so particularly pleasing on that front. In terms of profitability, it is worth noting that as we transition the rugs manufacturing from Belgium to Turkey, that has obviously had an impact. Our rugs division produced GBP 9.5 million less EBITDA than the year before. Then 2025 also benefited from about GBP 10 million of hedging benefits.
Obviously, the combination of those two things account for the majority of that EBITDA decline. Given our guidance on how volume impacts our profitability, you can see that actually a lot of hard work has been done across the business to improve the cost base of the business. Excluding those two things actually, EBITDA margin improved slightly by 0.3% despite that significant volume decline. Good performance by the team in terms of what we can control. We'll obviously keep on pushing forward with those business improvements wherever we can. Just very quickly on this slide, I think what this brings out splits the volume and pricing dynamic by division. Sorry, two sets of slides. You can see in every case really it is actually the volume decline here, so the left-hand bar in each case that has generally been the main driver.
I think in North America, a little bit of mix shift there, which is what's bringing down that ASP rather than any pricing action. Generally across the businesses, it's a reasonable environment for price changes. We do obviously have quite a broad portfolio, a little bit of that change is really driven by mix. Within ceramics, we previously mentioned that we were kind of exiting some lower profitability product lines. Possibly counterintuitively, those were actually some of the higher priced items within our Italian business in particular, that's really what's brought down the ASP in ceramics. The rest of the business actually trend-wise, probably on a positive there. Here we can see the breakout of the EBITDA change. Again, that is largely margin compression.
Obviously, because of the operational gearing in the business, as you get the volumes come down, the margins do compress because of the gross profits, the drops at the bottom. You can see here we have at the center look to be saving costs actually that was an area of improvement through the year. Just quickly to touch on exceptionals. Clearly a lot of moving parts here, won't touch on everything. The orange items are the cash items. Whilst the headline numbers are obviously very large, actually the cash impact is much smaller than that. Key ones there are really reorganization costs. We've talked about a lot of the business changes going on throughout the year, broadly about GBP 21 million in costs there. Then obviously the refinancing has incurred a number of costs, just over GBP 20 million of cash costs for the refi.
There will be more refi costs as we go through FY 2027, which will largely land in H2 this year. Worth noting, we have taken provisions for the changes in Belgium, which is that exceptional provision charge of about GBP 30 million. There are also exceptional impairment charges, which is effectively goodwill and other write-downs related to historical investments which are no longer supported by the cash flow forecast. Moving on to cash flow itself. Again, a relatively fulsome slide, not proposing to go through every block. I think just to pick out the key items there. In the kind of first teal bar, that is demonstrating the working capital inflow. We discussed at Christmas that we were targeting a GBP 40 million inflow in steady state. Key areas there really around receivables, inventory, which are in our control. New processes put in place across the divisions.
The team have done a great job of actually chasing down overdue payments. That is now actually pretty well-controlled. A lot of that benefit has already flowed through. On the inventory side, generally, we are looking at SKU reduction, and making sure that we are using raw materials effectively, in terms of the products we are designing. That has been the majority of that inflow. Teams have been working on the supplier side, I think a lot of our partners have been very constructive in that. We are being more disciplined around asking for longer payment terms there. That will begin to flow through as we go through this year, but it's a slightly longer transition, I guess, to get the benefit of that. As Geoff mentioned, we are beginning to see volume growth.
Having taken half of that original GBP 40 million target by March, I think the guidance for the year ahead is that we are looking to be working capital neutral. That is effectively higher efficiency in our working capital offsetting the growth that we are expecting in the coming months. Other points of mention just on interest costs here. Just over GBP 30 million there in cash interest costs. As you'll remember, we have the ability to elect for PIK on those first priority notes, which we did for the first payment in February. We will do that again in the August payment, so we only pay 1% cash interest for those bonds for this period. The first full cash coupon will be due in February. From that point, it will be all cash pay.
On CapEx for the year, you can see that split out between maintenance of about GBP 40 million and expansion in CapEx of GBP 16 million, so around that GBP 55 target level. We're expecting to keep that flat for the year, guiding to GBP 55 CapEx for FY 2027. The second teal bar is on asset disposals. The teams have been asked to remain focused on cash generation. Some of those are small property assets, some of those are old bits of machinery. That process has begun. We'll come onto our asset sale target for the year ahead. People are already getting on with that, which is great to see. In terms of other bars there, exceptionals and reorgs, we talked about the kind of cash impact there, about GBP 28 million. Sounds exceptional reorg in the M&A. Also flag that GBP 12.5 of M&A expenditure.
That is largely the final material deferred M&A payment, which we made in December. Going forward, very limited deferred payments to be made on historical M&A. Obviously, at the right-hand side of the page there are a number of non-cash movements in the debt. Broadly, GBP 80 million between the FX, PIK interest, and the non-cash movements. Those far two bars just provide that bridge for you. Okay. This page, we've largely touched on it already in terms of how the balance sheet will progress. Small senior net debt reduction as part of transaction, which is the right-hand column. Obviously, the preferred equity, you can see on the bottom right-hand side, reducing very significantly. I don't propose we spend any time on that. Geoff, I think back over to you for the operational review.
Thanks. I'll just begin with a more general comment, and then we'll get into the individual businesses, because we've made some key management changes in the last six months where it was felt that the business could benefit from renewed energy and experience in the senior management team. We've made changes in the U.K. flooring business, in the Rugs division, and also in our ceramics business. We're starting to see some results from that. The U.K. business is making some very strong market share gains since the start of this year. One of our major competitors has struggled and continues to struggle with the difficult trading conditions. The management team, our management team, are capitalizing on that.
The growth that we're securing is essentially down to having superior product availability and our best-in-class logistics service that we have set up a number of years ago and talked about frequently for Alliance . I think we'll continue to see good growth in the U.K. flooring business this year, both in revenue and also in profitability. It's very encouraging. The Rugs business, the focus remains on execution of the transition of the manufacturing from Belgium to Turkey. Turkey is a much lower cost environment to manufacture. There's savings in labor and energy. We are well advanced. This is a project that was begun about 14, 15 months ago. It's scheduled to complete in calendar Q3, so we've got a couple of months to go. It's been a very substantial project. We've had to dismiss some 600 employees in Belgium.
We've had to hire nearly 300 new employees in Turkey. We've moved some 40-odd looms, and these looms are genuinely the size of a house. These are big pieces of kit. Trying to do that while maintaining service to customers has been probably more challenging than we expected. The managing director that runs the division makes the analogy that it's kind of like having to change the wheel, a flat tire on a car while the car's still driving along the road. We certainly underestimated the inefficiency as production scaled down in Belgium, and that led to higher production costs and also disruption in shipping goods to customers. You can see that in the drop in earnings in the Rugs business b ecause you couldn't just go to the next slide. Yeah.
You can see that in the drop in volume and earnings in the Rugs business. I'm pleased to say customers continue to value the product that's made by Balta. As a result, they've continued to place orders, and there's now a back order book of nearly four months. As the looms come into production in Turkey, we'll start to catch that up and we're expecting, obviously, that will dramatically change these numbers, both in terms of volume and margin and profitability. The Ceramics division. I talk briefly about Italy first. The big change we've made in Italy is we consolidated production onto one fewer site. That happened in March of this year. The savings from that consolidation is about GBP 6 million a year. That's been fully in effect since the 1st of April.
It has left us with one empty site in Italy that we will look now to sell. That won't be a sale and leaseback. It'll just be a sale of an empty piece of real estate, and I'll come onto that a little bit later on. In Spain, the key project has been the installation and commissioning of the V4 production line. This has started in production. It is a much more efficient piece of equipment than the equipment it replaces, and as it scales up production over the next few months, margins will improve and profitability will improve, in the ceramics business, in Spain. We're expecting a much better result this year in the Ceramics division, not relying on any major macro recovery in demand, but more because of the cost savings that we've put through the business in the last 12 months. Go to Australia.
You can see that Australia has continued to produce well. I remain delighted with the consistent performance of Australia. It's been a remarkably consistent business and growing business now for 15 years. We're seeing, again, good growth this year as another major competitor in that part of the world has continued to struggle quite badly. We've picked up market share gains there, and that's flowing through into the FY 2027 performance. The U.S. has, in the last two years, has suffered from very low housing transactions, due to high mortgage rates in the U.S. Mortgage rates have been up around 6%+, and that has constrained housing transactions severely, which flows straight through to impact on the flooring sector.
The business has, since balance date, so in other words, in this financial year, our North American business has secured two major customer wins, that are already giving the business a material boost in revenues and earnings. You can expect to see a much-improved result out of North America in this financial year. I mentioned earlier that we're looking to sell some real estate. This slide sort of gives a quick summary of the key pieces of real estate. We're targeting this year to sell GBP 70 million of real estate.
We sold, or completed, you will have seen an announcement, I think, last week. We've completed on one piece of real estate, which was EUR 34 million. There are two more pieces of real estate that are on the market. Some others will be placed on the market shortly. We're quite confident that this year, given the quality of the real estate and the location, we will achieve GBP 70 million of real estate sales during this financial year.
The pictures on the right-hand side, just a selection of properties we're looking at. That is a broad mix of things across U.K., Italy, and Spain. On the right-hand side, I don't know if you can see my cursor, but the pictures on the right, versus manufacturing sites, top right, which will probably be a sale leaseback. Bottom right, just an example of some of the unused lands that we do own, that is adjacent to a commercial park. Planning on that is going through to increase the value. Bottom left here is a large distribution site. Just off the right of the picture is actually one of our largest manufacturing sites. Effectively, some of that is covered and uncovered distribution space. As part of the consolidation within that business, that site will become free. Again, that can be sold rather than a sale and leaseback.
The pictures in the top left of the right-hand side are basically three of our Italian assets. Look like big buildings, but are relatively small sales. We are working through those over the coming weeks and months. That portfolio is what underpins that GBP 70 million target through the course of FY 2027. There will be some additional sales in FY 2028, it will be a smaller number. The final slide here before handing over to Q&A. This is current trading outlook. Really great performance in Q1. Revenue up 7%, as Geoff mentioned, and volumes up 3%. This is all kind of market share, or largely market share based. Profitability also up versus our most profitable quarter last year. A really strong start. I think that's what gives us confidence in the year ahead.
This is kind of a theme that we were hoping/expecting probably this time last year of smaller competitors beginning to struggle as the cycle. I think it is a good demonstration that actually we do not need aggressive market growth to take share and grow volumes over the next couple of years. It's good to see that coming through right now. That is all about winning new clients, and pushing into kind of white space within our local market. As we look at the guidance for the year ahead, it is really about what we have already achieved rather than hoping we're going to do more of that for the balance of the year. Obviously, the Iran conflict has flared up a little bit over the last few days. I think the way to think about that, obviously the biggest impact there really is around input cost prices.
We are a user of diesel and petrol for moving things around. That hits your P&L very quickly, obviously, because petrol prices go up. You then also have gas input prices on the ceramic side. Very ballpark, the cost of a tile is about 20% energy normally. On the synthetic carpet side, obviously that is made from oil derivatives as well. The teams have a pretty well-established playbook from the Ukraine disruption a few years ago. I think we've been very pleased with how quickly everyone reacted. In some markets that has meant price increases, where that's been relevant. In others, actually we used it as an opportunity to kind of reposition our price points within markets. That is being very proactively managed.
Clearly, there is a bit of a disconnect between the speed at which your input prices rise and how quickly those prices kind of flow through to our customers. There is a little bit of margin headwind if things continue to default up. In total, we're guiding to at least GBP 115 million EBITDA in the year ahead. That's obviously good, strong growth that is primarily driven by those market share gains being offset by temporary margin dilution from those higher energy input prices.
Obviously, the lower starting volumes at the start of this year has meant that certain EBITDA improvement initiatives that were slated for FY 2027, we'll probably only get the full benefit of those into FY 2028 and 2029 now. Pushing back some of those synergy gains we were targeting, but that's already factored into the GBP 115 million. We are assuming a gradual easing of energy prices.
I don't think any of us can sit here today and say with 100% heart that we know which way that goes and how quickly. We have factored in a fairly conservative level of oil and gas into how we're budgeting that. Other key pieces of guidance on cash flow. Property and asset sales, as I said, are targeting about GBP 70 million. CapEx will remain in line with last year, about GBP 55 million. As we execute that move from Belgium to Turkey, some other initiatives, we expect about GBP 55 million of cash exceptionals through the year. Along with working capital neutrality, as we touched on previously, that basically means we're looking to have cash levels remain flat through the year. There will be a little bit of an increase in debt due to kind of the PIK interest that we are incurring.
At this point, it's probably worth saying what is happening a bit further out. As we said, the V4 plant, which we are now calling Saint-Quentin, and the move from Belgium to Turkey, which is Project Himalaya. The run rate benefits of those will come through in FY 2028. As well as any kind of volume or pricing growth that we'd expect to see, then we will get those cost improvements in FY 2028. Please don't forget about those as you're building your models. Just a reminder that for each 5% of volume growth, we would typically expect to get about GBP 20 million of EBITDA improvement. I guess with that, over to you, Geoff, to summarize and then move on to any questions.
I'll do the summary at the end, we'll take questions in a minute.
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. Could I please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, I'll pick up from you at the end.
Okay. Thank you. I'll read the first question, I think the second question, I'll hand over to Alec to answer. First question is, "The company's guiding for earnings up about 30% in FY 2027, with further improvements in FY 2028 and 2029. Why should investors believe that Victoria has reached an inflection point after several difficult years?" It's a fair question, the most encouraging evidence is that we've already seen the first signs of recovery. Q1 FY 2027 delivered growth in both volumes and revenue, with profitability ahead of the prior year, even though that was the optimum quarter of FY 2026. I think that demonstrates that the operational improvements made during FY 2026 are beginning to translate into financial performance. The important thing to appreciate is that the ongoing recovery in earnings is not dependent solely on a market rebound.
We have improved our manufacturing footprint, we've reduced costs, integrated the acquisitions more effectively and strengthened, the result of that is that our cost base is lower, our productivity's higher, and we're more efficient. All those initiatives are entirely within our control and continue to be delivered. I think we can safely say that we are through an inflection point at the company. Alec, there's a question, revenue for the coming year. We've talked about earnings being up 30%, what about revenue?
I said earlier, high single digits. Yeah, probably approaching GBP 100 million of growth. That's what we're targeting. The majority of that is market share and gains, as we mentioned in the U.K. and Australia, plus the strong growth in the U.S. I think there is a little bit of outperformance we saw in Q1 in the grass business as well, which is basically off the back of very poor weather, which is never a good reason, but poor weather last year, which didn't repeat this year. That is part of the reason for that outperforming over the last few months.
Okay. We're asked how much upside exists if the flooring market recovers. I've commented previously in notes to shareholders that prior to 2022, the sector had a 25-year track record of volume growth of 1.5%-3% per annum, and price increases contributing another 2%-3%. We've only got data going back for the 25 years, but that was consistent right across that period. Since 2022, demand's been negative for each of the last four years. Absent structural changes in the sector, and we're confident there aren't any, in other words, people will still continue to need and buy flooring. Reversion to the mean is a powerful concept, and that suggests to us that volume could be 20 %+ higher than it is today.
The important factor for Victoria is that we have quite high operational leverage in the business at the current level of volume. As Alec said a couple of minutes ago, every incremental increase in volume flows through very strongly into profitability, such that I think we have a view that every 5% increase in volume contributes approximately GBP 20 million of operating profit. If we think that volume is currently 20% below where it should be, or maybe 25%, there is very material upside for the business as demand recovers. What will drive that will be a factor of three main things: housing transactions, consumer discretionary spending, and interest rates. There we go. You can read out the question. My voice is getting croaky. Sorry.
It's a very long room with a lot of Zoom, so it's not me. I've had a question: Does yesterday's announcement of consent solicitation mean less debt or shares will be issued than originally planned? If so, how much less? The announcement yesterday was that at least 90% of bondholders have consented. What that means is that we can implement that consent solicitation, and we know that that will succeed when we get the documents out. The way that is structured is that anyone who does not consent basically has their bonds written down to zero. That process will happen over the next few months. Yeah, as we sit here today, we don't know if people won't turn up. If they don't, I guess 10% of the EUR 166 million is about EUR 16 million of potential reduction.
I think it is worth noting the company does own approximately EUR 8 million of bonds. Those were purchased earlier in H2. The reason for that was a block of bonds became available. Clearly we were very keen to secure voting percentages. We took the opportunity to make sure those didn't fall into the wrong hands. As we go through that consent, we won't be able to vote into that. That debt will get written down to zero. That is held on the balance sheet at March netted down anyway. It doesn't change the March number, but if you're projecting forward, you should assume that bonds or new TPN level is lower by that 8,000,028, which will turn into 6 million lower TPNs.
Why should investors believe margins can recover? I think margins have been temporarily depressed by exceptionally low volumes, and some very dramatic changes in input costs, particularly energy and oil-based raw materials over the last three or four years. That has begun with the war in Ukraine, which drove up energy prices dramatically, and raw material input prices. Iran has happened more recently. That's been the reason for the compression on the margins. However, historically Victoria's generated EBITDA margins in the mid to high teens for nearly a decade. I would suggest that the evidence exists that is a realistic possibility as demand recovers and as we put through some of these productivity improvements.
It's important that despite the much lower demand and the operational leverage impact of that lower demand, our belief, which we've shared previously with investors, that we can secure another GBP 50 million of savings beyond where we were last year, is sufficient to support, to restore mid-teen EBITDA margins even before there's a cyclical recovery. The margins are currently running at about 9%. We put through another GBP 50 million of savings, which we think is achievable or we believe is achievable. That gets us to mid-teens even before there is a recovery in volume, which will drive margins up further because of operational leverage. In the future, margins will benefit from both the delivery of the productivity improvements and also a recovery in demand.
Want me to go with that one?
Yeah.
The next one is: With many competitors under pressure, do you see opportunities to emerge from this downturn with a structurally stronger competitive position? Look, I think the simple answer is yes. Right? Across our markets, we have different market shares. I think where we are a larger player, that is obviously the bigger opportunity. As we sit at Group, we have choices about where we deploy capital. I think we are looking to be very disciplined around where we put more money to work. As with everything, you usually get better returns where you are already strongest. Certainly, we've highlighted the U.K. and Australia as areas where we are able to push into a space where smaller competitors are struggling. Yes, I think we will be able to double down on that in most of our geographies.
We've had a question on net cash flow change from Turkey in FY 2027. Turkey savings minus the Belgium costs. Look, in terms of the actual transition itself, we've obviously completed that first Belgium sale. The net proceeds there were probably closer to GBP 25 million. We are looking to see another one of the three sales within the year. That will mean that the vast majority of the transition costs are covered in FY 2027. Third and final sale in Belgium will probably slip into FY 2028, at which point the transition costs will have been all covered.
Been asked if acquisitions are still part of the long-term strategy. I think the immediate focus of the management team is on execution of the various internal projects to improve earnings and de-lever the business. That is what we are fully focused on today. However, even over the last two or three years, we've maintained contact with potential opportunities in the industry, I'm not going to rule out the possibility to conduct leverage-enhancing acquisitions or divestments, where it is possible to get a very attractive price for a non-core asset. Acquisitions, divestments remain part of the strategy. I think we're focused in the short term fully on just executing these projects.
Just to clarify, when we say leverage enhancing, we mean de-leveraging.
Yeah.
Obviously if there are opportunities that come at a very low multiple, if we can fund those, that actually de-levers the business. Clearly, synergies are a big part of that. I would be surprised if those end up being big swings, right. The clearer and quicker execution opportunities will be the smaller ones. We're certainly open to those as and when they come up. I think there is a big focus on capital discipline within the business. We need to be comfortable on the level of liquidity that we are rebuilding.
We also have the opportunity to invest in our own debt. When we look at those kind of senior bonds, those trade at a 20% plus yield. That's obviously an attractive opportunity as we sit here today. We are going to look at the kind of benchmarking between external investment and call it internal investment, when we're making those decisions. Where next?
You choose. My eyes are struggling. There's a lot here.
Are you experiencing any increase in direct sales to retailers rather than via distributors? Do you want to take that one on?
Yeah. Look, I'm assuming this refers to the U.K. business. Given the sort of well-known difficulties a major distributor is in at the present time. We are certainly seeing growth in revenue in the U.K. and market share gains. Our focus is, or our business strategy in the U.K. is to supply retailers. We regard retailers as our partners and our focus is on continuing to supply retailers who then in turn supply consumers and some of the individual sole traders doing fitting. We are not going to now or in the future compete with our retailers.
Okay. Next one, just on Koch. Why would Koch feel comfortable becoming your largest shareholder? What near-term upside do they see? Look, I think as we kind of talked about earlier, we have spent a lot of time with the Koch team over the last, probably three to six months. That has been kind of a full diligence exercise. Meeting most of the local management teams. Look, I think they have done a good job to understand the key drivers of the business.
Clearly they are big industrialists themselves. I think they do understand that we operate in cyclical markets, and that actually they buy into that recovery longer term. I think we are pretty well-aligned in terms of strategy as well. I think the opportunity for integration savings as well is also exciting to them. As I said earlier, we are looking forward to them having a bit more involvement on the board and the kind of skills that they can bring to us going forward because I think that'll be for the benefit of all shareholders.
Koch are good partners. We don't necessarily see eye to eye on everything, as you can imagine. I cannot ask for better partners than Koch on the business. The current board appointee of Koch has been extremely helpful over the last 18 months with some of these projects providing support and analysis and advice. I'm very pleased that we have Koch as a partner and look, they're economic creatures. They did not agree to the, or they did not do the refinancing deal that you see because of soft, squishy reasons.
They did it purely because they can see the potential upside of Victoria as the market recovers and as the projects get executed. The result of that will be a very significant recovery in earnings. Because of the high financial leverage in the business at the moment, the recovery in earnings will drive equity value creation very, very quickly o n.
A couple of different questions on asset sales. A few people asking sort of the split of sale and leasebacks and pure sales in the real estate. That is broadly 50/50. That is what we're looking at there. There's a question about revenues decline in U.K. Soft Flooring. The Soft Flooring division is combined U.K. artificial grass and rugs. What we've seen last year was particularly a reduction in the rugs business, as Geoff touched on. Within the U.K. itself, that we've seen double-digit growth in the first quarter. That's not broken out for you in the numbers, but very clear that that is coming through.
Look, we've actually run out of time, Alec. There's been a flood of questions. We've only got two minutes left to go, I think, or three minutes might be. I think what we'll need to do is probably pause the questions and just, what I'll endeavor to do today is get the questions uploaded and along with answers, because there's actually some very good questions here and quite a lot of detail. We've just simply run out of time in the hour that we had to answer them all.
That's great. Thank you for answering those questions. You can, investors, and of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the InvestorMeet company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide with their feedback, which we know is particularly important to the company, Geoff, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?
Look, I think the key thing for us today and for you as investors is twofold. One, can we deliver on the project plans? Can we execute on them? Because they have a very material impact, obviously, on earnings as they come through, both in FY 2027 and through into FY 2028. That would be one significant question I would be asking is, can the company deliver on those? Firstly, I think the signs from the outside are encouraging. We've had a very good Q1. A very good Q1, and yet we're still waiting for the two major projects to start delivering through into their numbers. I feel very good about this year. We have been deliberately conservative in our guidance this year. You will have heard Alec saying that we expect to generate at least GBP 115 million of EBITDA, that we have deliberately been conservative.
We're acutely aware that in the last three years, we have missed numbers on a number of occasions. We need to rebuild trust with the markets. From 2012 through until 2022, we had something like 43 consecutive profit upgrades, bar one. For 10 years, the company consistently delivered profit upgrades and I know the market, what we saw in the equity value reflected that. After three years of poor results, we are acutely aware of the need to rebuild trust. We've pitched our guidance conservatively and we'll see how the year unfolds. Thank you very much for joining today. We'll get as many of these questions answered for you and posted on the InvestorMeet website before the end of the day.
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 afternoon to you all.