For 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 David Stirling, CEO. Good morning, sir.
Good morning. Thank you very much. I'm joined here by Andrew Goody, our CFO, on the other screen.
Good morning
to present to you the results for our year-end 2026. Quick introduction to James Cropper PLC. We have two divisions. The business started off as a paper maker, and paper and packaging is still our largest business. About two-thirds of the turnover comes from the paper and packaging business. We supply very many markets globally, U.K., Europe, North America, some markets in Asia. Best known for color papers and the quality of our products in a range of markets, including craft papers, graphics, specialty packaging, et cetera. The other part of the business is advanced materials. Most of that business, we create paper-like materials from other raw materials like carbon fiber, polymer, glass, et cetera, and these are used in a very wide variety of mainly industrial applications, but also including things like sports and leisure. The range includes things like medical, aircraft, defense, construction, et cetera.
We also have a metal coatings business that primarily supplies into the Hydrogen business. With that brief introduction, let me talk about the results quickly. I joined in early 2025, so this is my first full year as Chief Exec, and it's been a pretty decent year. When I joined, we set some key objectives. The first one was to improve performance in the paper division, which has been, for the last four or five years, losing money. The second objective was to get growth in advanced materials, and the third one was to improve our financial position and balance sheet. Andy will talk about that as we go through. The results for the financial year, we saw about 4% increase in turnover. That came predominantly from advanced materials, which grew 11%. We saw a 33% increase in EBITDA. That's our preferred metric for profit.
It's our core metric here. That 33% included a profit upgrade late in the year. We've got some adjusted profit metrics there, but again, showing the same picture, a very strong improvement in the profitability of the business. Our net debt reduced by almost GBP 5 million and is now sitting at a pretty comfortable below one times EBITDA. Generally a very good performance in the period. If we talk about the group, what did we do and how did we do it? As I said, advanced materials is about one-third of the business, paper and packaging about two-thirds. When we look at the performance, really it's about being a good operator. The advanced materials business actually, operationally, was pretty well run. We just weren't seeing top-line growth, but good margins in there and the challenge is to make sure that growth continues.
In the paper and packaging and group functions, it was really about getting the business right-size and becoming operationally efficient. That's something that has been a big focus for us this year. When we talk about the paper business in a minute, I'll give you some feeling for the progress being made there. Advanced materials first. Our turnover increased by 11%. We are selling almost GBP 40 million sales in the year. The growth came predominantly from our Hydrogen Coatings business. That's one of our largest customers there. Had a very good year. The rest of the business, actually a few pluses and a few minuses, but generally, operationally performed well, but we didn't really move forward as fast as we wanted to on the commercial side. That's something to address at the moment.
The divisional profitability increased from GBP 10.6 million to GBP 11.4 million. That's a good increase in EBITDA, and we did invest additional money in the year in sales, marketing, R&D to look for areas for future growth to support those future growth initiatives. The drop-through from revenue down to earnings wasn't quite as strong as it could've been, but that was a deliberate action by management to put oomph behind our commercial ambition. If we look at the sectors that we operate in, you can see a fairly wide range of sectors here. I would really categorize the business into two main sectors. One are nascent markets. Those markets are such as carbon capture, the hydrogen economy, battery, fuel cell, et cetera, are really just getting started.
Batteries obviously a bit more advanced, but the other ones, they are very small compared to people's expectations of what they could be in the future. There is a lot of people jostling for position. There is a lot of technology development in there, so they do offer opportunities for really good growth, but they are also much more risky. I think it is a really interesting part of our portfolio, but very difficult to predict where they are going and, obviously, the risk of technological change coming.
We are very active there. We are happily active there, but it is a very different feel from the rest of the business. The rest of the business primarily are fairly well-established markets, things like aerospace, medical, et cetera. We have decent growth rates in the markets, but we are actually more about specific projects, specific customers, et cetera, so trying to improve our sales in a very targeted way.
James Cropper are a very small player in these big markets, so what happens in the market is less important than what happens on the project, if you like. If we think about our growth opportunities, again, I would probably think about these in two different kind of opportunity sets. The first, things like aviation, defense, medical, et cetera, they tend to be quite highly regulated. Lead times are long. We are working on projects right now in aviation that could be active in 2035 and beyond. Most are not as long as that, but it is very difficult to move the needle in the short term. Happily active, happily supporting those projects and customers, but unlikely to move the dial in the next few years.
There are other markets such as consumer, electronics, sports and leisure, construction, et cetera, where the development cycles are shorter, and the life cycles are shorter. We can probably get more short-term benefit from focusing on those markets in terms of the turnover. I think we have got to get the balance right. It is great having lots of long-term, potentially big projects, but we need to make sure the pipeline is moving forward and delivering revenue in the short term as well. That is kind of what we are doing in advanced materials. If we look at paper and packaging, it is about two-thirds of the James Cropper Group. Revenue in the year was about the same as last year. Our profit, again, on the EBITDA metric, we lost about GBP 500,000.
During the year, we started with a first-half loss of GBP 0.7 million and a second-half profit of GBP 0.2 million, so we are improving through the year, and that is a vast improvement on the GBP 2.1 million we lost last year. That momentum is continuing into 2027 year-end. We have a very strong start in paper, and the profitability picture is improving pretty rapidly within that business. The reason it is improving that rapidly is kind of two things.
One is that we have managed our cost base, so we have fewer people in the business. We have fewer overheads. We are running the factory five days a week, rather than seven days a week, which allows us to save energy two days a week. We have rebalanced the mill in the sense of if we are making product that creates scrap, we have got other products that can use that scrap.
We become overall a lot more efficient, and that properly balanced paper mill concept is a big factor in how we plan to grow and go forward with the paper business. If we look at the markets that we are in, you can see here a wide range of markets. I think we are particularly active in some of them, but they are all important. One of the things that happened in 2026 was that a very large customer, in fact, the largest customer that we have, or we had in the business, decided to source paper from another mill, and that was after a 50-year cooperation with them. Unfortunately, that meant that our revenue of that customer, it was about GBP 13 million in a normal year. We had one quarter of it last year, so about GBP 3 million.
That gave us a kind of GBP 10 million gap in revenue, which is a big number to make up. Very pleased to say that is what we did. We gained some of that business back through partnering with a company called Winter & Company, who are a longstanding customer in other areas stepping to be a paper merchant in the craft paper market. Going direct to some end users there was successful to an extent. Actually, the rest of the growth was made up by other markets that we were already starting to target. You can see how successful we were in getting some of that other business come through the door. We have got a bit of a headwind in the first quarter this year, from the GBP 3 million that we sold last year.
Actually, we are already ahead of where we were last year in the first quarter in the paper business. As I said, very strong improvement. Getting that commercial engine going, getting the operational efficiencies in place is really transforming a business that has struggled in recent years. With that, I am going to transfer you across to Andy, who will talk through the financials in a bit more detail.
Thank you, David. Good morning, everybody. Financial highlights on here, David has touched on the key elements of this already, we will look at some of the detail in a moment. The key points to highlight on here are the 33% increase in adjusted EBITDA, which as David mentioned, is our key profit metric, and also a nearly GBP 5 million reduction in net debt. Both critical objectives for us through the year that ended in March 2026. Pleased to say that we outperformed expectations in both areas. Just look at it in a bit more detail. Revenue. Our advanced materials business grew its revenue by 10% when we adjust for the effect of changes in currency. We sell a fair amount overseas in that business, which was a strong performance.
As David mentioned, that level of growth was heavily reliant on the performance of a single customer in the hydrogen coating sector. We benefited significantly from that. Elsewhere, we saw some ups and some downs, but strong revenue growth across the year as a whole. In terms of the paper and packaging business, the story there around revenue is really the one that David's just mentioned. We lost a significant customer early in the period. The team in that business did a fantastic job to grow revenue with everybody else, including some new customer wins in the year, by around 20%, that fully made up for the loss of that customer that David mentioned. Across the year as a whole, revenue was broadly in line with the same periods last year.
In terms of our EBITDA profit, EBITDA was up GBP 2.2 million or 33% across the year, driven by two big things really. One was the level of revenue growth in the advanced materials business, and the other was the significant improvement in the profitability of the paper business. Although, as outlined, a significant drop in the EBITDA loss that that business made to GBP 0.5 million for the year. By the second half, the six months to March 2026, that business made a small EBITDA profit. Major step forward in that business. That was driven, as David mentioned, by becoming more efficient in the way we use our materials and energy, and some savings in people costs as well. A significant step forward in profitability in the paper business.
Revenue growth in advanced materials resulted in EBITDA comfortably ahead of last year, and indeed ahead of our expectations and the market expectations. In terms of net debt, the green bar on here is showing you the gross debt in the business and the black bar, the net debt. That's the debt, less the amount of cash we have on our balance sheet. You can see that that peaked about three years ago, and it's been dropping significantly since then. The red line shows the ratio of our net debt to our EBITDA profit, which is a really important measure of financial health, financial resilience. We've seen a significant drop in that ratio over the last two years to slightly under one times. That was achieved over the last 12 months when we saw a drop in net debt by GBP 5 million.
That was achieved by the EBITDA performance itself, which generated a significant amount of cash. We were disciplined in terms of capital expenditure and working capital management. That helped as well. We also benefited from collecting out some of the tax amounts that we were owed. We've completed that process now. We sold some non-core intellectual property assets or one particular asset, early in the year for about GBP 1.5 million. A number of activities, some one-offs, some disciplined cash management, which really is business as usual for us now as a business, helped us bring net debt down significantly during the year to a point where our debt position is healthy. Our balance sheet is resilient. This is the balance sheet here.
I've touched on this already, in terms of the resilience and the strengthening of the balance sheet that we've seen over the last 12 months, our net assets have gone up by GBP 4 million. Our net debt has gone down by GBP 5 million. Our pension deficit, in terms of the accounting measurement, has dropped by around GBP 2 million. Some really significant improvements in terms of balance sheet health, balance sheet strength. This is the cash flow. Again, as I mentioned, at the heart of this is a strong performance in terms of trading. We manage working capital and capital expenditure well as a business, and so we were comfortably able to meet our obligations to our debt funders and to the pension fund, and still see a significant improvement in the overall cash and debt position of the business over the course of the year.
In terms of our pension schemes, we have two pension schemes that had a combined deficit at the end of March 2026 of GBP 14 million. It's quite a big number for us as a business. The deficit has dropped. As you can see on the black bars on the chart, the deficit has dropped over the last two years. During the year, we also had our triennial actuarial valuation, which is the critical valuation that looks at the health of the scheme, and assesses where we are in terms of the conversations we need to have with the scheme trustee. That improved by about GBP 4.5 million in the year. Whichever measure we look at, the position is improving.
We've agreed a level of repayments into the scheme with the pension trustee to ensure that the scheme is fully funded and as part of our commitment to our pensioners. This is improving, this position. We're probably seven to eight years away from this being back into balance, but we have a plan to deal with that. The deficit is going down. It's getting more manageable as our balance sheet position strengthens. That's where we are in terms of managing this important obligation of the business. A couple of weeks ago, we completed and announced a refinancing of our debt package in the business. Again, a major step forward for us as a business.
It was possible to do this now because of the significant improvement that we've seen in the debt levels in the business and the strong trading, which meant that our existing banks were very keen to support us in what we did. In summary, what we did was we have borrowed some money or put in place a facility with the banks that is secured on our receivable or our debtors' ledgers in our U.K. businesses. That allows us to borrow money as and when we need it. That enabled us to pay off about GBP 7-and-a-bit million on our largest term debt in the business. That achieved a number of really important benefits for us as a business. It's reduced the scheduled debt repayments that are coming up over the next four years by about GBP 7 million. For us, that is really important.
It's the difference between having debt repayments that could have been challenging in terms of all the other things that we want to do as a business, and having debt repayments that are eminently manageable in terms of our underlying cash generation and balance sheet position. That's really important to have got to that point. The other thing that this refinancing does is gives us access to more liquidity, more cash availability as and when we need it. It provides the ability to borrow more money as the business grows if we need to fund additional working capital spend as the business grows. It also is going to reduce our interest cost by around GBP 250,000 compared to what it otherwise would have been.
Lots of big benefits to this, and this puts in place the right medium-term funding structure for us as a business, and in a sense, completes the work we've done over the last two years to put in place a resilient balance sheet that is able to deliver and support what we want to do as a business. That's the key financial highlights. I'll hand back to David, who will give you an update on current trading and outlook for the business.
Yeah. Thanks, Andy. Very comprehensive presentation. Where are we right now? Well, just to remind you, we have had a good year in 2026. We are significantly stronger than we were last year and we have actually overcome quite a few challenges. The start of this financial year, we've actually started really with good momentum coming through from the back end of last year, particularly in the paper business. We are expecting further growth and profit this year and I think if we look at the analyst notes, we can see that that confidence is shared. The outlook is unchanged. We've probably got, in advanced materials, more of a challenge this year. Particularly our Hydrogen Coatings business did really well last year, and that's likely to be a bit less this year, just with some normal timing variation there.
We haven't quite got the pipeline moving in the rest of the business to cover that in advanced materials in the short term. Let's see. It's early in the year and we're working hard on it, but I would think that the growth in the year will come more from momentum in the paper business, and that'll be a strong contributor to overall group profit growth this year. There's a lot to do still, but that's good. It gives us a chance to improve and improve. That focus and discipline is now beginning to show through in the business. I'm confident that we are in a position to create long-term value for the shareholder group. With that, I will stop the formal presentation. If you have any questions, please put them in the question bar. We have a few questions come through already.
I'll turn to them and give you a chance to think of your questions based on what we said this morning. First question is regarding James Cropper's involvement in the defense industry, and specifically references the F-35 programs. This is a question that's come up every time I've presented, to be honest, at every AGM, and we have a very comprehensive statement on our website in relation to that program and defense in general. We see defense as a core part of James Cropper's future. We firmly believe in people's right to defend themselves, and the statement says it gives a very comprehensive view on that, and there has been no change in that position. I would refer you to that statement, please. The second question is asking about the leadership in our Advanced Materials division.
We have recently had a few people leave us in the leadership and commercial team. That will give us an opportunity to basically change the approach a little bit and the execution of that business. In the short term, I am sitting in that chair, I'm managing the Advanced Materials division. The response from the executive team has been very good. We are currently recruiting for someone in that position. I've got, I guess, a follow-on question, which is slightly related, talking about the pipeline in the business. It doesn't specify whether it's Advanced Materials or paper, let me cover both. Paper first. We currently run two paper machines five days a week. We have three machines, we run only two from three because we have some bottlenecks earlier in the process in the pulping side.
We are putting in a new pulper, that should allow us to run three paper machines simultaneously late this year or early next year. We have a good pipeline of growth lined up for that. I think we've just got to manage the timing of those projects and those new businesses coming on there to match the timing of our execution. With any different way of working, the key is not to overload the system on day one, to grow into it and make sure you've got ability to react and iron out any difficulties as you scale up. I think in paper, we feel confident in what we're doing there. Advanced Materials, we actually have a pipeline which is less robust than we would like, and a bit more focused on long-term projects than we would like.
I think there are some quite interesting things in the short term, but they're kind of binary. If one or two of those come off, we should see very good performance in the business. If they don't come off or if they're postponed, it's going to be more of a struggle over the near term. Medium term, actually, I think we've got enough in that pipeline to convince ourselves that we have got a confident future in Advanced Materials. As I said earlier, it's about focusing on some of the things like construction, sports and leisure, perhaps consumer electronics, that would give us more of a boost. We have capacity there. Again, we have invested in the past and not grown. The capacity is in Advanced Materials and right across the business.
We could see significant growth without recourse to very much capital spend at all. That's an opportunity there to be taken. I will just mention in advanced materials, we recently launched a product called UNIMAT, which allows us to deal with very short carbon or other fibers, which are typically a result of recycling. When you recycle fibers, you chop it up, fibers get shorter. This is a way to create a nonwoven product with substantial alignment of the fibers, which is something that allows composite designers to actually design a particular flex or strength attributes to the product in a very controlled way. It's normally associated with very long Continuous or unidirectional tapes. Not suitable for recycled products at all.
When I was at a trade show, it was probably one of the only innovations that people were excited about in the recent composite trade show. It's got, I think, a very bright future. A lot of people trialing those products, but a little bit away from any commercial movement there. Positive for the medium term. Let's see how quickly we can get it moving. Right. Do we have any other questions?
That's great. Thank you for answering all those questions you have from investors. Of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, David, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?
Yeah. Thank you for your attention. If you're a longstanding shareholder, thank you for your patience. We are getting to grips with the challenges in the business. I think we're making good progress and we want to get back to being a dividend-paying stock as well. We're not quite there yet, but as Andy explained, we have tidied up our balance sheet with a much stronger financial position than we were before. Keep the faith, watch this space, and we'll speak to you soon. Thank you very much.
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 may 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.