Hello, everybody. Welcome at the second Capital Markets Day of Brunel. Welcome, Jan Brand. Welcome, Laura Brand, Linda Brand, and Roderick. Super to have the family here. Also welcome to our Supervisory Board, Frank van der Vloed, Kitty Koelemeijer, thanks for joining us. Kuiper is on vacation in the U.S. and couldn't make it. It's great to see everybody because we want to give an update. When we planned this update, the background was all positive, and we planned it because we are so far ahead of our plan. We planned it because the execution of our current strategy, the momentum strategy, is going very well.
We actually presented in the third quarter a EUR 19 million EBIT, which is one of the highest EBITs Brunel ever presented, and the highest I had the opportunity to present in my timeframe. And at the same day we presented the EUR 19 million, our stock price dropped 10%. So there's another reason to give an update. We didn't time it, but we're happy we can, because there was a disruption in the market and, in a specific market, Renewables, we saw a sudden slowdown in some of our perm orders. And that's why I'm also happy that Tom Hopkinson is here. Tom, welcome. And Tom, later on, I will interview Tom, will share his, vision on the Renewable market, as we have it with Taylor Hopkinson and Brunel together.
So looking forward to this story, there's something going on in the outside world. There's a lot of changing elements, and we will talk about the megatrends, but we see that many companies struggle. They struggle in this timeframe, sometimes with geopolitical events, but sometimes also just with economic trends. And that's where the good news starts, because Brunel is not struggling. The growth is continuing. We will talk today about growth, we will talk about conversion, we will talk about our winning team and how these things come together, also to the future. So with that, I would like to start the presentation, and go to the agenda of today. Please. Good day. Good day. Yeah, these two seats, you have to sit up front. We do it. Let me talk you through the schedule of today.
We start with looking back, our history, where we're coming from, who we are, our purpose, our culture of the organization. Then we go to the recent history, the momentum strategy, the strategy of the last three years, and what happened there. Then we look at current situation, current markets, and geopolitical trends that we face as an organization. And then with bullet four, we go to the next level. What's after this? We are gonna elevate Brunel to the next level, and then we talk about how are we gonna do that. And the final part, Peter takes over, and he will explain the financials of the last three years, but also look forward, what are our updated targets? That's how we wanna tackle it today. First, looking back, our history. Jan is here. Jan started in 1975.
Actually, not true. Jan started in 1973, but he started his own company in 1975. It was a carve-out, a carve-out of an agency in Delft. In the same office Jan started, he still holds his office, and once in a while, we go there with a group of top Brunellers to hear the story about the founding of Brunel. And one of the stories you actually face today when you walk into the building, because one of the stories is about how do you recruit? Very close to the source. And the car you see outside, the RV you see outside, is how the German team picked up an idea from Jan and is still recruiting. After the event today, we would like to invite you all to join us at the fair, where we show many Brunel differentiators.
We show you something on our foundation, we show you something on Renewable, our top clients, our technology. So please join us there before we go into our newly created room, which we call the Brunel Bar, and then celebrate, hopefully, the good outcome of this meeting. At least I hope that it will be the case. The history of Brunel has a couple of clear highlights. Jan grew the company, first in the Netherlands and later on in international through some acquisitions and some organic starts. Became a quoted company in 1997, already more than 25 years at the Amsterdam stock market. And then the real international expansion and the connection with the energy business started. And energy is still a very important part of our future, and we will explain that also today.
Of course, in the history of Brunel, we also sailed the seas a couple of times, so we have a connection with water as well, and water will always be also in how we give back to the world, will always be important for us. A clear highlight that we will touch on later when we, Tom and I, have an opportunity to explain is, of course, also the acquisition of Taylor Hopkinson, giving us a lead position, global lead position in the Renewable recruitment solutions. I would like to show a small video that tells very, very short, the story of what Brunel is.
This is who we are: a global specialist delivering customized project and workforce solutions to drive sustainable industry transformations through technology and talent. In industries such as Renewables, Conventional Energy, mining, and Life Sciences.
Much more, of course. Because what's more is also our culture. When you talk about an organization, then you talk about the people in an organization. Especially in the service industry that we are in, an organization is created by its individuals. More and more, the individuals in the organization and the technology platform, more about that later on, and also at our fair downstairs. But the people side is critically important, and we have a unique culture. Every organization says they have a unique culture, but also Brunel has a unique culture, and a unique culture is a culture of entrepreneurship. How Jan started, how he created this company, how he drove us to always be focused on the ultimate client solution. If you have to customize, you customize, but you make sure your client is happy.
You find a way to do that, wide-angled engineering, but also you win. The result-driven mindset is extremely important. We want to be a winner in the market, and when we are not, we have to change courses and try it in a different way. Integrity standard is critically important. You're part of society, and we follow rules and regulations in society. We are a compliant company, we pay our taxes, we follow the laws in all the 45 countries where we are. And passion for people. When you're a people-oriented company, there should be passion. And when you walk around in Brunel, travel around in the Brunel world, or meet people here in the building, you will feel the passion that we have, the curiosity in each other, and the passion that drives our common goals. Why do people want to connect with Brunel?
Why do clients want to connect with Brunel? Why do contractors want to connect with Brunel? And why do Brunellers want to work for Brunel? That's what, in these modern days, we call a purpose, but it's always been the why. And we created a sentence, and I would like to read the sentence for you. "We are a recognized leader in customized workforce and project solutions. By connecting our specialists to pioneering projects, we empower our clients to lead the way in industry transformations, working with them to create a better future for people and the planet." So what we do every day is not only helping our clients and connecting them to specialists, but we also create a better world through that. Very important reason why people want to work at Brunel. It works.
Another important element from who we are is that awareness of being part of society. When you're part of society, you can call that the ESG strategy or ESG commitment. But when we talk ESG, we should first talk about... You want to join? Please, there's one chair, one chair. Yeah. We first talk about the social component. First of all, we take care of sustainable careers. We make sure that everybody is upskilled for the next job, that they have a career path with Brunel, and that's a very sustainable solution. Secondly, our clients are facing an enormous challenge to make a energy transition, a digital transformation, and Brunel is perfectly situated to help our clients in those transitions. So our social commitment is already very big. By the way, we also do more.
We embrace some groups in society that have a disadvantage in the labor market. On a global level, we support people with autism to get closer to a job and train organizations how to handle people with autism in a working process. But the basis is our clients and our candidates, and the sustainability of that. On the E side, environmental, of course, first, our own responsibility, reduce our own footprint as much as possible, and we do that in many aspects. One important one is change our whole lease fleet to electronic driving, both in the Netherlands and Germany, we are in process. If we can buy enough electric cars, because that's a little bit of the issue, then we can move very fast in that. And many, many, many more elements.
And what we are not able to reduce, we will offset with certified programs and projects, and that's why, since 2022, we can call ourselves already a carbon neutral company. And of course, everything around this also needs to be tracked, and we has to be put in a good governance, and we follow the CSRD and are on track with CSRD reporting for the years to come. But already internally, we are tracking our progress on these commitments. So with that, I would like to go to the next chapter. We looked back on what we are, our history, and what the culture of the organization is.
Then look back maybe three years, because in the last three years, we looked at a strategy that was called the momentum, and in that strategy, we looked at four items: diversification, because we were too dependent on one industry or two industries. Specialization, because we need to attract and retain talent even better than we did before. We recognized that our clients asked actually more services than we offered, and those services were not so hard for us to develop, to innovate ourselves towards the needs of our clients. And we needed to do a better job in disciplined execution, to make sure that we leverage, constantly leverage the infrastructure. And I would like to give you an update on how we're doing on this. First, a quick snapshot.
Peter, later on, will show a lot of other hard data on the financials, but this slide tells the story already. Gross profit, conversion, EBIT, three financial indicators that we mentioned in our previous momentum plan, all in the last three years, going up significantly faster than in the past. And for instance, the conversion, when you grow the conversion from 17 to 25, why would you not be able to grow it from 25 to something over 30? So on track, I would say, on all aspects of the previous strategy. The financial and non-financial indicators are almost all met, and we're very proud of our internal teams in the delivery.
The story later on will also show we believe we can do even better. Let me start with that even better already in this strategy, because presenting this would, could create a reaction: "So you think you're done? So you think everything is fine?" Which is not the case. We understand that we also have room for improvement. In our current execution, not everything is perfect, and already on the previous slide, I mentioned that three regions don't show the gross profit percentage development that we would like to see, and those regions are Middle East and India, DACH region, and the Netherlands, for different reasons. When we look at the current organization, we see clear opportunities to do even better.
I think it's good news for you and hard work for us, because when you, in a successful execution of a strategy, show room for improvement, then you can do even more. In DACH, we can go back to pre-COVID levels, when it comes to revenue, and we can also drive our conversion up. The Netherlands is at the moment clearly outperforming the market on growth, but can leverage that growth even more into profitability. Probably our biggest opportunity market is the U.S., where we have a very small market share in an attractive market, where all our industries are active, a market where we can clearly double our position and also leverage the infrastructure. But it's not only that. It is also, in general, driving conversion up through our strong infrastructure.
We have an IT infrastructure, a digital infrastructure, that can support a bigger volume, more matches. And we have to identify that there are sometimes teams that are not performing up to par. So far, we have been clearly investing in future growth, and in our industry, there's always a little bit of a cyclical movement. And what we... Hello. There's one chair left, so you're lucky. And then we be.
There. Sometimes there are teams that are underperforming, and when you're in a growth phase, you're talking more about the investments and maybe less about right-sizing the organization. And what we are doing at the moment in some markets where we don't have the full productivity, we are looking at cost, and we also use the word "cost" in our organization, and we are right-sizing teams. So when you do that and you continue your growth, you will later on see that we can continue on the current path and even improve our results going forward. Another check on our previous strategy is to look at the four pillars that we identified then would be critical for a, a good execution of our, or a good reach of our goals. Diversification, again, specialization, capability building, and disciplined execution. I will not read this slide.
This will be in the deck, so after the meeting, you can use it as a reference to check for yourself if we indeed reached our strategic targets there. We have some proof points below. Let me call out one. The average day rate for our contractors moved up in three years' time from EUR 359 to EUR 429. Of course, partly helped by inflation, but the other 50% is also because we are aiming for higher level roles. Another big one is perm. We now have 10% of our revenue through permanent placement, partly through an acquisition of Taylor Hopkinson, who are an expert in permanent placement, but also through organic growth in our organization. I will quickly go through all the four pillars again, but then with some other proof points.
What you see here is that we are clearly diversified. If you would go back to 2014, we were EUR 1.4 billion big. EUR 1 billion was in Oil and Gas revenue, and probably that was 55%-60% of the GP. Now, 24% of our GP is in Conventional Energy, 14% is in Renewable Energy, and that's... and the other spread you're seeing. If you look at the circle, the bottom circle on the left, that's very diversified. So we have all the opportunities to grow in all the markets, but also, if one market is going a little bit slower than another market, to make up for different trends in the different markets. And we're doing that with more clients, and we have a comparable dependency on our largest 10 clients.
So we are very proud of the sales execution. Thank you, Walter and the team. Very proud of the sales execution, also of the largest clients, and it's, yeah, it's good to see the diversified portfolio. If you go, then go to the second pillar, specialization, attracting and retaining specialized talent. A bit harder to measure, but we have some clear data that our talent attraction works. We get more applicants than ever before. Stranger in a supposed to be scarce market, but we have more applicants than ever before, and a lot of the applicants coming in through free traffic, search engine optimization, direct entry to our website, and that's created by a strong brand. Our teams build strong brands that creates a direct inflow to our websites. And then you see some big numbers, but you see how it works.
When a lot of people click on our website, a lot of people leave information. You have also the opportunity to get a lot of followers and have an easier way of selecting your future, specialists. And we're really proud of the 680,000 followers on LinkedIn. If you compare our size of company with other companies in the market, then we do an excellent job in that aspect. The third pillar is this pillar of the services, the capabilities, and we can now proudly say that we have a full end-to-end service package for our clients. Of course, we always have to watch if there are new needs on the horizon.... We're constantly innovating.
We're working with companies in Silicon Valley to constantly look at the future needs of our clients, but we cover, at the moment, all the needs of our clients, all the basic needs when it comes to projects and workforce solutions. Come through some additions, what I already mentioned, growth in permanent placement. Also, a small acquisition in Singapore, where we are now seen as an commissioning expert, and many, many other additions to our service package. And then the last one, and probably also the most important one, when you see it, the opportunity that we're having, when you bring all these goodies in, more verticals, more capabilities, and more top talent, then you should also do it in a very efficient way, so that you make good money out of it. First of all, organic growth always helps.
When you have an infrastructure and you grow your revenue, there's always a cost efficiency, and Peter later on will tell how we manage that cost efficiency. But it's also the discipline in the organization. Every individual in the organization should know what is expected of him or her. Setting clear KPIs and manage to it. That's disciplined execution. Our processes were sometimes not optimal because we have this mentality. We organize everything for the client, as customized as possible, and then sometimes the processes are not as smooth, and we now find a better way with supporting tools, with lean processes, to align the process and make them with more flow, easier to operate. Digital tooling, I already mentioned. Clear cost steering, cost agility, maybe in the last three years, and into the future, more cost steering.
But also, the acquisition of Taylor Hopkinson helped because you add a company with volume to an organization, not everything has to be added on the IT cost, on the management cost, on the support roles, and it also leveraged, of course, our infrastructure. And on the right side, you see again, and we will keep on mentioning these numbers, the clear improvements we reached in conversion over the last three years. So the four pillars are addressed, and we also mentioned three years ago that we have many enablers to make sure that the execution can be at that level. A very important enabler is also connected to the culture slide that I mentioned before. It is our strong brand, a brand that attracts, and I actually should say now, brands, because we also have the Taylor Hopkinson brand.
Very proud of the two brands that we're driving, being recognized as leaders in the energy world, making big steps in leadership, knowledge leadership in the mining industry, and still a lot of opportunities in the Life Science industry. And by the way, in Germany, also recognized as a leader in future mobility. Our entrepreneurial culture, already touched on it, clearly important enabler to make sure that we constantly utilize the opportunities our markets have. Very important is the way we steer. Globally connected, but locally owned. Our teams own locally their P&L, close to the market, in the local language, with the local legislation applied. They know what is needed in those markets. They understand the dos and don'ts in those markets. But if we leave it there, then it's a missed opportunity. Then you don't need a one brand.
Now, we connect our world in a very specific way. Later on, I will explain how we do that through verticals, but we also do that through management training, management meetings, and make sure that there is a collaborative atmosphere and organization. Brunellers help Brunellers to be successful, and it's not a single focus, me, myself, focus in our organization. That is not acceptable. The scalable IT platform, I already mentioned, but I also will mention after this slide because it's a very important... or later on in the presentation, because it's a very important differentiator for us. And then, of course, acceleration through M&A. We acquired Taylor Hopkinson in December of 2021, and we are now two years in this acquisition, and I'm so happy that we can give an update on that. First, we can see that it's mutual beneficial.
Taylor Hopkinson brings in world leadership, knowledge-wise, clients-wise, and permanent placement-wise. Brunel brings in a global framework of compliant contracting capabilities, and when you connect these two, something unique happens. What you can see on the right side, that we grew only in the last year, our gross profit over 30% in Brunel, in Renewable recruitment solutions. But the biggest growth is actually coming from our regions. The Brunel teams are now connected through the vertical... Sorry. The Taylor Hopkinson teams are now connected through the vertical with our Brunel teams and help them to sell the opportunities of, identify the opportunities better and sell our services better. And you see the acceleration in that.
The contracting business also today is still going extremely well, and later on, we will touch also on the revival of the perm business, and you will say, "The perm business is still going strong, Jilko," but let's say the extra acceleration of the perm business. But it's more, and you see some other bullets on the slide. Two organizations coming together better also creates a lot of career opportunities, of course. But let me call out on the second bullet, one client example. This client, it's not on the slide, but it's Equinor. We would not have won if we, as Brunel, without Taylor Hopkinson, would have tried to win this client, and Taylor Hopkinson would not have won because they could not deliver in all the countries where the client needed us.
One of the biggest wind farms they're building here in Europe, and in an early phase, Taylor Hopkinson already delivers through permanent placement solutions, project managers, the finance manager of the project, a lot of key roles in the beginning phase... but Equinor wanted to have one supplier in the whole, in all the project phases. The way Brunel sells, not only in Renewable, but also in Conventional Energy, energy, is recognizing project phases: a financing phase, a design phase, a preparation for construction phase, construction, commissioning, and then it goes to operation and maintenance. And in all those phases, the main client is there, but a lot of other suppliers are connected to these projects, and that's how we sell. Equinor wanted, in all the phases, one partner, and because of the setup we could offer to them together, we won this contract. There was one other element.
In the last phase, we won from one competitor because of our compliance, and the compliance was, in this case, around data. They have a lot of local, a lot of Norwegian expats that they wanna move around through the world, and they were afraid that the data, the employee data, would not be protected. And we were able to show, through great work of our global IT team, to show how we protect the data through this whole life cycle, and that's the final little cherry on the cake to win this deal. So a nice example of how we won this deal together. Tom, can I invite you to join me? What you see on the screen is the history of Taylor Hopkinson. You can stand on that side. That's fine. Tom, 2009, you founded Taylor Hopkinson. Why did you go into this industry, and why did you do this?
Well, I'd been in Renewables for about 5.5 years at this point, so I'd built a knowledge network, contacts, and a personal brand to be able to set up. But the reason I chose Renewables in the first place is because a few reasons. One, I'm passionate about fighting climate change. I think it is the number one existential threat to humanity we face today, and it allowed me to choose a career with purpose, to do something to impact this challenge that we face. It also allowed me to overcome some dubious educational choices. Apparently, English literature degrees aren't that useful once you leave university. But, but yeah, and the other, the other, element was it was an opportunity.
In 2004, when I started doing this, other than some early adopters that were driven primarily by environmental concerns, nobody really believed in it. Nobody thought it was viable or commercial. But I did. And I believed that it would become mainstream. So we stuck at it through the highs, the lows, the ups, the downs, the two steps forward, one step back, and we stuck with it, and eventually, I think in 2008, the U.K. government, through the Crown Estate, launched the first large-scale offshore Renewables auction, and that was really the sort of firing gun to start.
Wow!
And, it was the following year that I decided that was also the firing gun for me.
That's the starting point, and then you, if you read through it, the incredible success, what are the three main reasons that you, yeah, have this incredible success and, and, and, yeah, built a company of that size?
So I think it comes down to the knowledge that we built. I was always a key advocate that to be successful, you have to be specialist in our field. We built up a knowledge of projects similar to Brunel. We followed the projects wherever they were, and then the players. We tend to service the sort of top of the value chain, the developers, and those developers are the same in Europe, in Asia, in America. And we got to know them really, really well wherever they were, and if you go knock on their door in Asia and in Europe and in America, and they can see that you can service them in all these places, that builds credibility.
Then finally, it was sort of expert knowledge of the people, the people involved building those bridges, and I think now we've built the biggest team that are dedicated 100% to Renewables. Therefore, every day they're adding to their people networks, and if we continue to do that, we'll always stay ahead of the competition because they'll always struggle to catch up if we keep expanding exponentially.
That's great. But you built that story first, without Brunel, and at a certain moment, you wanted to make a strategic move.
Yeah.
Why did you join Brunel?
They offered me the biggest check. No, seriously, we were really beginning to struggle a little bit in that, for the size of our contractor book, 300-400 people, it was becoming really complex because our clients were going to Asia, they were going to different places in Europe. Therefore, for 300 people, the amount of complexity in there around tax laws, it was really becoming expensive. It was becoming risky to stay compliant. So we deliberately went out to find a partner that could help us in that regard. We also realized we needed to expand internationally at scale. And there was another reason, wasn't there? The reach, yeah.
So, we needed to be on the doorstep in person in all these countries, and the other element as well is we recognized that at some point, the pace of the growth of the industry is gonna demand transferable skills. And, you know, the core markets that Brunel operates in are the key markets that we'll go to look for those skills in. So I think it was the knowledge of compliance, reach, and scale. That was why we looked for Brunel.
And then we found each other, and I think this was in the middle of the night, somewhere in Glasgow, in a lawyer's office, when we signed the contracts, 2:00 A.M. or something like that?
It was 12 o'clock, remember.
Yeah, yeah, sorry, we wouldn't say that. Yeah, yeah. And now two years later, how do you see the synergy is working and not working, and what is your experience so far?
I think the numbers speak for themselves a little bit. I think year to date 2023, we've done EUR 5 million of joint contract work. Work, as you say, that each of us on our own couldn't have done, which I think speaks volumes. I think if you look at 2021, we were EUR 10 million GP. This year we'll do EUR 20 million GP.
That's Taylor Hopkinson.
Taylor Hopkinson alone, yeah.
Yeah.
So I think to double your GP in two years is tough when you're also doing an integration, while you're also learning how to work together in a, in the most efficient and effective way. So I'm really proud of the team and what they've managed to achieve, and I think it's very easy, because I think the cultures are really, really well aligned. I think it was very easy for us when we were reviewing our values, to look at the Brunel values and go, "Yeah, actually, let's just use those because they speak to what we're about." And I think every single day you can see the companies coming closer, collaborating more in a very positive fashion, so everyone's very happy.
Wow, great to hear. Marc asked a question this morning in his note out from ING, and it was about: where's that offshore wind market? Because I already opened and said, we have a bump on the road.
Yeah.
Of course, you and I talked a lot about what is happening, how can we respond to it. When you look at the short-term development of offshore wind and maybe also the medium-term development, what do you see?
For me, it's certainly a bump in the road. I think if you look at, I see offshore Renewables very much as a maturing market. The last 10 years has been an immature market, and I think 10 years ago it was EUR 180 per megawatt hour for a megawatt hour of offshore wind. And a lot of the incumbent Conventional Energy players said, "That's too much. It's not viable, it's not commercial." So the offshore wind market effectively said, "Well, we'll show you, Mr. Conventional Energy," and they came down that cost curve to EUR 45 a megawatt hour. Super fast, probably five of five years ahead of what everyone expected, and I think they probably came down too fast.
So just as they were basking in the glory of having achieved this amazing feat, you get the war in Ukraine, you get, inflation, and then you get the following high interest, so debt becomes so much more expensive. All these projects that, got their strike prices prior to this, all of a sudden, their cost of debt goes through the roof, and they can't get into FID, and they have to rip them up and start again. But I think it's really important to understand that those, those projects, that EUR 4 million GP of ours, that hasn't disappeared, it's just moved to the right. Those projects will come back round and bid again for strike prices that make those projects viable. So it's true, I think a lot of our clients, when we were speaking at the start of the year, they said they were holding on.
They felt inflation was gonna peak, and interest rates would come down, and the biggest- one of the biggest constraints to our clients is skills. So they were trying to retain that talent. They were trying to hold on to all the people they possibly could. So there weren't any outward signals to the market. There were, there was no redundancies, there wasn't massive layoffs. They were even continuing to recruit in many areas in these new emerging markets. But then, I think as we came out of summer and in September, there were a few critical things that happened. One was, Ørsted pulling out of the U.S. market and writing down $4 billion.
I think the news that Siemens Gamesa had taken a few billion EUR in state aid to keep going, and then also in the U.K., no offshore wind in AR5, which is the auction round for Renewables. And I think that really sent a message to industry that "Yep, we've tried to hang on, but we're gonna need to make a few changes in the meantime." However, I think when you look at the last two weeks in the U.K., the government have said, "Okay, we're listening. We're gonna take you seriously now." Because I think it was a real shock to them that all the developers stood back and didn't bid. I think they thought the developers were positioning.
It was a game, and when they actually didn't come forward, I think the government thought, "Oh, okay." Two weeks ago, they increased the strike price 66% for offshore wind in the U.K., and the U.S. followed suit in New York. The price, strike prices went up considerably in the last round versus the projects that have just gone to the wall because of the strike prices. So I think we'll see other governments follow suit. I think in the last five years, offshore wind has become a mainstay of the energy transition. We can't get to net zero without offshore wind. Governments know this, and therefore, they have to come to the table and negotiate, and I think we're seeing prices coming through now, which mean the industry will undoubtedly continue.
This was really just a bump in the road, yeah.
Wow. Thank you very much, Tom.
Okay.
Thanks, and later on, when there are questions, Tom is also available for answering some questions. Looking back to the middle part, and we looked back, and we looked at the acquisition and where we are. Let's look at the markets we're in and the mega trends that we're facing. But maybe first, the markets we're in from a geography side before we go into the vertical markets. This is the world map for Brunel. We cover a very big part of GDP, and we are active in all the markets where we want to be. We also lost a market, because in this planning time, in this momentum strategy, we lost a full region with 1,000 Brunellers and a very high conversion and a very high profitability: Russia.
Despite that, we are still on track with the goals as we presented earlier. Active in the whole world, but organized in eight regions. We report seven externally, but we internally organize ourselves through eight regions in 45 countries with a lot of offices. Through this, across this, we organize our vertical structure. We also have dedicated vertical leaders that work through a shadow P&L and a shadow KPI, building up knowledge leadership to those industries, supported by our marketing teams, connecting specific clients, focusing on specific clients in these industries, and making sure that the talent programs that are needed to attract the right talent in these industries are customized to these industries. When you make a connection of the verticals to our markets, to our geographies, and many of you asked before this: how does it look?
Then you actually see how nice of a spread and how nice of a match we have between our vertical markets and our geographies, and how important it is that we keep on connecting our European markets to the energy markets, because they are opportunity markets, mature already for Renewable and opportunity for conventional, both Germany and the Netherlands. The orange dots are where we have activities already, but we have clear growth opportunities. The gray dots are the areas where we, when we are ready to do it, can make investments and also have opportunity in these markets. And of course, the green ones is where you're strong already, and what's the easiest way to grow? Is where you're strong already, because you have infrastructure there, and with the growing markets that I will show. By the way, I forget to call out one number, growing markets.
When you focus on something, you can grow it very fast. We are focusing on these industries and a hidden gem, nobody asks us a lot about mining, but a hidden gem is, I think, our performance in mining. 86% growth year-over-year is an incredible performance, and I will show you the mining market, later on. But let's first go to the Conventional Energy market. This is a story that almost nobody believes when we, when we're telling it. They say, "Yeah, you're in the Conventional Energy, and that's a risk because, yeah, someday the Conventional Energy will stop." Yeah, someday, but when? In the next decade or decades, we actually see the capital investments in this industry going up. Why? Because we need energy, energy security.
There's an energy transition that asks for a lot of extra investments, and also geopolitical risks, like the disconnection of the Russian LNG market to the rest of the world, also creates additional investments. If you, if you look at the planned capital investments by known consultancy companies, then you can see that we go to levels that we have never seen before, and that will be multiple years in a row. And if you look where we are coming from right now, then we are at a, at a moment of, of future growth that is almost unseen. A little other proof point is the number of FIDs, the number of projects that will go through approval, financial approval, at the big OEMs.
That number is increasing over the years, and the connected capital investments is incredible. So the Conventional Energy market, as we say, tailwind going forward, will continue to be growing, and we can benefit from that. Renewable. Now, I can only refer back to the story of Tom. Many, many gigawatts need to be added, and a lot of capital investments need to be done there, but we also included another new market, hydrogen. In the Renewable world, we see an incredible eagerness in governments to move heavy industry and heavy transportation to hydrogen, and the investments are really staggering, and, and as we say here, 90% of the projects that we know need to be started. So it's also gonna be a big flow of projects there. Then mining, I called out the enormous growth in mining already. Why?
Because we are focused on metal mining. We're only focused on metal mining, and that means the metals that are needed for the energy and the digital transformation, for the batteries, for the turbines, for the chip technology. And those mines are opened everywhere or reopened everywhere, and our project managers, health and safety managers, help our clients to make that happen. The commitments in the past have been sky high already and will continue to go up. And I would like to show you a small video of how we attract talent into the mining industry, because the mining industry is maybe not the most sexy one. It's a little bit dusty for many talent, and that's why we're helping our clients with this next video. And this is a small snapshot.
When you will see the actual video, it's almost like a documentary, three minutes and a bit, and shows how we are positioning the new mining industry for a young generation, helping our clients to attract talent. Then the last market? Life Science, that's the one where we still have the biggest opportunity, also because the market is still growing so fast. Look at the prediction of the total industry in value, which can only happen when there are investments in this industry, when there are capital investments, when new factories are built, when safe food production is invested in, and when that will lead to this line continuing going higher. More capital investment means more opportunities for Brunel. Markets are positive. Almost so big that there's no limitation for growth. But there are also other elements that we face in the world.
We call it the megatrends, and on the left side, you see all the megatrends that we are facing every day. You could say in a SWOT analysis, the threats and the opportunities. Some of them are opportunities. What we put behind is why we can turn almost all into opportunities, or at least when there is a risk, how we cover the risk. And we have a proof point. A Russia region is gone, and we're still on track to reach our targets. So in a more diversified world, where you're active in more countries and in more industries, and then once in a while, something happens, there is an opportunity to cover that somewhere else. As Jan many times says to me, "Maak van een min een plus," how do you turn a negative into a positive?
You will see that many things on the left side that you would call a negative, if you look at the statements behind, in many cases are a positive for us. We always get questions on inflation, and inflation drives our revenue up, and we get more dollars or more euros of profit because of inflation. There are more aspects to it, I know, but in general, it's not bad for Brunel. Again, this slide is in there for your reference. So if we then go from history to how did we do in our momentum strategy to, hey, in which markets are we operating, and what are the megatrends? Let's then go to the next level. What do we need as differentiators? What are the Brunel differentiators to be able to take this opportunity?
These I can spend an hour on, but I look at the clock and we don't have the time. I also give these, these to you for reference. But there's one I want to-- or actually two, the IT and the digital world I want to pull out, because I already said more and more, the winning formula is a formula of the winning internal team together with the technology platform. And we're very happy with what we have. We are always called out in industry reports, in investor conversations on having a global platform and a global database is unique in our industry. We really can track internal data, client data, contractor data on a global scale. How do we do that?
We built a complete SaaS platform with partners like Microsoft, with connection ability to all kinds of digital tools that are up and coming in the market. We are agile when it comes to tooling, to support, and also to scalability. We can scale this platform in an incredible way. We have AI already working in the way we write our vacancies, in the way we communicate with our candidates. There are many aspects that are market-leading when you look at this picture. So very proud of our global recruitment platform. An element of that is the digital specialist journey. Specialists want to interact with us, of course, in a personal way, but also in a digital way. It is normal to keep in touch with your employer and keep in touch with your agent through digital tooling. That's what we call the journey.
Already from the orientation through the application, to the onboarding, to when you work, we have all kinds of tools to improve the intimacy and to make it easier to access Brunel, and that leads also to record high number of applications. So with those differentiators of people and technology, we can say that when you look back at the previous strategy, which is still sort of the current strategy, because we're not changing the complete course, that the four pillars could be reduced to two, because diversification, we are diversified. Capability building, we have the capabilities our client want. So what can we do more and better? Bring more candidates in for our clients and leverage the infrastructure better, improve the conversion. So how does that look going forward? Very simple.
I'm always getting the question, "Jilko, what is the first thing you need to do when there's a scarce market? The first thing you need to do when you do not have the available candidates?" And many people say, "Recruit better," and it's the wrong answer. What you have to do is bring more projects in, the best projects, because when you have the best projects, the candidates want to work, the specialists want to work for you. So the first thing we need to do is bring more projects in. Go to the clients, make sure that the most attractive engineering projects are on our website, are available to our candidates. When we do that, we can attract more candidates. But it's also known that when you recruit well and you can fulfill the orders of your clients well, that it also attracts new clients.
So both wheels will turn when they are connected. And how do we connect them? Through our internal teams and through our technology. This is very simple, our way forward, making sure that we do better in simply connecting specialists to pioneering projects to the next level. How do we make sure that we can execute that to the next level? And that's why we announced in our previous press release a new executive leadership team, where four people from internal have been promoted into the executive team. You know, Peter and myself, but two of the new members of the team are actually here. In the back is Stefan de Boer, Global Head of IT and Digital, and Joanita is here, Global Head of People and Culture.
The other two new members are not here because they live in Perth and Singapore. Tania is leading currently our Australia region, and that will be expanded portfolio. And Jan leads the Asia region and will move with his family to Amsterdam or to this region in the next summer to support the strategy execution also from here. Yeah, and with that, we presented the new way going forward, and I would like to hand over to Peter for the financials, looking back and also the targets going forward. Peter?
Yeah, thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. What will the next level look like? Before we get to that, I still wanna look back to provide you some comfort on why we are going to achieve our targets going forward. And the summarized slide that Jilko also shared, the how are we progressing against the targets we shared in 2021? I wanna highlight two, especially out of this overview. First of all, in 2021, we guided for a high single-digit revenue growth for the years from 2022 onwards. We reported 31 and 17%, that's reported. If you look at organically, so adjusted for acquisitions, divestments, and exchange rate, we managed to achieve 20% growth for eight quarters in a row, even Q3 last quarter.
If you look at what happened with our conversion ratio, that increased significantly from the starting position in 2020 into 2021. But after that, it didn't increase anymore. But and that's a bit strange if our top line and our GP, gross profit is still growing, because then you would expect operational leverage. But there were some really specific elements why the conversion ratio did not increase. In 2022, we had two specific reasons. First of all, the acquisition of Taylor Hopkinson, where the accounting for the acquisition costs resulted in a very low conversion ratio in our numbers for Taylor Hopkinson. And the other part was the divestment of Russia, Jilko already mentioned, at a very high conversion ratio, so that dropped our average number.
Then from 2022 to 2023, we had another hurdle in improving our conversion ratio. Normally, we steer on a fall-through. So that's the additional EBIT compared to additional GP, and our target is at least 40% fall-through for additional GP. But in 2023, we were faced with high inflation, and we were not able to manage that high fall-through now, but that's largely behind us, so we will be able to manage a high fall-through from next year onwards, and that will help improve our conversion ratio. Then, moving on to the progress. If you look at our regional financial performance, we get many questions that the P&Ls look differently, and I wanna explain part of those differences. The first difference is the type of business we do.
We do both contracting and perm, and perm is a one-off fee with a 100% margin. So if you do more perm, that supports your reported gross profit or your gross margin. Then, if you look at the contracting margin, so the margin ex adjusted for perm, there are still big differences across the world with very high margins in Europe and slightly lower margins outside Europe. The reasons for that are several. First of all, the labor law in Europe, so we have to employ our people there on a fixed-term employment contract, which comes with more risk that justifies a higher margin.
The other part is, that in Europe, we typically have one-off jobs, so it's one placement, at a time, and in the rest of the world, it's mostly many placements at the same time for a single project. So that enables our clients outside Europe to ask for a volume discount. And another reason for the difference is that outside Europe, the day rates are much higher, so the percentage fee we get looks smaller, but the dollar value is not too far off. So in summary, the differences between our gross margin, but then you also understand that if there's difference in growth rate across the regions, then that will also impact our overall gross margin.
Interesting enough, if you look at the conversion ratio, those are pretty similar across the globe, except for the standout performance in the Middle East and India for a long time already, with a very high productivity, but they're all pretty close to 30% already. Moving on to some other developments that are relevant to look forward. First of all, you see the development of gross profit and the regional mix. That reflects the growth we achieve in all regions, but the middle one is interesting, especially at the moment. There you can see that the perm placement, as a total percentage of our revenue, increased from 3%-10%, and that's a slightly different business. It's a more volatile business, as Tom explained, requires a different management of the business.
And the contracting business has a very good visibility always for us, 'cause it's always related to CapEx projects, where as soon as the project starts, you have visibility on how long it will take. And many times, we also have a lot of visibility on the start date. Then finally, the development per region of the conversion ratio. Well, huge improvements where we still had regions at, that incurred losses in 2017, and are now all profitable and getting close to a 30% conversion ratio. Then how does this fall through in operating leverage work? So let's assume next year we will grow with EUR 100 million revenue, which is, yeah, high single digits, so it's what we're guiding for.
At our current efforts gross margin, that will add EUR 20 million to our GP, and with the 50% fall through, that we will, will result in an additional EUR 10 million EBIT, and that will help improve our conversion ratio going forward. Some distortion in the reported numbers. We have our numbers, working days, the calendar has an impact on the numbers we report in a quarter. If there's one working day less, you just miss a working day of revenue. That has an impact on your revenue development, but even more so on your gross profit and your EBIT. And the impact is bigger in the Netherlands and Germany, because all our people are on a fixed monthly salary, so we do have the cost, but you miss the entire revenue.
At the moment, a one working day difference has an impact of EUR 2.2 million EBIT. So it's getting more significant, bit growth we're incurring. Another element, and that's not so big, is our exposure to exchange rates. We do business in 45 countries in many currencies, so that suggests a high exposure to exchange rate. But the way we structure our business, it's always back to back, so our cost and our income are pretty much in the same currency. So that does mean that there is exposure on every line item, but the overall impact is limited. So as an example, if there's a change of 10% in exchange rate of the euro to the dollar, that will have an impact of EUR 90 million on our revenue, but only EUR 0.5 million on our EBIT.
The biggest exposure is actually on our assets or receivables in foreign currencies, and that's also why, yeah, the only way to mitigate that risk is to collect them as soon as possible. That brings us to the overview on our cash flow and working capital. Our business requires a high working capital because we have to pay salaries each month, then send the invoice and wait for our clients to pay us. So that takes roughly 60-70 days, including the time we need to invoice. So that average is 12%-14% of our revenue. And you can also see it's a bit at the higher end at the moment, so there's also room for improvement there.
But in general, when we are growing, we need more cash for to fund the increase in working capital, which you also see reflected in the other graph, where you can see that in years where we achieve growth, our cash flow is always below our EBIT. But with EBIT getting to this level, with a high single-digit growth rate next year, we should be able to generate cash. And that... Let me explain what happened in the last three years with our cash position. The last capital markets day, we started with a cash position of EUR 155 million, and all of you have seen that it has dropped to EUR 11 million at the end of Q3 this year.
The biggest thing, and we separated out the operating cash flow into profit and working capital, yeah, we did achieve EUR 154 million profit, but our working capital increased by EUR 130 million. So that explains the biggest part of what happened with the cash. And besides that, we did the acquisition of Taylor Hopkinson with the big check to mention. We invested in our IT environment, and we still did pay the healthy dividend. Result, again, EUR 11 million still net cash, and that's pretty unique in our industry to be net cash. So that means that we still have to think about capital allocation. Why do we need to be net cash? Why do we need cash? First of all, to fund future growth.
If we want to grow, we need more working capital, and we need cash to fund that. The other part is we are still interested to do more acquisitions. We're looking for targets, and the criteria there remain pretty much unchanged. So up to EUR 100 million revenue, and that should allow us a better position in certain markets. And so we're not looking for volume, but it should add something to our global coverage or our capabilities. And finally, we also want cash to be able to continue dividend, to pay dividend. That brings us to the overall, but what is our outlook for the next five years?
Looking at the position of our markets, we still continue to achieve high single-digit revenue growth, and with the fall-through management and the cost control, we will be able to improve our conversion ratio up to 32%. Jilko?
Yeah. New targets. Some are the same, some are rephrased, and some are a bit higher. How are we so... Why are we so sure that we can make this commitment? Yeah, that's the whole story of today, and you see it again on the right side of the screen. Of course, first, we are in the right markets. We chose the right markets. Secondly, we have the right team, entrepreneurial, and you see on the bottom side, a winning team, an engaged team with the right clients, and that entrepreneurship and innovation to make sure that day to day, we understand what those teams want, leads to growing market share. We are outperforming in the growing markets. So growing markets and growing market share leads to an accelerator, and that's why we are comfortable that we can reach the growth goals.
We're also comfortable that we can reach the conversion goals. There's more to gain than we have now. First, operating leverage. When you continue to grow, you leverage your infrastructure. Secondly, the technology platform that we built is unique, both from a client and candidate interaction, but also from an internal support side. Our front, mid, and back office are unique, globally aligned with a global database. And we have shown cost agility and cost control over the years. When you look back at the COVID times, when we had a significant drop and everybody had to face a difficult phase, we quickly brought down the cost structure in the organization.
We have cost agility, and what we say in this, in this target, we will approach the fall-through stricter going forward to make sure that each year we reach 40%-50% fall-through, so that we can grow the conversion. And where we need. Even when you're growing, when you have teams that are not performing, you have to rightsize the team. When teams are not performing, you better make sure that underperformers are not there, so that you have room to hire new, strong talent in the organization again. If you apply that on a disciplined execution side, we can go beyond the targets that we committed last time, and in 2027, we'll reach the 6.5% EBIT. So with that, I think we showed how we can bring Brunel with the winning team to the next level. Thank you very much. Q&A. You want to be the first, Hans?
Yes. No mic.
Yeah, there's a mic, and if you want to call out your name first, then for the registration, it will be-
Yeah.
I had to get in my role first, but they told me. So what we do first is we do first questions here, then we see if there are questions online, verbal or what is it? Call-calling questions, and then we'll check if there are some questions left behind on the Teams call or on the Zoom call. Yeah, Hans?
Yes. Hans Pluijgers, Kepler Cheuvreux. Few questions from my side. On your targets, of course, that we will start with, as a financial analyst. You increased it to 6.5, but it is for 2027. So your initial target for 6 was for 2025. So have you dropped that, or is that still what we should calculate with? And secondly, on your M&A, you indicated that you're still looking for M&A, and in specific, let's say, to improve your position, and also, let's say, adding additional value. At the same time, you pointed out that you, let's say, have certain global verticals, and especially, let's say, Renewable and Life Science. I think maybe you could argue you still have some room to build.
Are that also the two main areas you are looking for, or are there more? Because in the previous CMD, you had a quite wide range of focuses, let's say, areas where you were looking for. So could you maybe give some feeling on that?
Yeah. I can start with the second one, and then Pieter will do the first one. So focus areas for acquisitions. The acquisition criteria did not change a lot, but the focus areas are clearly there. Focus areas, clearly, we always say we have... Our position in the U.S. is too small. We want to have a bigger infrastructure, and preferable, the bigger infrastructure is aligned with our vertical approach. So Renewable Energy, Life Science would be the ideal acquisition targets, and that is still the case. But we're not saying that we are only focusing there. We are also looking at other mature markets like the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, mainly. And also those acquisition areas, mature markets, would be focused on the chosen vertical markets, so the Life Science, Renewable, mainly.
Then the other question, the 6%, EBIT. So if you draw a straight line from our EBIT percentage this year to 2027, then you will end up slightly below 6% in 2025. But I think that's the safest way to assume, as I've seen, as I've shown, there's difference in characteristics in the P&Ls in across our regions, and that impacts the overall EBIT. So at the moment, it's safe to assume that there will be an average development, so the straight line between now and 2027.
Marc Zwartsenburg, ING. To come back on that conversion ratio, because you mentioned next year we'll see a better conversion because we will have a better fall-through. But what is exactly different next year from this year? Because actually, we had that same wage inflation and pass-through in 2023. While at the moment, we have a bit more challenging macro environment. So why are you so convinced that by next year you will see the conversion ratio accelerate again?
So there are a couple of reasons driving that. First of all, the very high growth we achieved in 2022, that meant that we need to invest more in our organization. That was one part where we allowed more cost and a lower fall-through already in budgeting for 2023. Then the wage inflation we incurred for 2023 is much higher than we will see for 2024... and the clearest example is if you look at Belgium, where the wage inflation for 2023 was 11%, and at the moment it's?
1.5%.
1.5%, and yeah. So that's a clear example that the inflation will be much lower. And the other part is, with the inflation dropping and our, our growth stabilizing at a high growth level, we are tighter on cost control and allowing, new investments or not allowing new investments.
But the wage inflation is a positive. So we had higher wage inflation this year. Next year a little bit less than your client might accept, also less pass-through. So I'm still a bit puzzled.
Yeah, but the inflation part, you're right, is favorable for us for top line and gross profit. But it affects us, hurts us in our operating costs, and that's especially the operating cost part, put pressure on our fall-through. And in our top line and our gross profit, we didn't see too much wage inflation outside Europe yet. That's still coming, and that part will help us.
And then maybe on the, on the labor market itself, if you look to the Netherlands and Germany, yeah, the labor market scarcity is there, and as a result, we also see more use of freelancers, and that will eat into your gross margin. Do you—how do you see that being any different in the next years? 'Cause, you... in the end, you will need to stabilize or at least improve your gross profit margin to get to those conversion and to get to your targets of 6.5% EBIT margin. But currently, we see that the margin in the Netherlands and Germany is a bit under pressure because of that. So how do you see that?
I fully agree with you on the Netherlands part, not so much yet in Germany, especially not our business. There, the use of freelancers is pretty complex because of the requirements for the contracting markets in Germany. But we do recognize it for the Netherlands. And freelance is just a part of the labor market, and we need to also use that to offer to our clients. But we need to make sure we offer the right freelancers at the right margins, because that ultimately will allow us to achieve a decent EBIT percentage on it. And to explain that, so we make a 35% margin on our own employees in the Netherlands, but that's 35% of a day rate of EUR 65 , so that's just over EUR 20 .
Our target for freelancers is at least 15%, but that's pretty much... Sorry, that's hourly rate, does it? Our minimum target for freelancers is 15%, but that's typically on a day, on an hourly rate of 100. So it's EUR 15 versus EUR 22. So, as long as you manage the mix properly, you can drive up your conversion and still achieve higher EBIT targets.
Maybe a quick last one on the rest of the world. The, your slide showed that there's a zero result currently. Taylor Hopkinson is in there. Can you break it down a bit between Taylor Hopkinson and the Brunel business? What's going on there in... 'Cause it's hindering your conversion rate shows and your margin targets a bit. So what, what is, what's behind that?
First of all, there's EUR 3.5 million of the earn-out cost and the, amortization of intangibles in there. So that will improve it, a bit. And another element is that we did invest a lot, in especially Taylor Hopkinson, with the outlook in offshore wind market. So the conversion ratio with, a couple of weaker months is lower than where it needs to be. So if you adjust for that, you will, easily end up with a pretty decent conversion ratio. So if you adjust for both the, the both, so the acquisition cost and the lower productivity for a couple of months.
Maybe an example to that, Marc. Looking at what happened in the last quarter, and as Peter said, we invested heavily in the Taylor Hopkinson organization for continued growth. Tom mentions in his stories many times, when I joined Brunel, my organization was 60 people big. Last year, it was 80 people big, approximately beginning of last year, and now it is 160 people big. But I will start next year with 140, because when there's underproduction, I also have to rightsize my team. So this is one of the examples where we are rightsizing the team, and that gives us also an opportunity to improve conversion with a continued growth expectation in the market.
Yeah, and we only have one year of earn-out costs left.
Yeah, true, true. All right. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Konrad.
Yeah. Thank you. It's Konrad Zomer, ABN AMRO. I have a few questions as well. The first one is a quick one. I noticed in your slides that for next year, you expect two more working days than this year.
One. Sorry, that was an example that's only for the Netherlands. We will publish the, yeah, the average global average we have for you.
Okay. I'll switch to the next question then. On your... I think you did a great job in the last few years diversifying your business. All countries now contribute to EBIT, give or take, maybe one or two, and you're a lot less exposed to Conventional Energy. But we've also seen in your last report that it has not really increased the predictability of your earnings stream going forward. Do you think internally that your diversification and your better geographical mix has improved your earnings visibility from, let's say, three or four years ago?
Yeah, absolutely, and we are learning. So we were also frustrated that we have to surprise you, and the shareholders and ourselves with the sudden, decline in the outlook or a lower outlook. So the visibility was not good enough, and we have to improve there, and we put it also in the presentation. The biggest part is that we come from a 3% of revenue, or 3% of GP was, perm, to now 10% of GP was perm. And the way we forecast perm is a learning exercise for Brunel, and we better learn quick because we want to continue that on that percentage, 10%-15%, not more. But yeah, if you want to have that as a serious part of your GP, you have to understand what's happening there.
So we have to be even closer to our markets and to our teams and ask the right questions about what's really in the pipeline to be able to do that. But the organization will continue to grow, and a growth, let's say, a larger organization is better predictable.
But do you not think if we look at the history of companies like Robert Walters, Hays, and Page, that an increasing proportion of your business coming from perm actually reduces your visibility?
Of course. Yeah.
Complete- completely.
I agree with you. Sorry to say that.
Thank you. No, but so that's slightly counterintuitive from the story that you've been trying to persuade us of, that you will improve your earnings visibility going forward, which you have done by becoming less dependent on Oil and Gas, and you've... But by moving into Renewables, well, at least at this point in time, it doesn't really increase your predictability.
Yeah, but the contracting part in Renewables is very predictable. It's the perm placement part that is less predictable, and we can improve there. But I have to agree with you, there will be that it will always be more volatile than the contracting business. So the perm part, yeah, the visibility will always be less than the contracting part.
Yeah.
If I can ask two more questions, the first one is hopefully a quick one. You have a reduced, a lower net cash position than you had, let's say, on average in the last 10 years. Can you confirm here that if you do M&A going forward, you will pay them out of your cash reserves? Because obviously, interest rates, the time of free money is also behind us, so interest rates have moved up if you put on some debt on the balance sheet. I, is that something you can confirm, or is that, it, does that depend on how much money you need?
It depends on how expensive the acquisition will you we will do. You've seen we have EUR 11 million of net cash. There's not much you can buy for EUR 11 million.
Mm-hmm
Besides the fact that we also need cash.
No, but EUR 11 million is not the level where we expect. We expect the year to end.
That, that's correct. But yeah, it depends on the target we will identify, but if there are interesting targets, we will use our bank overdrafts.
Okay, and then maybe the last one. I'm struggling a little bit because I want to be very polite, and as you know me, I'm a nice guy, so I don't want to- I don't mean this in a sort of not nice way.
No.
The EBIT contribution from Taylor Hopkinson in the first year after acquisition, as in last year, was negligible. The earnings contribution in the second year after acquisition, as in this year, is also negligible. So the benefit of that acquisition can still be very material if it's the synergies that have, and you've explained it in your slide. But looking back, has this been as good an acquisition as you hoped it would be? Because of the margin you had in terms of maybe paying a sensible price or maybe looking at the diversification it brought you. Because when you acquired it, well, I thought it was; it was gonna be much more contributing to your earnings than two years down the road it has done.
There are a couple elements to that. First of all, we didn't expect a significant EBIT contribution during the earn-out phase because of the way we had structured the earn-out. So we are-
So, to say it differently, if you would apply another accounting practice and it would go through the balance sheet-
Mm-hmm
You would see an addition to the EBIT. So in the end, it's the same money, it's registered in another way.
And an outperformance would pretty much go to additional earn-out, so it would also balance to a limited number. So that's the first part. And the second part is, and that Tom and Jilko explained that more and more contracting business in Renewable and offshore wind is ending up in the Brunel regions. So that's included in the numbers of Asia and Americas. So you also need to take that into account, but you cannot because we're not sharing that. But overall, we're very happy with the acquisition.
Thank you.
Mart Verbeek, The Idea. Just to get back to your cash position, and also in the first half year, you had a negative free cash flow of about EUR 40 million. Obviously, that will reverse in the second half. But cash at the end of the year will be, yeah, will increase. But you are a good dividend payer, and after you have paid your dividend, you might end up with, again, a negative cash balance. So how do you work out the balance between growth, financing your working capital, and paying dividend?
That's a good question.
Very good question.
Yeah. So, we want to pay our dividend, and in an... if there are no big M&A, we always, we'll be able to pay our dividend with the seasonality in our cash flow. So only if we do serious M&A, I expect that we need to reduce or drop the dividend.
Okay. One consumer of your cash issue, working capital, and obviously when you grow fast, working capital will grow maybe even faster. It's now at a pretty high level historically. But obviously you want to take some improvement measures in that respect as well. What do you think you're gonna do in that area to have better control and make it less cash consuming?
Yeah. I like that question, Mark. And of course, when now cash is no longer free, we also see some slight changes in the behavior of our clients, so we need to respond to that. And we have responded, and we are still responding. First of all, is that everywhere in the world, we have professionalized our credit management and our invoicing, just to be tighter and stronger to our clients. But still, they are also quite talented in trying to delay their payment behavior. Another part, and we have implemented in the Netherlands already, is implementing robotics. And what does robotics do? It speeds up your invoicing, but especially improves the quality of your invoicing. And we saw great results from the Netherlands, so we're also...
We're going to roll it out in the rest of the world. The next part is, of course, that payment terms are a bigger part of our negotiations with clients at the moment. So either our rates need to go up or the payment terms need to go down.
If I recall well, more or less, your working capital ratio is about 25% of revenues today. Is that more or less also the max going forward? Because did you want to keep it-
That's 14%. 12%-14% of annual-
Okay.
Yeah. But it... So 14% is too high, so 12% is probably a normal normalized level.
Okay. And then, lastly, you talked about inflation is good for, for the company. However, in the Netherlands, it's a bit different because of the government is a big client of yours. We work for the government, and they are not so eager to increase rates that much. I think that's also one of the reasons why the conversion ratio in the Netherlands is below the 30%. When do you think you have caught up that, more or less, you are back to your old GP levels, and also can share this 30% conversion ratio?
Yeah. We have, in our recent discussion with the Dutch team, we looked at the graphs where the internal costs go up because of the inflation, because of the salary increase in the beginning of the year, and then the catch-up starts. And actually, the lines are about to touch now. But of course, there will be a salary increase again, January first. So, and it's less, as we already said, less than last year, so we can catch up quicker. But, normally, the catch-up would take three quarters, maybe 10 months to get there. We do think with the renegotiations of certain of our large contracts, that we can accelerate that process of 10 months a little bit into next year.
So then we would be on the line earlier in next year.
Yes, yes, Hans Pluijgers again. Going back on the, the trend, let's say, in Renewables, that let's say, you see also indeed, what the, the U.K. government, have increased prices also in the U.S. You saw, let's say, the recent tenders improving and pricing. But does Taylor Hopkinson already see that a little bit in the KPIs? What, what could we expect there? Let's say, is this a blip for one or two quarters, or do you expect maybe it to take it somewhat longer? Could you give maybe some feeling on that?
You want to respond, Tom?
Uh, yeah.
Can you...
Uh,
Yeah, you have to be here, otherwise you're not visible, probably.
So I think the way I look at it, a lot will come out in the next two weeks in Dubai. I think top of the agenda is trying to find pathways to cheaper finance for these projects, and if we're able to strike a deal on that, I think that'll release a lot of projects. Personally, I think it'll take within half one next year, we'll start to see the projects start to flow again. When in half one is still uncertain, but if you look at forecasted install capacity from 2025, 2026 onwards, they have to start pre-engineering those projects by June. Otherwise, they don't go in the water in 2025. So that's my prediction, that we'll see within H1 those signs of growth will come back.
And maybe follow up on your conversion ratio. Middle East, of course, is very high. You already indicated maybe a little bit on the high end, but how do you see that develop going forward, and especially more, let's say, in the near future? Is that still... because it has come a little bit under pressure, is that still what you see coming under pressure? And maybe you can a little bit elaborate a little bit further on what you have learned from the Middle East that you maybe could use in other areas to uplift the conversion ratio in some other key areas.
One of the reasons the conversion ratio is high is the volume of the projects. So you do one project with bigger volumes, so that's easier to operate, and it creates higher conversion. When we look at our pipeline, that will continue. We are still in the process of winning bigger projects. We announced that we won a big project that was delayed, and it will start now, February first. So these projects have and leverage and efficiency factor that will continue. What did we learn from the Middle East team? First of all, great people make great results. We have a fantastic team there, good leadership, mature team, long retention of people in the team, and an enormous commitment to Brunel and applying the right processes.
Especially when you look at a finance leader in the region, when a new client is started, there's a real good review of the whole process from end to end, and that makes the process leaner than maybe in some other places.
And so you're expecting that, let's say, the conversion ratio will remain relatively this level? That's what I want to understand.
It will remain higher than in other regions. Significantly higher. I cannot predict if it will stay exactly at this level, but also for the Middle Eastern region, the fall through should be between 40% and 50%. So the current 56% of conversion will not go a lot down.
Question for Tom, actually. If you look at the tail optimism business, and you lost, say, almost EUR 5 million of perm business this year because of the disruptions. If you then say, for the next year, in the first half, we would not see much of recovery, and then later on we might be recovering, then it might be that in perm, you would do exactly the same result next year. That you do say the result that you had in the first half of this year, you will do it in the second half last, next year, and the second half of this year will be similar to the first half next year. If that's the case, would you then expect to be profitable actually next year, leaving aside the earn-out?
Yeah, good question. So there's a few things that we're doing. First of all, like I already said, we've reduced the headcount by around 20 heads going into January. We'll continue to work on performance and outputs. The other thing we did as well is, if you imagine... So in Renewables, since we started, we've always been in a growth market. And when you're growing from a low base, even in a bad year, you can grow. I think our average growth across the last 15 years has been up in the sort of late 40s. So this year was a sort of new territory for us. Therefore, we were learning how to respond to these situations. And when you're in high growth markets, and you're very successful in what you're doing, the...
I spoke earlier to part of the reason the clients work with us is specialism. We were specialized into very strict disciplines. What that meant was when the market did hit pause to reset, we weren't as flexible or agile as we should have been. We've been working the last six months to make sure that our teams are more flexible and more agile. For example, people that used to just work in offshore wind are now working in onshore wind. People working in offshore wind are also now working in grid. Because even while the offshore wind developers are deciding what to do, grid is rolling out at pace in order to accommodate that when it comes.
We're doing a lot of things to make sure that we can be a bit more agile and stand behind the forecast for next year.
Is it also that you're maybe a bit exposed to only a few key clients, like predominantly U.K. play, government projects or Ørsted related clients? 'Cause if you look to the offshore wind, it's still growth business, and there's a bit of a disruption here and there, but it's not all over the place. So I had expected to be a bit more indeed, agile, to catch the growth somewhere else.
So we've seen a lot of growth in hydrogen. We've seen a lot of growth in transmission, distribution and grid infrastructure. We've seen a lot of growth in Asia, where we hit all our forecasts. We'll beat the forecast in Asia. In Southern Europe, we'll beat our budget for this year. Predominantly, the issue was the States. High cost of employees. Very, very immature market, still finding its feet. And yeah, delays due to the market just finding where it's at. And just to that point, we started the year in the States with 16 employees. We're at 9. So we've reshaped that team to be fit for purpose going into next year.
Clear. Thank you very much, Tom.
Thanks.
Then another question on Germany.
Mm.
On that slide with the perm exposure, it showed that Germany had almost EUR 10 million of perm business in there. Is that correct?
6, I think.
Yeah.
Six?
Yeah.
Yeah. But is that, is that really perm or is it more transitional perm?
It's both. It's perm and transition fees. Split is roughly 50/50.
Okay. And if you look, and it counts a bit for the Netherlands as well. If you look to the margin of Germany, and so you expect to be back at, at former peaks, like 13%+ . Currently a bit, quite a bit away from that. The same is true for the, for the Netherlands-
We said 12%+ , eh?
Oh, sorry, 12%.
You may get to 13%, but,
Twelve, yeah, well, the gap is still two, 'cause I think it's around 10%. There's quite a gap which you need to cross, and the same is true for the Netherlands. Are we more at 8% if you get there, and to get to at least 10% again, that's quite a jump. Well, I have the feeling that in the Netherlands, you already made quite some progress on the OpEx side and become far more productive and efficient. And Germany was, in terms of margin, always already quite efficient. So how are we going to get there if the gross margin will not be that easy to improve because of what's going on with wage inflation? And how the labor market is, and with the clients you have in the Netherlands. So how do we get there?
Is it-
Marc, I think actually the step from in the Netherlands, 8.7-%10%, and in Germany from 10.5%-12%, is easier than the steps that we made in Australia from zero to now 3.5% because you already have an infrastructure, you have the client base, you have the high margin. So we have an opportunity to balance our investment to the future a little bit better. Which actually means at the moment in Germany, where we also have a few teams with a low productivity, that we will start with a lower headcount this year than we started last year.
Okay.
So we really see an opportunity, an organization that is completely ready for growth to the next level, but is growing a little bit less. Still growing, but growing a little bit less, probably carries a little bit too much cost, and then we have to reset the cost.
So it's still a cost issue? 'Cause I haven't seen these margins for the last five years, to be fair.
Yeah.
So it's not an easy fix, I guess.
No, and last five years, of course, was after COVID, and where we had a-
Right
Because just before COVID, we were sort of there-
Sort of
And now we have to go, get back there. I actually think for Germany, the biggest opportunity is the market is. Let's say the market is still far away from pre-COVID levels. Not only we, but the market. And the normal flexibility need in these markets will lead to continued growth. If you saw in one of the slides, where everybody thinks that future mobility is down and at risk, we are growing 30% in future mobility. We have a little bit of pain in the other industrial elements, and the combination is still a nice growth in the German market. But the growth is lower than we expected, so we can reset our cost.
All right. Thank you very much.
Two more questions, please. The first one, you showed us that about 20% of your revenues come from your top 10 clients, and that percentage has remained fairly unchanged. Are those also the same names?
No, there's also some change in there. So the good news is that we're also refreshing the clients. You saw, for instance, 80% growth in mining, so there's also a mining client in there, there's a Renewable client in there. So we really have also an update, and some clients that you know are always there.
Okay. And, my second question: with more perm as part of your business, is there a an incentivization difference between the the consultants that place people in a permanent role or in a temporary role?
Not really, because they still apply a mechanism that every employee should make at least three times his own cost before they really start making commission, and that's the high-level principle we apply everywhere. The only thing is, in perm, you get the commission really fast, whereas in contract, it takes some time.
It is done by different people, right?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Some of your competitors do have quite a big difference in pay structure. Because it's a totally different ballgame.
Absolutely.
Yeah, but the commission, but it's both for contracting and for perm. The really high performers, they have a really aggressive commission scheme, but that's also the case for contracting.
Yeah.
We allow similar principles, but-
The formulas behind are a bit different, but in the end, we pay for GP.
Yeah. But a highly successful consultant in perm ends up with about the same salary as somebody in temp?
No, a bit more.
Okay.
Highly successful in perm, then the commissions is a little bit more aggressive. Contracting book you have, and you want to grow it, and for the growth, you are compensated also with an aggressive multiplier. But the book that you have, yeah, you have to retain, of course, but that's has a less, an different value than every time with perm, every time restarting and finding new GP. But that should be valued differently.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Okay. Pieter Hein?
Yeah. Pieter Hein , Degroof Petercam. No, I'm sure, the fact that we are now in a situation where we are, you know, where the cash position is significantly less than we've seen in the last decades, and the fact that you are on the hunt for M&A, do you have a framework in place with regards to debt levels you want to have, and how that fits with the dividend ambition?
Yeah, we do, but we look at our yeah, the normal ratios that are applied for our business, and we also have arrangements in place with our banks. But in the end, it depends on how big of an acquisition we will find, and then we probably need to have another look. But like I said, it would be an option to cancel dividend for a year if it, if we need to do it for a really big acquisition.
All right, thanks.
What will happen with the share price when you-
Sorry, Jan, you have to use the mic because then it's registered.
Yeah, well, if you, you know, if your cash position will go down, you know, what happens with normally, you know, the share price? Will that go down as well? I mean, that's very important to keep the right balance, of course, with the, with the share price at this moment.
Yeah, yeah. So we need to keep a healthy cash position, but a healthy cash position in our industry can also be a certain level of debt, as long as it's yeah, healthy, looking at the business. So it's actually, what are we doing with the cash? And that's-
You want to keep everybody happy, you know? Also the shareholders. Aren't we? You?... But, yeah, well, in the time when I started, you know, our company, and here's the man who took us to the stock exchange from ABN AMRO. I remember that I had two persons in position. One was called the cost cutter. Every week, he went with his little pair of scissors to cut the costs, which were not, you know, necessary to have them. You will have that all the time, you know, that comes back every time. And the other guy was called, on his, you know, card, was written, you know, a mark-up terrier. You know?
So he looked at all the prices of the at the placements, and, you know, if salesman doesn't do his work correctly, you know, he will punished. You know, we had to do all over the announcement to the client that, "Sorry, client, we have sent you the wrong, you know, offer. We have to change it." So with a good training, it helped us to have the right leverage, you know. And we call this the trumpet construction, that you if you want to grow, you keep your profit also, you know, in a growth path. Well, that's the theory I took it. You remember that? Yes. Yeah, that was the trick to have a very good price during the stock exchange.
Thank you, Jan. I think it's the best summary of our story today, isn't it? Because the story today is a story of growth, market terriers, and on the other side, our conversion to cost cutting. So, your story aligns fully with the story we had today. So-
One more question.
Then I have to go back, then I have to go back to you, but I want, don't want you to keep the mic, Jan.
Well, one question is, if you change contracting to consultants, could that help us, you know, to get a higher level in your price process?
Yeah.
Is that so?
In many markets, we do. Ours-
I know the word uitzendbureau. That's what I invented. We had Multec in the old days, called Multec Uitzendorganisatie. Then I changed it into detacheren. I'm the founder of that world, or that word, and now I think, well, this word also, we have to change it into something else to hire it up, you know, the image of Brunel.
In many markets, we are-
Huh?
... registered as
Yeah, we call that, here, to Brunelize-
Yeah
... you. You know, we all have to Brunelize. Brunelization in German language. Yes.
Yeah. Thank you, Jan. But, but you're right. One of the pillars is to attract and retain talent and to specialize deeper, and specializing deeper means that you wanna be seen as a partner, as a consultant. In many countries, we're actually registered as a consultancy company because that's the type of service that we deliver. And more and more in our markets, we also take consultancy work. We take a full scope project from our client, and we deliver that project for our client. So this is absolutely an integral part of our strategy to drive rates up, to drive position and our brand up, so absolutely. Thank you. Time-wise, I also want to check, any burning questions here in the room? Let's then go to check if there are any online questions. What is it?
Verbal questions from the people that watched online. Operator, are there any questions?
Thank you. If you've joined on the phone line and you'd like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing Star, followed by One on your telephone keypad. When preparing for your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. And if you wish to revoke your question, please press star followed by two. We have no questions registered on the line today, s o I'll hand back over to the management team.
Thank you very much. Then I promised a third level of people that maybe asked questions on the Teams chat or on the Zoom chat. Are there any questions? Yeah, we have to look at...
Yeah.
Hmm. Oh, boy. This is gonna be... Are there many, Jan?
One.
One. Okay, from person [P. Schreurs], the question is: Artificial intelligence leads to extremely higher productivity of knowledge workers, both internally at Brunel, but also with its customers. Could the need for hiring/outsourcing knowledge workers suddenly become much smaller? How do you see the overall impact of AI on Brunel? Great question. First of all, I already mentioned that we apply AI internally, and we will continue to apply AI internally because it is another way to improve the conversion. I am of a generation that saw the fax coming, that saw the email coming, and that saw all kinds of digital tools coming in our industry. And every time we get this question, every time we get the question: Will it disrupt your business? Will jobs be replaced by artificial intelligence, by what we had, digital tooling, by robots?
And yes, the answer is yes, and it will create much more jobs on the other side. Jobs will change, so our role becomes bigger to upskill and reskill. New matches have to be made because clients cannot understand, with the speed of change, what the skills are of the future. It's our role to help our clients in that aspect. So, a lot of new roles in the world of artificial intelligence are created. We already see that our engineers are all working with artificial intelligence tools, so we better are close to that, and then it's actually an opportunity.
We do see artificial intelligence as an opportunity for us because of the changes it will bring in the labor market, and Brunel has a role to connect the skills to the client in the right way and, yeah, upskill and train our specialists in the right way. So [Schreurs], Ms [Schreurs], Sir [Schreurs] I hope you appreciate the answer. Let's check one more time, Jan. Any other?
No other questions that side. Then I want to thank everybody for attending our Capital Markets Day. Please join us at our fair, where we can show some of the differentiators we discussed. When you walk through the fair and have still time for one drink, we have a new room here, which we could call the Brunel Bar, and we would like to invite you there as well. Thank you very much. See you next time.