Good morning to everyone in the room and to those watching online. Welcome to the 2025 results presentation. I'm Allan Pirie, the CEO, and I'm joined by Ingrid Stewart, our CFO. I'll start with the results overview and some highlights. I'll then pass over to Ingrid for a more detailed review of the financials, and then I'll follow up with a market and operational review, after which we'll open the floor to questions. 2025 was a year of financial, strategic, and operational progress as we expanded our mission-critical, market-leading solutions capability. We're delighted to present another strong set of financial results. Revenue increased by 21% to GBP 203 million, including organic growth of 3%. Adjusted EBITDA margin at 29.1% was towards the top of our medium-term target range, reflecting our focus on high-quality revenue.
Adjusted EPS growth of 10% demonstrates the compounding nature of a resilient business model. These financial results demonstrate the strengths of our differentiated global services model, our scaled diversified footprint, and the mission-critical solutions we offer to our customers. We built on strong strategic and operational momentum during the year. The 24 acquisitions of Seatronics and J2 have been fully integrated across the four regions, realizing synergies ahead of plan. We opened a new Mechanical Solutions facility in Houston to further localize our offering in the US, which is gaining traction. In Norway, we moved to a new facility at the end of the year, expanding our service offering there. GBP 37 million of CapEx was deployed to further expand our technology capability, including new proprietary products.
To further support growth, we also strengthened our team, including the appointment of an HR director, QHSE director, a CTO, and a head of Mechanical Solutions. Our long-term outlook is underpinned by structural growth in our end markets. Long-term offshore activity is supported by rising global energy demand and energy security considerations. Our addressable market is forecast by Rystad to grow at 6% CAGR through 2029, and our growth strategy is supported by record levels of multiyear customer backlog. Our highly mobile service allows us to follow market demand unrestricted by geography. We're closely following the situation in the Middle East, and our primary concern is for our 27 employees and for the families in the region. Absent extended or wider disruption, the board is confident of delivering further progress in 2026. If we move to the next slide.
We're building unrivaled capability, and the benefits of our strategy are increasing. The platform we have creates a great opportunity to drive financial performance and further scale the business. We're a trusted partner. Service failure offshore carries significant financial consequences, leading customers to prioritize reliability, track record, and trusted supplier relationships over marginal pricing differences. We're a trusted supplier, given that ten of the top ten customers have been with us for more than a decade. We're deepening our service model. Increasing focus on integrated solutions embeds Ashtead Technology into customer projects, de-risking their execution. We're accelerating in-house innovation. The majority of our Mechanical Solutions and Asset Integrity equipment is designed, engineered, and assembled in-house. That's really difficult to be replicated by our competitors, and it can't be bought. We've got global reach.
We support our customers globally with the world's largest independent subsea equipment solutions fleet, and our offering is highly fungible. Our mission-critical flexible service supports offshore construction, inspection, maintenance, repair, and decommissioning, giving the business exposure to the full life cycle of subsea energy infrastructure. We are increasing our TAM, delivering unique value through integrated project support, and we're well-positioned for growth. Go to the next slide. During 2025, we advanced our innovation efforts through design and engineering of proprietary in-house equipment. We also collaborated closely with our OEM partners to deliver innovative technology solutions to market. Starting at the top left and going clockwise around the page. Socket inspection, we delivered a bespoke integrated sonar package for imaging seabed boreholes, and this was for a wind farm construction project.
On mattress recovery, we created the most technologically advanced tool in the market for mattress recovery, which is part of decommissioning, and that now features as part of our wider decommissioning capability that we've been building in recent years. On abrasive cutting, we use a proprietary Airlift Dredge and a new abrasive cutting tool to assist our customer decommission five platforms in India, which was a first of its kind. eBOS. We invested in eBOS recently, which is a game-changing 3D sub-bottom imaging sonar used to locate and identify previously unseen subsurface targets such as cables, unexploded ordnance, and boulders. Each of these technologies and delivery methods, which are difficult to replicate, deliver significant value to our customers. I'll now hand over to Ingrid.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Our financial highlights demonstrate our continued strong margin and excellent returns performance despite the geopolitical headwinds that we experienced through the year. Our revenue of GBP 203.2 million equates to growth of 21% on prior year. Having adjusted for the planned removal of certain low-margin activities acquired as part of the Seatronics and J2 Subsea acquisitions, the growth can be split 19% inorganic, 3% organic, and then a small headwind of -1% from FX. Having experienced some market headwinds through Q2 and Q3 last year, momentum built through the remainder of the year and our second half revenues were 5% up on the first half. Our full-year adjusted EBITDA of GBP 59.1 million represents a margin of 29.1%, remaining at the top end of our medium-term target.
This falls to an adjusted EPS of 49.4 pence, an increase of 10% on prior year. Our return on capital remains strong at 22.7%, remaining well ahead of our cost of capital. Through our continuation of strong cash flow, we have reduced our leverage to 1.3x , further strengthening our balance sheet. This next slide sets out our P&L in more detail, but I've covered most of the salient points on the previous slide. The additional information included on here is our split of revenues between oil and gas and renewables. With particular headwinds felt in the US due to the change in policy in offshore renewables, our renewables revenues grew only 4% in the year, compared to a stronger oil and gas performance at 28%.
Oil and gas remains our largest contributor, and within this, circa 10% of our revenues came from decommissioning, with the majority of this work being undertaken through our European operations. It is also worth noting that we continue to grow our business across all of our geographical segments as we continue to expand our operations globally, increasing the robustness of our operating model. As noted previously, our EBITDA margin was at the top end of our medium-term guidance, and this is also true for our EBITDA margin. We saw an increase in our finance cost as a result of funding the Seatronics and J2 Subsea acquisitions through RCF, but expect this to reduce during 2026 as a result of lowering leverage. Our adjusted profit after tax of GBP 39.8 million falls to an adjusted EPS of 49.4 pence.
Through our compounding growth model, we've delivered a 2.6x increase to EPS over the past four years. We've also continued to strengthen our balance sheet through 2025. We continue to invest in both our own in-house designed and built proprietary technology, as well as maintaining close relationships through OEM partners to ensure our fleet is well-positioned to support our customers globally. We continue to ensure that our CapEx investments are fungible across asset life cycles, geographies, and markets to allow us to pivot to market demand. Our net debt to EBITDA leverage is 1.3x at the year-end, and our working capital represents 16% of revenues, close to our 15% target. Through 2025, we invested in both shelling spares and cable molding stock as we sought to expand these services acquired through the Seatronics and J2 Subsea acquisitions.
Our balance sheet strength gives us the flexibility and optionality to keep investing in our growth, and we seek to maintain our strengths of scale, global mobility, and provide mission-critical support to our customers. Our opening net debt was GBP 128.4 million, representing pro forma leverage of 1.6x . We've utilized our free cash flow to continue to our discretionary organic growth investment, spending GBP 37.2 million in CapEx in the year. Our free cash flow, being the cash generated from operating activities less our net CapEx, was GBP 40.4 million, representing an EBITDA to free cash flow ratio of 49%. Our strong cash generating model has resulted in our leverage reduced down to 1.3x at the year-end, well within our 1x to 2x medium term target.
This next slide demonstrates the growth journey that we've been on through both organic and inorganic investment over the past four years and the outstanding returns that our business can deliver. Through utilizing our strong operating cash flow of GBP 206 million, plus GBP 82 million of our available RCF, we have spent GBP 100 million in CapEx and GBP 143 million in acquisitions during the four-year period, and that creates an average multiple of 4.6x on acquisition. The growth we've achieved during that same period equates to 41% CAGR on revenue, 44% CAGR on adjusted EBITDA, and 37% CAGR on adjusted EPS, a growth in EPS of 2.6x during that period. This brings us nicely on to our capital allocation policy.
We have sustainable and growing operating cash flows driven by our high margin business, which allows us to continuously invest in growth through active deployment in technologies to broaden our offering and meet our customers' needs. We've had great success through our acquisition strategy, and we will continue to utilize our free cash flow and balance sheet to fund complementary bolt-on M&A. We remain committed to our progressive dividend strategy and this morning recommended a GBP 0.013 per share final dividend, which will be put to shareholder vote at our AGM on the twenty-first of May. Our net debt target remains at 1x to 2x , and we will continue to utilize our balance sheet to target industry-leading ROIC through our growth plans.
There may be opportunity for additional shareholder returns, but with significant growth opportunities ahead of us, we see this as a lower priority at this current time. I'll now pass you to Allan to cover the update on the market.
Great. Thanks, Ingrid. The market continues to provide a strong growth runway for the business. Over the past four years, Ashtead Technology's total addressable market is expected to grow by 25% to GBP 3.4 billion by 2029. If we look at the left-hand graph, despite recent headwinds, the offshore wind market is forecast to grow by 12% CAGR through 2029. Successful completion of the U.K.'s Allocation Round 7, which was the largest to date, awarding 8.4 GW, has firmed up the 2030 pipeline. Just recently, they've pulled forward Allocation Round 8, which is due to start in July, which is another positive move. Oil and gas IMR and construction support is forecast to grow at 3% CAGR again through to 2029.
Oil and gas is very much part of the future energy mix, with stronger demand forecast for decades to come. If we look at the right-hand chart, this shows the key addressable markets for Ashtead, which are global, excluding China. We support our customers' operations across all the key offshore regions, and we're well-placed to benefit from forecast growth. Not only is our equipment mobile, our customers' vessels are also highly mobile, so we can support our customers' operations globally. With the platform we have built, our team's domain knowledge and expertise, and through the deep value we deliver to our customers, we believe we are very well-placed to benefit from long-term growth across all of our end markets. Increasing subsea activity is resulting in customers continuing to build record multi-year backlogs.
The graph here shows how the backlogs of the three major subsea contractors, TechnipFMC, Saipem and Subsea 7, who are all key customers of Ashtead Technology, has strengthened significantly over the past four years. In the past four years, the backlog for these customers have more than doubled to GBP 55 billion. Backlog for execution in the current year at GBP 23.2 billion is 18% higher than the prior year. Not only is there higher backlog, more importantly, the duration profile of the backlog has materially changed since 2021, providing stronger future visibility. What does this mean for Ashtead Technology? Our customers depend on us for our advanced technologies and specialist expertise required to execute their projects. From this multi-year customer backlog, we expect a strong pipeline of revenue opportunities that will support our continued growth plans.
Strategic M&A has been a cornerstone of our strategy to expand our business and position Ashtead Technology as an integrated solutions provider. To illustrate this point, I'll talk you through three Is of the ACE Winches acquisition. Internationalization, innovation, and integrated services. Firstly, internationalization. When we acquired ACE Winches in 2023, circa 80% of its revenue was generated from outside the U.K. Last year, working on projects across 38 countries, 91% of its revenue was from outwith the U.K. With new facilities in the U.S. and Norway, and with equipment now positioned in other Ashtead locations, we are well-placed to further diversify our geographic revenue mix. Secondly, innovation. The capabilities we acquired with ACE Winches have been essential to launching new products during 2025, including the Mattress recovery tool and deployment solutions for eBOS, which was discussed earlier. Thirdly, integrated services.
Lifting, pooling, and deployment is generally considered at an early stage of offshore project planning. The acquisition of ACE Winches accelerated our project engagement with customers, helping us to secure and deliver wider Ashtead Technology integrated packages. Supported by a proven M&A track record of successful integration and value creation, we're well-placed to continue on the M&A theme. Finally, we've got a very clear growth strategy, and we're executing the plan. Our unique service offering is highly differentiated, really adding value to our customers. The markets we operate in have strong fundamentals, presenting multi-year growth opportunities. Record customer backlog creates a strong, sustained revenue runway for us, and our highly flexible business model is creating multiple geographic and end market opportunities.
With increased balance sheet strength, a continued focus on strong cash generation, and disciplined capital allocation, we're well-placed to further our growth strategy, both organically and inorganically. We're closely monitoring the evolving situation in the Middle East, and absent an extended or wider disruption, the board remains confident in delivering further progress during 2026. Thanks for being here this morning, and we're now happy to take your questions. Ashley?
Hi there. Just a couple of questions from me. One of them is on the CapEx last year. Can you give us a split on how much of that was maintenance CapEx and how much was growth CapEx?
Yeah. As you know from previous conversations, it's very difficult to kind of calculate the sort of true maintenance CapEx figure because we don't actually kind of have a rolling kind of replacement in our fleet. We would estimate that sort of low double-digit GBP millions would be sort of maintenance CapEx. I did an exercise to look back at the last 10 years, and it averages. If you take out the two kind of big acquisitions, Forum and Seatronics, we're averaging about 5% of our fleet would be disposed of each year in terms of replacement. That, you know, kind of equates to the low double digit.
Okay, thanks. Other question was, in terms of further M&A, are there any particular segments that you're targeting at the moment?
I think it's a continuation of the same theme, Ashley. You know, we see opportunities across the three service lines that we've got. So Survey and Robotics, Mechanical Solutions, and Asset Integrity. We've done a fair amount in Survey and Robotics to consolidate that market. You know, we see Mechanical Solutions as a super fragmented market. But, you know, we've got opportunities across all three, ranging from the very small to some that's more sizable. You know, as we've discussed before, some of these things we've been talking to the owners for years and years and years.
As I've got the mic, Andrew Nussey from Peel Hunt. Couple of questions as well. I guess the first question is, given the investment that you've made in the fleet, particularly in Mechanical Solutions and some of the IP that's gone in there and the global platform, are you seeing more of a sign from your customers now looking to you to provide services so the propensity to rent externalization, and anything you can sort of point to there? And secondly, you gave the sort of backlog for three of the listed companies. Are they quite a good proxy for your wider customer base when you're having conversations with them in terms of their outlook?
Thirdly, the Rystad data and the forecast growth, is that all assumed to be volume, or are they assuming an element of pricing headwind, tailwind in there as well?
I think two questions became three. Let's try and pick our way through those. Propensity to rent, first of all, so we're seeing two things there. We're seeing a continuation of the theme that customers are electing not to buy equipment, and therefore propensity to rent is increasing. And that's been a theme that's been developing over many, many years for, you know, all the reasons that we've discussed with all of you before. You know, it's easy to buy equipment. It's much more difficult to maintain it, to mobilize it, to, you know, support it in the field. The other theme that we are now seeing is not only is there an increasing propensity to rent, there's an increasing propensity for integrated projects.
This is one of the themes that we've really been sort of doubling down on, which is Ashtead Technology is more than sum of its parts. It's how can we help our customers deliver their projects safely, quicker by taking sort of the grit out of the cog by having one supplier do all the work. Not every project we do has that, you know, sort of view. Where that is possible, we're seeing much more readiness to engage on that basis. On backlog Tier 1 contractors, you know, clearly, Subsea 7, TechnipFMC, Saipem are the three big players in the market.
As you go further down through, you know, sort of the customer layers, not all the customers are running at the same pace as the top three. However, there is a trickle-down effect here in that, you know, the capacity of the top three to take on more work is being limited. There is no new vessels coming to market and therefore some of the smaller players are stepping up and taking scopes that historically they wouldn't have taken. Thirdly, on the Rystad data, you know, the 6% CAGR, is that volume or is it pricing? Yeah, it's more volume rather than pricing. Did I get them all or did I miss any?
Thank you, Colin.
Great.
Good morning. It's David Buxton from Deutsche Numis. Can I ask two, please? Also on the Rystad forecasts, it looked like there was growth in all regions across the forecast. Can you just give us a sort of an update on what you're seeing from a sort of regional trend and any that are sort of particularly more robust than others and any that are weaker? Secondly, just in respect of the Middle East, can you maybe just talk around sort of plans for mitigation if it is more protracted over the next few months? Thanks.
Sure. On a regional basis, you know, we're seeing strength across all regions. If we look back at 2025, and certainly the first half, there was a bit of a shock in the U.S. in particular. Our U.S. business did not perform particularly well. Last year, we saw recovery start to build early Q2, which has continued, and in trading for the group, year to date to the end of February, you know, is in line with management expectations. On the Middle East, you know, as I said earlier, you know, the first and foremost priority is our people. We've got 27 people in the region with their families. Thankfully, they're all safe.
You know, we are operating in a way to minimize, you know, any risk of, you know, something going wrong. The facility is still open. We are encouraging working from home where it's possible, but we've got people in the facility every day. The situation is different in Qatar than it is in Saudi. Operations in Qatar are largely suspended. In Saudi, you know, work in certain places is continuing. It's very much a wait and see game. You know, we're talking to customers every day. You know, even yesterday there was a number of inquiries and, you know, suggesting mobilization dates during the next month. It really depends on what happens.
If there was a cessation of military activity, you know, the vessels that we are on are mobilized. They're fully kitted up. They can go back to work within hours. It's a factor of duration. If there was an extended situation here, our equipment is obviously highly mobile, we would look to move that equipment elsewhere in the world.
Thanks very much. Victoria McCulloch, RBC. A few from me. First of all, the customers you mentioned there, they've talked through the reporting period about their backlog strength, but also the duration and the coverage and utilization they have for 2026 versus 2025. Can you give us some color as to how your visibility has changed for this year versus last year, and how much greater visibility you have of revenues, let's call it ex Middle East, given that's a pretty fluid situation? Secondly, on the Seatronics J2 acquisition, can you obviously the cost savings have been successful this year. What other takeaways do you have from that deal, that you've been able to apply across the business? Finally, on your CapEx for this year, you know, where should we be looking to see additions?
You know, what's your plan for growth for this year? Thanks very much.
On backlog. Clearly the backlog for the tier one contractors is very much there. We've got master service agreements in place with them. You know, we're not seeing necessarily a change in behavior of them securing services or equipment. I think what we are seeing, and again, this is probably more driven by what we're doing with us as a group rather than customer behavior, that a business like ACE Winches is engaged in project planning with the customer at a far earlier stage than some other parts of the business would be.
If you put that into context, you know, they could be talking to a customer 18-24 months before mobilization, whereas in Survey & Robotics, while we know what the customer's vessels are generally going to do, we would secure the PO within, you know, maybe two, three, four weeks or two, three, four months, depending on what the project looks like. The way that we're moving as a business means that we are actually getting greater visibility. On Seatronics and J2, you know, this in part was a bit cookie cutter in that we did the Forum Subsea Rentals merger and then sort of takeover back in 2017. We realized synergies faster and more than we expected. The team has really bedded in well.
Doing an integration across all four regions at the same time is challenging, but you know, the team has reacted really well to that. I think the takeaways here is that we have got real confidence in how we go about M&A. You know, we did a lot of work before we went into this deal. We had a very clear plan on how we were going to integrate this business, and we did it in super fast speed. I think that is that for us, the key is integration. We're not a house of brands. We're not a house of, you know, the parts. We want to integrate everything, and we want to provide an integrated solution to our customers. Then finally on CapEx, if that was the final question.
Again, we see opportunities, you know, across the three service lines. In Survey & Robotics, it's very much sort of bulking out what we've already got. You know, we've invested in, you know, all the sort of standard products. In Mechanical Solutions, that is very much expanding our capabilities. So expanding our capabilities in cutting. We are building out our winch fleet primarily to stock up new regions. So the U.S., where we opened a facility last year, Norway, where we also opened a new facility. Then on Asset Integrity, there's a number of innovative products that we are investing in, one of which is eBOS that we spoke about earlier. Alex?
Hi. Alex Brooks, Canaccord Genuity. Can I come back to your point on integrated projects from earlier? Because if I go back to when you listed, you were very much identified as a rentals business, and you've clearly done a lot of acquisitions since then that actually mostly don't do rentals. You've just been talking about you're much more than the sum of parts. Can you talk a bit about how the shape of the business has shifted and what you know, if I look at the business this year, how much is rental and what should it be? Could it be?
Very good question, and thank you for that. Yeah, I think the word rental has got two sides to it. One, it's easy to understand because it's about equipment, it's about utilization, it's about pricing. In all, as you know, everyone here knows, the commercial mechanism that we use is very much akin to rental because it's about utilization, it's about pricing. But what we've always said is Ashtead is not a rental business. It's far more than a rental business. This is not about moving boxes. This is about, you know, providing the customer with the consultancy up front, making sure that there is no room for error because mistakes offshore are costly, and they're valued in vessel time. They're not valued in the equipment that we put on hire.
What we've been doing is as we move our, you know, as we widen the capability of Ashtead, specifically around Mechanical Solutions and Asset Integrity, we're building differentiation into the business that no one else has. In Mechanical Solutions, you know, the vast majority of our equipment is designed, engineered, and assembled in-house. We are the OEM, and on Asset Integrity, that's very much problem-solving. If you take all those together and again, you know, this doesn't happen on every single opportunity, but where there is an opportunity for Ashtead to partner with the customer to provide a suite of services, whether that's like decommissioning, ROV, which includes cutting gear, dredges, ROV tooling, survey equipment, backdeck power, lifting. There is no one else in the market that can provide that service to customers.
One of the key commercial benefits that we've got that we can deliver to our customers is our own people. You know, we don't want to scale this business through people. We're not a manpower business. If the case is that the customer takes a cutting package from us and say for 24-hour operations, that might mean eight people offshore, and they take a winch package from someone else, and that's eight people offshore. We don't need 16 people on the back deck of that vessel. We can do it with probably eight or 10. Instantly that is a saving that the customer is getting, cash-wise. The real saving is the integration of the offering. The problems offshore generally happen because of communication.
If the communication is between ourselves and the customer and no other third party is involved, room for error is reduced significantly.
Thank you.
Welcome.
No more in the room?
Any questions?
Yes, sir.
Online ones.
Yeah, we've got a couple. Yes, we've got two questions from online. The first one is from Chris Wheaton. Are there any signs of early inquiries about additional activity given the setup in oil and gas prices due to the war?
The easy answer is no. I think you know, it's a bit too early for that. You know, while the situation in the Middle East is unfortunate, I think it really does bring home the issue of energy security and that goes across both oil and gas and offshore wind. You know, the political situation in the U.K. clearly is biased towards wind. You know, if we look at regions which are you know, politically more stable, that have got a lower risk tolerance, the likes of South America, you could quite easily see in a matter of years, not days or weeks, that the current situation would stimulate more investment in regions like Guyana and Brazil.
You know, we see that for our business, offshore energy from both sources, across oil and gas and offshore wind, the market is buoyant. You know, our belief is it's gonna stimulate more investment going forward, which will ultimately be good for us.
Brilliant. Thank you. The next question is from Matthew from Anseras Capital Management. Can you outline your priorities for Ashtead Technology over the next quarter, and what do you see the opportunities ahead?
It's a good question. First of all, we don't run our business quarter by quarter. You know, we take a long-term view here. The CapEx that we spend is based on a return over, you know, 10, 15, 20 years if it's a winch. It's a continuation of doing what we're doing. You know, we're very focused on building out on the capability that we built or started in 2025. That is building out our Mechanical Solutions capability in Houston, which is gaining traction. The Norway operation that was started a couple of years ago, you know, we moved to a new facility at the back end of last year. That is really gaining traction. We're looking at other geographies and, you know, we're investing in CapEx.
We're continuing to build the team and we continue to look at M&A. It's a bit of a boring answer, but it's just a continuation of the same thing.
Brilliant. Thank you so much. That's all the questions. Hand back for final comments.
Great. Well, thanks everyone for the time today. Thanks for being part of the presentation, and we'll hopefully see you all again soon. Thank you.