Morning, everybody. It's quite interesting actually, the future of our industry, and especially the next five to 10 years, is all gonna be predicated on our ability to attract the best and the brightest. It's not about the demand, it's about the ability to actually supply and satisfy that demand, which is a nice place to be. It was quite interesting as I talked to apprentices and graduates and people within the company, what I talk about is engineering is really cool, and more specifically, what we do within Balfour Beatty is even cooler. This photograph really sums that up because what you're looking at here is actually one of the tunnels that will feed the cold water from the Bristol Channel and cool the reactor of the new Hinkley Power Point station.
If ever there's been a good picture to talk about cool industry, this is the one. Good morning. I'm Leo Quinn, Balfour Beatty's Chief Executive, and I'm gonna talk about the group's first half performance for 2022. If you look at the financials, it's a really strong performance for the first half. It doesn't matter what measure you look at, whether it be profit, the value of the investment portfolio, the order book, cash flow, whatever. However, the numbers are flattered by the fact that when you compare it with the first half of last year, we did have the long tail of COVID, so that didn't actually give us the best performance that we would've liked. I think even in light of that, this is a strong performance.
What you can't see in the numbers is really the fact that the underlying momentum in the business is extremely strong. I can take you to the takeaway on this slide, is that really gives us confidence in upgrading the full year. It's a really good position to be in. I'm also very pleased to say that we've repositioned the portfolio over the last two or three years, and it's a larger portfolio, but it's significantly de-risked, and that de-risking makes us more confident that we can actually deliver the returns within it.
The portfolio is underpinned by a set of capability which I'll present the slide in the next section, which shows a decade of infrastructure growth and all those things that you've seen in the video, how they come to bear in making us probably the preferred choice of supplier in that market. We've got a very attractive portfolio of investment assets, which does two things. One is it's actually a store of value, and coupled with that, it's also a good future growth pipeline that we've got. Anyway, put all that together, gives us an awful lot of confidence, so we've raised the dividend to 3.5p and a 17% increase. Why are we confident?
If you look at Construction Services, there's a number of things going on here which actually allows us to take ourselves back to the 2%-3% margin or average margins that we see in this sector. The first is that we've pivoted the business towards infrastructure, and that has two benefits. One is the market is very, very large, and it has a very sensible customer, and we have terms and conditions which are much more manageable. The second thing is that in the U.S., over the last three years, we've been looking very strongly at the federal market, and that moves us away from, in times of high interest rates, it moves us away from the developer market, so therefore it mitigates some of the risk.
Thirdly, we announced last time that we were suspending developer work in high-rise buildings in London. Again, that's given us another fill-up. We feel very confident about the 2%-3% industry average margins that we've talked about in the past. If I look at Support Services, again, we've transformed that business where we completed the framework in gas and water. Those have now largely been concluded and tied out. That leaves us with three businesses in terms of road, rail, and power. All three businesses are performing very well at this moment in time, and therefore, as a result, what we're talking about is moving to the upper end of expectations in terms of the 8%, and we're pretty confident about that for the full year.
Thirdly, if you look at our infrastructure portfolio, and what a superb asset to have actually in the books. Not only is the valuation of it increased by some GBP 200 million, and we can be confident about that. Exchange rate has helped, inflation has helped, but if you look at the divestment of Purdue and you look at the other assets we've got, they're all being sold at significantly above the Directors' Valuation. Again, another store of value and also a store of future growth. All businesses are sort of performing well at this time. Now, I always talk about the cash doesn't lie, and here's our cash flow performance.
Although it irritates Phil, my Finance Director, enormously that I should talk about cash because he feels it's his domain, if you look at how we've progressed over the last five-year period here, it is year-on-year consistent performance. That does come from operating profit, but it also comes from the management and the effective management of working capital. If I compare the first half of 2022 with the first half of 2021, we're up by some GBP 200 million, and that's despite the fact that we've done a share buyback of some GBP 180 million, and we've actually done a dividend as well. Put those two together.
The cash we've spent on buybacks and dividends is some GBP 227 million to date since the beginning of 2021, and there's also material cash expenditure in the second half of this year. Cash performance is strong. That gives me a lot of confidence in terms of underpinning future returns, and our capital allocation model. Phil, over to you and you can take them through the facts.
Thanks, Leo. Good morning, everyone. Let's start with the headline numbers. We have reported strong financial performance for the first half of 2022, with total underlying profit from operations of GBP 85 million, being 42% higher than the first half of 2021, with all businesses performing well. Profit from operations from the earning-based businesses was also GBP 85 million and up 42%, with U.K. construction returning to profitability and improved underlying margins at Support Services. Earnings per share at GBP 0.129 is significantly ahead of the GBP 0.077 delivered for the same period last year. Our total order book at GBP 17.7 billion has grown by 10% in the first half, or 4% excluding foreign exchange movements, with increases across all construction geographies.
While the directors' valuation increased to GBP 1.3 billion up from GBP 1.1 billion at year-end, of which nearly half was due to the weakening of the pound. Average net cash at GBP 811 million, and period-end net cash of GBP 742 million continues to underpin the group's competitive advantage and supports our long-term capital allocation framework. As a result of this strong performance, the board today is announcing an interim dividend per share of GBP 0.035 . Moving on to the business units, and let's start with Construction Services. Underlying profit of GBP 49 million reflected higher contributions from each of the three geographies. In the U.K., profit from the operations of GBP 18 million with an achieved margin of 1.5% represents a return to profitability compared to a loss in the first half of 2021. Profit at U.S.
Construction and Gammon were both slightly up, with margin percentages in line with the first half of 2021. In the second half of the year, we expect the profit margin in U.K. construction to improve as our remaining fixed price residential property projects in central London move towards completion, and the proportion of revenue earned from public sector infrastructure projects increases further. We currently forecast full year margin for U.K. Construction in the range of 2%-3%. Touching on the U.K. construction order book quickly, which has increased by GBP 200 million to GBP 5.8 billion in the first half of the year and has continued to de-risk. As you know, we are actively pursuing a shift away from fixed-price projects and now have a much higher proportion of target cost and cost-plus work in our U.K. order book.
Similarly, we're reducing our exposure to private developers, and at the half year, 92% of the U.K. construction order book was from public and regulated clients. This is aligned to Balfour Beatty's focus on selectively bidding for contracts where it holds expert capability and can achieve improved contracts terms. This has resulted in a higher quality order book with enhanced risk protection, providing more predictable outcomes. In comparison, in the U.S., our order book has grown 17% to GBP 6.3 billion. U.S. market is predominantly bid on a fixed-price basis, which we manage through early subcontractor buyouts, typically within 30 to 60 days. The supply chain is then covered by surety bond, mitigating the risk in the business. Moving on to Support Services.
As Leo said, the impact of repositioning the business to focus on power, road, and rail maintenance can be seen in the results delivered for the first half. Revenue declined by 28% in utilities following the group's strategic decision to exit gas and water and focus on the more profitable power and transportation markets. After adjusting for GBP 20 million of prior year one-offs reported in the first half of 2021, profit from operations increased by GBP 2 million despite the reduction in revenue. This represented a 7.2% profit margin in the top half of the targeted market margin range of 6%-8%. We have now upgraded our expectations for the full year, with margins forecast to be at the top end of this range.
Support Services is underpinned by long-term frameworks in power, road, and rail maintenance, giving us visibility and confidence that we can remain in the top half of our targeted range in the medium term. Turning to Infrastructure Investments. Pre-disposal operating profit increased by GBP 2 million to GBP 10 million as a result of increasing returns on projects as income has increased with inflation. We also realized a gain on disposal of GBP 7 million following the sale of a multifamily housing project in Houston in June with the transaction above Directors' Valuation. The business continues its disciplined approach to target a 2x return on its invested capital as we continue to see good market opportunities. During the period, the group invested GBP 17 million in new or existing projects, including a multifamily housing project in San Antonio.
The Directors' Valuation increased to GBP 1.3 billion in the first half. However, we would expect this number to reduce by year-end as the previously announced Purdue disposal completed last week. We anticipate at least one further disposal in the second half. We now expect full-year profit on disposals to be in the range of GBP 55 million-GBP 65 million. Looking briefly at our track record on investment, disposals, as I've just covered. With the disposals in Houston and at Purdue University, we now have two further investments sold above the Directors' Valuation. These disposals further demonstrate the strength of the secondary market for infrastructure assets and the value which our investment portfolio brings to the group. We'll continue to time disposals to ensure we maximize value for shareholders. Let me now talk you through the valuation. The 108...
GBP 90 million increase in the Directors' Valuation since year-end, the first four items here largely net out, so I'll focus on the three, the three blue columns, the final three blue columns. The valuation has benefited from a weaker pound in the first half. 57% of the portfolio's value was in North American investments at the start of the year, and the shift in exchange rates has driven a GBP 86 million increase. Furthermore, higher inflation than forecast has led to an increase in the value of some U.K. projects, totaling GBP 52 million, and I'll cover this in more detail in the next slide. Finally, there was an additional GBP 41 million increase, largely driven by the revaluation of various projects, including those disposed to debt, giving us a half year's Directors' Valuation of GBP 1.3 billion.
Let me cover inflation now, and the impact which we're seeing across the group. Starting with the investments portfolio, which is benefiting from the increase. In the U.K., most of the contracts are linked to RPI, and recent rises in inflation have resulted in a GBP 52 million increase in the Directors' Valuation. In the U.S., the portfolio is also positively correlated with inflation, but indirectly through the link to the rental market. You would expect income to increase over time. However, in the construction and infrastructure markets, we are seeing inflationary pressures in relation to both labor and materials. While the group is not immune to these pressures, we are currently mitigating these risks through contractual protection and early buyout using the group's scale and supply chain management.
As a result, we do not expect to see a material impact from inflation in 2022. Moving on to cash flow, which has once again been strong in the first half. Average month-end net cash of GBP 811 million was GBP 140 million higher than 2021, although the closing balance was GBP 48 million lower than year-end. As forecast in March, we've seen a working capital outflow in the period, while all other items have largely been in line with expectations. Our share buyback program started in mid-March, so will be second-half weighted, with GBP 47 million of our stated GBP 150 million target completed in the first half. Our consistent cash flow performance gives me confidence that our full-year average net cash will be in the range of GBP 740 million-GBP 780 million.
This includes a further working capital outflow in the second half, prior to a more material working capital outflow in 2023, as we move towards our long-term 11%-13% of revenue range. Turning to our multi-year capital allocation framework that we launched last year. We continue to see a wide range of opportunities to invest in organic growth, and Leo will touch on the scale of this in his section. I've just mentioned two great examples of us realizing value from the investments portfolio, and we'll continue to do this with a higher Directors' Valuation demonstrating the opportunities available. The balance sheet remains strong, and we have raised new U.S. private placement debt in the first half in anticipation of repaying debt falling due early next year. The refinancing has extended the debt maturity profile of the group.
These factors give us confidence to grow the dividends with GBP 0.035 per share recommended for half-year. Our 2022 GBP 150 million share buyback program is on track to complete in the second half. We expect this framework to be in place for a number of years to come and to give our shareholders confidence in the returns available. This is underpinned in the short term by our full-year guidance, which I'll recap now. We now expect U.K. Construction to deliver profit in the industry-standard margin target range of 2%-3% for 2022. This is an improvement on the first half. At U.S. Construction and Gammon, we remain in line with expectations for the full year.
We are upgrading our expectations for Support Services to the top of its range of 6%-8%, above the 7.2% achieved in the first half. In Investments, profit on disposal for the full year is expected to be in the range of GBP 55 million-GBP 65 million. Moving on to cash. We will complete the remaining GBP 103 million of the 2022 share buyback in the second half, and we now expect average cash at year-end to be in the range of GBP 740 million-GBP 780 million. That includes a further outflow in the second half on working capital. We are pleased with the financial performance to date, and to be able to upgrade expectations for the full year. On that note, I'll hand you back to Leo.
Thank you, Phil. Who's got the clicker?
It's on the.
There. Got it. Thank you, Phil. That was very instructive. The thing I would point out is that it's great to show and demonstrate a set of numbers, but what's really important is what's behind it and what differentiates us and what actually makes it repeatable because you know, one-off events are not bankable. This is really what makes it repeatable. We've got highly differentiated capability in the company built around our infrastructure assets. These are just some examples and they're really quite stellar. The top left is actually the Hong Kong Airport. It's the new terminal building we're building there. That roof is assembled on the ground and jacked into position. Again, nothing revolutionary about that, but it's safer.
The scale and the size of it is quite incredible, and the logistics to do it. If that wasn't impressive enough, the top right here is what's going on at Hinkley as we speak. The two cranes either side are the size of a football pitch just to get your eye into this. That little white concrete thing in the middle is 5,000 tons, and it's a tandem lift to the seabed, where that head will then be connected with the cooling tunnel that I showed you earlier in this industry of ours, which is cool. That will then form the mechanism for the water to flow into the reactor and to cool it. Just an absolutely major engineering feat to pull this off, and I think it's almost a world first.
Up in Boston, we're just completing the Green Line. We've opened the first section. I think the second section will open shortly. That's where we're connecting to an existing train line. We're building five kilometers or five miles of track with five new stations and refurbishing two existing stations. Again, a real challenging engineering project. Then the bottom right, High Speed 2. This is the first tunnel that's been completed on HS2, and what you see here is the tunneling machine breaking through. That tunnel's about a mile. It's under an ancient wood. Again, it was completed about two weeks ago. Again, really interesting stuff. Not only do we do this for a living, we actually get paid to do this for a living. How exciting can it get?
This is probably the most important slide in the pack for me. Really, what it's doing is now describing how that capability that I've shown you is going to demonstrate and create recurring value over what effectively is the next decade. If you look at HS2 just as an example, you can see that the revenues are starting to peak 2023, 2024, and then it'll be coming off. You can see that the HS2 track and OCS, that's effectively the track that the train will run on, and the cabling that will provide the electricity in terms of the catenary above. 2a is the extension to Crewe, and then 2b is up to Manchester. You can see that this revenue stream is gonna go on for a long, long time.
We sometimes don't make a lot about it, but we're doing all of the northern section around Birmingham, N1 and N2. Also we're doing the Old Oak Common down in Acton, and that actually for us is a fee-based contract. We get a fee on whatever we spend, and the risk and the cost flows through to the end customer. That in itself is really exciting. If you look at Hinkley, where we're doing the mechanical and electrical, we're doing the heads that you've seen, we've done the tunnel boring there as well. You can see that's going to peak about 2023 and then actually tail off to after about 2024. Coming on stream, you've got the likes of Sizewell.
Although Sizewell at this moment in time is talked about in terms of whether it will or won't go ahead, if you look at energy security, invariably Sizewell or something equivalent to it has to actually go ahead. Sizewell you can see is a sizable project where we'll have a major stake. You know, modular reactors will also come into play as well. Whichever offering it is, whether it's Rolls-Royce or Westinghouse or General Electric, doesn't really matter, but there's gonna be a market for that as well. If you then start to look at some of the new areas which effectively are supported by government, but they're not necessarily funded by government, this is your Net Zero Teesside, your Hydrogen Humberside, and they're gonna have a material play for us in the future.
You've got also your offshore wind. If I think about these as actually major fiscal expansion effectively funded by government, it's a very different game to playing with private development, and so there's a lot more security. The good news is provided you follow the right processes, you get paid, and the client actually has the money to pay you, which is not always the case in other markets. This actually this growth sits atop of what effectively is our core business. Our core business in the likes of rail, and I'll touch on this more later, is CP6, CP7, which is the maintenance. You've got your highways, whether it's your RIS or your smart motorways. We've got our CPS, which is our 25-year sorry, 40-year 25 maintenance.
You've got the power contracts, and then you've got our regional work, whether it's through our defense, whether it's through the SCAPE framework and the likes of that. All in all, you've got this growth opportunity here sitting really on top of what is our core business. This for us will designate a decade of infrastructure growth for Balfour Beatty and for the U.K. industry. Offshore wind is a really important area because not taking into account in what you see here is this next slide. The U.K. energy security and the Net Zero, the size of the opportunity is about GBP 20 billion.
That's actually making sure that our infrastructure onshore is effectively resilient enough in order to take what are all the new mixture of cocktails of power coming onto the grid. Whether it be wind from the eastern East Coast or the Irish Sea, all of that has to come onshore. It has to be connected, and then actually has to be to a robust and reliable infrastructure. If you look at our experience, you know, ElecLink is where we took an interconnector from France through the Channel Tunnel and connected it up to the U.K. grid. Littlebrook, we just recently upgraded and serviced the substation here, which serves 1.5 million customers.
Our work on Hinkley, Net Zero Teesside, and the idea of how we put substations in place to take offshore wind, all of those represent quite unique capability. This is all founded on top of what are our specialist engineering areas, whether it be design, ground engineering, mechanical, power transmission. This is a highly differentiated end-to-end solution, which makes us, I believe, quite invaluable to our customer base. Really encouraged by the future that I see spelled out for our industry, but in Balfour Beatty in particular. If I move to the United States for a few minutes and have a look here, first and foremost, it's a very interesting six months. The first three months was quite stark. There wasn't a lot going on.
In the second three months, it was almost like a tsunami of orders actually hit us. It was quite important because in the first quarter of the year, we stayed away from getting caught in a market where everybody was bidding to get volume. We held our nerve, and then the second quarter, the market came back and normalized. We've had a record first half in terms of bookings and what we call awarded but not contracted, so we know awards that we're going to receive. That gives us very, very good visibility in terms of 2023 and 2024, which is quite important. The second thing is we have two businesses in the United States or two business models. There's the building business, and then there's the civils business.
About 80% of our portfolio is buildings. The way buildings works is that we will effectively go out and look at a job with the supply chain. We will cost it up, and then we will add a 4% + fee to that job. When the job is awarded, it is immediately passed down to the supply chain that then contract it with their supply base. What this does is it means that the inflation risk is actually in the estimate, or it's contracted back into the supply chain. It doesn't sit with us. Then our fee of 4% + is virtually guaranteed. Now, when you take overhead of that means that your operating profit is around between 1%-2%.
It may not sound like a big profit, but effectively it's a mitigated risk profit because the risk lies with your supply chain or ultimately your own customer because our fee is guaranteed. That represents about 80% of the volume you see in the United States, and I'll touch on that volume in a second. The other area we've got, which is the remaining 20%, is our civils business. That's largely fixed price lump sum. It can be the area of some of the completion of the waterworks that we do in rail and also in roads. That's a higher risk model because it is a at-risk lump sum fee.
What we decide is how much of that we want in our portfolio at any one time, and we can moderate that up or down depending on the bids that we see. Where do we operate in the United States? We've said this 100 x before. We operate largely in the Southern Smile, which you can really see is the yellow on the graph. If I do a quick whistle-stop tour around the geography, that's what we're seeing. In the northwest, Washington, Oregon, Portland, around there, highly dominated by tech companies. What we've seen is a real softening of the tech market and the associated commercial office space with that. Not surprising given tech stocks are down, and they're starting to lay people off.
If I go to Southern California, really robust business in that we're the largest provider of schools. We've recently received five school awards, so a really strong business there that keeps turning out schools. Funnily enough, you know, some of the schools are over $100 million, which is astonishing in terms of value. In this area, on the civil side, we've got the Los Angeles Airport, where we're doing the people mover, and we've got the Caltrain. We're electrifying the train line from San Jose to San Francisco. Two very large contracts and going, you know, well at this moment in time.
Caltrain, as I said last time, we've renegotiated the fee from, I think it was about $600 million-$700 million to about $1 billion. In terms of Texas, what we're seeing in Texas is Texas is benefiting from really what is a population move. There's a lot of people and corporations moving to Texas. We haven't seen the downturn in the commercial market. What we've seen is very strong growth, both in commercial office space, hospitals, but also there's a number of banks moving to the area. We've actually got the largest pipeline we've seen in a long time at about $7.5 billion. Our challenge, I think, in Texas, is going to be how we actually manage the demand that's coming through in 2023 and 2024.
If I move to the Southeast, this is a $10 billion pipeline of opportunities, and this is largely hospitality entertainment. I think Disney recently announced with its theme parks sort of a record first half of the year. We're now seeing the projects that they mothballed during COVID now coming back out again. These were previously awarded to us, and they're looking to actually continue to for us to implement. What we see here is this market is coming back and coming back very strongly. The last area I touch on would be the Mid-Atlantic. The Mid-Atlantic has it does have the developer market, but we've been moving away and reducing our exposure in that area towards federal. We were hoping to get one federal project.
We ended up getting two major federal projects and over $1 billion of orders. The other thing I would say, that's in these numbers as well or in this picture is that, we've received our first instruction around military housing to actually do a demolition at Fort Carson of some of the old properties there, which are really beyond maintaining and repair. That's very encouraging in light of the history with the DOJ. We are seen to be a valued supplier going forward in the future. Hong Kong. Won't spend a lot of time in Hong Kong because there's really no change except this order book, flattered by exchange rate, is up by some 20%.
We see Hong Kong as being a very robust market going forward with good, reliable, consistent performance. Again, the growth is gonna be in the northern metropolis, where they're gonna be building out more cities. MTR, in terms of infrastructure, is a big customer of ours and somewhere we wanna stay very close to and play with. They've still got their hospital program. We're not a big player in that, although we're trying to participate. The one thing I would say is that there's a great emphasis, and it comes from the recent visit and the 25-year anniversary of Hong Kong, on young people and getting them to stay in Hong Kong and ensuring that they've got the right sort of housing and accommodation.
There's a big thrust here around attracting young people, particularly to do startups and keep the entrepreneurial spirit. Whether that'll be successful or not, I do not know, but this is going to continue to be a strong market for us. Let's move to Support Services, where we've announced sort of that we're gonna be performing at the upper end of expectations. If I look at rail, road, and power for a few seconds and if I add all this up, it's about GBP 1 billion of turnover. It's a material business for us. If I look at the opportunity, you know, if we double that business in terms of percent of market share increase in this opportunity, it wouldn't even be negligible. There's plenty of growth to be had in this area.
The challenge is to get the people to actually to capitalize on the growth. Again, we're not constrained in this market by opportunity. We're constrained by capability. If I look at the rail business, really exciting. We're performing very well on CP6 and CP7. Challenging, demanding, but we're actually doing a very, very good job. We are bidding other areas which potentially in 2024 could see that business double. Now, that awards, that depends on awards, but if we were to get another award of another area, it would double our market share. In the meantime, what we're doing is we're looking to drive the business for productivity improvement because if you can't get more people, you've got to become more productive. You've got to use modular manufacturing. You've got to use digitization.
That's where we're driving, and we're looking to see increased productivity in this area. In terms of road maintenance, there's a number of local authorities will be coming out with their road maintenance to tender. This is usually a five-year contract. We've bid three or four. We've been successful on one. In the case of Berkshire, sorry, Buckinghamshire, it's worth GBP 176 million, which will actually show approximately 5% growth next year as that pro-contract comes online. So again, big market here, a lot of opportunity. Also within road maintenance, we have our CPS contract, which is the maintenance of the M25. You can't actually change the revenue on that. What we're doing is we're driving productivity.
In the next timeframe, what we're gonna see is productivity improvements from the CPS contract and then growth in the 2023 and beyond in the council road maintenance. In the area of power, I think I've described the offshore and the wind power, the resilience and how robust our network is. This is a highly differentiated offering of ours. We've got tremendous capability. The challenge is it takes five years to bring people up to speed in this area. This is all about how do we drive productivity in order to satisfy the increasing demand. Again, I think it's you can comfortably see why we're talking about the upper end of margin expectations.
We're often asked the question about our infrastructure investment pipeline as to is it actually simply a store of value as in a battery, or is it actually something that can be supercharged in order to drive growth? Well, fundamentally, it's both. If you look at the divestment track record, as Phil's described very ably, we've done extremely well in terms of the divestments themselves, but also exceeding the book value that we have. I don't see that abating. In terms of the other question, in terms of is it a growth engine, well, if you look at the U.K., very, very quickly, there hasn't been an effective P3 or PPP market in the U.K. for 10+ years. In effect, our only real growth is around student accommodation.
We've got 3,500 rooms tied up between the Royal Holloway and the University of Sussex. They're good projects, and there are other ones in the pipeline, but again, it's not really a dramatic growth market for us. However, last time I presented, I talked about P3 in the United States. Although it's early at this moment in time, if you just look at all the clutter that's up here, there's an awful lot of things going on and an awful lot of people exploring the opportunity. Interestingly enough, we're starting to gauge. I talked about schools last time, Prince George's County in Washington, D.C., Virginia. Actually, Maryland. You're seeing also bridges and roads now coming into play.
With some of our customers, we've been able to sort of combine offerings to say, "Why don't you put your road and your rail bridge together and start to create some real value? So rather than building two separate structures, you can do it on one." We're looking at a lot of civic hall, civic offices and the like. Student housing is still a big deal. Fundamentally, I see this as a, you know, over the next three to five years, as a considerable amount of growth will actually come through this channel, and that will then underpin our U.S. construction business. I'm very optimistic about the strong pipeline, and it will emerge over time.
In terms of, for us, building new futures, you know, really important that we buy into this, not only because, you know, the government says so, but this is sort of the right thing to do. The way I think about it and characterize it's a little bit like safety. We've already laid out our ambitions for 2040, zero carbon, zero waste, sort of beyond zero carbon, zero waste, and positively impacting 1 million people. We've laid out our science-based targets for 2030, and we've also prepared and are in the process of preparing for submission the waterfalls as to how you're gonna do that step by step. That'll be really important.
The real thing that I want people to take away here is I talk about, you know, we run a safe company because we design for safety. So we think about it at the front end as we're doing design. The sustainability, decarbonizing, whatever, is actually the same context. You've got to do it by design. You can't retrofit it. So for example, we have dedicated carbon and energy teams. I think we're the one of the few companies in our sector that actually has that. So you hear about the greenwashing. We've really got people whose full-time job is to get this right. And if we actually design for sustainability, it impacts such thing as water in terms of how do we recycle it and use the minimum amount.
On that tunnel that you saw built at the beginning, that actually uses high-pressure water to cut out the earth, and that is actually recycled, and we reuse 70% of that. In the case of mass haul, if you've got your design early, you cut the material once, and you place it where it will rest for the rest of its life. We don't believe in double-touching materials. If we get all these things right in the same kind of way we get safety right, we'll end up with a business that actually is at the forefront of decarbonization and achieving our science-based targets will be, I think, fairly comfortable. Very important and a big differentiator for us.
Fundamentally, in summary and the outlook, Phil's given you every single possible combination of numbers so that even the less numerate of us can actually work out how bright the future looks. Fundamentally, the first half performance gives us confidence in the full year, and that actually underpins our upgrade. Our unique capability, which I've emphasized all the way through this, talks to what is a decade of infrastructure growth. I mean, we really couldn't be in a better position than we are in today. In the short term, the way we've moved our order book in terms of the example of federal infrastructure, how those contracts in terms of conditions are put together leave us with a much more de-risked position than we've ever had in the last six or seven years.
Our investment portfolio, you know, up GBP 200 million. Yes, it's flattened by exchange rate and inflation, but what an asset to actually have, almost equal to the market capitalization if it wasn't for the sharp rise in the share price this morning. As Phil's talked about ad nauseam, our capital allocation model gives us confidence that we're going to continue to give future returns back to shareholders underpinned by the cash flow, which I showed you. Net-net, good set of results, optimistic about the future, and our positioning in infrastructure, I think, gives us real confidence that this is gonna continue for the next few years. Thank you.
Leo, we're gonna start the Q&A in the room, and then we'll go to the phones.
Good. Mic on. Stand up.
Thank you very much. This is Pam Liu from Morgan Stanley. I have one question, but it's quite a big one. It's on infrastructure investment portfolio. First of all, on divestment. If I think about what are remaining to divest, is it fair to say that out of the sort of remaining portfolio, the operating or operational assets are mostly U.S. military housing and U.K. PFI? If that's the case, then U.K. military housing, I think in this sector in general, there has been very limited secondary transaction in terms of the equity stake.
In U.K. PFI, I assume the reason you haven't sold them is probably because you have an operating interest and therefore you're probably not likely to sell them. That will leave it to some sort of assets still under construction, which are probably related to U.S. housing or student housing, which again, may not be right for the investment. The first bit of this question is what can you sell in the next three years? Will you have a void of not having sufficient assets to sell at attractive timing? The second bit of question with that is obviously, we are in the environment with rising interest rate, so how do you see that affecting investors' appetite, their cost of funding, and therefore the price they're willing to pay?
On the investment side, so it's really great, by the way, to see the pipeline being put on the chart, so thank you very much for that. I'm interested in the return profile. Can you give us a bit of guidance on how attractive are these P3 investments, and who are you competing with? Thank you.
Wow. I thought you were gonna ask why Phil wasn't wearing a tie. The story behind that is we've only got one tie, and he wore it last time. I'm wearing it this time. Where do we start? I'm gonna give some general points, and Phil will sort of fill in with some facts. It's a really interesting question you ask, what is available for sale. As I look at the portfolio, and we talk about it day to day, I think the number of assets in the portfolio available today as asset items are at their highest level in terms of the fact that they're coming to maturity. I'll give you one example. I won't give the specifics of it, but we recently had an asset which was underperforming for the last three years.
We recently enacted upon cutting out 7 km of cable under the ocean and replacing that cable with a new cable. That asset is now operating at 100% of its capacity, where it was operating at sort of sub-50%. The reason I make this point is at sub-50%, we weren't going to sell it. Having paid for the upgrade, and we will hopefully be refunded for that payment through the regulator, that asset is now available for sale. You know, sometimes there are operational issues around them which we then endeavor to improve.
I'm not sure exactly what the question is, but I would just say that we have more choice today in terms of the number of assets that we can sell than we have had for the last three or four years, which is good news. That comes back to ensuring that the performance is at a level where we can actually ensure the return. Do you wanna say anything on that or?
Look, we typically in our forecasting and budgeting, we look at a three-year plan. We look at that in terms of what we think is, we're gonna get to maximize our value on divestments, there. We are going to continue over the next three years, divesting at the right time for those assets. I don't see us having a void period. We may have a smaller period at a given time, but I can't see us having a year where we aren't disposing of an asset. I think we've got. If I look at Purdue, which we've been successful on, we got that asset in 2018. We're turning it now, you know, three, four years later.
I see quite a few of those assets that will come up in that timeframe as we go forward in the next two to three years. I can see some U.K. assets that we will sell. Don't just think it's gonna be U.S. assets. We think there's some U.K. assets that will go to market as well.
Just in terms of the military housing asset, there have been transactions which have happened a different way. There hasn't been outright sales of the whole portfolio. Some of them have monetized part of the revenue stream. I can't remember the exact details, but it was something like 25 x the earning value or whatever. You can look it up, and you probably know better than I do. I do think those assets are extremely attractive where they've got 30-40 years cash flow, and the market is at this moment in time paying a premium for such cash flows in our experience. You asked about interest rates.
There's no doubt that interest rates are having an impact on the market, especially if you're looking at some sort of private development. You know, cap rates are at an all-time beneficial level, and so therefore they're looking to derive better valuations than we had anticipated in our model. With cap rates where they are at the moment, we're looking to be a divestor rather than necessarily a buyer. These things change over time as well. It is more difficult to get financing around projects, there's no doubt, and even when we go to the banks, they're looking for more onerous terms. The fact is the money is still out there. It's just a little bit more challenging to get. I don't know if you'd like to say anything on interest rates at all.
No, I think you've covered that. I think on the return profile, what I would say is that, look, we take a very disciplined approach. We're looking at 2x return. That's our goal. That's typically equates to, you know, a 15% IRR kind of hurdle rate for us. So there, you know, as we look forward, we are seeing attractive things in that space. But we're disciplined. We're not. We're, you know, we are, and the investment team has been very good at selecting and keeping with that discipline. We've benefited from it, as you can see, in terms of our divestments. Actually, we're still sitting at GBP 1.3 billion of value there even after all of these divestments.
One of the two things we're looking at is a little bit more of an innovative approach in terms of some of the things we're investing in. The full year we'll announce some of these things. We are just about to launch a GBP 10 million investment fund around startups and innovative technologies, which is sort of a departure from our more traditional PPP assets. I think when you see what we're talking about, you'll find it quite innovative.
Sorry, just one quick thing. On P3, who are you competing with for this?
P3s, you'll find other contractors. Let's call them Europeans. That's probably the way I'd have them. A combination of some infrastructure funds teaming up with contractors is what you typically see. That's the kind of people we've seen in the market. You've gotta be careful that's in the P3 space, then when you move into student accommodation, a different set of competitors in that market. We do vary in terms of the competitors we see. Yes. Sometimes those competitors are people who actually buy our assets as well. Yeah.
Thanks. I've got the mic, so, I'll carry on with that second one.
Oh, all right.
Jonny Coubrough at Numis. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, on support services, I mean, you've spoken previously about how the improved margins are being driven by exiting the gas and water markets. Keen to also hear if you're seeing improved contract terms, or improving contracts as a result of demand, particularly within power and rail. Also you spoke a few times, Leo, about the challenge around human resources. Could you give us an update on where you are with salary reviews and within support services, what the impact to the margin would be there and ability to pass that through? The final question is around the multi-year capital returns. You referenced there, Leo, the share price and the share price today.
Just keen to hear what your appetite is in future years to continue with buybacks versus special dividends? Thanks very much.
Great. I'll let Phil do the last one. I'll do the first two. First and foremost, if you sit down and you read the contracts carefully, you would never sign up to the gas and the water terms and conditions, especially when you look at the tail that comes with them, which could run for several years after you actually finish the work. Just on a relative comparative basis, we're in a far better position around the contract T's and C's. The other thing is that, you know, the contract T's and C's need to be managed, but sometimes it's not the terms and conditions, it's actually the technical specification that you sign up for and how difficult that can actually be to achieve.
We in our GTIC process have now gone back and we can't change the contracts, but as each order would effectively come out and you would be tendering for it within the framework, we're very careful to look at what's the technical scope that we're taking on so that we don't expose ourselves to risks that we can't actually manage. Fundamentally, the terms that we've negotiated in the new frameworks, we've pushed back on certain items that we're not prepared to accept. That's in the master framework. But then on each job, we've pushed back in terms of the technical scope. I think we're in a far better position, which allows us to make the returns. When we get those technical specifications wrong, we delivered one job recently, a large job in London.
In the power business, we actually lost money. The point being is being aware of that, learning from it so it doesn't repeat itself is really, really important. That loss was last year, by the way, no need to worry about that. Rail business, again, you know, the terms and conditions are well understood. I don't see big risks there provided you perform in line with the contract. In terms of salary review, this year, our salary review was in January. We went out with 3.5%. We had four in year changes, another 1%. That's where we are. You know, we all realize just how difficult it is for people with the rising energy costs and all of these sorts of things.
We're sort of remaining constantly vigilant about it and see what's required. If you go back to COVID, if you look at how we responded in COVID, I don't regard energy as the same crisis as COVID, the fact is, we're a responsible employer and we wanna make sure that we look after our people. In terms of, we do have some unions. We have quite a lot of unions as part of our business. We're looking at discussions around 4%, maybe as high as 5% in some of those direct labor areas. We're very much in line with what National Rail will be doing and our other end customers. We're not stepping out and saying we're something different.
It's all part of a negotiated agreement. We'll follow what government and the major customers actually supply, 'cause ultimately they pay for it. It does flow through back to them. Here we are. In terms of the Yep, I'll take them capital allocation.
Look, we've always said we'd use the most appropriate method to return surplus to shareholders. At some point, if that's not share buyback, then it'll be something else. We'll get to that when we think the share price is not as attractive to buy back on. I don't think that's as yet.
We have enjoyed a particularly low period for the last six months, so we've been trying to buy back as many as we possibly could. Yeah, that's. We'll keep that under constant review.
Coming.
Good morning. Joe Brent, look, we're always going to have some fixed price work in our portfolio. The important thing is that we are set up to handle that. Clearly, the fact we've done it historically in the U.S. Civils business means it's an area we can manage. You know, we do get surprises on the upside, and we get disappointments on the downside. In balance, it's a business worth staying in, and we have that capability. In terms of rail, if we think of London Underground, which is not Network Rail, but I think it's back up at about 75%-80% of where it was. Weekends are 100% recovered.
You know, if they do cut back on it, you know, I don't think I'm gonna be too concerned because you can't not maintain the network, and your CPS is about the maintenance. If you cut back, you'll cut back on capital programs. One thing I forgot to say on my slide was by having that capability footprint in rail, we are very well-positioned, and we've bid for the work on HS2, the track slab and the catenary. That's over and above anything that we're actually looking at in our services business. The same people that do the work on the maintenance side, we would then move to the capital side. I don't really see there's a risk in that at this time.
I might live to regret my words, but I'm pretty confident that it's underpinned. Then Phil.
The working capital one in total on the negative, that's exchange rate. Let's push that up. The table we show on the working cap is pre-exchange rate.
Okay. I think we're gonna go to Gregor on the phone.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. Gregor, please go ahead.
Hi. I hope you can hear me. If not, please shout. The first question's on Support Services. I wanna clarify some of your comments. I think you said you thought there was an opportunity to double, I think, the size of the overall business if I'm not mistaken. I guess I wanna understand. I appreciate that's more an ambition than perhaps you know a guidance, but what you think you can realistically do, say, growth-wise over the next few years, considering you know the constraints that you're facing?
Yeah, look, first and foremost, we're not doubling the business. That was really to point out the market is so large that if we actually did double the business, we wouldn't necessarily be having a big impact on market share. If you look at the business, these things were always one or naught. If you look at the rail in particular, we currently under CP6, CP7 run one of the regions. If we were to run another region, you would see that business potentially double in volume. There is that potential, but it's always gonna be one or naught. In the roads area, we said we'd grow that by 5% next year, and I could see another 5%-10% in the years going ahead. We have a very capable group.
In the power area, it's really around how do we drive more productivity? I would look at that and think we should be thinking about how do we get 5%-10% growth there? You know, we're not restricted in any circumstance by the market. It's really around keeping the people we've got and how do we drive up more productivity through digitization and modular manufacturing and better work practices. If you wanted to put a number in there, you know, if you put single-digit growth for 2023, I think that would be a sensible range. If you look at that at the upper end of the target margin range, I think you're there or thereabouts in the right place. Now, Phil might contradict me.
Okay.
'Cause he's always less optimistic than me.
I don't hear a contradiction, so I'm guessing he doesn't. I guess from that comment you're suggesting.
No, I know Gregor.
From that comment, I guess what you're suggesting is that the 8% is sort of sustainable. I guess what I'm asking is if there's anything sort of non-underlying in there that's flattering the results this year or you think that can be sustained sort of going forward?
No, no. Far from it. I don't think there's any one-off underlying things in it. I think we are looking at sustained upper end of that margin expectation.
Okay. Thank you. The second question is on your slide 24, which is the pipeline. What's interesting is that on the sort of PPP, some of your peers, you know, actually exited that market, and some of the European peers, in fact, because, you know, those are essentially fixed price contracts on the contracting side. While you make good return on the, you know, on the equity, on the investment side, you lose or you have the quite a high risk on the contracting side. I wanna understand what you see differently there.
I know that, you know, your U.S. business isn't really that P3 focused yet. I wanna understand your risk appetite, I guess, to grow there and how you manage that considering your comments on the sort of fixed price, you know, contract appetite that you've got at the group level.
Gregor, just to clarify, you were dialed into the Balfour Beatty conference, were you? What I don't recognize is sort of the exit and the fixed price, and I can't remember the context in which I made that comment. What this slide is the Infrastructure Investments pipeline slide is really pointing out is that in the U.K., there's very little. There's no PPP in effect. There hasn't been a vehicle for doing that for a decade plus. Therefore, there's really no growth on that side of the portfolio. In the U.S., what we're seeing is a large appetite for people to find alternative ways to fund their needs, whether it be municipal buildings, road, rail, bridge contracts. The market is starting to grow and become very vibrant.
Not all of these things will ultimately come to fruition, but as we look at where we're gonna put our dollars, we're gonna put it all into the U.S., or that's gonna be our primary focus for growing the investment part of the portfolio. Did that answer the question, or did I miss something?
Well, I was referring specifically, for instance, you know, Skanska, I think a few years ago, exited that market because.
Okay.
They lost so much money on, you know.
Yeah, Gregor.
On the contracting side. You know, you know, that's kind of the question. Yeah.
I think we have no appetite for toll roads in the U.S. and the P3. I think Skanska was involved in those, you know, I don't want to say any more than that, but we've never played in that area.
Right.
'Cause we didn't think we could make money from a contractor point of view. When we look at, you know, the forward pipeline, it's clearly we look at the end to end. What we can achieve on the contractor side and what we can achieve from an equity investment. Clearly, we have to think about that risk to the contractor. We balance that all up, and that will be part of our selection criteria of which of these we'll do and which we won't touch to be fair. Does that help?
That's clear. Thank you. Yeah. That helps. Thank you.
Just one final.
Finally, I think there's a triennial valuation ongoing, and this year, I think you're on course to put in GBP 50 million or so into the pension. I wanna sort of get a sense of what you think the claim from the pension will be in the next two years in that context, please.
Well, we're in the midst of the triennial. We've not seen any numbers from the actuary or the trustees yet, so it's a bit early to say that. We're hoping by the year end or as early as we get to March next year to have concluded on that, and we'll be able to give some greater clarity to people. At this point, we're still in process, so it's a bit difficult to comment on that.
Okay. Brilliant. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Andrew Nussey from Peel Hunt. Andrew, please go ahead.
Hello. Yeah. Good morning. Couple of questions from me. First of all, following on from Gregor's question on Support Services margins of sort of 6%-8%, can you just give us a little feel for how business mix might influence that moving forward, given the comments you made in terms of potential revenue opportunities? Secondly, on the U.K. construction margin guidance of the 2%-3%, which Leo, I think you class as industry standard. When you look forward now, given your order book mix, opportunities for efficiencies, scale advantage, should we be beginning to think about you beginning to build on that margin ambition? Thirdly, if I could as well, just in terms of inflation, you'd obviously highlighted it being manageable.
I'm just curious what clients are now sort of thinking in terms of their projects and how they're managing cost inflation. Are you seeing your continued hesitancy in terms of contract award, or is that beginning to sort of normalize? Thank you.
Okay. Right. Let me just have a think. If I think about mix, it's a difficult one when you start to look at 2023, 2024, only because some of these things are very binary. They're one or naught. I would see, you know, low single-digit growth, you know, for the roads business, as these contracts come out for tender. Rail will, in the short term, drive for improved margins with no growth. If the other regions come into play, you know, it could lead to a doubling of the business by 2024, 2025. It's very difficult to forecast because you don't quite know what you're gonna win.
Power, I think, is gonna be a consistent, steady performer, both in terms of, you know, a slight tick up on its top line, which will come through ultimately productivity growth, which will hopefully see an improvement on the bottom line. I don't know if that helps. It's very difficult to be more clear except to say, you know, I'm it's a great business to own and hold, so I'm optimistic about the outlook. Does that help?
I guess my question was sort of aimed more at sort of the relative margins between those three segments. I've always sort of thought the power business as being a higher margin activity than road and rail. I just really kinda wanted to get a bit of comfort around that.
Yeah. Well, you do it. You're better at numbers, or supposed to be better at numbers than me.
So you're right, Andrew, in that if we have a higher proportion of power, i.e., if some of the opportunities come to fruition for us, then that mix would probably drive margins, 'cause we have a better margin in power. Yeah.
It's interesting. This is totally counterintuitive, but I think it was four years ago, if not three years ago, we consistently lost money in power for three years in a row. I mean, when you think of the barriers to entry in that business, it was just ridiculous.
We sorted that out and, you know, our margins are now starting to improve. There's actually not a lot of differentiation between the three areas now. Power should be by far and away double what it is today, but it's a very challenging customer base 'cause it's effectively you're selling it to an oligopoly. There are only, like, three customers, and those are the big network holders, and they're very commercially astute and very tough to deal with. I think that's answered that question. Your second one around the 2%-3%, and basically, are you gonna do better? You know, I read a book a long time ago, and it said to me, the first thing is first, achieve what you set out and then second, look to exceed.
Let's sort of get the 2%-3% nailed down and have a consistent level of performance. Then hopefully, we can surprise you with something better. The mix of business-
Okay
that I've pointed out in terms of the decade of infrastructure growth should be favorable in the long term to margins. Inflation. On inflation, customers. No, no. The fact is that inflation is causing price, new business prices to, or costs to rise, and that is causing people to reassess whether or not they can get the return on those projects. You used the word hesitancy and delay. I think that is creeping into the market. However, our exposure to that element is less material than others because the projects we're concentrating on really rely on, you know, you can't afford not to do them. If you think about Sizewell and you think of the others, it's not a question of if, it's just a question of when.
A lot of that critical national infrastructure, the upgrading and the robustness of the onshore network and the resilience of it, you can't delay that forever. In that area, I'm not concerned about delay. Obviously, developer-type work in the U.S. and a little bit here in the U.K., you could see some delays as interest rates rise. You know, given that it's on the supply side that's driving the inflation, I could see a path where that actually abates and all of a sudden things in the next two to three years start to normalize back to where they were. It really depends on how the next government manages that.
Got it. Great. Thank you very much.
You're welcome. Is that it? Great. Well then, that concludes the first half results. Thank you, very much for attending and appreciate all of your questions. We'll see if we can organize for Phil to have a tie next time. Thank you.