Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the C&C Group FY25 annual results presentation for the year ended 28th of February 2025. A particular welcome to those of you who are here in person. Welcome to our London offices, which are relatively newly opened, and we're delighted to be with you today. In my case, for the first time, as CEO of the C&C Group, I'm pleased to be joined by Andrew Andrea, our CFO, for this meeting. I started my role at the very end of January this year, so I'm now approaching the end of my fourth month or my 90th working day today. I'm really just a relative novice, in particular in comparison to Andrew, who is a veteran, having been in his role at C&C for just over 12 months.
It's been an interesting, exciting first four months for me, and I hope we can give you a decent update today regarding the performance of the group over the last financial year and also an early insight into some of the immediate plans for the group across FY26. Today, I'm going to specifically cover some of the highlights for the past year, along with some initial observations on my first few weeks in the business. Andrew will, of course, give you a detailed review of the financial performance from FY25, and then I will pick up some of the business performance highlights from last year before providing a bit of a summary outlook, and then we'll move to some Q&A. Now, firstly, picking up on slide three in your pack, we've delivered a solid performance across FY25, following on from a well-documented period of instability and challenges for the group.
I believe we now have a much more solid platform to build from. We've recovered earnings performance across the year, delivering operating profit of EUR 77.1 million, a significant increase on the prior year. This has been delivered on the back of modest revenue growth, the return to customer growth, particularly in our distribution business, which was previously losing significant customers due to poor service levels. The team have worked incredibly hard in the last year to stabilize the business and provide customers with a compelling level of service, value, and choice, especially across our distribution business. We've maintained strong free cash flow, which has allowed us to support both our progressive dividend policy and our previously disclosed capital return plan.
With a more stable platform alongside a reinvigorated management team and a plan to further improve the business basics, we believe there is real potential to create value for shareholders over the short, medium, and longer term with C&C. Now, turning to slide four. As I've just said, it's only been a short time of just under four months for me in the business. In that period, I've spent as much time as possible with the C&C team, with our customers, our partners, trying to get around as much of the business as I can. I still have a great deal to learn about the business, the industry, consumers, and customers, but what I can say with some degree of certainty is that this is a great business with real potential, staffed by some terrific people. The brand portfolio is of high quality with significant development and growth potential.
Many of these brands have been neglected, not simply from an investment perspective, but they've also been neglected from a development perspective. Innovation has been somewhat absent and insight somewhat lacking. We can and will fix that and have kicked off the building blocks to deliver this, but it will, as you will all understand, take some time to build momentum. Matthew Clark Bibendum is a powerful platform with unrivaled geographic reach, range, and category insight. This has been obscured by the internal challenges experienced in recent years, leading to customer volume losses in the past. I have spent some time in my first few months trying to get under the skin of this side of the business, and I am pleased to report that our service levels, whilst far from perfect, are much more at an industry-leading stable level, built on improved assets, systems, and processes.
However, once again, it will take time to rebuild full customer confidence, but we are on our way on that journey. Many of the historic issues experienced by C&C have been self-inflicted. Complex operating models, poor systems, and a lack of execution focus have dogged the business. We are determined to bring simplicity and executional focus to the business. In support of this, we have launched our Simply Better Growth program, led by Andrew, which will support our long-term growth plans in volume and margin. It is early days for me at C&C. Andrew and the team have definitely worked hard over the past 12 months to stabilize the business and bring an improved level of control, which has afforded us the opportunity to begin the next phase, which will focus on how we grow and develop the business.
I would now like to hand over to Andrew to take you through the detailed financial review for the last 12 months.
Thanks, Roger. Good morning, everyone. Lovely to be presenting to you face to face. Looking at the financial performance and starting on slide six with the headline financials, as Roger's mentioned, group revenues are in line year on year. I'll expand on that in a moment. Importantly, the quality of earnings underpinning that revenue has improved through exiting low-margin business and driving efficiency through the organization. As a consequence, operating margins have increased by one percentage point with growth in both our branded and distribution segments. That margin improvement has flowed straight through to the earnings line. Operating profit of EUR 77 million is up around 30%, and underlying PBT and EPS up 44%. With regards to cash, the business continues to be strongly cash generative. Although slightly behind last year, we generated free cash flow of around EUR 70 million in the period.
Importantly, leverage, and just to remind you, our focus is on net debt to EBITDA on a pre-IFRS 16 basis and a borrowings to EBITDA basis. That remains below one times in the period. Strong earnings recovery and continued strong cash generation. Turning to revenues on slide seven, the two material drivers in our revenue in the year are an upside driven by good account progress in Matthew Clark Distribution, as Roger's just described. Offsetting that, we've seen some adverse mix, most notably adverse product mix, reflecting lower wines and spirits sales, which reflects the market trends we've seen in the last year or so. In addition, as we highlighted at the interim results, we've exited low-margin business, most notably the Irish soft drinks business, and exiting some low-margin contract brewing activity.
Turning now to costs on slide eight, for FY25, costs came through as expected, I think overall a period of modest inflation. Looking forward to FY26, I think I would describe it again as a year of modest inflation. On commodities, it's a bit of a mixed bag, a couple of downs and a couple of ups. On distribution, fuel costs are broadly neutral, but we're seeing higher vehicle costs and other associated distribution costs. Labor costs are increasing as for all U.K. businesses as a consequence of the increase in employer NI and indirectly the impact of the increase in the national minimum wage. Importantly, the two key things to note on costs, one, this is all in line with our expectations and guidance. Secondly, from a commodity perspective, we've fixed in the majority of our commodity costs for the year.
We're not exposed to any volatility that may arise from the quite daily tariff narrative we seem to see. Who knows what Trump's going to do next, but we're not exposed to that. Turning to cash flow on slide nine, as I said, we continue to be a strong cash generator. The moving parts on our cash flow, we've seen a slight improvement in working capital. That's despite a couple of one-off adverse impacts. We've acquired significant uptick in a national on-trade customer, and also the switch of Irish and Great Britain operations between ourselves and Bibendum have caused us an adverse working capital outflow in the year. Those two items will unwind going forwards. CapEx is just shy of EUR 20 million. The majority of that was investment in our supply chain. We'd expect FY26 CapEx to be a similar level.
About two-thirds of that will be supply chain and about a third systems investment as we strive to improve controls within the organization. From a tax and finance perspective, our tax and finance cash outflows are consistent and stable. That enables us to have confidence in driving a cash flow of around EUR 70 million. It is just worth noting that in the year, we incurred EUR 25 million in exceptional cash outflows, details of which are given in the appendix. Moving on to net debt on slide ten, our borrowings have increased in the year, principally reflecting those exceptional items that I have just referred to. Our lease obligations have increased, principally due to renewing leases on some depots in the network. I referred 16 to the non-initiated amongst you. We have a lease with one year left.
We now have to reflect the fact that many of those leases are 15-year renewals. So we're reflecting the full lease obligation over the term of that lease. For clarity, our financial obligation on an annual basis, i.e., the rent, remains unchanged. We've just renewed the leases. As I mentioned earlier, our focus on leverage remains absolutely robust with our leverage pre-IFRS 16 at just below one times in the period. With regards to our debt structure, the construct of the debt remains the same. We have a combination of RCF, term loan, and private placement. What we have taken advantage of this year is the option to extend our bank facility by one further year to January 2030. In addition to that, you will note from the RCF, we've drawn down EUR 25 million of the EUR 250 million facility.
The two key things to take away from that are, one, we have no short-term refinancing requirements, which in the current environment would be quite challenging. Secondly, if we need to, we have got access to significant financial firepower in our balance sheet. Wrapping all of that up on slide 11, ultimately, financially, why are we here? We are here to generate and drive cash. Our cash growth will principally come from the growth in EBITDA through the next few years as we aspire to our EUR 100 million operating profit target. In addition to that, of note, as we simplify the business, we see working capital opportunity. We believe we can take SKUs out without impacting customer service. This is a business that requires modest maintenance CapEx. I am saying EUR 19 million next year. We will work and operate in a EUR 15 million-20 million underlying maintenance CapEx cycle.
As I mentioned earlier, we've got very stable finance and taxation cash costs in our business model. What this means, therefore, is that this business, out with working capital, has very predictable and reliable cash flow generation. In growing that EBITDA on the right-hand side, we have a medium-term free cash flow target of at least EUR 75 million free cash flow year in, year out. That gives us capital allocation optionality. Our current priority is to return EUR 150 million to shareholders by the end of FY2027. That will take the form of a progressive-based dividend. We've announced a 4% increase in our final dividends. Last year's dividends overall were just shy of 5% growth. That will be supplemented by either share buybacks or special dividends. Clearly, our execution preference at the moment is the former.
Last year, we returned EUR 30 million, and we've just embarked on the latest EUR 15 million tranche, which commenced on the 1st of May. Whilst it's not a priority for us, generating this level of cash gives us options to invest in strategic growth capital should the opportunities arise. Just to be clear, both myself and Roger have operated in a very disciplined capital allocation and CapEx environment in both of our previous businesses to make sure that we will only spend if we can get the requisite returns. Underpinning that is a leverage strategy of one-time step to EBITDA. We're maintaining that discipline regardless for the medium to longer term. What is clear is we have a business with predictable cash flow. We have a plan to grow that cash flow, which gives us optionality to allocate capital as we see fit.
That's everything for me. Back to you, Roger.
Thank you very much, Andrew. Now, I'd like to just take a few minutes to update a little bit about operating review of last year and a little bit of a look forward. Turning to slide 13 in your packs. Let me just reiterate the already well-established medium-term financial objectives of delivering, as Andrew said, EUR 100 million of operating profit, EUR 75 million of free cash flow, supporting EUR 150 million return to shareholders by FY 2027 with a target leverage of one times. These financial targets will be delivered at the same time as we build a business capable of sustaining real-term value growth for shareholders over the long term. This will require both investment and business improvement across the board. Our strategy will be refined in coming months, and I would expect to provide a further detailed update before the end of the current financial year.
Our clear focus for the moment is very much on improving and developing our two current segments of the business. That is the brands and our distribution business. Building our brand portfolio with innovation in the core and further development of our premium portfolio is where our activity will be. Increasing our operational leverage through our own manufacturing base will drive efficiency and margin improvement necessary to fuel growth. In distribution, our focus is on building our customer proposition, ensuring industry-leading service, choice, and value, making us a true partner to the hospitality industry on one hand, whilst we provide unrivaled route to market for some of the best and biggest brands in the world to the GB and Irish hospitality markets. To deliver this, we need to release the potential of our colleagues across the business. To do this, we need to simplify, focus, and connect.
Simplify what we do and how we do it, focus on execution, delivering for our customers, connect across the business, improving collaboration, understanding what's important, and making C&C an easy business to do business with and a great business to work for. We have initiated a number of actions across our program to deliver this across the coming years, and this will deliver our volume and margin improvements across both our operating segments. Turning from strategy to the markets that we operate in on slide 14, there is no doubt there is significant change underway in core markets that we operate in. There are headwinds in cost, as Andrew has outlined, for all operators, alongside general economic challenges for many consumers.
However, hospitality is a broad sector covering everything from nationally operated late-night venues to small local cafes and supplying them with the broadest range, stretching from a bottle of super premium wine through to a lowly bottle of water. This diversity in itself brings us resilience in these challenging times. Our branded portfolio is supported by strong regional routes to market, as well as the long-standing importance of these brands to consumers in our core markets. We have not, as yet, really tapped into our ability to stretch our core brands and brand equity. We are building a position at the premium end of the market with differentiated quality brands, which will support our portfolio into the future. In short, we believe the potential of the markets we operate in to sustain long-term growth, and we believe that C&C can grow within this context.
Now, turning to look at the brands. Firstly, Tennent's. For those of us in Scotland, in particular, Tennent's is an amazing brand. A brand with rich history, a unique position in the market, and, in my view, so much potential. Tennent's remains Scotland's favorite beer. One in every two pints of lager sold in Scotland are Tennent's. The brand has performed well over the course of the last financial year, but there's definitely room for improvement and, more importantly, room for growth in the Tennent's brand. Much of our activity last year was focused on our Scottish sports sponsorship and continued above-the-line marketing activity with the OOFT campaign. Our actions have ensured we maintain market share in this competitive arena, but we now need to develop the program of activity across brand, product, packaging, and innovation to underpin our growth ambitions for the Tennent's brand.
From my perspective, we have a great opportunity to build the brand further, initially looking at pack formats, engaging consumer offers, and, most importantly, some simple innovation, something which has been, as I mentioned before, lacking on the brand in recent times. We have immediate opportunities in 0.0, light, and also some limited-edition Tennent's products, all of which are currently in development, and we hope to excite consumers with interesting options from their favorite beer brand over the course of this year. Moving on to Bulmers Irish cider. Bulmers is the Irish cider in its home market. With its iconic pint bottle, it plays a key role, especially in the on-trade.
Share in the period has been roughly flat, and we've kicked off a program of work to revitalize the look and feel of the brand, balancing the objective of modernizing without taking away from the iconic nature of the brand and developing further the strong relationship between Irish consumers and the Bulmers brand. You can see on slide 17, much of the activity across last year was to build a solid base from which we could push on. Now, in the new financial year, we are pushing hard into the low and no space with Bulmers 0.0 product alongside further support for the core Bulmers brand, building out our digital-first approach. Now, turning to Magners. It's undoubtedly been a tough few years for the Magners brand. However, we now have a real opportunity to reinvigorate this brand, to bring it back to what it used to be.
It's now back in our full control, both from a marketing perspective and from a sales execution perspective. Magners is a brand with real heritage and also buckets of latent love from its customers and its consumers. Our job is to reengage with these consumers and make Magners the consumer cider choice once again. Turning to slide 19, you can see how we're starting this journey by freshening up the brand with new creative work, an updated look and feel across all its packaging. For some of you, you may have even seen the TV ad which kicked off earlier this month. The magnetism campaign is now fully off and running. I am excited by the opportunity to drive the Magners brand through our various routes to market, but I would caution at this early stage that the reinvigoration of Magners will take time and continued investment.
We are at the starting point of this journey, and I look forward to updating you on our progress over the coming months. Now, turning to our premium beer portfolio on slide 20, we believe in the benefits of a broad but targeted premium portfolio in our branded business segment. To that end, we have a premium biased range of beers and cider that provide customers and consumers with differentiated, great-tasting premium products, which importantly sit comfortably alongside and complement our core brands across the geographies and markets and channels we trade in. These smaller brands do have good momentum in the market that they operate and will provide us with exciting growth options as we look to the future. We are now further planning how we can leverage our strong routes to market across core markets to support continued distribution growth in this portfolio.
Importantly, at the same time, we need to do this with commerciality at the heart. For each of these brands, we are looking at all of the commercial options as we go forward. Now, turning to our distribution business on slide 21, our distribution business, Matthew Clark Bibendum, probably suffered the most in the difficulties experienced by the group in recent years. The last 12 months has been more of a period of recovery than business development. On my arrival in the business, I was pleased to find that service levels in MCB were both stable and much improved relative to prior years. I had experienced the challenges from the other side of the table as a supplier, so I know firsthand how difficult this period was. In a wholesale business, service, choice, and value go hand in hand.
If you fail in one aspect, you fail in all. Whilst historically, our choice and value have been maintained, our service had not. That dynamic is well understood across the business, and service, choice, and value are now our collective mantra for the distribution business. We have seen and continue to see growth in customer numbers and volume alongside our continued service improvements. The next stage of our journey is to improve our overall customer proposition, making MCB the easiest supplier for customers to deal with, the most informed supplier in the market about the ranges we sell and the advice we provide, and finally, the best value supplier who provides worthwhile added value services and support to all our customers in all channels.
The wholesale markets we operate in remain highly competitive, and we must ensure we drive efficiency into our system, investing in technology, assets, and capability which supports our service, choice, and value strategy. To that end, we're investing in enhanced CRM capabilities and have commenced our digital-first customer journey. This is alongside the ongoing consolidation of our distribution footprint aimed to deliver service as efficiently as possible across our whole network. Lots to do, but I hope a very clear focus. Now, finally, turning to the expected evolution of our margins. Whilst I'm very much still in listening and learning mode, I do recognize that to ensure we build a sustainable business, we do need to see operating margins in both our segments improve over time. In the branded segment, the balance will be between brand development, innovation, and growth in revenue versus margin.
However, I do see margins over time trending upwards as we improve operating efficiency, cost, and seek improved operational leverage across our business model. In the distribution segment, margins are tracking in the right direction from the low point in 2024, and we can see a path to a sustainable, growing business running at a rate of around 3.5% and perhaps even slightly above. This will require strong cost controls, improved efficiency, and developing increased capability in revenue growth management across our whole team, whilst always delivering on our service, choice, and value approach with all our customers. As I said earlier, we will update further on our medium-term plans later in this financial year. In summary, 2025 was a solid performance, recovering from prior year challenges. The business has delivered materially improved service to our customers, driven improvements in trading, and continued to generate strong cash.
There is much to do at the C&C Group, but I'm delighted to be here, and I can see a balance of both challenges and, importantly, opportunities as I look ahead. For the immediate future, we will be focused on delivering the basics as best we can, ensuring we support our customers, delivering on our commitment such that we can begin to earn back trust because this is a great business with real future potential. That's the end of the formal presentation. I think we will have a few questions from the room. We've got a microphone available, so if you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. It'd be helpful if you could let us know for the videocast who you are and what your question is. Lawrence.
Thanks very much. It's Lawrence White here at Barclays. Three from me, if that's okay.
I'm interested in your experiences coming from Barr and the production facilities that you had there and comparing them to what you see here at C&C and whether there's any immediate changes that you think could improve efficiencies or otherwise, things that you'd like to see. Secondly, in terms of the U.K., we've obviously seen a bit of financial difficulties at consumer level. Is that why you think we are seeing this increase in long alcoholic drinks, beers, ciders, and the like? Do you think it's largely a cost thing, or do you think there's something else happening? I suppose associated with that in your presentation and the release that came out this morning, you talked about a lot of growth in stout. Is that any particular stout that is driving that growth, or do you think it's the category that is somehow rejuvenated?
What do you put that down to? Thank you very much.
Okay. Thank you for that. Let me try and kick off. I mean, look, the two different businesses, always easy to make simple comparisons. We put liquid into packaging. A lot of the equipment we use is very similar, but in brewing and cider making, it is different. Look, I think the main opportunity for us is operational gearing. We need to put more volume. We need to sell more of our brands to more people. We need to put more volume through our sites. We have capacity available to us, and that will improve the efficiency of what we do. The actual technical equipment, the businesses from a production capacity point of view are invested well. We do not need any big lumps of capital.
There will be investment in various elements of the process in the coming weeks and months and years, but there is no huge drain on our capital. It will be more a progressive investment. The consumer behavior around long alcoholic drinks, look, I think we came out of the pandemic, and there was a big push into cocktails and spirits, and people had possibly, in their lockdown days, decided that they wanted to socialize in a different way. There was a big return to the on-trade. We've seen a little bit of that hiatus ebbing away a little bit. That associated, in my own personal view, is tougher economically for consumers. I have a 19-year-old daughter who is in her first year at Glasgow University, and she can tell me the price of drinks in every pub in Glasgow.
Maybe not every pub, but a large amount of pubs, it would appear. I think consumer value is important, and consequently, it is driving some purchase behavior. There is definite value in LED products as opposed to some of the other subsegments. I think it is consumer-driven. Stout, the power of brands is incredible. If you manage them well, you can create fantastic outcomes. To talk about us rather than them, I can remember when Magners first appeared on the scene, it was a force to be reckoned with. Cider over ice became an enormous opportunity for the trade. It became a consumer thing. If you manage brands well, then you can drive significant growth. You can change consumer behavior. We have just seen one stout brand in particular do a very good job at that. That is all credit to them.
We have our job to do with our brands, and we hope to be able to ensure that consumers want to participate in our brands in a similar way. Deirdre.
Thanks. It's Deirdre Mullaney from Deutsche Bank. A few questions for me. Firstly, just on the negative mix impact that you saw in 2025, obviously, there's been the longer-term trend where spirits and wine have been a bit more challenged. Do you think that you're kind of through the bulk of that now, and do you think it's a little bit more optimistic heading into 2026? I mean, a lot of the external data on global spirits still looks pretty weak. Just interested on your comments on that. Second.
Can you just let me try and answer that? I think there's a wee list here, so I'll jump in.
Our wholesale business has, in the last two years, passed through 50% into LED. Previously, it was lower than 50% in beer and cider, and it has now moved ahead of that. For the time being, I think our view is that will continue. Wine and spirits consumption is suffering in the on-trade still. The reasons for that, I'm sure there are many people around the table who have their views on that. Look, we are a mixed wholesale business. We supply soft drinks. We supply high-end wine. We supply everything in between. We have to adapt our business to whatever the consumer and the customer wants. I think we'll continue to see that mix happening for the next 6-12 months. Thereafter, we'll be determined by the market. In part, I think we, as a wholesaler, we've probably over-indexed on wines and spirits.
We've probably borne the brunt of that share shift outside the market over the last year or so. As Roger said, there's still a little bit more to go.
Thanks. That's helpful. The second question is just around, I suppose, just the volume outlook that you have for the branded side of the business for 2026. I know you've previously referenced revenues marginally ahead of this year, but just interested in kind of your volume outlook potentially across products.
I mean, we're in a little bit of a transitionary phase, I guess, in that I am very clear in my own mind, and I'm trying to encourage all of my colleagues across the business to be equally clear that we need to grow our brands and grow them in volume terms as well as revenue.
We have seen decent revenue growth over the last few years, but not volume growth. To gain volume growth, you have to focus on both innovation, investment in development, and distribution growth and rate of sale, some of which is price-related, some of which is product-related. We are just building our plans at the minute in terms of what we expect. We're not expecting any great turnaround in the prior year's position. There will be some value growth coming through and volumes much more benign. We are trying to pull the platform together to change that.
Thanks. The last question is just on kind of trading post-period. I mean, some of the external data in the U.K. for April was really positive. Just wondering if you have any qualitative comments if kind of you're seeing something similar.
I think we said encouraging.
Yes, I know you said encouraging, but anything else you want to add?
Look, the weather has been pretty kind, and we've seen some of the operators in the hospitality industry with some reasonable outcomes and comments. We are reasonably encouraged. There is still lots for us to do with our business. We're sitting, I've not done a cycle in this business, but I have worked in soft drinks. The summer is still to come. There's a lot of ground to cover. I think encouraged is as much as you'll get out of us at the minute. Question. Question. Question. Question. Question. Question. Question. Question.
Externals here from Redburn. I've got a couple of questions. The first one, just early on, Roger, you mentioned that you're still rebuilding customer confidence at Matthew Clark. I guess, what are the attitudes of customers at this point?
I suppose it's probably only the IFT at this point that you're trying to win back. I guess related to that, while MTB had its issues, LWC obviously made a big push into the distribution market. Has the competitive landscape changed, which is why it's harder to win back customers? That's my first question.
I don't think there's any material change in the competitor landscape. It's a competitive world. Wholesaling, there are multiple people in it. Some of them are specialists. Some of them are generalists. Some of them are big. Some of them are very local. You need to offer value, service, and choice. We are a national footprint business. We have some truly differentiating qualities to our business.
Our job with all our customers is to make sure that they can rely on us, that they can rely on us for each one of those elements: service, quality, and value. Price is important too, but value is made up of more than just price. It is about what you can bring to a business. We need to really get behind that. I do not think it is any different. We had historically a tough time. We have got our confidence back. We want to ensure that we support our customers. It is a tough time for many of them, and we are here to try and help them.
Okay. Sure. Second question just on Magners. Could you talk through the changes that have been made since it came back from BBG and maybe where you think they got it wrong or potentially the points that you could improve?
I wasn't here then, so I'll dodge that question. I don't think we want to look backwards. I think the fact of the matter is Magners is an important brand in our stable, so therefore the opportunity for us to have control of, as I said in the presentation, everything from the brand marketing, the product development, the customer contact, and the sales execution is important because it is important for us. If you set any wider portfolio and you're not a company-owned brand, then it is natural that it is less important potentially to a third party. It's early days. I can't give you too much other than to say we want to make Magners a core part of our business. We're starting with the brand marketing. We're investing behind the brand. I think the investments behind the brand in recent years have been lacking.
It just lacked a bit of love and care and attention. There are a lot of customers out there who have been very loyal and stuck with the brand, and we want to repay them now by building it with consumers so that they get the rate of sale coming through, whether it is in retail or whether it is in the on-trade.
Just final question. On your 0.0 products, you sort of mentioned both Tennent's as one coming or maybe it is being redeveloped. Being redeveloped. I suppose, how are you thinking about the category overall? Is it something which has been led by customers, or are you trying to get ahead of lower per capita consumption of alcohol? Just how are you thinking about the category, I suppose?
I mean, again, I think from a personal view, I think we are catching up a bit.
We believe that whilst it's a relatively small part of the segment, it will be important. It is important. It will continue to grow in importance over time. We need to up our game. We've got great capability in product. We just haven't utilized it. Our product quality has not been good enough. It will be significantly better. We've got some investments to do from an operational standpoint, but we think we know how to do this far better across the range. I think it's something that whilst it takes, as I say, a small amount of the segment at the minute, it will become increasingly important, and we need to up our game there.
Good morning. Carhill Kenny from Davie. Couple of questions from my side. Firstly to Roger on Bulmers.
I know you're only four months into the job, but interested to get a report card on that brand. I think in the presentation you said selective revitalization. Just interested in what you mean by that. That's my first question.
Bulmers is an important brand to a lot of people. The iconic nature of it means you have to trade somewhat carefully with change and development, but we need to refresh the look and feel of the brand, I think, but keep that connection with its core consumers. We have just started that process. It's coming through hopefully in subtle improvement rather than significant material change. We have to build on the equity that exists. We have to ensure that the frequency of purchase, it's a competitive marketplace.
There are quite a lot of new entrants in the sector, and we need to fight for our share of consumers, and we need to do that by investing in it in terms of both communication, but importantly, in my view, in innovation as well, and finding the right platform to innovate. As I said, we are pushing the 0.0 now more than we have done in the past. We need to have a very good think about how we properly connect with consumers. It is a sort of starter for 10 rather than a complete finished point.
Okay. I know the ERP issue predated your time. It clearly impacted distribution in 2024. One, is that fully resolved? Two, can we think about payback on that investment now?
Look, I think if you take systems at a more general level, there is work to do to improve how we connect across the business, both from a customer point of view and internally. The very specifics of the ERP implementation, I think that's all past us now, but there is improvement required in systems and processes. Andrew and his team have done a power of work in the last year from a control point of view, from a system and process point of view. There's lots still to do. In terms of the returns, look, I think we've got work to do in systems. There is an opportunity to simplify what we do, whether it's in our corporate structures. We have a lot of entities all requiring lots of work around them.
A big amount of work has already gone into that in the last 12 months, but there's more to do. I think it's part of what we do, and we just need to be better at it.
I think if you look at the objectives, the on-time and in full, we're back, in fact, ahead of pre-ERP levels. Still, we're scared for improvement, but relative to competitors, those numbers are market-leading now. If we look at the roadmap of EUR 80 million-EUR 100 million that we're sort of going from, the majority of that is in distribution. It's got to be borne out of just running that business far more efficiently and in a simpler manner, as Roger's alluding to.
Thanks. Related question on that final question is this digital first, this journey you want the customer to go on. Where are we on that journey today?
I mean, it's been talked about for years, I think, at C&C with regard to MTB and just the order capture system around digital. Just interesting update on that. Thank you.
I think there's been quite a lot of talk, whether there's been very much action. I think there's been a number of perhaps false starts. We are now starting from effectively ground zero to build our plan. I am not going to make any claims today that we are further along the journey than we are. We are at the start point, and we need to be very clear about what we're going to get out of this, what it's going to do to improve our customers' lives, how it makes us simple, more simple to deal with, how it makes us better administratively, how it makes us more efficient.
There is a power of work going on in that at the minute, and we will keep everybody updated on how we're getting on, but we are in the early stages. I think it's very much a part of the improvement plan that we see, very much part of the simplification, very much part of the making us easier to deal with. Early days.
I think maintaining a discipline as to how much one invests behind digital and getting the requisite returns, that is the key for us. As Roger's alluded to, I think there have been some very grandiose plans on where digital can take us. We've got to ensure we make the appropriate digital investment for our business and for our customers. There are lots of examples where people have invested very heavily in digital and have not really got a return.
That balance is really key.
Good morning. Vincent Nguyen here from Goodbody. Three questions for me, please. Firstly, in terms of the distribution business, could you give us a sense of how the health of your customers is trending, particularly the independent free trade versus the more managed groups? How should we think about sort of the new customer win momentum going forward versus that sort of 8% you did in the second half?
Do you want to do that, Andrew?
Yeah. I think Roger's alluded to the pressures facing the on-trade, and smaller operators are facing into some very well-publicized cost headwinds. My view, having operated pubs, is if you run a good pub, customers will come, whether you're free trade, whether you're large managed.
The challenge for us is ensuring that we target appropriate quality customers where we can support that customer and we can both make money out of one distributing to them and them growing their business. We just need to be cognizant that for smaller, smaller pubs, that pressure is something we've just got to be alert to. That doesn't mean you switch off supplying to small customers, but it's about quality of distribution. Big customers, as you alluded to, they're facing the same cost challenges. It's just a few more zeros in the end. What we've got to work with our insight capability is help partner them to ride through the challenge of being able to pass those cost headwinds to customers and partnering from a category perspective to ensure that we're both winners in that. This is about quality and partnership. That's how you win through.
If it's just about, "I can sell my product as cheap as I can into you," that ain't a partnership. It's a race to the bottom. It is about quality of that business that we've got to ride in tandem with driving profitability.
I would agree with that. I think we have a, as I said earlier, we have a powerful route to market, and our drive is to be as efficient as possible with our customers and to work with them on that efficiency. If we can find supply solutions, whether that's in product, whether it's in offering, whether it's in how we distribute physically to them, we are working hard across the piece with our customers to find, I would call it, value-added solutions. To them, the value-add may be it is more effective and it is cheaper and it is more sustainable for them.
There is a lot of work going on. It does not really matter whether you are a large group or an independent. We are looking for those opportunities with everybody.
Great. Thank you. Within the branded business, I appreciate this is sort of year zero for particularly the Magners brand and the reinvestment. At the sort of branded level in aggregate, how do you see the AMP spend trending for 2026? Do you need several years of enhanced investment before you can get to that 17% EBIT margin?
That is a good question. I am not sure I am going to give you an appropriate answer other than to say we do need to invest in our brands. We need to be smart about that investment, though it is not just straightforward A. There is also D, which is development. It is not just product development. It is packaging development. It is positioning.
The whole innovation muscle in the business needs to be built. The good news is we have not really done any for years. It is a bit of an open runway. If I looked right across our brand portfolio from some of the small brands, some of the big brands, there is great opportunity to put new things into the market to excite consumers and customers and add value. I think we can build a program of activity which is affordable, fits within our metrics that we are trying to do, but will drive longer-term value for everyone in the chain. It just takes a bit of time to build that capability and to get it to work.
We will be investing more, but we'll have to find ways of funding that through operational gearing, through efficiency, through how we execute, how we do revenue growth management in our business. There is a bunch of stuff under the bonnet that needs to be improved that will support that.
The exciting thing, I think, is if you look at the two powerhouse brands, Tennent's and Bulmers, they're retaining market share despite this absence of innovation and development. That is quite exciting because that means there is share gain opportunity.
Actually, probably more of an Andrew question, but just in terms of I appreciate you do not want to give full details away around your simplification plan, but just high-level, any indication of initial or incremental costs, either cash costs or P&L from some of the measures you are undertaking?
Yeah.
I think the next couple of years, we've got project teams and a project function in situ. I think sort of mid-single digit millions over the next couple of years to get our systems and controls to where we need them. That will be a key driver of that EUR 20 million journey from EUR 80 million- EUR 100 million.
Hi. I'm Anubhav Malhotra from Panmure Liberum. I had one on your capital allocation policy and your comments around the strategic growth capital investments. Maybe directionally, give us an idea on whether you think you'd be more likely, in case opportunities arise, to look for premium brands or look for distribution assets, maybe in the right categories or in the right geographies where you may be underrepresented at the moment.
Look, Andrew's eloquently explained our financial position. We've got headroom. We've got the opportunity.
However, our focus at the minute is on simplification and delivering and giving some more certainty to everybody about what C&C is about. If opportunities come along, we will review them, but we are very focused on delivering our basics. That is what this year is going to be about for us. I do not think there is no sort of hit list between those two areas that would be considered on merit, but the merit would have to be significant because I want to get the business really focused on delivering the basics. Okay. Thank you all very much. Also, thank you to those who have dialed in. We will close now, and we look forward to seeing you in October to further update you on our progress. Thank you very much.