Hello everyone, and thank you for joining the DCC Market Update and Results Presentation 2025. My name is Sammy, and I'll be coordinating your call today. During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two on your telephone keypad. I'll now hand over to your host, Donal Murphy, Chief Executive, to begin. Please go ahead.
Good morning and welcome to DCC's Market Update and our Results Presentation for the year ended 31st March 2025. Thank you all for joining us this morning on our webcast. Our presentation this morning will take about 45 minutes, a little longer than our normal results presentation, as we want to spend some time updating you on our opportunity in energy. I'm delighted to be joined today by our Group CFO and incoming COO, Kevin Lucey, and Conor Murphy, CFO of DCC Energy and soon to be Group CFO. Here's our standard disclaimer. Let's get started with an overview of the key messages from today's presentation. On the 12th of November 2024, we announced a strategic plan to maximize shareholder value by firstly focusing solely on the compelling opportunity in our energy business and secondly simplifying the group's operations through portfolio actions.
We have made significant progress since the announcement, and today we are announcing a material capital return to shareholders on the back of the sale of DCC Healthcare. When we announced our strategic change, we said we needed to perform as well as transform. Crucially, we have delivered an early year of strong growth and development in energy. Given its strong returns, our energy business is our most compelling growth opportunity. We will grow DCC into a global leader in the energy sector. Our energy business has excellent financial characteristics, delivering organic growth through the cycle, high returns on capital, and excellent cash generation, all while reducing the carbon intensity of our profits. We believe that these characteristics will continue to be delivered as we grow the business. Given the characteristics of our business, we are confident we will grow DCC into a global leader in the energy sector.
Let's look at our strategic progress now. The plan we announced in November to maximize shareholder value had three actions. Firstly, we said the group will now focus solely on our most compelling growth opportunity, our energy business. Secondly, we launched the process to sell DCC Healthcare. Thirdly, we said that within the next 18 to 24 months, we would review our strategic options for DCC Technology. We have made significant progress since November. We have reached agreement for the sale of DCC Healthcare for GBP 1.05 billion to Investindustrial. We are making good progress on our strategic review of DCC Technology. To set DCC up for growth as a single-sector energy business, we have made a number of leadership changes.
At the board level, Kevin, who has been our Chief Financial Officer and an Executive Director since 2020, will become Chief Operating Officer with effect from the conclusion of our AGM on the 10th of July. In this newly created role, Kevin will continue to partner with me in the overall management of the group, will be responsible for driving the performance of our energy activities, and will lead our regional management teams. Kevin will continue to be a member of the board. Conor will succeed Kevin as CFO and will be appointed as an Executive Director again from the conclusion of our AGM on the 10th of July. Conor joined DCC in 1998. He has held many senior leadership roles both within the energy business and at group level, and he is currently the CFO of DCC Energy.
Fabian Ziegler, CEO of DCC Energy, will leave DCC in July 2025. I would like to thank Fabian for his significant contribution to our business during his tenure as CEO of DCC Energy and wish him every success in the future. I will give you more detail on the new DCC leadership team a little later in the presentation. Last, but certainly not least, we are announcing today a material capital return to shareholders as a result of the sale of DCC Healthcare. In November, we announced our intention to sell DCC Healthcare. After an extensive and competitive process, on the 22nd of April 2025, we announced that DCC had entered into a definitive agreement for the sale of DCC Healthcare to Investindustrial. The transaction values DCC Healthcare at a total enterprise value of GBP 1.05 billion on a cash-free debt-free basis.
DCC Healthcare represents 12% of the group's adjusted operating profit. The total enterprise value for DCC Healthcare represents a multiple of 12.2 x 2025 adjusted operating profit, significantly above the group's multiple. The total expected net cash proceeds are GBP 945 million, including an unconditional deferred amount of GBP 130 million receivable within two years. Completion and receipt of the initial cash proceeds is expected in the third quarter of this calendar year post-customary regulatory approvals. DCC Technology has also grown strongly over the last decade. The business provides a wide range of products and services across three product areas: Pro Tech, Live Tech, and Info Tech. DCC Technology is a global leader in Pro Tech and has established a particularly strong footprint in both Pro Tech and Live Tech in North America. Clive Fitzarris continues to lead the division, reporting to me.
We have recruited a new CEO and established a new integrated leadership team in North America, and their focus is delivering the operational integration program over the next 18 months. Our operational integration program is progressing as planned, and we are confident that it will deliver the benefits we outlined. The Info Tech business has operated in a very challenging market in Europe in recent years. We are streamlining the business and have exited our consumer operations in France and Iberia, the Middle East, and parts of our business in the Nordics. As already mentioned, over the last 18 months, we will review our options for DCC Technology as we conduct our strategic review of the business. We are announcing today that we intend to return up to GBP 800 million of the proceeds from the sale of DCC Healthcare.
The process will commence shortly with an on-market share buyback program of GBP 100 million. Following the completion of the sale of DCC Healthcare, DCC will return GBP 600 million to shareholders. We will announce the form of the return, which will likely include a reduction in the share count on completion of the disposal. The final GBP 100 million of proceeds will be returned following receipt of the unconditional deferred consideration. This GBP 800 million return to shareholders represents approximately 16% of our current market capitalization. Our pro forma leverage will be unchanged at 0.9 x net debt to EBITDA. The strength of our balance sheet and the cash-generative nature of the business provide significant capital for growth and shareholder returns. I'll hand you over to Kevin now, who will take you through the performance for FY 2025. Kevin.
Thanks, Donal, and good morning, everyone. I'll talk you through the highlights of the 2025 performance for the group overall, and Conor will run through the main points of the energy trading performance during the year. Firstly, our strategy to simplify the group and focus on energy has an impact on how the financial performance is reported this year. The sale of DCC Healthcare was very materially progressed at year-end and signed shortly after year-end, and so we presented in the financial statements as a discontinued activity. Related assets and liabilities are shown on the balance sheet as held for sale. Similarly, although smaller, we exited our last-making activities in Info Tech in France and Iberia, and these are also presented as discontinued. Also, we will mention throughout the presentation both reported and constant currency numbers.
In our total reported operating profit, we had a 1.9% headwind from FX translation, approximately GBP 13.5 million, driven by a strengthening sterling. I won't cover every line item on this slide, but just to pick out a few, revenue on continuing activities was GBP 18 billion in the year, a decline of 4.5%, driven by reduced wholesale cost of energy commodities during the year. This wholesale cost decline doesn't have an impact on our profitability, given our unit margin business model where we sell energy commodity products. Group adjusted operating profit on a continuing basis was GBP 617.5 million, up 4.8% on a constant currency basis. Total group adjusted operating profit, which includes healthcare, was GBP 703.6 million, 4.9% ahead of prior year on a constant currency basis. Good growth in a pretty volatile macro environment. Adjusted EPS was up 5.2% on a constant currency basis, modestly ahead of the operating profit growth.
The board has proposed a final dividend increase of 5%, which would give a dividend per share for the year of GBP 206.4 per share. Returns remained very strong in DCC Energy at 18.5%, with overall group returns at 15.3%. In terms of net debt, we finished the year at just under GBP 800 million pre-leases, equating to 0.9 x net debt to EBITDA in line with prior year. This waterfall or bridge slide is helpful to express some of the components visually. This is a little different to our normal chart as we split out the discontinued impact now in the waterfall to explain the total growth in the year. 1.9% headwind from FX translation in continuing activities and 5.9% growth from M&A. The organic performance represents the solid organic growth in energy of 1.8%, being offset by the decline in technology.
Finally, you'll see the discontinued profits, which get you back to the GBP 704 million of total operating profits. In terms of free cash flow conversion, we had an excellent 100% free cash flow conversion in the prior year, driven by material working capital inflow. As expected, we saw working capital outflow in the current year, with CapEx broadly in line with depreciation to give an 84% free cash flow conversion in the current year. The cumulative conversion across both years was a very strong 92%. Just a couple of other items. The cash flow generated means the balance sheet remains very strong with net debt to EBITDA of approximately 0.9x, and we have no acquisition spend committed that had not completed at the balance sheet date.
Finally, in the appendix to this deck, we provide our usual information for analysts and investors on some of the items relevant to modeling for FY 2026, including effective tax rate, interest, etc. We have also included this year some pro forma information in respect of the sale of healthcare and the capital return that Donal mentioned earlier. Now, a very quick look at the high-level divisional performance. Energy reported growth was 6.5% or 8.5% on a constant currency basis. Technology had a difficult year and second half overall, with profits declining 14% on a constant currency basis. In terms of our continuing operations, energy now represents just under 90% of profits of the continuing group. From a geographic perspective, continental Europe represents 46%, U.K. and Ireland 37%, with North America 17%.
I'll now run through DCC Technology's performance and then hand over to Conor to bring you through the energy performance. As mentioned already, DCC Technology had a difficult year, with the seasonally important second half being weaker than the first half. The technology market context overall was difficult, with disimproving consumer confidence. Revenue was broadly in line with prior year, with growth in Pro Tech in North America offset by declines in the other segments. Operating profit declined by 15.7% or 14.2% constant currency. As you can see on the right-hand side of the slide, this was driven by a decline in gross margin. Mix was a feature. We had revenue growth in lower margin Pro Tech products relative to declines in higher margin Live Tech, but we saw like-for-like margin challenges in Europe generally due to the weak demand environment.
The team did a good job at managing the cost base with a reduction in operating costs of approximately 5%, but that was not enough to offset the gross profit decline. Our Pro Tech business in North America was the best performer in the year, and we continued to see market share gains there. In contrast, our Pro Tech operations in Europe saw much more difficult market conditions, with weaker business confidence in Germany and France impacting demand and margin levels. In both Info Tech and Live Tech, we saw revenue declines due to weaker consumer confidence and lower consumer spending in the second half of the year. The team have also been very busy optimizing the portfolio. We exited a number of loss-making operations during the year, most materially our consumer business in France, but also our small position in the Middle East and a division of our business in the Nordics.
You will see there's a non-cash impairment associated with the exit in France and the results, and we've also recognized a non-cash impairment in our Info Tech component, which reflects the relatively low return on capital being achieved there. We have a large program running in North America, which involves substantial integration and operational efficiency projects to improve profitability and returns, but also improve our customer proposition in North America. Finally, we know that tariffs are particularly topical at the moment, and of course, it is difficult to predict exactly where it will finish up. In the U.S., the team are very busy working with their suppliers, customers, and supply chain on the topic. Almost all technology products have some components manufactured in China and Asia more broadly. From a business model perspective, we will adjust pricing to reflect tariffs.
Ultimately, if implemented, they will push up the cost of products in the U.S., which could impact demand. I'll hand you over now to Conor, who will run through the detail of the energy performance in the year.
Thank you, Kevin, and good morning. The year ended March 2025 was another year of both profit and strategic growth in DCC Energy. We achieved 8.5% constant currency operating profit growth, and I'll touch on the detail behind that growth on the following slide. Organic growth was 1.8% after a very strong organic performance in 2024. Our key metric, return on capital, continues to be strong at 18.5%. That included our Hong Kong and Macau business up to the point of its disposal early in the financial year. If we fully exclude that business, our return on capital was even stronger at 18.8%. Many of you will recall that we've been using a metric to measure the carbon intensity of our profits, which is scope three emissions divided by operating profit.
It was really encouraging to see that we have continued to reduce the carbon intensity of our operating profit by a further 8.5% in the year. As mentioned, we sold a majority stake in our liquid gas business in Hong Kong and Macau and invested GBP 100 million in seven acquisitions, adding to both our solutions and mobility businesses. The weighting of operating profit remains broadly the same as it was in the prior year between solutions at 77% and mobility at 23%. This takes me on to the following slide with some additional detail of those businesses. Our solutions business delivered strong operating profit growth of 9.5% on a constant currency basis, which was driven by M&A activity net of the disposal of Hong Kong and Macau. Organic growth was 0.7%, led by our businesses in France.
In solutions, our continental European business, which is our largest region, achieved excellent growth with Germany and France being our main drivers. In Germany, we acquired Progas towards the end of financial year 2024, so we benefited from a full year contribution in 2025. We further strengthened our business in Germany through the acquisition of Wirsol, establishing an excellent Energy Services offering in that market. We achieved strong organic growth in France across both Energy Products and Energy Services. We also completed three acquisitions, further expanding our energy services capability. Our Nordics business saw a decline in the year after a strong performance in the prior year, with a small number of commercial customers reverting to natural gas as prices normalized. We grew strongly in U.K. and Ireland. We saw good volume growth in Ireland, driven by our natural gas and power businesses.
Our U.K. business achieved a robust performance despite facing a weaker underlying economy. At the beginning of the financial year, we acquired Next Energy, a provider of energy services for domestic customers. That business was a driver of the strong profit growth we achieved for the year. We highlighted in our results for the first half of the year that our liquid gas business in the U.S. had a difficult start to the year. While our business remained difficult during the third quarter, the business saw good customer demand improvement as seasonal weather returned in December. This improved demand continued through the last quarter of the year. Our mobility business, which accounts for 23% of energy's operating profit, performed very well during the year, achieving 5.4% constant currency operating profit growth, of which organic growth was an excellent 5.2%.
Volumes were lower year-on-year due to the loss of one lower margin contract in Denmark, but despite this, our gross profit grew strongly by 4%. In our service station networks, we delivered good volume growth and profit growth in France and Luxembourg, while we also continued to develop non-fuel services that we provide to our customers, including expanding our EV charging. Our business in the Nordic region performed well, where we grew operating profit in each country. In addition, we've agreed to acquire Esso's fuel card offering in Norway in the coming year, securing volumes and adding to our service offering. Finally, in fleet services, we grew strongly and continue to develop our customer offering with the acquisition of Cubo, a telematics business. I'll now hand back to Donal to talk through the opportunity that we see in DCC Energy.
Thanks, Conor.
Let me now tell you why we are focusing on energy. DCC is a unique energy business, providing multi-energy solutions to our customers for five decades. We have built a strong capability in engineering-led decentralized energy solutions, particularly in our liquid gas business. As the energy systems of the world decentralize, this heritage and our growing skills and capability in energy solutions enables us to win. Our ambition is to be a global leader in the sales, marketing, and distribution of Energy Products and services, delivering high growth and high returns for our shareholders. We will win by having the best offering of secure, cleaner, and competitive products and services, and the best service for our customers. Our aim is to be the best customer company in the energy sector.
We have scalable growth opportunities across our sectors, and I will outline later scale opportunities in both liquid gas and energy services. Our strategy is to grow our customer base by being the provider of choice for essential Energy Products and to sell more services to our energy customers, driving higher organic growth rates. How do we win? We leverage our strong market positions, being number one or number two in most of our markets, and with our deeply embedded customer relationships. We are strong and experienced operators in the energy sector and have significant experience in consolidating fragmented energy markets. By delivering our strategy, we will drive organic growth of 3%-4% on average per annum and acquisition growth of 6%-8% on average per annum to achieve our ambition of delivering double-digit growth in profits.
We aim to turn approximately 90% of our profits into cash and always to deliver returns on capital employed in the high teens. From an initial modest investment in 1977 in Ireland to start up a liquid gas business, we have created a substantial business selling Energy Products and services to approximately 10 million energy customers across 12 countries. We have delivered strong profit growth, 16.2% per annum over the last decade, high returns on capital, 19%, and turned our profits into cash. The business supports the essential energy needs across commercial, industrial, domestic, and transport uses. The right-hand side of this chart is the most important piece. We set out in 2022 our ambition to double our profitability by 2030. We are well on track to achieve this aim and to continue this growth trajectory beyond.
We are simplifying how we describe our business in line with how we operate it. This will make it easier for everyone to understand and model our business. We operate two businesses, Solutions and Mobility. Our Solutions business is 77% of our profitability overall and has two areas, Energy Products and Energy Services. In Energy Products, we market, sell, and distribute liquid gas, fuels, biofuels, on-grid gas, and renewable power, including power purchase agreements for commercial, industrial, and domestic customers. The products are typically used for more energy-intensive activities. Energy Products represent 68% of our profitability. In Energy Services, we design, install, and maintain on-site solar and hybrid heat and power energy systems mainly for commercial and industrial customers to self-generate power.
In addition, we have a small and growing business helping commercial and industrial customers optimize and reduce their carbon footprint through metering, battery storage, retrofit, and energy efficiency consulting services. We have built our energy services from almost nothing in 2022. Energy Services is growing rapidly and now represents 9% of our energy profitability. Our Mobility business is 23% of our profitability. We own and operate service stations for mobility customers, providing fuels, convenience retail, car wash, and EV charging. We also offer fleet payment, digital parking, and telematics services for our fleet customers. Kevin will talk about the financial value drivers of these businesses later, and you can see the full split of our profits in our new format later in the deck. Here is our strategy for the biggest of our two segments, solutions, 77% of our profits.
We will deliver our cleaner energy in your power strategy for solutions by becoming the provider of choice for secure, cleaner, and competitive energy products and services. In Energy Products, 68% of our profits, we will grow our customer numbers organically by being the best customer company. We will be excellent operators driving best-in-class operational efficiency markets metrics. We will grow the volume of premium biofuels we sell, which can be delivered straight into customers' tanks as cleaner alternates. We will continue to consolidate the fragmented markets through M&A, which will drive greater returns through root density, for example. In energy services, which is 9% of our profits from a standing start in 2022, we are building a leading energy services business with operations already in eight countries in Europe. We are leading this initiative with on-site solar for electric power generation, predominantly for commercial and industrial customers.
We will continue to expand our range of solutions, both organically and through acquisition, while selling more services to both our Energy Services and Energy Products customers. Our Energy Products business markets, sells, and distributes a range of products to commercial, industrial, and domestic customers. We are not a producer of energy. We partner with producers and traders to source our liquid gas, fuels, and power. We have close customer relationships. We sell products to approximately 1.5 million direct customers in the European and U.S. markets. We also supply liquid gas and cylinders to approximately 7 million consumers in Europe. Our liquid gas and fuels customers typically use our products to run industrial processes, heat buildings, and heat their homes off the natural gas grid. They typically have intensive energy needs, such as running mobile machinery, high-temperature manufacturing, or heating large buildings or campuses.
Over time, we'll grow our sales of newer energy services, such as on-site solar power solutions, to our energy products customers for their less intensive energy needs. We have grown our Energy Products profits organically by approximately 5% on average per annum over the last decade and our operating margin per liter by approximately 11% CAGR over the last decade. We win in Energy Products by driving the margin per liter. We create leadership positions, and we're typically number one or number two in most of our current markets, and we'll do the same as we enter new markets. We benefit from network effects and operational efficiencies. We drive cost synergies as we create route density, and we centralize procurement within regions. In liquid gas, we typically own the tank on-site and have provided an engineering solution, giving us a closely embedded relationship with our customers.
Across all products, customers stay with us for many years. In energy services, we are scaling a leading European energy services business led by on-site solar electric power generation. In 2025, we served approximately 10,000 energy services customers across eight countries. This is a fast-growing business and generates high margins and returns on capital employed. Many of our customers, such as hypermarkets and property developers, have multiple sites, and we leverage these relationships to expand our services across their networks. In France, we have been a consolidator of the fragmented energy services market and have built a nationwide footprint under the Wewise brand, with a leadership position in the agri and commercial and industrial sectors. We are particularly focused on expanding the range of recurring revenue services in the business.
We win in energy services by consolidating the highly fragmented solar and energy services markets, leveraging our existing platforms, by making it easy for our customers to take control of their power needs and gaining energy security, and by developing recurring revenue streams and stronger customer loyalty as we offer multi-energy solutions over time. Now, in mobility, we own or operate service stations and refueling sites for trucks. We are also growing a digitally-led fleet services business in fuel and EV cards, telematics, and truck parking services. We have a scale business with operations across eight countries and handle tens of millions of customer transactions in 2025. We operate approximately 1,200 service stations, about 50% of which we own. We will enhance our very well-located sites close to cities and towns, which are ideal for four quarters of the future in an EV world.
We are also expanding our network of motorway service stations. We have invested CapEx to upgrade 172 sites over the last four years, increasing our profitability per site through EV charging, convenience retail, car wash facilities, and biofuels. We maximize the profit contribution from the remainder of our network through our low-cost-to-serve model and our advanced technology-driven price optimization. In fleet services, we have approximately 67,000 direct customers. Our typical customers operate fleets of vans and HGVs. Fuel cards are essential for easy tracking and cost management of fleets, as well as saving time for the drivers. In recent years, we have expanded the range of services we provide to our customers to include telematics and a truck parking app that helps fleet managers and drivers to plan their routes across Europe, guaranteeing locations for secure parking, rest, and sustenance.
Over the next decade, we will continue to invest in our well-located sites. While in fleet services, we will continue to grow our customer base, expanding the range of services we provide to include fuel cards for ICE and electronic vehicles. We have grown our mobility profits organically by approximately 5% on average per annum over the last decade and our fuel margin per liter by approximately 13% CAGR over the last decade. We win in mobility by leveraging our low-cost model and technology-driven margin management to maximize operating margin per liter. We invest in our well-located forecourts to create destination sites for our customers. We leverage our technology-driven fleet services solutions to help our customers reduce their total cost of ownership for their fleets. Now you have a good sense of our business model. Let's move to look at the huge growth opportunity we have in energy.
We leverage DCC's considerable M&A experience to scale our energy business. In Energy Products, we have a significant opportunity to scale our liquid gas business in many remaining fragmented markets in Europe and in the U.S. DCC has been in the liquid gas business since 1977 and has built leadership positions in six countries and has established growth platforms in a further three markets. Overall, DCC has just 5% share of the total addressable market in Europe and the U.S. We have built approximately 30% share in the European markets where we operate today. In these markets, our leadership positions drive higher returns. We drive higher returns by leveraging network effects, for example, better routing and scheduling of our fleet, or optimizing our depot infrastructure, reducing the cost to serve our customers and the cost to acquire new customers.
We have a very loyal customer base with relationships that typically last more than 10 years. With the infrastructure we install on our customer sites, we create a deeply embedded relationship. With its lower carbon characteristics, we are attracting new customers from other higher carbon energy sources who want to reduce their carbon footprint. We have significant opportunities to scale our business by expanding into new fragmented markets and by further consolidating in our existing markets. This is a core competency of DCC. In energy services, we have a significant opportunity to scale our business both organically and through acquisition. We are consolidating the fast-growing commercial and industrial solar power market for less intensive energy uses in Europe. Solar power is central to the European Union's Green Deal and plan to get to net zero.
In the power market, solar has increased its share from near zero in 2002 to 2% in 2012 and to 7% in the latest year for which Eurostat data is available. Forecasts for SolarPower Europe anticipate a 5%-7% growth in solar power generation per annum out to 2028. By 2030, we believe the solar share of the power market will be 10% plus. We will leverage the growth characteristics of the market to deliver high levels of organic growth. By building this new capability, we will retain our low or energy-intensive product customers through the energy transition. We have multiple repeat customers across many sites in France, for example. We also have the opportunity to grow new revenue streams from cross-selling additional services such as maintenance, battery storage, reselling power to the grid, and energy efficiency services.
The highly fragmented nature of the energy services market plays to DCC's strength as an experienced consolidator of energy markets. As well as the scale opportunities in liquid gas and energy services, we have opportunities to continue to scale across each of our business areas. On this chart, we outline the opportunities per market, whether by driving organic growth in the markets where we have large existing market shares, growing share by consolidating in the markets where we have a significant space to grow by M&A, and highlighting the markets where we have no existing presence. This highlights the material growth opportunity in front of us and the reasons we believe. Finally, in this section, I'd like to return to the leadership changes I referred to earlier.
In addition to the changes to the executive director roles, the new DCC leadership team has extensive experience in the energy sector and the commercial agility and drive to build DCC into a global leader. The DCC leadership team has approximately 200 years' experience in the energy sector, both within the DCC Group and previously in some of the world's leading energy businesses. You will find further details of the DCC leadership team and their experiences on our website. Now, back to Kevin.
Thanks, Donal. Over the next few minutes, we'll highlight the really strong financial characteristics of the energy business, discuss the reporting and additional metrics for energy that you will see from us from now on, how we see our growth being delivered, and we'll finish with our capital allocation framework. Our energy business has excellent financial characteristics. These characteristics reflect the underlying quality of the business.
In energy, we have produced growth through the cycle. This resilient growth reflects the essential nature of the energy we provide. We have driven very strong organic growth. We focus on market share gains, efficient operations, and identifying and building capability in areas of structural growth and customer need, such as energy services or biofuels. We produce excellent returns on capital. Again, this is driven by a long-standing customer base, our scale, and our business model, where we have relatively asset-light operations or where we invest capital on customer's location, building even greater customer stickiness. The business is highly cash-generative. We carefully manage the capital base, and we enjoy predictable and ratable demand for our products and services. Finally, our cleaner energy in your power strategy is reducing the carbon intensity of our profits. Here is what this looks like over the last 10 years or so.
We have produced sustained high returns of capital, 19% on average, as you will see with the purple line in the graph. We have grown profits at 16.2% CAGR across the last 10 years. Organic CAGR is 5.8%. Again, you'll see this in the green line. We have 97% free cash flow conversion across the same period. Finally, the red line in the graph shows the material reduction in carbon intensity we've achieved in recent years. Donal presented earlier on how we see the business model across both our solutions business and our mobility business, and how we see two different business models in solutions. In terms of the key metrics we focus on across the business, of course, everywhere across DCC, we focus on organic profit growth, cash flow conversion, and return on capital employed. They are well understood.
We also track closely our customer metrics, market shares, and gross margin conversion, and of course, our carbon. Again, they apply across the board. In solutions, Donal mentioned we have both product and service offerings. The key metrics we track there are different. In products, the revenue line is less important as these are unit margin operations. Volume is the key top-line metric. The absolute level of gross profit is critical and how we convert that ultimately into EBITDA per liter. In services, the top-line dynamics are different. Here, revenue growth is important. Gross margin conversion, again, is key, and the percentage operating margin ultimately displays the value of the service we deliver. In mobility, at a forecourt or with fleet customers, we have both fuel and non-fuel income streams. Again, we focus very much here on the absolute value of gross profit.
We look at how that is developing across fuel and non-fuel categories, and clearly, we track how that translates at the bottom line. Here, you will see the results presented through this lens or this framework. Starting at the top, solutions represent 77% of profits or GBP 411.8 million in FY 2025. Mobility is 23% or GBP 123.7 million. Within solutions, Energy Products are 68% of overall energy profits, and energy services, which clearly is a much newer area for us, represents 9%. I will not cover all of the numbers in here. You will be glad to hear. This is how we will be reporting the energy business going forward. The additional information in solutions is hopefully easier to digest, easier to correlate to the business model in products and services. It gives clearly much more granularity to the makeup of the solutions business.
We have produced revenue and percentage margin for energy services here for the first time, given it is a newer part of the business, and it is growing very quickly at good margins. The additional disclosure provided in mobility will allow you to track both fuel and non-fuel performance. Just to finish here, we see this as very much a much more intuitive way to model the business and operations. We know that some people had started using our carbon definitions around lower carbon and SRO, which are not aligned necessarily with how the business operates. These carbon disclosures are still being reported but are in the appendix to this deck, and we include, hopefully, a helpful reconciliation from SRO to the new reporting framework also.
Again, you'll be glad to hear I won't comment in detail on this busy slide, but the purpose of this slide is to look at the growth, organic growth, and margin history of our solutions business. We have a long track record in the products space, and we are really only active in the energy services area since FY 2022. The Energy Products markets in Europe and the U.S. tend to be reasonably mature markets, and so the growth you'll see here is set against that context. In Energy Products, we have steadily grown our profits and produced good organic growth, 5% on average, as you will see on the left-hand side here.
Mix has been helpful in terms of the total operating margin per liter, rather than organically, over the period, as you will see in the bottom section, with more sales of liquid gas and more recently bioproducts benefiting our margin profile. Services on the right-hand side is clearly more recent and has grown very well, a lot through acquisition, but as you'll see, we've also seen very strong organic growth, albeit from a standing start and low base. The overall market context is different here, of course, a much less mature market and one which we expect to continue to grow given the necessity for secure, cleaner, and competitive energy solutions. This slide presents similar data for our mobility business. Again, here, the market context has been a mature market.
You will see that the overall track record in mobility, again, is very solid, and the business has grown very well over the last decade. The overall profit growth record is strong, and this has been delivered by good growth across both our fuels offering and our non-fuel and fleet services offerings. In 2023, we set out our plan to more than double the profits of our energy business by the end of the decade. We are well on the way reaching, as you will see on the left-hand side here, GBP 536 million this year. From 2022, that is an EBITDA CAGR of 10%. In terms of how we see the business evolving towards the end of the decade, we have represented this to show both the products and services areas within solutions and then mobility and how we see the contribution from M&A.
Of course, this will be subject to change as actual performance is delivered, but the key message remains that we are well on track. In terms of the organic contribution to that bridge, we aim to deliver 3%-4% organic profit growth in total. We have a strong track record in terms of delivering this by focusing on the customer, driving efficiency, and adding services over time. Again, I will not go through each line item here, which add up to the 3%-4% growth, but in terms of the businesses, we are very comfortable operating in relatively mature energy markets, be that in Energy Products or in Mobility. We focus on adding new product capability here, driving margin, and cost performances. Energy Services within solutions clearly is different.
We see continued potential for strong growth, even with a slower energy transition than seemed likely a few years ago in areas such as solar, self-generation of electric power, energy, and power management, and energy efficiency solutions. We have a higher organic aspiration in this area, albeit it is a relatively smaller contributor today. Similarly, our fleet services within mobility, we think, also has this higher organic growth potential, as you'll see on the bottom of the slide. We aim to deliver 6%-8% growth through our M&A capability. The heritage of DCC is in venture capital or private equity, and this skill set or D&A is very much alive in DCC today. The 6%-8% we see here is very much a self-funded acquisition model. We continue to build our pipeline and ensure that we have development plans in line with our strategy.
We build our pipeline through multiple means, and we have a well-embedded process and governance structure around M&A. Fundamentally, the simple questions are always, how does the opportunity fit with strategy? How does it make our business better? What does the growth look like and returns look like? What is the probability of delivering that growth and return? Can we carefully integrate the business? As evidenced by our recent disposal in Hong Kong, we use the same lens to look at our current business portfolio to recycle capital. We look at around 200 opportunities a year, and we always have about 20-30 things that could be active. Exactly how this translates into acquisition activity will always depend on valuation and due diligence, but we have the capability to complete well over 10 deals a year, and we've done this in energy in the recent past.
A final slide from me. I've talked a lot about the financial characteristics of our business, in particular the returns and cash flow characteristics and the growth we have already and expect to continue to deliver. One thing that we are committed to maintaining is a strong balance sheet and investment-grade credit rating. I will come back to that in a moment. As we simplify the group, we have thought about what changes, if any, we should make to how we allocate capital. These are our capital allocation priorities. We see investing in our business to grow organically as our first priority. Typically, this means that CapEx will track a little ahead of depreciation. This supports organic growth at high returns. Second, we have always used the dividend as a way to provide predictable and progressive shareholder returns, and we see this continuing to be a priority for us.
Our third priority, as outlined in our strategy and our growth ambition to 2030, is to deliver self-funded M&A growth, provided it improves our business and will deliver strong returns on capital. We expect to deploy at least GBP 1.5 billion on M&A to 2030, with leverage moving modestly into the range illustrated at the center of the chart. We would like to spend GBP 250 million-GBP 300 million per annum over the next couple of years, subject to opportunity set and, as always, valuation and returns. Finally, we do very much see share buybacks or similar mechanisms as being our fourth lever. It may well arise that for whatever reason, M&A opportunities are not attractive. If this situation were to persist, we would have surplus capital, and if so, we would return it to shareholders.
That is where we find ourselves at the moment, for example, with the healthcare sale generating surplus capital, and we have announced today our intention to return that surplus to shareholders. Now I will hand you back to Donal for his closing remarks.
Thank you, Kevin. Just before we open up to Q&A, why invest in DCC? Global energy demand will grow. Customers need secure, cleaner, and competitive solutions. We have scale growth opportunities in new and existing markets. We have market-leading positions and long-term customer relationships, and we are strong operators. We have an agile, entrepreneurial, and resilient business model founded on a strong balance sheet and cash generation, self-funding, double-digit growth. We are a highly experienced compounder, almost 400 acquisitions at high returns. We are confident that this will deliver superior returns and compounding growth for our shareholders.
Our outlook for FY26: DCC expects that the year ending 31st March 2026 will be a year of good operating profit growth on a continuing basis, strategic progress, and continued development activity. Finally, in summary, it has been a year of good growth, development activity, and significant strategic momentum. We have scale opportunities in energy, and we are well on track to deliver our ambition to double our profits by 2030. We are focused on the future and know we will build DCC into a global leader in the energy sector. Thank you all for listening, and we look forward to answering your questions.
Thank you, Donal. To ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally.
Our first question comes from Ryan Flight from Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, all, and thank you for the presentation. Ryan Flight from Jefferies here, just three from me if I may. On the first question, it looks like a great step on disclosure for the energy division. Just looking at that services piece, I mean, the 49% organic profitability growth is obviously pretty groundbreaking. I wondered if you could give us some extra color on where you're seeing the most traction and what's driving that, along with kind of current trends and themes? The second question on the products piece, you've seen EBIT pence per liter expansion most years over the history that you've provided, I guess, on scale and mix, but a little bit of a dip this year.
I wondered if you could give us some color on that? And again, your thoughts on current trends and themes over the next few years? Just final question on tech. There's obviously some bits that are doing very well and some bits that are seeing some softness. When you think about the strategic review, are you increasingly seeing that division in two parts? Thank you.
Super. Thanks, Ryan. I suppose, and thank you for your comments on the disclosure. We have listened to all our analysts and consulted, and hopefully, what you see today will make life easier for you and definitely make life easier for us in explaining the business. Just on the services side, Ryan, just to start, as we outlined, there is really strong underlying organic growth within this part of the market.
Where we have seen the greatest level of growth is within France, where we're most mature. We have acquired seven businesses there. We've created a nationwide platform, and we're delivering very high levels of organic growth, and we have a very strong pipeline into the current year. Services and the way we outline it now, I think you're going to see is a very high growth, very attractive business delivering high operating margins as well. On the product side, I think, and you'll see from time to time, Ryan, that the margin per liter will move around a little bit. That's predominantly driven by mix. That wouldn't have been any different in the current year. It's really about looking at the trajectory on the margin side. I don't know, Kev, do you have anything on that?
Yeah.
I mean, you've made the majority of the point there, Donal. I mean, I think, Ryan, you'll know that FY 2024 for us was an exceptionally strong year across solutions, and we delivered over 8% organic growth. We did benefit a little bit, as you'll have read in the statement, from some of the dislocation in the natural gas markets in particular, where we saw exceptional demand maybe across liquid gas as a result. That is a little bit of the driver of it, just the context of 2024 being particularly strong. You'll have seen we've tracked up from GBP 0.025 to GBP 0.03 to now over GBP 0.033 per liter.
Like I said, the progression over time has been strong, and I think you've got to, at the GBP 0.034 to GBP 0.033 this year, you've really got to look at the GBP 0.034 as being a standout year, and really, we're well above where we would have been operating in 2021, 2022.
Just on the tech side, Ryan, and probably three parts to the business: Pro Tech, Live Tech, and Info Tech. I suppose you can look at it in two parts: Info Tech, which is the high volume, lower margin activities that have been pretty challenging, actually, over the last number of years. A lot of self-help that we talked about there during the presentation, including walking away from some loss-making activities. The Pro Tech, Live Tech business is actually, well, last year was a difficult enough year, is a real high-quality business.
We are very much working on the integration program in North America, which we are on track to deliver the GBP 20 million-GBP 30 million of improvement that we talked about. Clearly, tech, as Kevin outlined, is a tough market area at the moment. We do believe technology will be back in growth in the current year. We do believe we will deliver on that operational integration program and will continue with our strategic review. There are two different parts, really, to the business, and that might lead to two different solutions at a point in time. It is really about delivering the operational integration program now and delivering the synergies. Thanks, Ryan.
Our next question comes from Rory McKenzie from UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning. It is Rory here.
Yeah, I also had two questions based on the outlook now that the new disclosure helpfully maps it to your operating model a bit more. On that slide 40, can you firstly talk about the assumptions within Energy Products volumes? Is that reflecting bottom-up views on organic fuel volumes, liquid gas volumes, etc.? Does that margin outlook reflect the mix of that volume shift, or is there any like-for-like improvement you're assuming in that margin pence per liter as well? Secondly, for Energy Services, you say that you expect the EBIT margin to be kind of flat to plus 1% impact. As on slide 37, that margin percentage has been moving around quite a bit, I guess, given the evolving portfolio. Do you see the mix of that as being pretty stable from here?
And then just a final one on the actual results. Could you just comment on the working capital, which I think was a bit more of an outflow in H2 than expected and what we should assume for FY 2026? Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Rory. Maybe just on the services, I'll start, and then Kevin might talk through just the build-up in the model going forward. On the services side, we started obviously from literally a startup a number of years ago. As the business is scaling, there's a little bit, obviously, of movement depending on the types of contracts that we're doing over the years. We think those margins are going to be pretty stable at that level. It's a high-margin activity. It's obviously low capital intensity as well.
Further consolidation, Rory, as we do it within market, as I say, France has the highest returns because we've been buying businesses and integrating them and leveraged those compounding benefits. You will see that coming through going forward. I think we would see the margins within that kind of level.
Yeah. Thanks, Rory, for the questions. I mean, yeah, I guess the slide 40 that you refer to, just for everyone's benefit, is outlining the kind of 3-4% organic aspiration that we have in terms of operating profit growth. Obviously, we've set out some constituent parts to that. Yeah. Across the products piece, Rory, I guess from a volume perspective, I referenced it a couple of times in the presentation. Our business operates in Europe and North America in the product sector in a relatively mature market.
What we tend to find is that while there may be opportunities for us to increase market share, which we will always target, the market is pretty flat overall. Therefore, it is up to us and incumbent on us to find those areas that are growing. We do see demand growth in areas like liquid gas, and we see greater demand from commercial and industrial customers in that market. There are certain parts of the market on the domestic side that are a little bit more mature, and we see greater home efficiency measures coming into play over time. There is typically a little bit of growth in energy demand, offset by some efficiency measures that are in the energy system. That is why you will see we have a -1% to +2% volume piece around that.
That represents mix, but it also represents our best call at this point in terms of how we see the next five, six, seven, and beyond years evolving. I think on the margin side of that, clearly, we have some higher margin products, which is built into the margin per liter evolution that we see of +1% to +3% margin per liter. That includes things like greater contribution from liquid gas and from biofuels over time, which tend to be slightly higher margin products for us. It also includes just the incessant sort of approach in DCC to ensure that we are being as efficient as possible, that we are maximizing the contribution from the fuels and products that we sell. There is a little bit of mix in that, but it also includes the kind of general margin improvement that we've delivered.
As you go through the detail of the deck, you'll see it as we've delivered over the last decade. All of that adds up to the 2-4% organic growth aspiration in the products area. Mobility is very similar. Again, mature market and includes all of the EBITDA margin from a mix perspective and from a little bit of self-help on the margin line and getting our pricing spot on. From a working capital perspective, you mentioned, Rory, just to finish there, obviously, the working capital performance in this year is set against the context of the prior year where we had an exceptional working capital performance and delivered 100% free cash flow conversion. We had expected an outflow in FY 2025, and that is ultimately what came to pass.
As we think forward in FY 2026, we do, again, foresee a relatively modest working capital outflow of the order of about GBP 30-40 million as we grow organically into FY 2026. Across 2024 and 2025, we delivered an excellent 92% free cash flow conversion. Just to say that the performance in the current year really reflects an excellent performance in the prior year.
Rory, just the benefit of age, maybe been around the energy businesses for almost 27 years now at this stage. We have always been able to grow our margin per segment ahead of inflation and well ahead of inflation. While the markets might be flat-ish, our ability to grow margin has really been there over all my time within the business, and we certainly do not see that changing. Thanks, Rory.
Our next question comes from Colin Grant from Davy.
Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks very much. And good morning, everybody. Just a couple of questions for me. Just looking at the previous slide 39, where you've got your EBITDA bridge going out to GBP 830 million in fiscal 2030. We're three years into this kind of eight-year timeframe now, and you're running slightly ahead of the run rate required, which is very positive. I'm just thinking now, as we stand here looking over the remaining five years, could you just maybe give us a sense of your confidence level of getting to that GBP 830 million in five years? In particular, I'm interested on the Energy Products organic growth, where you're looking at 2-4% per annum. That's obviously the main part of the division.
Then just secondly, related to that, there's a GBP 175 million element of that coming from acquisitions within that timeframe. I'm wondering if you could just give us a little bit of color. I know deals are lumpy, and they come and they don't come. If you could give us some kind of thoughts as to how you think that might play out in terms of different kind of businesses it might be, whether it's liquid gas or SRO, and also the geographies where you think you might look to try and be doing deals over that kind of timeframe. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Colin. I think we should just give you our pipeline, really, is basically what you're asking for. Maybe starting with the second one. Look, we're very confident in terms of our ability to deploy capital. Joking apart, we do have a good pipeline, as you say.
Deals come at different times. Maybe people were saying, "There wasn't a lot in the second half of the year." We just remind everyone we have bought a lot of businesses in the previous 18 months, and we have to digest a lot of those businesses. Pipeline is good. We are very confident that we will deliver that level of growth between now and 2030. It will come, and that is always the piece. Kevin said, "You can't really say precisely what areas that will come in." I think we outlined in the presentation the areas of growth, those that are real scale opportunities in liquid gas and energy services. There are growth opportunities from an acquisition perspective in each of our sectors, in each of our geographies. We have a very high-quality development team who are really busy.
We just get to, I suppose, get the best or buy the best businesses that will deliver us the best returns and continue to deliver on our strategy. On the 830, Colin, we are highly confident of hitting the 830. You can ask Conor beside me here, or you can ask Kevin or anyone else. We're on track. You said we're ahead of track. We're on track. You know us well enough that our aim is to outperform, not to underperform. That certainly is `our focus. Thanks, Colin.
Our next question comes from Ken Rumph from Goodbody. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning. If I could ask you a couple of questions. Firstly, overall, you've given guidance for this year of good operating profit growth, which is the same phrase you used last year.
Last year, there was a significant part of M&A in achieving that growth. How much M&A that you've done already remains to sort of flow through into 2026? I imagine not that much, given it was sort of earlier in the year. That does seem to imply that if we're going to get a similar outcome, more of it would be organic. Second question, on the mobility side, in a way, it feels a little bit like mobility on a smaller scale resembles the services side, the other energy part, whereby it's got a sort of volume-driven part and a service-driven part. Do the fleet services, telematics, fuel cards, and so on, do they generate the kind of operating margins that you see in the energy services on the other side of the business? Thanks.
S uper. Thanks, Ken.
Look, and I think you broadly answered the question yourself on the outlook for the year. It is principally all organic. We had most of our acquisitions have been contributing for the full year. We have a little bit of still Hong Kong that will go out of our numbers in the first couple of months of this year. The underlying growth is all really organic. Take it as organic, and we have money to spend, hopefully, from an M&A perspective. Conor, will you talk about maybe the mobility piece?
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Ken. I guess on the mobility side, obviously, we have split out for the first time the fuel, non-fuel services from a gross margin point of view.
We do not drop that down to operating profit because, as you can imagine, there is lots of convenience, car wash, all the services that happen on the sites that you cannot break down, the cost piece below that. The other services, the fleet services, the telematics, they are good gross margin, as you can imagine, and they are strong operating margins. You asked, were they in line with the services on the service side from a products perspective? They broadly are, broadly in that kind of double-digit operating margin side.
They would have really high returns on capital employed as well because they are very little capitalized.
Very little capital, very little fixed infrastructure in those. Yeah, very high return on capital, which, as you know, we love.
Thanks, Ken.
Our next question comes from David Brockton from Deutsche Numis. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Good morning. Please can I ask two questions around the technology division? Just in terms of the GBP 82 million operating profit that you reported in the year that just completed, does that include any benefit from the GBP 20 million-GBP 30 million gains that you hope to drive in Pro Tech and Live Tech? Or should we still think of that as all of that still to flow through, and this should really be GBP 100 million-GBP 110 million as a sort of reference EBIT for the division as you reach the end of the review? And then the second question, are you able to give any more insight into how much that EBIT splits between Pro Tech, Live Tech, and Info Tech? Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks, David. There was a little bit in the current year of the operational integration program in North America, but really, we only started into that program during the year.
Our focus has been actually in bringing an integrated management team together in North America, which we have done. The vast bulk of that is to come. We talked earlier about delivering growth in the current year. That will be driven by self-help. We do not believe the market is going to be too beneficial to us within the current year. I think about Pro Tech and Live Tech together. Clearly, the vast bulk of the profitability of our business is coming from Pro Tech and Live Tech. Info Tech is marginally profitable. It is really all in the Pro Tech and Live Tech space. Thanks, David.
Thanks. Our next question comes from Joe Brent from Panmure Liberum. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. Yes, it is Joe Brent from Panmure Liberum. Three questions, if I may, perhaps one by one, if that helps.
Firstly, could you talk a little bit more about the nature of the GBP 600 million capital return? It sounds like a one-off transaction. Are we right to think that means special dividend or tender offer?
Joe, do you want to give all three questions, and we will try and answer them as efficiently as possible for you?
Absolutely, if you prefer. The second one was about Energy Services. Thanks for the better disclosure on that. Could you give us an indication of what the organic profit growth was in the second half? And then finally, the U.S. solutions business seems quite subscale. I think I am right in thinking that your M&A is focused mainly on Europe. What are the plans for the U.S. solutions business?
Yeah, do you want to talk?
Yeah. Look, on the GBP 600 million, thanks, Joe, for the three questions.
On the GBP 600 million, look, yes, we're obviously planning a material, call it special event later in the year. The form is yet to be decided, Joe, and we'll get into that over the coming weeks and months. I think if you're thinking about it, you should expect a material reduction in the share count as a result of that. That's what we're aiming towards.
Yeah. Look, the service, and clearly, the growth is pretty stellar in the services business, and the organic growth is pretty stellar in the services business. As I said earlier, that's mainly coming from our business in France. In terms of the solutions business, the U.S. is still a real focus for us. We talk about Europe.
I think people maybe had forgotten a little bit about opportunities within Europe, but we do want to deploy capital both in Europe and in the U.S. Thanks, Joe.
Yeah. Joe, the only other thing to add, Donal, if you do not just, I think on the H1, H2 split for services, look, it is broadly consistent. We have seen strong growth throughout the year. There is less seasonal weighting in that business than you might expect in the products business of our energy business. Broadly consistent profitability trends through the year.
Our next question comes from Christopher Banbury from Peel Hunt. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Morning, gents. I have got three questions. First, with regard to the North American technology integration program, what are the key outstanding actions to deliver that GBP 20 million- GBP 30 million of profit improvement? Second, are there any further potential portfolio disposals in technology?
Finally, looking at restructuring exceptional, those were GBP 37 million last year. What are your thoughts on this year's sum given the ongoing restructuring in technology? Thank you.
Thanks, Chris. Look, the North American program, the actions, and as I said, we've really started that. There is what I'm calling kind of the harder synergy or extraction options, which is managing our freight effectively. It is the integration or the rationalization of our warehouse infrastructure. There is a lot that we're focused on in terms of the commercial improvement around using AI around our pricing and supply chain management. There are, line by line, detailed items, a very substantial program that we have supported by a third party as well. It is early days in it. It is delivering. It is on track. We are very confident in the GBP 20 million-GBP 30 million delivery of profitability over the next 18 months.
On portfolio side, like it will clearly, all of tech is in sight, obviously, as we head to being a single-sector business. We will continue to review our strategic options over the next 18 months, as we said, and deliver on that. Maybe restructuring, Kev.
Yeah. Chris, look, as best we can call it, and as we see it today, you're probably looking at somewhere between GBP 15 million-GBP 20 million into FY 2026, depending on progress, depending on the strategic review progress as well. They're not all fully baked in at this stage, but that would be a reasonable estimate.
Thanks, Chris.
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Daniel Cowan from HSBC. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. It's Dan Cowan from HSBC. I've got just two questions, please.
The first one is on net debt at year-end with all the moving parts and assuming that you get away the capital return as you've outlined here this morning. Where would you see year-end net debt, please? The second question is, I wonder if you can give us a bit more color on tariff impact. I'm sure you've had some discussions on this, and I appreciate this is still a very open-ended topic. Any thoughts on mechanisms and how that might affect the business, both in terms of direct effect and then sort of second-order effect, please? That's it for me.
Thanks, Dan. Maybe I'll start with the great question on tariffs. Look, firstly, in our energy business, we buy and sell products in-country for the country. Tariffs do not have any impact on the vast bulk of our business.
It's relevant clearly within the tech business. For any distribution business, they're pass-through businesses, Dan, as you know. Our job is to pass any price increase, whether it's product price or tariff, into the market. We're pretty confident that we will be able to do that. The question will be, as that happens, or if it happens, what impact that has on demand. As I said earlier, for technology, we're expecting the growth in the current year to come from self-help, not coming from the market. We'll have to wait and see. Every day you wake up, there's new news on tariffs.
Yeah. Thanks, Dan. On net debt EBITDA and net debt, I guess clearly the sale of healthcare we expect to complete during the year, and indeed, we expect to return, obviously, a substantial proportion of proceeds to shareholders.
I think if you were to look firstly at the FY 2025 net debt to EBITDA at around 0.9x, and you were to pro forma that for the announced sale of healthcare and the capital return, you end up at the same number. We do not see any increase or decrease in leverage arising from the healthcare transaction. We see that at 0.9x. As you think forward to FY 2026, I guess where we see things, assuming no further acquisition spend, so modest outflow in working capital, as described, a little bit of CapEx ahead of depreciation, you pay your interest, your taxes, dividend, etc., we probably finish at about 0.7 x net debt to EBITDA at the end of FY2026 as a broad rule of thumb.
As I said, that assumes no acquisition spend, and clearly, that's not what we expect to unfold as the year goes on, and we do expect to be deploying capital. The balance sheet is in good shape, remains in very good shape after the return of capital to shareholders, and provides us with ample liquidity and space to continue to be acquisitive through FY 2026.
Thanks, Dan.
Our final question comes from Sylvia Barker from JP Morgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Hi, good morning, everyone. Two from me, I'm afraid. First one, just on D&A versus CapEx, I guess we've ended up with, let's say, GBA 180 million of CapEx, GBP 160 million of D&A. I do not know if that's accurate, but I guess it's kind of quite a bit above a one, at least on our estimates.
Can you just talk about kind of how much of that you think both CapEx and D&A will be within energy, and how much within tech, and what actually you expect to be investing in most ahead of depreciation? Question number two. Just looking at 2026 specifically, and if we think about the organic within energy, how do you think about product services and mobility compared to that medium-term slide that you have put up, slide 40? Finally, on the benefit from the synergies between Pro and Live Tech, how much of that GBP 25 million-GBP 30 million will come in year in full year 2026? Thank you.
Thanks, Sylvia. Maybe we will just go backwards and leave CapEx to Kevin. On the synergy side in North America, it is probably because as you implement these changes, you will not have them for the full year as a whole.
If you look at about just less than half of it probably coming in within this financial year, and I said that's kind of in our view of what the growth is likely to be in technology, then offset, obviously, by weaker market conditions. Going back to, I suppose we talked about just earlier that there is pretty much no acquisition contribution in the current year. Again, we would see the energy business being kind of in that range of what we've talked organic would be for the year. We do clearly hope to spend money on acquisitions to drive that even higher.
Yeah. Sylvia, sorry, just on the CapEx piece of it, it'll be no surprise to you to expect that the vast majority of the GBP 180 million, roughly, of CapEx we expect in FY 2026 is associated with DCC Energy.
DCC Technology would be much less capital-intensive in general terms. But we'll have, say, maybe GBP 20 million or so CapEx within the Technology division, so the vast majority of it will be within Energy, and the depreciation would follow. The depreciation in Energy is much more of the GBP 160 million of depreciation. The vast majority of that, similarly, is within Energy.
On the areas that we're spending in ahead of depreciation, it's areas where you're gaining customers, tanks and cylinders on the Liquid Gas side, and investing on the enhanced side from our Mobility business. It's those areas where we see the highest organic growth.
Super. Thanks, Sylvia. I think, Sammy, that's all the questions?
Yes. We currently have no further questions, so I'd like to hand back to Donal Murphy for some closing remarks.
Great.
Look, just firstly, to thank you all for bearing with us this morning. That was much longer than we would normally present, but hopefully, you all found it beneficial. We are super excited about the opportunities that sit in front of us within the energy business. Hopefully, that came across in the presentation. We set out a material strategic change last November. We're making really good progress on that change to date. The sale of healthcare was crucially important, the GBP 800 million return of capital. We promised you that we would perform while we're transforming. I think the performance in the year with our energy business up 8.5% demonstrates that. Look, it's been a big year for us, a year of change, and it is the start of the next phase of growth for DCC. Thank you all for your support.
We look forward to seeing many of you over the week and next week, and see you all soon. Thank you.