I think we're ready to start. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our results presentation today for the year end of 31 March, 2023. We're delighted to be here, the DCC team, in front of everybody in person for the first time in, well, in since 2019 was the last time we did a in-person results announcement. For the last three years, we've been doing virtual presentations. This is a lot more engaging. Thank you to everybody who's come along today to be in the room, and obviously welcome also to everybody who is joining us online today. We have quite a few people online. I guess a lot has changed over DCC in the last three years, but a lot remains the same.
You know, I think what you'll hear today is a lot about the continued resilience of DCC and how we've continued to manage to grow and progress over the last three years, and in particular, again, in the most recent financial year ended. You all know this already, Donal unfortunately is not with us here this morning, and so we send Donal our best wishes, and we very much look forward to having him back full-time in the business in advance of our AGM in July. I'm Kevin Lucey , the CFO of DCC, and I'm joined here this morning by my three divisional colleagues. Fabian Ziegler, CEO DCC Energy. Conor Costigan, CEO DCC Healthcare, and Clive Fitzharris, CEO DCC Technology. I think most of you might know Conor Costigan, who's been here with us before.
Fabian joined the group last year as CEO DCC Energy, he'll introduce himself later on. Indeed, Clive similarly has been with the group for quite some time, 13 years now, I think, 14 years, and has done lots of senior roles around the group and stepped up to be CEO DCC Technology during the last financial year. Obviously today is all about results, we are gonna use the opportunity to talk about maybe a little bit of the longer-term picture in DCC. Also just to draw everyone's attention to the fact that this morning we did launch a new website, which hopefully will provide people with good additional color and insight into the DCC business and what makes DCC a great place to work and indeed to invest in.
We have significantly refreshed our preliminary announcement this morning, there's a lot of additional disclosure in there for investors and analysts, again, hopefully people will find that welcome. Finally, you know, in the appendix to our results presentation this morning, again, you'll find an awful lot more transparency and disclosure about our business, hopefully again, that will make things easier for people to understand. DCC. If I flick on. I guess there's three sections to what we want to talk to you about this morning. Firstly, we will spend a good chunk of today talking about the highlights of FY 2023 indeed then delving into a little bit more detail of the performance during the year.
We'll then, if you will bear with us, take a little bit of a step up and out of the FY 2023 performance to talk a little bit more about the medium-term picture in DCC and what we're trying to do at a group level, and indeed then what each of the three divisions are trying to do. You know, we'll talk a little bit about the growth platforms we have in the group. Finally, we'll finish with outlook a bit, and a bit of a wrap-up before we open to Q&A. Let's begin with getting into FY 2023. I guess the first thing to say is we're very pleased and happy to report that FY 2023 was another year of very strong growth in DCC.
I guess that strong financial performance again demonstrates perhaps the benefit we get from the diversity we have in the group, demonstrates the resilience of DCC. We've made good progress on our development agenda over the course of the year. We'll talk a little bit about that in more detail. Indeed, it's been a good year again of strategic execution in terms of what we've been doing on the Energy side and some of the capital we've deployed during the year, and we'll talk about that in more detail. Again, we're very proud of the performance in terms of sustainability across the group during FY 2023, and again, we'll talk a little bit more about that in some detail.
Firstly to say from a financial performance perspective, you know, operating profits, adjusted operating profit up 11.3% to just about GBP 656 million in the year. Strong performance. The free cash flow generation of the group remains very strong, so a free cash flow conversion of 87% in the year. Again, keeping that progressive dividend approach that we've had over very, very many years in DCC, with a 6.5% increase in our dividends. I mentioned earlier that we believe it's been a good year from a strategic execution perspective. You know, we've made quite a bit of progress in our Energy division, and we've deployed GBP 360 million of new capital into new platforms of growth for the group during the year.
I think the notable acquisition during the year, the largest one, was the expansion of DCC Vital's medical device operations into Europe for the first time through the acquisition of Medi-Globe. We completed 19 acquisitions over the course of the year, and that GBP 360 million of spend. By number, a lot of them in the Energy business. The largest one of those was the PVO solar distribution acquisition that we bought earlier this year. We've, you know, deployed capital into at least 10 acquisitions over the course of the year that expand our capability in newer energy areas. Again, we'll talk about some of the progress we're making in that later in the presentation.
Related to some of that capital allocation, you know, particularly on the energy side, it's been a very good year for us from a sustainability perspective. I think a notable feature of our results this morning is that our Scope 3 carbon emissions have reduced further by 5% over the course of the year. That's, you know, also contributed to the fact that our services and renewables profits in DCC Energy have grown from 22% of our profits to 28% of our profits over the course of the year.
You know, again, you can see that that drive for sustainability progress is manifesting itself also in increased profits for the group. I think when we look at our own operations, which again is very, very important to us, we've had a very substantial reduction in the year in our Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions. You know, over 9% reduction there, and we remain well on track to meet our 50% reduction target against our 2019 baseline by 2030. Again, good progress there. Finally, on the people front, you know, we've been running engagement surveys across the group now for a number of years.
Again, pleased to report that even on the people side, we managed to create opportunities for people, some of which you see in front of us, myself and Clive and others included, who have, you know, grown their careers in DCC. You know, we have improved our engagement scores again across the group, demonstrating that DCC remains a very good place to work. If we get into performance in a little bit more detail, you know, we don't talk too much about revenue in DCC, but revenues were up very substantially over the course of the year, up 25%. Really that was driven by the increased whole detail. You know, we don't talk too much about revenue in DCC sale cost of energy products over the course of the year.
That is driven, you know, predominantly by DCC Energy and in DCC Energy predominantly by the fact that the higher wholesale cost of energies were reflected in our revenues. You don't see the same sort of growth in profits because as you know, our energy business, the profits are not particularly correlated to the volume of energy we sell or to the revenue that we produce, but more to the volumetric measurements. group adjusted operating profit GBP 655.7 million, up 11.3% and 7.8% constant currency. Adjusted EPS GBP 4.563, up 6.1%. A little bit lower growth than on the group adjusted operating profit line, principally driven by a higher tax rate and higher funding costs over the course of the year.
Again, we would see those continuing to be a modest headwind for us as we enter FY 2024. From a free cash flow perspective, very strong free cash flow generation in the year. Already talked about that, over GBP 570 million of free cash flow generated or 87% conversion. From a dividend perspective, we're pleased to be proposing another increase in our dividend, our 29th year of consecutive dividend growth for DCC. In talking about return on capital, return on capital remaining strong at 15.1%, reducing a little bit on the prior year, principally reflecting the very substantial acquisition spend we've had across the last two years. We've deployed over GBP 1 billion in the last two years, and that really is the primary driver of that.
It's also impacted a little bit in the current year by, you know, organic headwinds in Healthcare and Technology. From a net debt perspective, balance sheet remains very strong. The GBP 767 million of net debt that you see there reflects approximately 0.9x pro forma net debt to EBITDA. If you were to look forward on an FY 2024 basis, that would approximate to about 0.6 or 0.7x net debt EBITDA, assuming we weren't deploying capital on acquisitions, but, you know, we don't expect that to be the case. That's it from a financial highlights perspective. Just to talk a little bit about the divisional shape of the results over the course of the year.
Obviously, as you can see, DCC Energy increased its profits by 12.4% and 10% constant currency. DCC Healthcare declined by 8.6% or 11.1% constant currency. DCC Technology is GBP 106 million, an increase of almost 30% year-on-year, 20% constant currency. In terms of the shape of the group, energy, similar to last year, reflecting about 70% of the profits of the group. You know, from a geographic perspective, again, the internationalization, I guess, of DCC continues. Many of you will have been following us for a long time and know that, you know, our heritage really has been here in the UK and in Ireland.
Obviously the greater diversity in the group, the amount of cash flow we now generate in Continental Europe and North America is really quite substantial. You see, you know, Continental Europe representing approximately 40% of the group, UK and Ireland, approximately 1/3. Then the balance is 26%, principally in North America. Okay, we look at each of the visions now in a little bit more detail. As you can see in the slide, we've had an excellent performance in DCC Energy over the course of the year. Really that's been strong right across the division. We've had good performances from our Energy Solutions business and also from our Energy Mobility business over the course of the year. The organic profit growth at 8.3%, I think again, was particularly strong in the year.
We experienced pretty robust demand in what was a volatile environment. Notwithstanding the volumes are reduced modestly, that was, I guess, a little bit to be expected. Energy prices were very high during the year, and we had a lot of efforts, particularly in Continental Europe, from governments to try and economize and reduce energy consumption over the course of the year, which was understandable. Notwithstanding that, we saw good demand for our products, particularly on the lower carbon and renewable side of our business over the course of the year. There was good demand across each of our regions. You know, we had good profit growth in North America, in the Nordics, in Continental Europe, and in UK and Ireland. Like I say, a pretty strong performance all around.
Similarly on the mobility side, very strong performance from our fleet business, our digital, where we provide a lot of digital services to large fleets, and also on the retail side, where in France and the UK in particular, we performed well. I think one of the notable things, and I referred to it already, is that, you know, the strategy in action here, that DCC has been investing quite significantly over the last number of years in growing the proportion of our profits that come from services and renewables in DCC Energy.
From, you know, a high single-digit percentage four or five years ago to now approximately 28% of our profits in the Energy business coming from products or services where we have effectively zero, or very close to zero Scope 3 carbon emissions. The acquisition activity over the course of the year supported some of that. We have been deploying capital into this area, but it was also as a result of very good organic developments. Again, Fabian will talk a lot about that, a little bit later. We completed a lot of acquisitions over the course of the year in DCC Energy, many of them small, modest acquisitions bolting into our operations, but all of them adding new capability to DCC and particularly in the newer energy areas.
Finally, and you'll hear more about this later on, but obviously Fabian joined us over the course of the year, but we have established a, you know, a new regionalized management structure. Quite a, quite a lot of, you know, new energy across our management team as we've kind of reorganized and repositioned the team to enable us to grow towards 2030. Fabian, as I say, will talk about that a little later. In DCC Healthcare, obviously after a couple of record years in DCC Healthcare, where we had exceptionally strong organic growth, last year was a more challenging year for DCC Healthcare. Notwithstanding that, we continued to make good strategic progress and invested in the business to ensure that we're well positioned into the future.
Operating profit declined by 8.6% or 11% constant currency. Organically, that was down 18.7%, really driven by weak demand in DCC Health & Beauty Solutions. I'll talk about that in a second. In DCC Vital, trading was good and performed well, in line with expectations, in fact modestly ahead of our expectations. That really reflected good performances from our medical devices business here in the UK and also our primary care business here in the UK and in Germany. The Medi-Globe acquisition, which we completed during the year, continued to perform well. On the health and beauty side, we began the year, 12 months ago, if we were standing here, we would've been talking about, you know, record levels of demand and a very strong order book.
Over the course of the year, we saw that demand weaken as our customers began to try to reduce the amount of inventory that they had, and indeed mirroring, I guess, what they were seeing from their customers in retail stores and consumers. You know, we have had a period over the second half of the year in particular, where there's been a large amount of destocking going on in the supply chain, and I guess that has been reasonably painful for our business. However, you know, I guess the important point is that, you know, we haven't reduced our capacity in any way in this business because we believe it's a fantastic long-term growth opportunity. Conor, again, will talk about that a little bit later on. You know, we did see that destocking in Europe and in North America.
I guess the one bright spot for us through that period was that our effervescent business in the U.S. in particular continued to perform very well. You know, we remain very confident about the outlook for DCC Healthcare and indeed for our DCC Health and Beauty business. As we think about FY 2024, you know, certainly our DCC Vital business we continue to expect will perform well and grow strongly over the course of the year. On the Health and Beauty side, we do see a recent tick up in our order books, and we do expect that, you know, as we enter the second half of the year, the destocking will largely have washed its way out.
By the time we get to H2, we'd certainly expect to be back in growth mode in DCC Health and Beauty Solutions. In DCC Technology, which was our strongest growth over the course of the year by growing nearly 30%, all of that growth was driven by the acquisition of Almo. Pleasingly to say that the Almo performance in the second half was very much in line with expectations. You know, operating profits of GBP 106 million and 30% profit growth were very much in line with what we had been thinking about at the November stage when we were talking to you all. Operating profits organically declined by 16.9%, really driven by weak demand on the consumer side of our business.
We saw in Europe and a little bit in North America that operating profits organically declined by 16.9%. You know, the consumer was weaker and consumer expenditure into technology was softer than it had been in the prior couple of years. Demand for B2B products over the course of the year was pretty robust. Certainly, you know, we continue to see good demand for our pro solutions, our Pro Tech technologies that we distribute in North America and in Europe. Our U.K. business performed better this year and, you know, grew strongly. Again, in Ireland, actually, we had another year of good strong performance. As we think about FY 2024 in technology, again, think the market will remain pretty difficult on the consumer side. I think on the B2B side, we'd be reasonably cautious.
However, you know, we do think we can grow our profits again in technology organically in FY 2024. Business is well positioned. We've invested significantly in the division over recent years and therefore, you know, we think there's plenty we can do to grow our profits next year. When you pull all of that together and look at it at a group level, obviously you'll see on the left-hand side of the waterfall that we have grown the profits, as I mentioned earlier, 11%. Constant currency, or the FX translation impact of that, if you like, was a tailwind for us in the year of 3.5%, reversing what was, you know, a headwind in the prior year. We had a strong headwind from currency in the prior year.
You really just see the weakening of sterling over the course of the year there. From an M&A perspective, M&A added 7.6% to our reported growth over the course of the year, principally the acquisition of Almo in DCC Technology. Organically, 0.2% organic growth over the course of the year, driven obviously by the organic growth in DCC Energy. That 0.2% is in the context of, you know, a very strong organic performance in the prior year when organically profits were up 6.1%.
obviously also is in, in the context of, you know, an 8% increase in our cost base across the group this year on a like-for-like basis or GBP 130 million of increase, if you like, in our cost base over the course of the year like for like. you know, we're pleased with that performance. From a free cash flow perspective, you can see that obviously we converted 87% of our operating profit into free cash flow, and you'll see that we continue to invest really in the CapEx on the CapEx line. CapEx in excess of depreciation being the material mover. Working capital was not a material component of the cash flow in the year.
There's investment going into DCC right around the group, principally in the year in the energy side where we've been building new capability throughout the year in the energy business and, you know, one or two material investments like our LPG storage facility here in the UK in Avonmouth. On the health and beauty side, indeed, I mentioned that earlier, where we continue to invest in our capability across gummy formats and expanding our capacity, setting us up well for growth in the future. I mentioned earlier as well, you know, how, you know, we've progressed quite a bit, you know, from over the period of those virtual presentations in the last 3 years. In FY 2020 the profits of DCC were GBP 494 million, and today, 3 years later, they're GBP 656 million.
Obviously that GBP 656 million, and from an EBITDA perspective, cumulatively over the course of those three years is about GBP 2.2 billion. That really substantial cash generation in DCC has enabled us to deploy about GBP 2.4 billion in capital over the course of the three years. Those of you who know us well, again, will recognize the right-hand side of the chart here as being really how we set out our capital, our capital priorities in terms of investment in DCC. Always investing in making sure that we have, you know, well-positioned businesses, well-invested businesses, providing us with organic growth opportunities. The GBP 500 million in CapEx over the course of the three years is in excess of a depreciation amount of about GBP 400 million. Again, investing in our capability there.
You know, we maintain some agility, you know, in terms of how we think about these capital priorities, like a lot of what we do in DCC. Presently we are investing maybe a little bit more than we have four or five years ago in the organic development of the group, and that reflects the opportunities that we see, particularly on the energy side and on the healthcare side, you know, to add new capability and hopefully take a little bit of share. Years ago in the organic development of the group, and that reflects the opportunity. Over the course of the year again, or three years, we've deployed substantial amounts of capital in M&A. I guess that's been ever thus in DCC really, but you know, we do believe we have a differentiated M&A capability in the group.
You know, it stems right the way back to the heritage of the group in 1976 when it was founded you know that when we went public in 1994 to today, we've completed about 400 acquisitions. We've also made used that capability occasionally for divestment purposes. You know, we really do feel we continue to have a really strong engine from a capital allocation perspective, but also capability to invest. You know, that has been a driver of approximately 6%-8% profit growth for DCC over the last decade. You know, we continue to see that opportunity of being available to DCC into the future.
Finally, we've returned, just about GBP 500 million to investors over the course of that three years, and, you know, that remains, you know, something that DCC believes is, you know, continues to be the right way in terms of capital framework, how we set out, you know, sharing our returns with our shareholder base. The progressive dividend was again in evidence this morning, so, you know, you'll see the continued increase in dividends. We do understand that, you know, we have the optionality, we have the lever of increasing returns to shareholders if we were not convinced that there wasn't the opportunity in the organic development of the business, and particularly on the M&A capability side.
you know, continue to believe that there's very strong opportunities for us to deploy capital across, you know, our two priority areas, from an investment in the business perspective of organically and M&A. Okay. We are, I mentioned this at the start, we are gonna just take a little pause from the FY 2023 performance to talk a little bit more into the future in DCC and what it is we're trying to do as a group. There's obviously different lenses to look at that through. There's the group lens, clearly, and then there's each of the three divisional lenses which the guys will articulate and talk about in a minute.
I guess, you know, at recent market events, everybody knows that, you know, I think we have an ambition in DCC to double our profits by 2030 and make the group substantially larger, more cash generative than it is today. Actually, Fabian will talk a little bit about the ambition of the DCC Energy business in that context of doubling the profits by 2030 that the group has. You know, I think in DCC, we really focus on owning and operating great businesses and trying to manage them well, and really embedding that culture of entrepreneurship and innovation that we believe pervades the group. We spend a lot of time when we bring new businesses into the group, encouraging them to follow that DCC mindset, if you like.
Those businesses, if we, you know, buy the right ones and we execute well and manage them well, they tend to produce really strong cash flow. You know, that cash flow gives us the license to invest and reinvest those cash flows where we see fit and where we really believe we have really strong future growth potential. That always remains the lens we look at when we think forward about DCC. Where do we see the potential? If we don't see potential, you know, in our current business or indeed in things we're looking at, we won't invest behind them, and indeed, over the course of DCC's history, it has divested of many things that didn't quite fit that future focus. We continue to run the group that way.
We think about the future, we look for future potential and the lens in DCC, you know, the lever we look at and the lens we look through is, you know, where is the identifiable need and the sustainable growth potential within businesses we look at. I guess, you know, we talk a lot about in DCC about sustainable cash generative businesses producing very strong returns on capital. That's what we look for, but always looking forward and identifying that future growth potential. That need, if you like, tends to lend itself to businesses where we believe they're providing essential parts of what the world needs. That brings us on a little bit to, you know, when we think about what the world needs presently and into the future, there's no doubt that we have a great position in three transformative sectors.
Things that are right at the heart of a progressive world. There's a neat link between how we think about investment opportunity and our purpose in DCC, which is to enable people and businesses to grow and progress. As we think about investing and as we think about those three transformative sectors, you know, we know that there is a real need for progress in the energy market, where there's a necessity to be able to provide cleaner energy for everyone. If we execute well in DCC, we will contribute to a cleaner world. Similarly, in healthcare, and Conor will talk about this, you know, how we see the world's necessity for people to live healthier, to live longer and healthier lives.
In technology, we believe the technology we can bring to market will help make a more progressive world a reality. With that little introduction, I'm gonna hand over to each of my three colleagues who are gonna talk to you a little bit about their growth potential within their sectors. Fabian, over to you.
Thank you. Thanks so much. Good morning. It's Fabian. I'm delighted to be here. It's a first for me, and it's for me now six months that I'm heading DCC Energy. I just wanna briefly say, I know DCC since 2009, and I joined this company because I think it's a great company, and I'm deeply convinced it has all it takes to be a true energy transition winner. I'm, of course, deeply impressed with the financial delivery of my division this year, the resilience, and very excited by what we have done for our customers, and even more excited by what I'm deeply convinced we can become a very special energy company. Three things, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to talk about.
First, I would like to introduce our ambition to double our profits and become a recognized carbon leader by 2030. Secondly, I will try to lay out our 2-pillar approach, how we get there. We defossilize our carbon intense business becoming a bio leader. Secondly, we establish a decentralized electron-based energy management business. Number three, I would like to demonstrate that we are not starting this journey from scratch, like many of the big producers. Now I need to hit the right button. Over the past 6 months, we have built on and sharpened our Leading with Energy strategy, which we published exactly 1 year ago.
Through this sharpened focus, we position ourselves as a decentralized energy company, deeply passionate about our customers that typically are served not by the central energy systems, and we are leading them through their energy transition. The world needs cleaner energy for everyone. Our strategy is geared to delivering this outcome. Energy is clearly a challenging category in today's world. The energy trilemma: affordability, availability, and cleanliness is difficult for our customers. This, at the same time, constitutes a very positive context for DCC Energy's competitiveness. We are relatively product agnostic. We have very loyal customers. They strong trust in our brands. We truly believe in being the best customer company in energy. We will service our customers exceedingly well, aim to offer all customers an energy transition solution, and act as a net zero partner in a increasingly decentralized energy system.
From liquids stored locally to electrons produced and consumed directly at site, our customers become both producers and consumers. In nowadays language, prosumers. Our strategy contains a detailed growth plan to 2030, while embracing a strong intent to be a recognized carbon leader in our industry. Given the progress we have seen over the last 12 months, we have confidence in our ability to greatly exceed the Scope 3 reduction indicated in Leading with Energy. Under our plan, we will at least double our profits. This leads to a growth rate of 10.4%, which is in line with DCC Energy's historic growth over the last five years of 10.2%. This is driven by exposure to growth segments of the energy market and of course, our acquisition ambition.
There are two synergistic growth passes that entail quite different mechanics, but they're connected through our customer orientation. Firstly, we will reduce the carbon intensity of our fossil core business, becoming Europe's leading bio marketer. We view this as change from inside the core. This will add around GBP 200 million EBIT, and in true DCC fashion, this will be a mix of organic and acquisition development. We build on our success with HVO, Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil, a very profitable, highly differentiated product, aiming to be 10% of the HVO market in Europe. This is underpinned by partnerships with the large producers. We keep growing LPG, namely in the U.S. LPG accounts for 50% of our profits, but only 15% of our carbon.
LPG has the highest profit to carbon ratio of our fossil fuels, and it is around 20% lower carbon than traditional fossil products. We work to position LPG as a highly needed transition fuel for hard-to-serve customer segments. We deepen our involvement in incubating the production of renewable versions of LPG, seeing a path to 15% renewable content by 2030. We will transition our fossil fuel customers consequently to renewable solutions, and gradually, we will cut some carbon-intense activities with lower margin exposure. We have detailed out a mobility strategy to keep it short with 3 components. Highly selective EV investments for the top end of our network. We have almost 100 EV-enabled sites. Second, our more rural networks will act as a cash engine. Thirdly, we will then consequently grow in our digital fleet customer formats like Fuel Card Services and SNAP.
This defossilization pillar, we complement with our second growth path, which is building a leading electron-based energy management business. We regard solar as an ideal 1st platform, leveraging classic DCC strengths as a consolidator of fragmented markets. Solar plays a big role in any national energy strategy, and growth is very strong for long years to come. We can apply our disciplined operations mindset and our decentralized energy distribution capability. We target market leadership across Europe and then in North America. We will acquire solar installation capability as this is currently the biggest bottleneck. We complement it with more central brand management, central procurement of equipment and technology. Our new PVO company is really excellent at this, and we're building digital business models.
The design is solar as a service, including elements like financing, maintenance, performance management, and energy procurement formats, so to steadily increase the proportion of recurring revenues in this space. Our success in France gives us confidence in this move. This will become a EUR 300 million energy management business led by solar, and we round it out with the locally most suitable propositions, such as energy efficiency services, heat pumps, or other solutions. This will be a lot about acquisitions enriched with own capability building. We redirect our exposure to fast-growing segments in energy, and we grow our income per customer.
In combination, the two pillars will make us a holistic energy services company by 2030, with a sharply reduced carbon footprint and 50% or more income from renewables. Geography-wise, focus will be on Europe and the US, where the regulatory frameworks almost compete with one another for more favorable conditions around renewables. We will invest in our capabilities with a core theme around electrons and carbon. We will constantly improve the quality of our portfolio, especially looking at it from a carbon yield perspective. We sense a very strong customer pull for this direction. We build on our differentiated positioning as a special energy company, following our customer motto, Cleaner Energy in Your Power. We aim to give our customers control over energy with a very decentral offer, again, from storage in tanks to production at site, and making cleaner energy much more accessible and affordable.
We drive decarbonization not only because it's the right thing, but namely because it is a unique commercial opportunity for a customer company like us. We work through a leading carbon reduction story, aiming for leading market practice. Our expertise around advising customers and having a multi-energy offer is increasing by the day. In our 2030 plan, we target 50% more customers and equally 50% more margin per customer. Both we think is conservative. The good news is, it's working already. In the carbon intensity reduction sphere, we are making good progress all along the value chain. We just announced a partnership with Oberon to incubate production of clean LPG. In our own operations, our Certa fleet in Ireland, we put 100 trucks on HVO.
We landed large supply agreements with key customers like Amazon Web Services, Björneborg Steel in Sweden, or Sisk Construction. Important to note, bio is one of the most affordable passes to lower carbon. Through acquisitions and building own capability, we also broaden out our energy offer. We completed 526 solar installations in France with a total installed capacity of 61 MWh. Bureau Vallée is a French serial customer, and we are also pioneers in Corporate Power Purchase Agreements for renewable energy, matching our corporate customers like Britvic or Wavin directly with wind farms in the area. This creates even more longevity in our customer relationships. We talk about customer for life, and we grow margins per customer. Our model is truly customer-led and not dependent on pushing the supply of products we happen to have. Yes.
I was pushing the wrong button. Last piece from me. This chart pictures some of the facts that give us the greatest confidence in our strategy. Since Leading with Energy, we track the metric SRO, the % of operating profit from services, renewable, and other income with zero or close to zero emissions. As you can see, firstly, our SRO proportion has grown from 22% to 28%, this is highly relevant. We are not starting a decarbonization journey from zero. We have done a good proportion of the journey already, it works. Further, you see on this chart our renewable acquisitions over the last months. I just list out a few. PVO, a leading European supply chain company procuring panels, inverters, batteries, and other equipment. It's very profitable and growing. Importantly, it gives us insights across the whole solar market in Europe.
In France, we have just completed Aussietôt, our fourth acquisition, making us a leading player in B2B, demonstrating our ability to roll up and build energy management businesses starting with solar. In the last few weeks, we acquired AEI, the number 2 player in Irish Solar, and Hafod in the U.K. Our existing energy division delivers high returns, but so is our growing newer business. You can see the high ROCE at time of acquisition and where it is today. The key point is that they are in line with this year's overall ROCE of 19% after a tremendous performance for DCC Energy. We are confident our renewable investments will be as or more profitable than fossil ones, and we continue to focus on high-returning businesses. We see tons of opportunity to craft highly profitable energy solution business models for our customers.
Therefore, we have the highest confidence in our double profit ambition, acting as a true carbon leader. With this, I hand over to Conor.
Okay. Sorry, where... There we go. Okay. Good morning, everyone. I think, I know most people in the room, but for those of you I haven't met, my name is Conor Costigan, with DCC over 20 years, and I've been leading the healthcare business since 2006. As Kevin said, it's great to be back here in person, and I suppose to update you on what's been happening in DCC. We've made a lot of progress over the last 3 years. In fact, over the last 5 years, we've significantly internationalized the DCC Healthcare division in the US and Europe. We believe we've never been as well positioned for growth in the future.
Our vision for DCC Healthcare is to enable people to lead healthier lives throughout their lives. This vision leverages two mega trends in the world today. People are living longer, and that's driving demand for healthcare products and services. Consumers are increasingly focused on their own health and well-being, and that's driving demand for self-care products. DCC Vital, our patient health business, supports healthcare providers to improve patient outcomes by providing high quality, medical and diagnostic products for use in hospitals, primary care, and other fragmented healthcare settings. DCC Health & Beauty Solutions, which is our consumer health-focused business, develops and manufactures health supplements and beauty products for brand owners in this long-term growth market. Through our services, we help consumers to maintain and improve their health and well-being and enable them to lead healthier lives every day.
In addition to these mega trends, DCC Healthcare's markets are also underpinned by other strong macro trends. Large healthcare providers and consumer healthcare brand owners are looking to strong commercial partners to help them to innovate, to support their growth objectives and to generate efficiencies. We're also seeing increasing regulation across all of our markets, which favors well-invested, well-resourced businesses. DCC Healthcare is well-positioned to benefit from all of these trends. We've done a lot of work on building exciting growth platforms over the last three years, and we believe in our med devices activities, our primary care and health and beauty contract manufacturing activities, we have three exciting growth platforms.
In DCC Vital, we've deployed over EUR 300 million over the last two years in continental Europe through the acquisitions of Medi-Globe and Wörner, significantly enhancing our growth platforms in med devices and primary care. In med devices, we focus on mid-tech, single-use devices for use in minimally invasive diagnostic and surgical procedures in hospitals. Following the significant acquisition of Medi-Globe, our largest acquisition to date, we now have a strong commercial presence in medical devices in three of the big five European markets, together with developing positions in other European markets, and indeed in international markets such as Asia-Pacific and South America. We have enhanced product development capability, enhanced manufacturing and regulatory capability. Combining our existing activities with Medi-Globe is creating new growth opportunities in med devices.
In primary care, following the acquisition of Wörner, we now have leading positions in Britain, Germany, and Switzerland. Across Europe, primary care, the landscape in primary care is very fragmented, and customer interactions are increasingly evolving towards e-commerce. DCC Vital is one of the few players with the scale and financial strength to play a leading role in the consolidation and digitization of the primary care sector in Europe. Our third growth platform is in the contract manufacturing of health and beauty products, especially in health supplements. You know, as you will have heard earlier from Kevin, and have seen in our results over the last three years, we have come through an unusual period where demand patterns have been unusual.
However, the fundamental drivers of this market are unchanged, and health supplements, we believe, will continue to be a long-term growth market. Over recent months, we're seeing renewed interest in innovation from our brand owner customers, and our strength in innovation is a key factor in how we attract customers and how we build long-term partnership relationships. We continue to pursue acquisition opportunities in contract manufacturing of nutritional supplements, particularly in the U.S. At the same time, we're investing in our existing manufacturing facilities to enhance capacity and capability. We've got two material live projects ongoing at the minute. We're adding nutritional gummy manufacturing capability at our Florida facility.
Gummies, over the last 10 years has been the fastest growing form factor in nutritional supplements. In our Minnesota facility, the Amerilab business, we're investing to significantly expand our capacity in effervescent products to support the growth of customers such as Nestlé Health Science and Haleon. To wrap up, I want to leave you with 3 key messages. We operate in DCC Healthcare in long-term growth markets, typically growing at 4%-6% historically and projected to grow at similar rates in the future. We have consistently outperformed those growth rates. Over the last 10 years, DCC Healthcare has grown its reported profits by 15% CAGR per annum, and more than half of that was organic. We have 3 exciting international growth platforms.
Putting all of that together, we believe we've never been as well positioned to deliver strong growth over the next 10 years. Thank you. Hand over to Clive.
Thank you very much, Conor, and good morning to you all. I'm Clive Fitzharris, CEO of DCC Technology. I've been in DCC for 14 years, 8 years within energy. I think my first year, actually, I had many good times with Fabian as we were buying our business in Denmark. I've also been in group roles as head of group strategy in M&A, and for the past 3 years, I've been focused on the growth and development of our Technology businesses. Technology has a central role in improving the world and our lives. Our vision is to bring progressive technologies that enable these enhanced outcomes. Our ambition is to have the leading specialist distributors in our chosen markets. We've articulated our division in a little bit of a different way for you today.
We have three platform segments that we operate in: ProTech, InfoTech, and LifeTech. ProTech comprises our pro audio, AV, enterprise, and related businesses in North America and in Europe. These businesses are focused on specialist solutions to installers and integrators, selling products that are medium to high margin, that reflect the service capability and technical competency that we provide to our customers. InfoTech comprises our information and consumer technology distribution businesses in the UK, Ireland, Continental Europe, and the Middle East. These businesses focus on retailers, e-tailers, B2B resellers, and IT integrators with high volume, low margin products delivered at speed. LifeTech comprises our North American specialties within Jam and Almo, distributing high-quality products that enhance modern lifestyles, products such as prosumer audio, musical instruments, high-quality appliances, and home comfort technologies.
Superior gross margins are generated here with a focus on high services to specialist retailers and e-tailers, together with a wide range of own brand and exclusive brand product offerings. In line with our ambition to be the leading specialist distributor in our chosen markets, we're currently number one globally in AV specialist distribution. We're number one in North America in pro audio distribution and also number one in North America in lifestyle technology distribution of appliances and musical instruments. Technology is a 3%-5% organic growth market, and our platforms are positioned to grow above this level. Our division has more than doubled profits in the last five years, and we've added four percentage points to gross margins. This demonstrates the changing mix towards higher value-added platforms in ProTech and in LifeTech.
The U.K. business is transitioning through recent operational and market headwinds and is now in strong recovery. Outside of the U.K., if we look at organic growth elsewhere, it has been in double-digit percent per annum over the same period. Strategically, we're focused on the organic and acquisitive growth of ProTech and LifeTech businesses, which leverages the leading market positions and capabilities of those platforms. We're also focused on optimizing the InfoTech business in the U.K. and Europe after the operational challenges in the U.K. and more recently, the market headwinds post-COVID in Europe. We have an extensive and granular improvement plan in execution in the U.K. This leverages the digital investments that we've made in recent years and provides considerable opportunity for improved returns and profits for the division.
Following the underperformance in Almo's fulfillment division in half one of last year, we've invested in new e-commerce leadership and talent supported by leading digital tools and systems. We target material improvement in returns and operating profit in the medium term. To conclude, I'd like to highlight three key takeaways. The first, technology distribution is a growth industry enabling all of our futures, and we see above market growth for our three platforms as we've delivered in recent years. We have clear near-term priorities in execution in the U.K. and Almo's fulfillment e-commerce business.
We also have capital deployment opportunities within ProTech and Life Tech. Thank you all, and back to Kevin.
Great. Thank you everybody. And thanks for bearing with us. We'll finish quickly here before opening it to Q&A. Just to touch briefly on our outlook statement for FY 2024. Notwithstanding the uncertain economic environment, DCC expects that the year ending 31 March 2024 will be another year of operating profit growth and continued development activity. Before I get to summary, just would really like to thank everybody around our group for the excellent performance in FY 2023. You know, we're in great shape to continue to perform into FY 2024. Hopefully, what you've heard today is that in FY 2023, DCC delivered another very strong performance financially and delivered against our sustainability targets. We completed GBP 360 million of value creating acquisitions for DCC.
Things that improve our business today and give us growth today, but also provide us, like PVO that Fabian mentioned, and like the Medi-Globe acquisition that Conor mentioned, provide us with real growth platforms for the future. I think we've been executing very well against our strategic objectives across the divisions, particularly in DCC Energy, where I think you'll have heard quite a bit of new granular detail today. We remain very focused on the future, and that investment lens that we talked about earlier, you know, is part of the secret sauce of DCC and deploying capital in line with our priorities, and we'd expect to continue that through FY 2024. Thanks for bearing with us, and I think we'll open up now to Q&A.
I know we've got some mics in the room and, if everybody could, yeah, raise their hand when they've got a question. If you wouldn't mind, just for the benefit of everybody online, maybe you'd introduce yourself and the institution that you're representing today. Rory, you're first in my eye line here, so why don't you get us going?
Good morning. It's Rory McKenzie from UBS. Just a couple first on the FY 2023 performance. Within Energy, I think the division in gross profit per liter was up a very high 18% year-over-year. Can you say how much of that was like for like compared to mix? I know there's so much changing in that division at the moment. Within that like for like expansion, does some of that benefit from the, I guess, lag effect of price increases that you see, should we expect that to unwind into FY 2024? On the declines in tech and healthcare, health and beauty, I think, was down 25%-30% organically, and tech minus 18%.
Is that just operating leverage on the lower volumes that you've seen, or have you taken any pressure on gross margins as well in what's been quite a challenging, price market? Is this therefore about waiting for volumes to recover? Maybe Clive and Conor could talk about in more detail the plans to either reduce the cost base, or change the product mix to get back to returns targets. Thank you.
Okay, Rory. Thank you for those questions. Maybe I'll have a go at the energy piece and Fabian, I'll ask you maybe to comment. Just, you know, I guess right around our business, Rory, and it applies to each of the three divisions, actually. I mean, there's no doubt that we've been through, you know, reasonably unusual inflationary periods. Our like for like costs in the group are up 8% year-over-year. I guess the imperative on us to, you know, either be recovering that through efficiency measures or indeed passing those costs through to the market, Rory, is part of, you know, normal distribution activity. On the energy side, you know, we obviously had significant cost increases, which had to be passed through into the market.
Similarly, you know, when it comes to the changing mix of the business, you'll know, Rory, that, you know, a lot of the services and renewables that we're providing are higher margin products for DCC. You know, there isn't a substantial appreciation on like for like margins, particularly at a product level. Actually the changing mix of the division towards services and renewables, you know, produces better returns. I don't know, Fabian, if you'd like to add any color to that. I mean, from a like for like margin perspective, with small increases, but really to recover the overhead inflation that we see. The mix parts, Fabian, I think, you know, as we move strategy forward, we expect that to be margin enhancing.
I would strengthen that, I believe there's an impact, more LPG, less fuel, and we make more profit per liter of LPG than fuel. There's sort of this macro picture in the mix. The other piece is we push in particular bioproducts, and they have at the minute really, really nice margins. We spoke about HVO, and sort of the equivalence in LPG. I do believe this trend of strength in unit margin, you will keep seeing as we sort of deploy this strategy. There's an element of stock gains and stock losses. I don't have the exact numbers at hand, so I wouldn't speculate about it. I think this sort of rounds off the story.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Always when, you know, when the product price is variable, Rory, we can go through periods where, you know, stock in tank is more valuable or less valuable. Pretty much washes out through the period, actually. You know, we had a fall in products in H2 and a rise in product price in H1. Year-on-year, that wouldn't be a significant contributor. I think on the other two divisions, again, I'll ask each of the guys to comment, Rory, but again, I suppose that same macro picture applies, which is, you know, we have had cost pressure. I think every business has experienced that. And in both tech and in healthcare, we have organic revenue declines, okay? We haven't sought to significantly reduce our capacity, particularly on the healthcare side.
There's been a little bit. I mean, I think on the Technology guys, Clive and his team have done a great job at managing the cost base there. We haven't, you know, with a couple of exceptions in the Technology piece, haven't gone wholeheartedly after the cost base, if you like. I think there's more of a lead and lag from a cost price pass-through on the Health and Beauty operations within our Healthcare business. That is a feature. It tends to reflect itself reasonably quickly. You know, it can be months and quarters rather than, you know, next week before we get price increases through to our customers. It's contracted. I don't know, Conor, if you want to add any color or Clive similarly.
I think, you know, I think it's primarily a volume story, a delevering story. As Kevin says, there is, you know, there is some lag. There are contractual situations which need to wash through. You know, we have flexed direct labor costs, but obviously, as we've been expanding capacity over the last number of years, we have been adding to our fixed cost base. You know, I think we coming into the new year, we have, you know, our price increases are through across the piece, so, you know, we're in reasonable shape for the volume uptick when it comes.
Yeah. It's that same story in Technology. It's operational leverage. It's weaker demand. As that progressed through the year and overstock within the industry and overstock within our business, and we wouldn't discount, into that sort of weak market. We've gotten our inventory into a good place at the year-end. It's, you know, it's principally an operational leverage story.
Thanks, Rory.
Thank you.
Okay. Why don't you pass to Oscar, seeing he's beside you there. Hi, Oscar.
Thank you very much. It's Oscar Val Mas from JPMorgan. I have three questions. The first one on technology. I guess you've talked about technology. You expect profit growth. Could you give us a sense of the phasing H1, H2, and what you're seeing in terms of B2B demand so far in the early months of 2024? The second question is just on M&A. Could you comment on multiples? Have you seen multiples come down? Which end markets are we still prioritizing? Are we still looking across the group? Are there any areas that you think M&A will be easier going forward? The final question was going back on cost inflation. You saw 8% this year. Could you give us a sense of what you're seeing in terms of cost inflation around drivers or technicians?
Sure. Sure. Thanks, Oscar. On tech, Clive, I'll maybe ask you to comment on the B2B side of it. From a phasing perspective, Oscar, we would expect that, you know, We would expect to be growing the profits organically in tech this year. Mostly, you know, not necessarily because the market is going to provide us with a dramatic headwind or anything like that. It's actually more to do with the fact that we believe we can continue to, you know, to execute strongly. You know, the phasing, therefore, we would expect maybe to be a little bit better towards the second half than in the first half of the year. Clive, do you wanna talk about kind of where you see B2B demand right now?
Yeah. B2B, very strong Pro through last year and strong into the year-end into March. Opened weaker in April, recovering well in May. We saw something similar early autumn last year as well. I think as Kevin said in his ruse, you know, we'd be cautious about the year ahead. It's a difficult macro environment, but with strong momentum out of last year. Planning for that to continue.
Don't think the market is gonna give us a whole lot, Oscar, you know, I think we've got, we've got more than enough opportunity to go after. I think on the M&A side, I mean, we kinda talked a little bit about this earlier. We remain, you know, very excited by the growth platforms we have within our group and our capability to bring new opportunities into those growth platforms. You know, from a DCC plc perspective, certainly, you know, as we think about the three divisional sets that we have, we've got lots of opportunity there. In terms of multiples, you know, I think the private M&A market, which is where we play, you know, there's no doubt that the rising cost of capital environment doesn't get reflected the same way it does on a public market.
You know, I think that kind of negotiation period and talking to vendors about the value of their business is perhaps taking a little longer than it would have, 12 or 18 months ago, Oscar. There's a little bit of a readjustment period, but, you know, pipeline remains very interesting right now. You know, I think, like I said, we have. We're trying to hunt for fair value, and therefore, that will always take maybe a little bit more time than in a, in a market like this, where it's a bit a bit quieter. There's no doubt that credit conditions are maybe not quite what they were 12 or 18 months ago similarly.
You know, I think the competitive landscape might be, you know, as we think forward over the next 12-18 months, you know, we'd be optimistic about the opportunity in DCC to continue to deploy capital. You know, I think geographically, it's pretty straightforward for us that, you know, Europe and North America are our core markets, and that's where we'd be looking to deploy capital. I think each of the guys have kind of articulated that they have, you know, growth platform opportunities across each of the divisions. I wouldn't think that there's any one particular call-out, but each of the divisions has an opportunity to deploy capital. Then final piece was just on kinda look forward our cost environment right now.
You know, I think, you know, we're definitely beginning to see an ease in some of those cost captions. You know, the ones that are typically quicker to react are things like freight, transport, where, you know, they're so correlated to energy pricing, and as energy pricing falls, maybe there's a little bit of pressure comes out. Labor cost continues to be a challenge. Labor availability is a little bit better than where it was 12 months ago, maybe, but it's still hard to get good people. As we look forward, I think we see an abatement in that sort of 8% cost environment, but, you know, wouldn't be expecting for it to be dramatically lower.
So maybe, you know, a couple of percentage points lower into FY 2024, around the 5%-6% level is kinda where we kinda feel cost inflation is right now in our business. Obviously, we're doing our best to manage that carefully. Chris, we'll go along the row.
Morning. Clyde Lewis, Peel Hunt. I was just wondering if you could give us a breakdown on the profit growth in services and renewables between organic and inorganic? secondly, Fabian, you mentioned about, I think, by 2030 increasing, was it profit per customer by 50%? Is that primarily due to mix, or are there some other elements within that? Finally, Conor, you mentioned that you were one of the few people well-placed in Vitality for that move to e-commerce. Could you just elaborate on that, please? Thank you.
Okay. thanks, Chris, for your question. On the service, I'll take the services and renewables. Maybe Fabian, you talk a little bit about the kind of the customer focus in the energy business, and then Conor will answer the final piece. I guess on the service and renewables piece, Chris, as ever with us, it's a mix of organic and acquisition growth over the course of the year. You'll know that the acquisition of PVO, for example, goes straight into that services and renewables box, as does a lot of the other capital we've deployed during the year. The capital hasn't been massive, right? In fact, the, you know, the mix is about 2/3 organic, 1/3 M&A over the course of the year.
That, you know, a lot of the organic growth, if you like, is that, you know, we're getting increasing momentum around the bio initiatives that we have around the group. The solar businesses that we brought into the group two, three years ago are growing strongly. Okay. You know, we did call out and, you know, if you think back to, you know, it's a little while ago now, our capital allocation priorities and the growth rates we set out in each of the markets. We did say at the time that we did see in the services and renewables area maybe a 5% plus growth rate in those markets or that opportunity, and I think that's what the guys are delivering in the energy team right now. That's been the mix there.
Do you wanna talk a little bit about the customer, Fabian?
With pleasure. At the minute, we have GBP 9.5 million customers. It's obviously a bit of a mixed bag. Mobility customers, stationary customers. We calculated through the whole 2030 ambition, doubling profits also with customer modeling. We see in principle two things, it's interesting. Solar entrepreneurs are excited to join us because they see phenomenal cross-selling opportunities with our existing customer base. Sort of this sort of, you know, take your customer on the journey. It often looks like it starts with a conventional fuel. You put bio into it. You complement it with a solar installation. You can make it more holistic. You can complement it with a heat pump. The fossil doesn't go away immediately, huh.
I see this with my own house with a solar installation. You keep needing fossil energy. As you take your customer on this journey, you can simply make more money per customer. We have detailed this out quite a bit. We also, keep thinking that there is organic customer growth to be had. To add 50% to our 9.5 million customers, we believe is eminently doable.
Conor, do you want to talk about the digital opportunity maybe? Yeah.
Yeah. You know, we, as you'll know, you know, we've a leadership position in GP supplies in the British market. You know, we've been investing significantly in that business over recent years to really move to a true omnichannel approach with, you know, heavy e-commerce content. You know, so it was one of the kind of revelations as we began to look at the German market, and I think this got exposed kind of generally through Covid, is the lack of digitization in the German economy generally, but, you know, particularly also in primary care. You know, we still get faxed orders in Germany, which is, seems incredible. You know, that is evolving. That, the pace of that evolution will pick up.
You know, leveraging our learnings and expertise from our British position, we're in a very strong position to really be at the forefront of that digitization in Germany and on into other markets as we make further acquisitions.
Thanks, Chris, for that.
Thank you.
David.
Good morning. It's David Brockton from Numis. Can I ask 2 on technology, please? Firstly, going back to Almo, I just wondered if you can just touch on, given the issues that you had in terms of fulfillment, et cetera, last year. Can you just now confirm that cycle aside, you feel you've resolved all of the issues in terms of search optimization, excess inventory has sort of washed through there? That's the first one. The second one on technology as well. I think you touched on how B2B had sort of started weak in April and improved. I just wondered if you can just touch on the consumer side, what you're now seeing there?
Is that now sequentially stable and could we therefore start to see the like for likes improve in maybe in a, in a, in sort of two quarters' time? Thanks.
Yeah. David, thanks. You know, just to let Clive answer in more detail for you, but, you know, from a financial performance in FY 2023, you know, we obviously had a slightly lower outcome in H1 than we liked. From a H2 perspective, Almo performed exactly where we were and in fact was at the top end of the range I would've given you last November. You know, we remain 100% convinced that, you know, in North America now we have a fantastic scale platform. We've got coast-to-coast distribution of large products, both from the integration of our JAM business and our Almo business. You know, we really do see ourselves as being well-positioned.
Clive called out some of the optimization opportunities we have, but that's the same for every DCC business. You know, we're constantly looking at ways that we can execute better. You know about our mantra of operational excellence. Those kind of things will continue to be brought to bear on our newer platforms, particularly those businesses in North America. Clive, I don't know whether you wanna
Yeah. The, from a search optimization perspective and an e-commerce execution perspective, we're very happy with where we are in terms of our listings on the various marketplaces. A lot of that business is heat related, so it's air conditioning units and home comfort units. You need the weather, and when we've had the weather in short periods so far, we're not in the key period, the selling has been very satisfactory. We're happy with where it's at. There'll be a level of discounting so that we have an overhang of inventory. There's a level of discounting that'll mean that the margins will be somewhat depressed as we move through that during the balance of this year.
We transferred over in terms of digital leadership, our head of marketing in the U.K. business that's worked in, you know, the U.K. e-commerce environment is leading. He transferred over just before Christmas, and we've hired into the team a number of people that are ex-Amazon and other marketplaces, and then put the tools around them to make sure that we're sensing where the market is in real time and making adjustments. We're very happy with where we are from an execution perspective.
Yeah. Yeah, I think on the more on the outlook point, David, like on the consumer, Clive?
It's stable. To be honest, it's stable. It's. I think what we've seen is, and a lot of the retailers, they're just ordering to demand. They're not ordering to inventory. We had quite a slowdown, I suppose, into peak and into the early part of calendar this year. We don't see that as much now. We think they're getting their inventory levels right, but the consumer demand isn't really there, particularly for high-priced products. You know, as consumer gains confidence, hopefully the retailers will gain confidence and we'll see a more positive environment into the back end of the year.
Thanks very much. Thanks, David. Hey, Colin.
Thanks. Hi, it's Colin Grant here from Davy. Just on the Energy division, you've outlined some very interesting and ambitious plans for 2030 in terms of biofuels and solar and so on. In terms of service and renewables at the moment, which has grown very substantially, I think it's about GBP 128 million of EBITDA in FY 2023. It's almost a division in itself. It's grown so large. Can you give us some flavor as to what the current mix is within that today, so we can then gauge how that kind of ramps up going forward? Maybe just start with that, please.
Well, it's actually quite a fragmented mix of different types of products and solutions, Colin. I mean, it's got great breadth and diversity to it, so extends from everything from renewable power, the PPA-type services that we sell in the markets like Ireland, to the convenience operations that we have in our mobility sites, the EV charging that we supply in Norway and car wash and things like that. Now more materially, it encompasses more biofuel HVO profitability, which is the bigger, you know, some of the bigger growth in the year, and solar. You know, we make now approximately about GBP 25 million pro forma just in solar, which, you know, has grown from nothing two years ago. You know, that's been a significant driver of the growth momentum there.
There's probably not one particular huge area to call out. It's actually just the, you know, detailed execution locally market- by- market. The reason it isn't one big, you know, one big block is that, as you know, the energy market- by- market is slightly different, and we are adapting and agile, you know, to perform the services that will be rewarded locally in those markets. In Sweden, for example, we sell lots of HVO, whereas in Norway, we know that's more of an electron opportunity at the forecourt. Those kind of things are reflected and therefore you've got a lot of breadth of different services that we offer. Not one major thing I would say.
Fabian, I don't know if you want to add any color, but from a profit-
I-
From a profit mix perspective, Colin, there's no one single big, huge category in there.
I agree with that, and it will be hard to kind of spell it out. There's just one piece I would like to highlight which is digital fleet formats. We have a company that is called Fuel Card Services. We acquired another company that is called SNAP, that is kind of allocating parking lots to drivers. Sort of we look at this space at the minute in a quite intense way with sort of this customer back mindset again. We believe that's an area which is low carbon or no carbon, and it's a great way to grow in this mobility services field. In particular with fleet customers, i.e., larger fleets, long-haul, hauliers, et cetera, that's a pretty interesting area too.
Thanks. Could I have a follow on quick?
Yeah. Sure, Colin. Yeah.
It's just to do with the return on capital employed, again, on the same area, the services and renewables, the whole division saw 40 bits expansion in ROCE in the year to 19%. It feels as though service renewables are contributing to that and actually driving it higher. There was a chart in there.
Mm-hmm.
which showed a 24.5%. I don't know if that just relates to the acquisitions you've done last year or if that's across the entire GBP 128 million of EBITDA?
Yeah. That reflects just the recent acquisition activity over the last 3 years, Colin, really. It doesn't pick up some of those digital opportunities that Fabian mentioned. I think it really goes to some of the more energy efficiency businesses or the solar acquisitions that we've made over the last number of years, or indeed on the renewable power side where we've been deploying capital there. I mean, the expansion in the service and renewable profit increase is clearly expansionary from a return on capital perspective at the moment. We would have, you know, the sample size is small, so relative to the capital employed of DCC Energy, the capital employed in that today remains relatively modest.
From the new acquisition chart that we showed, you know, you've got about GBP 150 million of capital, if you like, deployed in that area, which has expanded from 15% to the over 20%. That has been helpful, obviously, in the overall return on capital of the division. I think, you know, the division continues to be very cash generative, continues to deploy capital sensibly and therefore, you know, the returns we'd expect to continue to be strong. You know, I guess the key message for us is that the services and renewables expansion isn't coming at the detriment of returns, which is a question we get asked quite a bit.
Great. Thanks very much.
Dan.
Good morning. It's Daniel Connell from HSBC. Just one question for me on that point you mentioned, Kevin. Over time, how do you see cash generation and Energy changing with the changing mix? I mean, you know, more services.
Mm-hmm.
Would HVO have similar working capital characteristics to what you have in the fossil fuels? How do you see that developing over time?
Yeah, good question, Dan. Thank you. I mean, to be honest, what we see presently, again, a little bit like the returns question is that, you know, the expansion into HVO or indeed any of the bio products that we sell, you know, are producing good returns, Dan. They have similar working capital characteristics. When you talk about the renewable products, I mean, I think what we are trying to do a little bit is invest a little bit in our stock position presently on some of these renewable fuels to ensure that we can fulfill the promises we're making to customers. We might maintain a slightly longer days position from an inventory perspective in some of the renewable products just to ensure, I guess, the robustness of the supply chain.
It's not as perfect a supply chain presently as, you know, the very strong commodity type fossil products. Maybe a little bit more investment in inventory. On the other hand, you know, that is rewarded by slightly higher margin profiles. Again, from a return and capital perspective, no real difference. You know, the services and renewable side in general has that same asset-light DCC model that we are attracted to, Dan. You know, altogether away from what the energy business are doing, you know, sit here and at DCC level, you know, it's asset light, it's recurring revenues with predictability, with order books, with, you know, real customer engagement over a long period. You know, don't see the capital or cash flow characteristics changing too much over time.
Gerry, sorry. You're in the back, Gerry. You're hard... The lights are bright here.
That's okay, Kevin. Gerry Hennigan, equities. Just two on energy, if you don't mind. First, can you talk on the outlook or relative stability of LPG in the context of what's transition you're unfolding yourself and obviously the transition that's unfolding in the market, and whether there's any variation on either side of the Atlantic? Two, your ambition in terms of bio. Are you confident that the supply can keep up with that sort of ambition, and where are you seeing the most opportunities there?
Okay. Thanks, Gerry. I mean, the, there's no doubt, and I'll ask Fabian to respond in more detail on these, Gerry, but in terms of the LPG piece, you know, LPG is the fuel of choice in many hard-to-abate sectors. In terms of the language we'd be talking about from LPG last year to this year, it doesn't change a whole lot. You know, it remains the lowest carbon of the fossil fuels. It remains used off the grid in, you know, in hard-to-abate use cases of, you know, rural domestic customer, rural businesses or in niche, you know, manufacturing, or manufacturing off the grid indeed. You know, that use case doesn't change too much.
I mean, we do see on the domestic side a more in the US in particular, less substitutable products. You know, I think at the end of the day, we serve rural communities in both sides of the Atlantic. Maybe there's a slightly different policy perspective either side of the Atlantic, but I'll ask Fabian to comment on that in more detail. You know, no real change to the outlook for it in general. I guess, you know, the key to the longer term outlook for LPG is the bio piece, Fabian, which you might. Sorry, that just doesn't apply to LPG because I think your question is more broad around bio availability.
Do you wanna have a go at that, Fabian?
Yes, please. Let me just add to the first question that the industry is really acting up in terms of engaging with regulators, with policymakers, and sort of really making progress in establishing LPG as a transition fuel. That's also something where I will invest quite a bit of my personal time. In terms of the bioavailability, I think it's a story of two tales. There's the liquids market, diffuse market, if you want, where hydrotreated vegetable oil is pretty established. You have sort of leading producers like Nestlé, like Preem, but you now also have most of the refiners investing in HVO plants. You know, Shell in Pernis, Cepsa in Spain. We believe this market is relatively liquid.
The interesting piece is that the top producers, they like us a lot because they see our customer strengths, huh. They see how good we are at generating demand. The top producers are very interested in deep partnerships with us. To my mind, to be a well positioned there to get access to the product. The story is a bit different in LPG. The industry is stepping up now. There is a bio LPG, which is a by-product of the HVO production, but it's very small quantities, and many other industries compete for the same product streams. What really needs to happen is the industry needs to invest in the production of renewable DME, which is a product that is more and more talked about. We deem this to be the most likely route.
There is small plants in operation already. Our partnership with Oberon, which we landed a few weeks ago, is designed to co-invest, like as a seed investor, to start the first plants in Europe. There is another company by the name Dimeta we also engaged with. To crack the bio nut in LPG is a little bit harder, but we are positive the 15% of our portfolio on renewable versions of LPG by 2030 is in reach, huh.
Okay. Thank you, Gerry. Got anything else in the room? No. No, nothing online. Okay. Well, I'm very conscious we've kept everyone probably a little bit longer than we thought we would today. We'll finish there. Just to thank everybody for coming in the room to us today, and indeed thank you for everybody online who joined us. We really enjoyed talking to you today about DCC, and we look forward to engaging more with the market over the coming week as we roadshow around. Thanks, everybody, and best wishes.
Well done.