Welcome everyone. It's an exciting time for DCC Technology. Before Christmas, we announced our largest acquisition to date, not just for DCC Technology, but for our group, DCC. The acquisition of Almo in a deal worth $610 million makes DCC Technology a much larger part of our group. Almo doubles the size of our technology business in North America, and it makes us the largest specialist Pro AV player in that market. There are huge growth opportunities for DCC Technology, and we are here today to hear from the talented management team running the business. After we hear from Tim and Clive, we'll be opening for questions. Please email any questions you may have to the email address on screen, investorrelations@dcc.ie. Okay, let's kick things off. Over to you, Tim.
Thank you, Holly, and good afternoon, everybody. Over the next few slides, Clive and I are gonna tell you a little bit about how, by focusing in on specialist sales, marketing, distribution capabilities, DCC Technology have been able to double their revenues while improving margins. We're also gonna be telling you why, through the investments that we've made, that we are poised for growth and poised to drive improved return on capital employed. By focusing on a few examples, we're gonna be able to demonstrate why customers value what we do and why they reward us with their customer loyalty. The first example is around Pro AV.
While a number of pictures on this slide could really talk to that story, what we do in the meeting room, or indeed in terms of providing technology that enable you to join calls like this, I'm gonna focus in on the picture of the stadium. This is the SoFi Stadium, where the Super Bowl was played this weekend. Congratulations to the Rams. Obviously, we provided the technology that really enables the sound, the music, and that experience for live audiences. The second example I'm gonna focus in on is the data center, where we support vendors like Dell with their storage, server, and networking story getting to market.
We work with them to work with their resellers that enable us to architect, install, configure, and ultimately deliver to site for our resellers to be able to deliver their projects for banking infrastructures, telcos, or indeed, the e-tail revolution. The third example I'm gonna focus in on is that mobile experience, where we've all enjoyed the moment where we peel off the film. If you pause a minute, we've not only delivered that to your front door, but we've managed the logistics from the Far East, the retail experience, including market-creating activities. If you stop a moment again, reflect on where was your old phone going to? We've built the online trade-in portals for vendors, and we've taken that product away. We've refurbished it and relaunched it as new for the market.
Check out asnewmobile.com to see what we do and something that we're really proud about. What is it that links all these examples that I've just shared with you? In each instance, we're enabling our partners to do more. We enable their success, we enable them to focus on their core competencies and grow their business. For vendors, we make the market through sales, marketing activities, like an example may be what we did for Microsoft in the Westfield stores in London, where we delivered pop-up stores for their Xbox launch. For retailers, resellers, installers, and even e-tailers, we invest in deep specialist knowledge that enables them to have leverage, and simplicity that allows them to focus on their customer's experience. We are an international business with size and scale.
We serve thousands of brands through tens of thousands of partners, be it retailers, resellers, or integrators. We're delivering nearly GBP 6 billion worth of revenue with our 5,000 people around the world. We've established a footprint over the last three or four years in North America that is delivering $1.8 billion worth of revenue, and we're just getting started. The pins that you can see in Europe obviously have opportunity to be reproduced in North America. We see North America as a high margin, high growth opportunity with the ability for us to share our specialist capabilities from Europe into that marketplace. Here are the specialisms I've been talking about. As you can see, we have considerable breadth, and that in its own right, it brings us diversity and resilience.
We don't have every specialism in every geography just yet, and that's clearly a work in progress and a source of great opportunity. Each of these markets, we've been able to create a competitive advantage and reflect on the fact that they are growing and delivering high margins. Our strategy is to grow by adding value. We build on volume, innovative sales, marketing, and distribution capabilities that really add value to our customers through deep specialism.
We become increasingly relevant and sticky to our partners in their supply chain. As we do so, we increase our margins. We look to complement our deep specialisms by building great own brand solutions that really enable their speed to market or for them to have a complete portfolio within the retail marketplace. We look to seek to be complementary within the brands that we build.
An example might be what we do for Facebook and their Oculus virtual reality solution, where we build cases, docking stations, charge points, really enabling the ecosystem of their solution so they can get to market faster and enabling us to make even greater margins, Clive.
We've been extending geographically into specialisms via acquisition. This strategy has delivered top-line growth, but more importantly, significant gross margin improvement. Over the last four years, our gross margins have increased from 7.6% to 10%. This is an American and European story of growth and development. In 2018, we made our first acquisitions in North America with Stampede and JAM. Martin Szpiro sold us JAM, and you'll be meeting him shortly.
This created platforms in pro AV, pro audio, and musical instruments. These businesses have grown and developed strongly since then, and in 2020, we made bolt-on acquisitions of JB&A and The Music People. In December last, we made the very, very significant announcement of Almo. This is a hugely exciting acquisition for us. It transforms our scale, capability, and scope in North America for further growth and development.
During this time, in Europe, we added Pro AV and consumer platforms. We also added to our existing mobile services and B2B cable businesses. As we leverage our international scale, we use the Exertis brand. We rebranded Stampede last year to Exertis with great energy and passion, and I'd like to show you a video which demonstrates the fun that we have as an organization. Have a look.
You know, they used to be called Stampede. Getting you all of the cables and gadgets you'll ever need. They're the AV experts. That part's still the same. From now on, Stampede's gonna have a different name. We'll tell you the name in a second, but first. They've grown for over 20 years, improving their position, both organically and also through some key acquisitions. Stampede's been amazing, but they're putting that to bed. They got a new logo, and it's bold, and it's red. It's red because they're ready to give you all the solutions. It's red because they're gonna redefine distribution. It's red for their incredible customer service. Hope you're ready for Exertis. Exertis.
They make extraordinary happen. Exertis. Exceeding expectations is their passion. Exertis. They're gonna give you a solution. Exertis. They redefine distribution. Oh, look, we now have some more information.
From their hometown of Buffalo, they distribute large format displays and audio and cameras and drones and also LED and AR/VR and tech for your RV. They work with the loan of the grand and at the sun. Did I mention Jabra, ScreenBeam, and Samsung? You see 'em in the airports, restaurants, and schools, or even in the time that you're chilling on a cruise. Exertis. They make extraordinary happen. Exertis. Exceeding expectations is their passion. Exertis. They're gonna give you a solution. Exertis. They redefine distribution. All right, now, after the big news, Exertis will match their global family around the world and their parent company, DCC in Ireland, and they will continue to be the leader in value-added distribution, innovating the industry every step of the way.
Back to North America, we're now leaders in Pro AV with a truly scaled nationwide warehouse footprint. Since the December announcement of the Almo acquisition and our planned combination with the Stampede Pro AV business, the Pro AV vendor response has been very positive, and why not? We have $1 billion of value-added sales with the largest dedicated sales force throughout North America. Almo has brought us leadership in indoor and outdoor appliance distribution. New news since the December acquisition announcement, we've added the Danby range of appliances nationwide.
We've also added Frigidaire in the southeast of the country across nine states and the Hestan premium appliance brand for the east of the country. We'll continue to drive the organic growth of this business through the addition of new brands, adding new lines for existing brands, and adding new territories, including Canada.
We have just a 7% market share in a growing market. We're really excited about the further opportunities to organically grow this business and to find further acquisition opportunities. Sustainability is also embedded into our North American operations, and I'm going to pass you over to Tim to talk about more examples across our division.
Thank you, Clive. Almo's focus on sustainability is really making a better tomorrow for us all, and it's a shared passion by all our businesses around the world. Each of them are charged with delivering in the most sustainable way. If you think about our operational focus, whether or not our businesses are choosing the energy source with which they run their operations, they may be choosing biogas, as our business, our Pro AV business in Buffalo did, or indeed solar, as our business in Burnley in the U.K. did by installing solar panels across that warehouse.
Each of them are thinking about how to be sustainable. It may be through our programs that we're driving a packaging improvement. Our business in the Nordics, for example, recently invested in mechanical equipment that allowed us to optimize the size of cartons that we use for shipping.
They also invested in machinery that pre-stretched the plastic and reduced the wrapping that was required before shipping. If you shift gears a little and think about the offerings that we make in the commercial space, I already spoke a little about the work that we do in the mobile business. We repair, we refurbish, and we recover components. Each of those are driving the circular economy, driving businesses like as New Mobile and indeed the subscription economy, where many of those products and services are predicated on refurbished units. We are positioned to win in large fragmented marketplaces. The businesses which we operate are growing at 3%-5%, and we see very fragmented marketplaces in North America.
We only have a 10% share, in fact, a less than 10% share in the IT sectors in which we operate, and we see great opportunity to diversify, extend our specialisms and to go into adjacencies. This is why we will win. We're expanding geographically in buoyant marketplaces. Our focus on specialisms is improving margins, and our operational excellence is driving organic growth. The fragmented marketplaces deliver us great opportunity to expand our footprint, and we've invested in the future that will really improve our margins as we go forward.
To bring the energy into the Q&A. Joined here by Tim and Clive for our Q&A, and also Marty, all the way from California. Tim, Clive, great presentation. Just before we kick off our Q&A, actually, a reminder to everybody at home, if you do have any questions, please email them into investorrelations@dcc.ie. That email address should be on screen, investorrelations@dcc.ie. Tim, let's kick off with you.
Yes, thanks.
Everybody listening is keen to hear more about Almo. How's the acquisition, how's the integration going and your synergies? Early days, but is everything going to plan?
Yes, Holly, I mean, as you say, it is very early days. I think the first thing to say is it was a substantial acquisition, and we're absolutely delighted to have Almo and the team in the business and welcome them to the family. As many of you will know, there were four divisions. For three of them, in many respects, it's business as usual, and that's going very well so far. The other was a Pro AV business, and we're looking to integrate that with our existing Pro AV assets in North America. Obviously the focus is on growth. From a synergies perspective, that's where we're looking to see the benefits of that acquisition. Marty's on the ground, he's driving that for us. Perhaps to Marty, I'll hand over to you to answer that more fully.
Thanks, Tim. The Almo integration is going very well. It's on target. It's on schedule. It's a real pleasure to work with a large, well tenured distributor like Almo through the process. Their scale supports a very talented professional back office, and quite a few of them have worked in public companies, including their CFO. They're aligning very quickly with the group without distracting their sales leads from their targets. Almo itself was acquisitive over their history, so they understand both sides of the process well. I think it bodes particularly well for the future, their ability to bolt on into their segments.
We see a lot of good synergies, clearly, great operations and eight large regional warehouses that will provide opportunities for the whole group in North America. As well JAM has provided a likely platform for Almo to expand their segments into Canada, which is something they wanted to accomplish. Finally, as Clive said earlier, the combination of the Pro AV businesses in the U.S. make us the largest by far, specialty Pro AV business and gives us new extended leverage with both our vendors and our customers.
Thanks, Marty. Marty, you joined the DCC Group about three and a half years ago when we acquired your business, JAM Industries. Can you tell us a little bit about the last three and a half years, what your journey's been like with DCC? You recently moved to an expanded role of President and CEO of Exertis North America. You might tell us a little bit about that role.
Thanks, Holly. It's been a great ride, really. DCC really gets entrepreneurs. I think it's one of DCC's greatest tools in M&A, kind of a secret weapon. I spent 30 years building JAM, and price is important, but it's only part of what I considered when looking for a buyer. I think Warren, the President of Almo, felt the same. I was concerned about the people of JAM, our partners, our customers, and of course, what my role would be after a sale. DCC allowed me to continue to run the business with the same methods and the same way that made us winners. We were empowered to get to the next levels with financial support, professional management, and of course, we had access to the DCC M&A process.
Not long after DCC bought JAM, we then made our largest acquisition, with this new skill set and a company called The Music People. Great company. In addition to our other divisions, JAM is now the largest pro audio distributor, not just in North America, but globally. Tim and Clive offered me my new role as President and CEO of Exertis North America. We had a great number two at JAM, our CFO, Stuart Frankel, who stepped up and replaced me. It made a smooth transition. It's been a great opportunity. Out of the gate, one of my first jobs was the Almo acquisition, a lot of adrenaline, a deal that size, and we've targeted quite a few exciting new acquisitions.
This is great stuff, and it keeps me very interested. The future looks pretty exciting, Holly.
Thanks, Marty. I might come to you, Clive. We talked a little bit in the presentation about lots of opportunities for growth through acquisition. Where do you see those opportunities? Is North America really the focus now?
North America is a priority market, and for all the reasons that we covered in the presentation and what Marty said, we have. It's a scale market with a relatively small market share in it. We have a scale presence with very capable management, and we've had inbounds already. We've had other conversations that we're having with potential targets, and we're refreshing those now. We've a little bit of work to do in relation to the Pro AV integration, but I think, very soon you'll see us do more acquisitions in North America. It's not just a North American story, though. There's plenty for us to do in Europe, and I referenced it in the presentation earlier.
We've added to some of our specialisms in Europe, but there's more to do in individual countries, and there's bigger platform ones that cover multiple geographies as well.
Yeah, I think you're right, Clive. You know, I tend to think about this in terms of white space, so where do we have specialisms that we have geographies that we can expand into. We have both specialisms and geographic areas that we need to grow into. That covers both North America, U.K. and Europe. Plenty of opportunities for consolidation and expansion.
Great. Okay, I think it's time to take some questions from our audience. Okay, so first up, we have Oscar from JP Morgan. Oscar?
Yes. Yes, good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, Tim and Clive. I had a question on the end market demand and how much comes, in your opinion, from B2B and how much comes from consumer demand. I guess how that's different between the U.S. and Europe, and how you think that will progress over the next year or so. Will that demand be different?
Tim?
Yeah. Thanks, Holly, and hi, Oscar. I suppose broadly speaking, our business is 50/50 between consumer and B2B. That fluctuates season to season, and indeed has fluctuated through the global pandemic. Obviously, there were periods when a lot of consumer demand came through. We obviously saw a certain amount of volume B2B come through in terms of work from home technology and so on. Obviously, as the world has gradually started to get back to normal, you've seen some of our more specialist B2B businesses really come back very strongly.
If you think through to the way that we see that playing out over the next two or three years to answer your questions most of our specialist B2B businesses will be looking at future growth of the sort of 3%-5% growth rates. We're pretty bullish around both the margins, as I said in the presentation, and the growth of the specialisms that we've been playing.
Okay. Thank you. We have another question in here from Sean Kenzie from Setanta. Given growth margin improvement 2018 to 2022, why is ROCE flat to lower over that period, and how will you improve it in the future?
Yeah, maybe I can answer that one as well. Obviously, as I said in the presentation, we've been making conscious investments in what we believe will deliver a better tomorrow in terms of both our business and the experience for our customers. Those investments have clearly had a slightly dampening effect in our return on capital employed over the last couple of years. We fully expect now we've got those up and running and operational to be able to deliver improved return on capital employed over the coming years. We fully expect to see the rewards of those investments. Those investments, as I say, are very much around improved offerings, driving our digital transformation, and of course, creating platforms that enable us to deliver further inorganic acquisitions.
I might add to that, Holly, if it's okay. I talked in the presentation about the gross margin improvement, and we'll see that dropping through to the bottom line. Like, the Almo acquisition on its own brings us from 1 point something into sort of mid-2% operating margin. At the time of announcement of Almo, we talked about the return aspirations. I would see over a three-year period, we'll be delivering our 15% plus. I think overall as a division, to pick up what you're saying, Tim, that's the momentum that we see within the division and that's where we'd see the returns going and typically over that time period.
Absolutely.
Great. Okay, another one coming in here. Annalise from Morgan Stanley.
Hi, Holly. Hi. Hi there. Hi, Tim and Clive. Just a quick follow-up, actually, on some of what you were just talking about in terms of the margins. I know you talked about it on the slides too. Over what timeframe and how much should we think about how much margins can grow from here, given the the nature of the industry, do you think there is a cap on margins given price transparency? Therefore, do you think that margin growth will come from value-added services or from a further bolt-on deals, perhaps into higher margin segments or end markets as you mentioned?
Clive, do you want to kick off on that?
I might hi, Annalise, 'cause we talked about the Almo piece. There's a sort of a mixed portfolio effect in it. Tim's presentation talked about gross margin, but if we go to operating margin, specialist businesses in general are 3%-10%, I would say, operating margins. The volume side of our business would have generally lower operating margins, but that's not an unattractive business either. If you can get the right characteristics in terms of gross margin, get your operating costs right, and get your velocity into your working capital, that's good business to have alongside the value side of our business as well, which is higher margin.
As we continue to invest into specialisms and extend into the white spaces that you talked about, Tim, I'd like to think that we will see our operating margins improving. There's that there'll be that mix element because we're not stepping away from those volume related activities. They can be attractive as well.
Absolutely. Spot on, Clive. I think to your point around transparency, we have to drive into more value-creating spaces. I talked about own brand, which again increase the opportunities around those margin improvements.
Great. We'll move on. Another question in from Mark McDonald from Invesco. What are the key drivers for end market growth across countries and specialisms? You talked about gaps where we don't have every specialism, every geography. You know, what are those gaps? Tim?
Yeah, no, just reflecting on that. I think if you recollect from the presentation, the pins that were representing our specialisms in Europe, you could see there were seven there or so, and only three or four in North America. There are a number of specialisms that we have in Europe that are not present in North America. We see a lot more opportunity beyond the specialisms that we have. I mentioned in the first question that I see white space pretty much everywhere I look, whether or not it's a specialism in geography or new specialisms. Lots of opportunities, as I say.
Maybe I'll take the drivers bit. In an overall sense, technology spend grows at GDP plus a little bit. The specialisms that we set out have higher growth than that. I'll dive into a couple of them. You take Pro AV, which is one that we've talked about a lot today. There is corporate spend, it's education spend, it's entertainment spend. A lot of it experiential spend as well, in terms of live events, drive the underlying activity then in our Pro AV business. Consumer appliances, it's really, it's repair and remodeling spend. It's a lot about the health of the housing market.
as part of the Almo acquisition, we spent a lot of time looking at the strength of the U.S. consumer and the U.S. housing market and that renovation and remodeling spend, which we see it into the medium term at a robust 4% alongside 4.5%-5% on Pro AV and the other specialisms we showed in the slides.
You mentioned a really interesting point there around the way that we've built a platform and then looked to add on adjacencies, and we've done that very nicely in North America. Marty, maybe you'd like to just talk a little bit about JVNA and how we added an adjacency there.
Our expertise in pro audio is extensive and in Pro AV. Though there are many adjacent spaces as Tim's indicating, and JB&A is in broadcast. A lot of similar vendors, a lot of similar activities, but really a new space. We have quite a few of those that we can add to pro audio and Pro AV. This all speaks back to what Clive was saying, growth in technology that's driven particularly right now by content creation. If you think about the amount of time people are spending consuming content, and if you think about what you need to create content, you get quickly to audio and video.
There's lots of adjacent spaces in the creation of audio and video, from musical instruments, to microphones, to cameras and audio and all of the interfaces that we sell that make this possible. For example, in creation of content at home, let's say YouTube creation, you might need a product like Focusrite Scarlett, which is an interface that allows your computer to be connected to microphones. We sell, I think I saw a stat this year, we sold in North America, 500,000 of these devices. If you can think about the power of content creation, you can think about all the adjacencies.
Yeah, it's a great point, Marty. As you get into content, you obviously then start thinking about curating and storing that content, and you get yourself into the enterprise space that I talked to in the presentation.
Great. You talked so much about specialisms. Why the big push into specialisms? What do you like about them?
I suppose the highest level, it's really around the solutions that we can build and support our vendors and customers in a specialism.
What we tend to find is that specialisms have much more attractive growth dynamics and better margins than perhaps more traditional pure play distribution. It's that solution that we can build around sales, marketing, and go to market.
Okay. Great. We have another question in from Allan Smylie from Davy.
Hi, Allan.
Hi, Allan.
Hi, folks. Yeah, it's Allan from Davy. Thanks for taking my question. I have a question on M&A, please. On how the DCC Group positions itself to prefer acquiring businesses. We saw Almo being a great illustration of that. I also find it interesting that to the best of my knowledge, we haven't seen much private equity involvement in the North American tech distribution market. How would you characterize the competitive backdrop for assets across the different specialists that you're interested in in North America?
Clive, do you want to kick off?
Yeah, I will. Well, at the large end, there's quite a bit of private equity activity with Tech Data and Ingram Micro going into private equity hands and then Tech Data merging with a listed entity Synnex. There's been a lot of activity at the very high end. Indeed, I've seen an article, Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway were an underbidder, and I think that supports the value that is in tech distribution in general. We would also see private equity in certain specialisms. We're...
As you know, Allan, we're a very disciplined acquirer, and it has to fit our strategy, we have to add value to it, and we have to be able to buy it at what's reasonable value or fair value. We do see private equity playing in certain specialisms around the security space, the cloud space. The multiples would be quite high. In the areas that we're looking to play, we tend not to come up against private equity too much. Marty's point is a very well made one in relation to his decision to sell to us and the Chaiken's decision to sell Almo to DCC.
That sort of people cultural fit and just long-term owners and being able to add value out of the box in terms of our vendor relationships and, just our knowledge and our long-term view is a real differentiator in the M&A market. Yeah, absolutely, Clive. I think the important part is the process and the fact that we're proactively going out to meet with prospective companies that we would have in our sights and ideally create bilateral opportunities before they ever get to market. That's really part and parcel of our secret sauce.
Great. Marty, I might bring you in there, just the competitive nature of acquisitions in North America.
I think Clive and Tim covered it well. In our space, particularly in adjacent spaces to our core of what we're doing, it's a lot of family-owned or privately owned companies. I'm heading out tomorrow with the M&A team to look at a company, and it's privately owned, and they have taken a pass on private equity because they don't wanna resell again. I think in the world or the larger spaces or more commodity spaces where private equity is flipping to private equity over and over again is different. In our space, we're buying from a lot of privately owned companies, and we're well suited to that, and they like our process.
Great. Next question is coming from Gerry Hennigan from Goodbody. Hi, Gerry.
Hi. Thanks. Thanks, Holly. Tim and Clive, just obviously the focus on the Almo transaction has been on the Pro AV side of it, but you've obviously got a large appliance business there as well. What are your aspirations or plans with regard to that?
Tim?
Well, I was gonna actually go straight to Clive, actually. Clearly the ambition is to grow that and take advantage of the great dynamics that we see in that marketplace. Clive and Marty-
It's a new area for us.
Absolutely. It is. We've been in appliances in Europe in a much more modest way and lifestyle products as well. The characteristics that we would have seen in Europe we would have seen reflected into the Almo business. Gerry, to buy a position in that market, the largest consumer market in North America, and to buy the largest distributor in consumer appliances straight away is just a great step for us. The margin characteristics are good and attractive and the underlying growth dynamics I talked about that remodeling renovation spend of you know 4% into the medium term is just really attractive.
The team in Almo are so long in the industry, and they add so much value. I talked in my presentation as well about just new brands that are coming to the Almo business. So we want to stay in that business for a very long time and continue to invest behind organic growth. We think there'll be acquisition opportunities as well to grow and develop that business. Marty is the man on the ground, I guess. Any
Anything to add there, Marty?
I believe that's all well put, and I can just add that it's opened up our pipeline dramatically to be in the appliance business. There's a lot of meetings coming up for interesting acquisitions. This is key to us to have this adjacent technology platform that leads to the next. Of course, Almo being a national player, we have a roll-up strategy of a lot of regional players in the same space. It's given us a big M&A lift in our plans.
Yeah.
Great. It's fair to say then that the appliance division, post-acquisition Almo is business as usual?
Absolutely, yes. Yeah. Two very experienced managers, Steve Terry and Jack Halpern, running those businesses. Yeah. Very much so. I just maybe if I could add, Holly, I touched on our e-commerce fulfillment. We're doing, alongside the appliances, there's also a very interesting division which does outdoor living products and air comfort and air conditioning equipment that goes into to people's homes, selling it through e-commerce channels. It fits the warehouse capability of Almo exceptionally well in terms of the larger format boxes. That's a very interesting space for us as well. We'd hope to bring with lots of ideas in terms of other products that we can bring to that particular channel.
We think there's acquisition opportunities there as well.
Okay, interesting. Okay, another question in from Rajesh from HSBC. Rajesh? Hi there.
Hi, good afternoon. I hope you both are doing well. Just a few questions. Sorry we don't get a lot of opportunities to understand each sub-segment. The first is, how can you help investors get comfortable that the tech sector or your segment is not, has not been overearning during COVID, given how much work from home investment has gone in? People have bought screens, people have bought, you know. How can we feel comfortable that the level of revenue generation the space has had is not a one-off, but it could be recurring? I know it's not a very straightforward question, but if you could run us through, say, for example, what proportion of revenue is maintenance and repair?
What are the secular demand drivers in terms of how long do these installations last and how often your customers have to replace them? Something like that would be super helpful. That's the first question. Second question is on the margin improvement aspirations you've shared with us. Really interesting, having AV players, unlisted AV players earn gross margins close to 15%. so we would love to understand how much of the improvement is coming from a shift in mix towards higher margin product versus, you know. You told me in the past that if there's drop shipping, your gross margin could be low, but it could be a very high return. So how much of it is by taking more inventory on balance sheet? That's the second question.
I mean, what are the drivers of that margin mix? Finally, I appreciate that your ROE in the segment has not been most stellar. Given the amount of capital you've deployed for M&A, and the margin improvement and the fact that your balance sheets don't look that stressed, I mean, even the return on operating capital must have shown a slightly different trend. Could you give us the trend on the return on operating capital, excluding the acquisition intangibles, which obviously has grown because you've done a lot of deals.
Thanks, Rajesh.
Good to see you again, Rajesh.
A lot to get through there.
You might wanna recap some of those questions.
The first one there, I might give to you, Tim, the COVID bank cyclicals in the business, how have you seen that over the last two or so years?
Yeah, no, I think we touched on this at the very outset with the first question, which was really around the nature of our portfolio being diverse. We see this on an annual basis in terms of seasonality in the mix between consumer and B2B. We certainly saw that through COVID. There was definitely a consumer wave that went through, as we've all experienced. We saw work from home technologies come through. As I said, we've seen, as the world gets back to something resembling normal, a significant bounce in our specialist B2B activities. Clearly, as we've looked at our future projections, we've normalized for those, and certainly that's reflected in the acquisitions that we've made. We've normalized for those prices.
We feel pretty comfortable that it's part of our strength, but we're very cognizant of the impact of COVID on our diverse portfolio.
Okay. Marty, anything to add there in the COVID impact in North America?
I can say, though, that obviously, we have some products that suit stay-at-home, that have had more demand during COVID. I have to say it's been gated by supply 'cause offsetting that have been a tremendous limitation on production and getting containers from Asia. We have a fair amount of product that come directly into our warehouses from Asia. Even though we've had some lift, we've had some headwinds in getting the stock. You know, so some wins, some losses as a result of COVID, even in that space.
Mm-hmm.
Thanks, Marty. Second part there, Clive, margin improvement. I suppose how much of that is down to or where is that coming from? Is it shift, the mix shift or where are we gonna see that from?
The margin improvement, yeah, I don't think it's related to COVID, if that was part of the question. You know, a lot of the COVID bounce was in the B2C space, which generally would maybe be slightly lower margin than the B2B space. The volume then has dropped off on B2C, and we've picked up on the B2-
B side of it. I wouldn't attribute it to COVID at all. I think it's more about the top line turnover growth that we have as we've been deploying capital into specialisms, and they have higher margin characteristics and that's why we're so much confidence about the continued momentum.
Okay.
Yeah. There was one question from him just there on refreshes. A very diverse. At one end of the spectrum you have almost consumable technology. At the other end, you've got very robust, durable, and it could be anything between 18 months and five years. The fact that we're able to be in all of those spaces gives us a constant refresh.
Okay.
If his question was particular to the appliances, like does the appliance usage has increased during COVID. There's a-
People at home.
There's an expectation that there'll be a slight increase in the refresh rate, but that's not a material part of the growth dynamic.
Okay, great. Last few questions, if people wanna keep sending them in to investorrelations@dcc.ie. One question we get asked all the time in Investor Relations about supply chain issues, and you know, how is that impacting your business? What's the impact there for DCC Technology, Tim?
Well, Marty touched on this actually. It's been a pretty complex cocktail of effects. At one end of the spectrum we've had supply shortages out of the factories. We've had freight challenges, both in terms of availability and pricing. We've had labor challenges in terms of being able to source drivers, not just for ourselves and within the forklift truck drivers, for example. We've seen that in our 3PL and our retailers being able to source drivers for the trucks to do pickups and dropoffs. It's been incredibly challenging. Obviously part of that is inflationary pressures that come with labor shortages, freight charges. We've had to be able to pass those on and try and manage those relationships with our customers.
It's been a challenging time. The team have done an amazing job of navigating through it. I don't know whether or not, Marty, you've got a sort of a more colorful explanation given that you're on the ground there.
Yeah. No, no, I think that summarizes it very well. It's a lot of pluses and minuses, a very complex cocktail of issues going on, as you said. Certainly, there's inflation in all our products taking place as the cost to bring them in. It goes up, the cost of labor goes up. We as distributors have the opportunity to quickly change prices and follow these new cost structures. To some degree, as long as the demand holds together, our GP dollars actually improve with the cost increases. It's a complex series of headwinds and tailwinds that are going on right now. Overall we've managed them extremely well and look forward to.
You know, I think the next wave is the increase in our B2B business. We see a book of orders building for the B2B side of our business.
Thanks, Marty.
Mm-hmm.
We talked a lot about growth and margins. Can you expand a little on that? You know, where you see those improvements?
Yeah. Part of this is a mix challenge. Obviously, we've been investing in specialisms. As they become a greater proportion of our overall volume, we will see our margins rise. Those specialisms have great growth dynamics. Again, fuel that improvement. We talked about investments that we've made in businesses that allow us to deliver better products to our customers around the world. All of those contribute to improving margins. We have a maniacal focus on operational excellence. Day in, day out, we have nearly a GBP 6 billion business to drive excellence, which is constantly improving our margins. It's a journey of micro steps in that regard.
Great. I think we have time for one last question. I believe Gerry Hennigan from Goodbody. Another question, Gerry?
Yeah. Thanks, Holly. Just Tim, with reference to your reference there to challenges generally, would that have been more prevalent in certain jurisdictions? I'm thinking probably more the U.K. than anything else than in other areas. Your ability to pass through prices, can you comment on that from a regional point of view?
I mean, I think the challenges that the U.K. had to endure are well documented, and many of them were reproduced around the world. Obviously, there was the added complication of Brexit. We've said we've made investments in that space that have also created some challenges that we worked our way through, gladly through that. If you think about our ability to manage prices, we've been able to work with customers very closely. As you said, the team have done a really good job of being able to manage that.
Okay. Thank you. I think that's all we have time for. Just thank you to Tim, Clive, and Marty for joining us today. Thank you for all tuning in and to everybody who asked a question. To wrap up, just leave you with that DCC Technology is a well-invested growing business. There's huge opportunities for growth and a strong management team focused on returns and scaling the business. Take care.