Good morning and welcome to the Diploma Half-Year Results 2024 webcast and conference call. This call is being recorded. I will now hand over to Johnny Thomson, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, everyone. Great to have you with us today for our half-year update. Thank you for joining. I'm here, as usual, with our CFO, Chris Davies. I'm going to start with an overview, and then Chris will take you through the numbers, and then I'll come back to discuss the businesses' questions, as usual, at the end. So let's get straight into it. It's been a great half for Diploma. We've again delivered a strong performance across all of our key financial metrics, building on our long-term compounding track record. We continue to diversify our specialized businesses to drive organic growth, scale, and resilience, particularly pleasing to see strong growth in a tougher environment. We've brought 6 quality businesses into the group, spending GBP 284 million supporting future organic growth and at great returns . We continue to develop our value-add businesses to improve the customer proposition and drive margins.
Reflecting both good momentum in the business into the second half, as well as the impact of the acquisitions, we're upgrading our full-year guidance. Sustainable quality compounding requires consistent, strong delivery across all metrics, which we continue to demonstrate. I'm particularly pleased with this half-year performance because of the tougher environment, with strong EPS growth and returns demonstrating the increasing quality and resilience of the group. Organic growth of 5% was volume-led. Reported growth of 10% reflects a strong contribution from last year's acquisitions, despite an FX headwind of 3%. There was further encouraging progress on our margins too, up 80 basis points to 19.6%. The benefits of scale and performance combine with accretive acquisitions. Maintaining our long-term double-digit track record, EPS grew by 10%, moderated somewhat by the impact of last year's placing. In line with our policy, we have declared a progressive dividend up 5%.
Financial discipline is key to long-term compounding success. Cash conversion improved year-over-year. Our balance sheet is strong, and importantly, return on capital has improved by 20 basis points to 18%, reflecting the quality of our acquisitions. Overall, a great performance. We're feeling positive about short and long-term prospects. Our brilliant people deliver the customer proposition and deliver these strong results, and I thank them again for their commitment and passion. Our powerful decentralized culture is a differentiator and critical to our success. It breeds commerciality, accountability, agility, rigor, humility. Preserving it as we scale is an important part of my job. As we talked about in our seminar last year, we do this by ensuring focus, by developing dynamic leaders in a lean structure, and by managing actively the mood. Our people and culture sustain our compounding for the long term. Now over to Chris.
Thanks, Johnny. I'm going to take you through the financial highlights before handing back to Johnny for a little more strategic color. So I'll start with revenue. We've delivered another strong first half with organic revenue growth of 5% and revenue up 10% overall after acquisitions and FX. All of our sectors grew, and importantly, again, this was volume-driven, with around 4% volume growth. More than ever in these tougher markets, this demonstrates the resilience of our revenue diversification strategy, and Johnny will talk a little bit more about that later. Controls delivered strong organic growth of 7% with double-digit growth in international Controls. Seals delivered a resilient 1% organic growth against the backdrop of customer destocking. Normal ordering patterns are starting to resume, and we expect a stronger second half. Life Sciences delivered 5% organic growth, with end-market dynamics now largely normalized.
This strong organic growth was boosted a further 8% by acquisitions in their first year, but FX was a headwind in the period, depressing reported growth by 3%. Now, given we are now in May, I should note here that we've started the second half well, with April now behind us, smoothing the Easter timing effect. Year-to-date, organic revenue growth is 6%. I'll now move to operating profit. We delivered very strong operating profit growth of 14%. This was driven both by the strong revenue growth I just outlined and, importantly, by ongoing margin improvement. We improved operating margin by 80 basis points in the period to a first-half record 19.6%. Margin growth was driven organically, with 110 basis points of growth from the performance improvements and operational leverage that our businesses drive as they grow.
We reinvested 70 basis points of that to continue to scale the businesses, building out management teams, enhancing systems, and upgrading facilities to ensure that we can continue to deliver our value-add solutions at scale. So, net of those investments, half the margin progression in the period was delivered organically. Acquisitions added a further 50 basis points of margin expansion in the first half, given the accretive nature of both DICSA and TIE. And it's worth noting here that as we move into the second half, DICSA and TIE are baked into those comparators, but then we have Peerless and PAR coming in, which are both margin accretive, and those effects broadly offset each other such that the full-year margin impact of acquisitions will be broadly similar to the first half. So I'll just round off the rest of the P&L. Net interest expense decreased to GBP 10.2 million.
That's largely driven by the structure and mix of our debt facilities. The all-in blended cost of our borrowing facilities decreased to 5.2% from 5.5% last year. Net of this, adjusted profit before tax increased 17% to GBP 115.2 million. Although growing at a strong 10% to GBP 0.651, earnings per share growth lags profit growth a little following the equity placing in March 2023. Now, this impact will reduce over the full year. And this, coupled with strong organic margin growth and the impact of accretive acquisitions, will drive full-year EPS growth to be around 15% at current FX rates. Finally, in line with our policy, we've declared a 5% increase in the interim dividend to GBP 0.173 per share, continuing our long-term track record of progressive dividend growth. Let's turn to cash.
I should remind you here that the group's cash delivery profile is always somewhat H2-weighted, so 76% cash conversion is a strong first-half result, up versus last year, and positioning as well for 90% full-year conversion. So just a few points on this slide. The working capital increase of GBP 17 million is reflective of the revenue growth I outlined earlier. Net capital expenditure was GBP 5 million lower than the prior year, benefiting from the disposal of a couple of properties. In addition to the initial outlay on four bolt-on acquisitions, that acquisition expenditure of GBP 22 million includes GBP 13 million of deferred payments, largely relating to the final payment in respect of Windy City Wire. Tax and interest payments were up GBP 10 million versus last year, driven by the increase in the U.K. tax rate and the addition of DICSA driving new Spanish tax payments.
As a consequence of all of that, net debt is broadly flat over the period at GBP 259 million, with leverage remaining at 0.9 times. With the completion of Peerless and PAR in recent weeks, we expect year-end leverage to be around 1.3 times before any further acquisitions. Now, I want to say a few words on the refinancing we completed during the period. The discipline of maintaining a strong balance sheet is a key underpin of sustainable quality compounding, and we've made some big improvements in the period. We've recently completed the refinancing of the group, extending and diversifying our funding position and setting us up for continued profitable growth. In July 2023, we entered into a GBP 555 million multicurrency RCF. This runs until July 2028 with an option to extend for two further years.
In March 2024, we issued our debut EUR 250 million USPP with maturities of 7, 10, and 12 years at a blended coupon of 4.3%. With these enhanced facilities, strong free cash flow, and ongoing discipline, we have strong liquidity with undrawn committed facilities and cash of a little over GBP 500 million at the period end. In addition, we further improved the balance sheet by de-risking our pension liability. We completed a full buy-in of the remaining liabilities in the UK scheme, so that means no further cash contributions will be required. Let's move now to how we put that capital to work. During the period, we completed 4 quality bolt-on acquisitions for a total consideration of GBP 10 million. With an EBIT multiple of around 4x, and year-one ROIC, therefore, exceeds 20%.
In March, we announced the acquisition of U.S.-based Peerless Aerospace for GBP 236 million, and this formally closed on May 1st. Acquired a multiple of 7x 2024 EBIT, it will deliver 15% ROIC and 8% EPS accretion in its first full year. On the 30th of April, we acquired U.K.-based PAR Group for GBP 138 million. Acquired at 7x 2024 EBIT, it will deliver 14% ROIC and 1% EPS accretion in its first full year. These add to our long track record of successful acquisitions driving accelerated organic growth. To recall, since 2019, we've now invested around GBP 1.3 billion in acquisitions to build geographic scale, access new end markets, and increase our product offering. They perform strongly under our ownership and are already averaging ROIC of 16%, and this continues to grow every year. Looking forward, we have a strong M&A pipeline with diverse, high-quality opportunities.
So finally, to guidance for the year. The momentum in our underlying business, combined with the contribution from recent acquisitions, drives an upgrade to our previous guidance. So we now expect constant currency revenue growth of around 16%. This is made up of 6% organic growth, boosted by growth from acquisitions of around 10%. So that's an upgrade of five percentage points of growth versus previous guidance. Strong operating margin of around 20.5%. Now, that's an upgrade of 80 basis points of margin versus previous guidance, with around half of that coming from the strong underlying performance and half from the recent acquisitions. So if FX rates stay where they are today, that will flow through to full-year EPS growth of around 15%. We continue to expect free cash flow conversion of around 90%, and before any further acquisitions, we'd expect year-end leverage of around 1.3x.
In summary, we've delivered another strong first half, and we are increasing our guidance for the year. With that, I'll hand back to Johnny.
Okay, thank you, Chris. Now onto our businesses. First, a quick reminder of the strategy, which is to build high-quality, scalable businesses for sustainable organic growth. We drive organic growth in what I call our three buckets: positioning behind structurally growing end markets, penetrating further in core developed geographies, and extending our product range to expand addressable markets. Small, concentrated businesses stepping out of their niche, taking their specialized proposition to new places, they all have fantastic opportunities to grow. This strategy drives exciting, sustainable organic growth, scale, and increased resilience. This is complemented by selective, high-quality acquisitions that drive future organic growth and at great returns. To keep the portfolio focused, we occasionally divest of businesses that are not our model or are not ours to scale. Our value-add model and decentralized culture are differentiators. Scaling our businesses and group effectively is therefore key to sustainable delivery.
Finally, delivering value responsibly is central to our commercial and operational strategy, embedded in our culture. Through it, we can make a meaningful difference. A few words now on the sectors. Controls continues to perform very well. Organic growth was 7%. Our international Controls businesses have continued to see market share gains on top of the tailwinds from structurally growing end markets such as aerospace, energy, defense. I'll talk about our Peerless acquisition in a minute. Windy City Wire has grown well, broadly in line with the group average, driven by good volumes. The business is well positioned, particularly in data centers with significant potential there for growth. Excellent margin progression, up 120 basis points, was driven by product mix, leverage, and the benefit of last year's accretive acquisitions. Controls has great momentum into the second half.
We're excited to welcome Peerless to Diploma, a family-owned specialty fasteners business based out of New York State, predominantly serving aerospace markets. It's been run by Bill Way and Dan Russo for 30 years. We've known them for some time. They do a brilliant job, and I'm delighted that they'll be staying on to lead the business into the future. Peerless has clear value add, evidenced by its 30% margins, supplying high-quality, high-demand fasteners with technical service , breadth of inventory, and speed to market, all in critical fuselage applications in the highly regulated market of aerospace. Peerless also has a long-term track record of high single-digit growth and huge potential for the future. That's based on, firstly, market tailwinds. Aerospace is a market we know well and has significant structural drivers, including the backlog of new aircraft manufacture and a healthy MRO environment.
Secondly, the business is well diversified, with 80+ customers covering all the major OEMs. Having a reputation for quality can only position us positively in this value chain. Finally, strategically, it complements our current geographic reach well with further penetration in the U.S. and Europe. It's also a nice product extension, complementing our existing interior fasteners with fuselage fasteners. We therefore also have cross-selling opportunities to go for. As we talked about at our seminar last year, while we are not always the highest price, we have competitive advantage as the home of choice for family-owned businesses. It's a win-win. I'm excited that Peerless has joined the group. I welcome our new colleagues, and I look forward to the contribution the business will make to the group. Seals has been our most resilient sector in recent years, and I'm really positive about the future for the sector.
Modest organic growth of 1% reflects a tougher period of destocking in the last 12 months or so. Reported growth of 22% includes principally the acquisition of DICSA in the second half of last year. As we've talked about before, both the European and U.S. OEM businesses have been affected by the destocking cycle in the industrial markets. We're now starting to see more positive customer ordering patterns return. The second half for these businesses, therefore, looks much better. We've seen very strong performances in the U.K. from R&G and in Australia. DICSA has been broadly flat, as we expected when we acquired it, reflecting the downward market pressures in Europe, offset by encouraging share gains. We expect DICSA's growth to improve in the second half. In North America, our U.S. MRO business, VSP, has performed very well. Their unique quality and safety proposition positions the business very well.
Margins were up 40 basis points in the sector, supported by both improvements in R&G and by the accretion from the DICSA acquisition last year. So I'm really positive about the period ahead for Seals, with good market tailwinds from infrastructure and renewable investment, particularly the recovery in the stocking cycle and significant potential within each of our businesses. I wanted to pause for a second and update you on our progress with R&G, our UK Seals aftermarket business, which we acquired in April 2022. Richard Davies , our GM, and the R&G management team have made a fantastic start to life in Diploma, growing organically at around 10% CAGR, bolting on nine acquisitions, and growing margins to an expected 18% this year from 13% two years ago. The organic growth is driven by extending local market penetration, entering new end markets, and by cross-selling new products around their group.
The 9 acquisitions done in the last 2 years, including 3 since the turn of this year, contribute significantly to organic growth performance. At an average multiple of 4.5, they deliver excellent year-1 returns too. PAR Group, a gasket specialist in northwest England, is the latest and biggest business to join and will support greater scale in our Seals and gaskets division with a powerful value-add model and great margins. We've been investing in scaling R&G for sustainable delivery, as we do everywhere. We've now organized into 4 divisions, significantly upgraded the management capability. We've invested in systems, and we've implemented 2 new state-of-the-art facilities with another on the way. The strong margin progression reflects leverage and the value of these scaling investments. Overall, it's a great example of how our acquisitions can flourish within Diploma's ownership.
I'm very happy with the progress we're making in Life Sciences . It's been a tough period for all healthcare businesses post-pandemic, but our hard work is paying off, and the 5% organic growth in the first half is encouraging. The diagnostics businesses have been strong as increased investment continues. This was particularly the case in Australia, where we also had some excellent market share wins too. In medtech, surgical procedures have normalized to pre-pandemic levels, which is positive, and the benefits of the unwinding backlog will benefit us in the medium term. We've broadened our product range, reflecting new technology in key growth diagnostic spaces such as genetic preconception screening, allergy, and autoimmunity testing. I'm pleased with our progress on business development, and the sector is benefiting from knowledge and opportunity sharing to leverage existing success across businesses. We've invested significantly in the sector in the last few years too.
We have great management talent, and we've invested in consolidating the Australian and Canadian businesses into single business units to leverage operational capability. The Australian project is complete, and the Canadian one is due to complete by the end of this year. Margins have come down a fraction over the last few years as a result of this investment, but will build back up. The market tailwinds in diagnostics and surgical medtech are very positive. We're driving better business development execution, and we're improving the infrastructure. I'm really positive about life sciences prospects. So in summary, we've had another strong performance in the first half and made good progress with strategic execution too. We're excited about the massive potential for organic growth ahead. Some fantastic new businesses have joined the group, and we have the pipeline to continue to bolt on quality businesses over the long term.
We're focused on scaling the businesses and the group for sustainable success. The outlook for half two is positive, and we're upgrading our guidance, and we remain confident in delivering sustainable quality compounding over the long term. With that, I'll hand you back for questions.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. If you wish to ask a question at this time, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. Please make sure the mute function on your phone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star one to ask a question. Now, our first question comes from Sylvia Barker from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, morning. Two questions from me, please. First of all, data centers. Could you maybe talk to how much revenue that segment represents today and what products you provide? And secondly, I'm sorry to bring it up, but copper. Can you just remind us how copper kind of flows through, just given the price has gone up so materially recently? And then finally, on the organic upgrade, could you just give us an idea? Is maybe half of that the Peerless organic growth kind of coming in, or can you just give some quantification there? Thank you very much.
Yeah, I'll let Chris do the upgrade in a second. I'll come first of all. I mean, I suggest it might be useful for you to spend some time with us to be able to clarify some of these points offline. I know your house particularly has been quite focused on copper pricing, and we've covered it in the broader public domain quite a bit. But just for the purposes of that question, I would say that copper is a direct pass-through, and therefore, while it may impact our top line, it has no impact on our profitability. Data centers is, for the moment, largely not entirely, but largely delivered through our Windy City Wire business, who have specced themselves into many of the data center builders, and therefore, we're in very, very good position with that.
I'd say at the moment for us, it's still a building exercise, if you like. It's becoming a bigger, bigger part of Windy City. But of course, on top of that, we expect data centers at the market to expand pretty significantly. So I think for me, it's an exciting part of making Windy City's business more sustainable for the long term. What we're also looking at is how to bring that expertise, that knowledge, those relationships into other areas of the group, where obviously more internationally data centers will continue to build too. So overall, I think it's a great end market for us. Chris?
Yeah, on the margin upgrade, so 80 basis points to 20.5% for the full year. Of that, a little under half of it is Peerless and PAR coming in in the second half. And of the remaining half, a piece of that, about half of that half, so about a quarter, about 20 basis points, is the full year impact of DICSA and TIE, and the remaining 20% is the underlying portfolio. And it's worth saying that all of our sectors underlying, all of our sectors organically are growing margin. There's a little bit of mix shift downwards as Seals comes back in the full year, but great underlying organic margin progression right across.
That's very helpful. Thank you. Sorry, just on the last one, that was actually very helpful, but my question was actually on organic revenue growth, just out of that 100 basis points, how much of that might be for?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, but that's great color anyway, so thanks for that.
Okay, so the 6% organic revenue growth up from 5%, a little under half of that upgrade comes from the faster growth of Peerless and PAR, and about a little over half from the organic business.
Perfect. Thanks very much, Paul.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Anneliese Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, Johnny and Chris. I have three questions, please, two on Seals and then one on the margin upgrade. So firstly, just on DICSA, could you give an update on trading specifically within that business? Clearly, organic growth in Seals remains a little softer, so I'm just curious as to how DICSA is trading relative to the rest of the Seals business. And then secondly, you've still talked about on Seals, sorry, you've still talked about destocking in the release, but also you mentioned that some of your larger OEM customers are returning to slightly more normalized order patterns.
I think you said the same thing in January, so I'm just curious as to what you've seen over the last five months, if anything has changed in that regard, or has that continued to pick up, and what are you seeing today that gives you that confidence for the business into the second half? And then thirdly, just on the margin upgrade, you've said it's broadly split between underlying and accretive. Just could you give perhaps some more color on what's in that underlying piece? Is it costs that have come out? Is it operational leverage? And is that something that we can expect to continue? Thank you.
Great, Anneliese. Thank you. Chris, if you can do the margin one in a second. I'll start on DICSA. Look, with DICSA, I think we bought DICSA when it was June or July last year. Can't remember which one. I think it was June. Yes. Very, very happy with the business that we've got. I mean, they've settled in very, very well. We knew and we said at the time that it was going to be slow, a little bit bumpy for the first year or so. And so we're not surprised that it's broadly flat. Obviously, they are subject somewhat to some of the destocking that I'll talk about in a second around the whole Seals business. But they're also in Europe, which has probably been slightly harder than, let's say, the US and the UK as a market from our perspective.
So in actual fact, what I would say about it is that for DICSA to be flat over the last 12 months, we're actually quietly a little bit pleased about that because those markets in Europe have been down quite a bit, and we've been taking a bit of market share to build it back to positive. So as we get into the second half, of course, comparators get a bit easier, yes, but also we're confident in the market share gains, and that'll carry through into the second half and the momentum that they've got in terms of their customer ordering patterns. So I feel good about the second half of the year.
On top of that, we've started to do at a very early stage, but we started to do some cross-selling as we said we would do around Fluid Power, taking some of the DICSA products into the UK through R&G and into the US through our Hercules business. Now, it's very early days, so it doesn't make any difference to the numbers as yet, but over the medium term, that will start to be a contributor for them too. So overall, we feel very, very positive about the future for DICSA. More broadly on Seals, you asked about, look, I think we said over the last few announcements we've made that the destocking was going to be going on for a bit longer. I think in January, we said a couple of quarters, and that's probably about right at this stage.
We do see that going into the second half, our ordering pattern, customer behavior is starting to improve. It's kind of patchy, as you would imagine, in different product groups, in different markets, etc. But broadly speaking, the order pattern is starting to come back. And therefore, we're expecting the Seals sector as a whole to accelerate in the second half of the year. I think I'd also remind you that the long-term prospects for Seals are really, really exciting. In a diversified group like ours, we're always going to have one sector in one particular period that does better than the other. That's the quality of the diversification. But over the long term, the prospects for Seals are really exciting. The end market tailwinds I mentioned earlier, infrastructure, renewables, but still lots to go for geographically in the U.S., Europe, and the U.K.
The Fluid Power journey that I touched on is still very, very early from a product perspective. Long-term prospects for Seals, very good. Short-term, we should see an uptick in the second half.
Yeah, on margins, let me just step back into history a bit because I think this is useful. If I look at the business that we had in 2019 and strip out all of the acquisitions we've done between 2019 and now, and any of the divestments between 2019 and now, and just look organic to organic portfolio, there's about 200 basis points of margin improvement over those years. And look, the core driver is operating leverage as these businesses grow, and then the benefits from the scaling investments we made as we're combining smaller businesses into more scaled operating units, as we're putting things into new and better facilities, as we're upgrading management capability. But the improvement you see this year is part of a long-term sustained organic improvement that we've posted over the last five.
Thank you very much for the color. It's helpful.
Our next question, Kean Marden from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Morning, all. Just to come back on some recent acquisitions. First of all, Johnny, just to start off with DICSA. So would that suggest therefore that DICSA's revenue contribution should be something in the region of GBP 40 million in the first half? Then, Companies House filing for the company accurate? It shows flattish EBIT for the last two or three years. Don't know whether the business experienced a post-COVID bubble, and maybe we've seen the unwind of that. So some background on that would be particularly helpful. And then a couple for Chris. So the inventory fair value adjustment that's in the notes, do you know which business that related to? And has that inventory now gone through the system and been sold, and did you get the realizable value that you're anticipating?
And then finally, the GBP 2.9 million asset disposal profits in the half, was that taken above the line, and have you assumed a similar number for the full year when your guidance?
Okay. Thanks, Kean. I think most of these questions are for Chris, really. If you're trying to get a model right on DICSA's revenue, I'll leave that one with Chris. Inventory fair value and asset disposal, I think, are all for Chris. I'll talk a little bit about the PAR one. I mean, look, it's a great business. Over the long, long term, it's delivered very good mid to high single-digit growth at very good margins that I think you can work out from the numbers. Over the last year or so, that growth, maybe 18 months, that growth has slowed just a little bit. I mean, mainly out of just the stage of their development, to be frank, and probably a stage of the markets that they're in.
But over the long term, their growth has been very good, and we are very enthusiastic about that growth returning over the next year or two.
Yeah. DICSA, a little below what you said, so it's high 30s. Inventory fair value, careful I don't get struck off with this answer. It is possibly one of the most byzantine pieces of IFRS I've ever seen. It's on DICSA. It's on all acquisitions. When you acquire a company, you have to write up the value of the inventory to the market, i.e., retail value. So we effectively write it up to the retail value, which, of course, if you then sold it, you would sell at zero margin. We then write it back down as it's sold, back down to its normalized margin. So it is just accounting noise. It goes up and it comes down, which is why we've stripped it out of the adjusted. And you'll see that on Peerless. You'll see that with any material acquisition we or any other company like us makes.
Asset disposal in the period was, there was a few bits of properties. No, there's nothing continuing into half two, and it broadly offsets some restructuring costs in that same business. So the net impact of those restructuring adjustments was zero.
Great stuff. Thanks. Thanks, Chris. Much appreciated.
Our next question comes from David Brockton from Deutsche Numis . Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. I have two questions as well, please. Firstly, international Controls. I just wondered if you could touch on how broad-based the growth is within that division. Are there any particular sectors driving it and the outlook? And then the second question, just in respect of the acquisition pipeline, just wondered if you can give us a bit more color around that. I guess if we rolled back to the CMD and the sort of the matrix of white space you presented at that point in time, are there any areas you're looking at harder to sort of fill out that white space? Thanks.
Look, I mean, on Controls, the growth is fairly broad-based at the moment. We're really encouraged by it. I think I touched on some of the end markets that are doing very, very well: aerospace, defense, energy, even, and one or two others. And you look across the businesses themselves, and whether it be wire and cable, whether it be fasteners, whether it be interconnect solutions, they're all doing pretty well. So the Controls growth is broad-based, and we'd expect that to continue. The pipeline for M&A, David, remains robust, remains strong. We feel pretty happy with the track record that we've delivered over the last five years, Chris outlined a few minutes ago. There's a good pipeline of small bolt-ons so we can carry on doing that stuff.
While there's no rush, we might occasionally do a slightly bigger one like a Peerless or like last year at DICSA. They come along, they're in our pipeline further out, and we keep our eyes peeled for those. So the pipeline remains pretty robust. The balance sheet is in good shape. Our M&A processes are strong. And as I talked about a bit earlier, we do feel that we've got a good competitive advantage in the buying process as well. So we're in good position with the pipeline. But as always, and you can see from the financials on these deals, we will remain very disciplined. And that's the financial discipline to make sure we drive great returns out of these deals. But it's also about management bandwidth. It's also about portfolio focus, etc., etc. So the pipeline remains as good as it's been and our discipline the same.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question over the phone, please signal by pressing star one. Now, the next question comes from Sam Dindol from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Congratulations on the results. A couple of questions from me, please. Firstly, on pricing, I appreciate the commentary on volume-driven organic growth. So I've seen prices flat. Can you give us some expectation on how you think pricing will progress in the next sort of 12 to 18 months? And then secondly, on the scaling investments, 70 basis points headwind to margin, but appreciate it improves the longer term. Do you take the decision on that sort of independently of the growth of the business and sort of looking for long-term? And is it sensible to think about it as just like an ongoing process given the amount of M&A you do and the opportunity to scale those? Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll let Chris do the pricing one in a second. On the scaling one, I mean, look, the way we work the group is we have a group-level strategic framework, which I talked about a few minutes ago. That strategic framework for the businesses is around the three buckets, but for them, what are their objectives within these three buckets? Of course, we review those with the businesses at least once, if not twice a year. The same applies to scaling as well. So when we're reviewing their growth plans, we'll also be reviewing their scaling plans. Now, while we have a long-term operating model or vision and journey, every business is in a slightly different place. So we review each business together.
And it might be, therefore, that in any given business, it might be about some management investment into a particular functional expertise, or they might be at a certain stage where they need a new e-commerce system or a back-office system, or indeed, they might be in need of a facility upgrade. It'll be very much horses for courses. And we review that with each business through a strategic review and budgeting review at least once every year. And therefore, for every business, we're clear on what their handful of growth objectives are, but we're also clear on what their handful of scaling objectives are too. And therefore, we're able to ensure the execution of that in the year that comes.
And Sam, on pricing, look, I don't think we are anticipating, forecasting, or expecting any specific and certainly any macro move upwards. For us, it's laser-like, and it's very precise. So business by business, product line by product line, customer by customer, to make sure we've got that got prices that reflect our value-added proposition. So I think when you see it as a whole at a Diploma level, I think there will be little or nothing in the next 6-12 months. But underneath that, there is a lot of very careful, very diligent decision-making being made most months.
Brilliant. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Henry Carver from Davy. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, guys. Just a couple from me around margins again. In Controls, you talk about the better margin mix or better product mix driving margin improvement there. Just remind us which products that is, just helping the margin. And then around a more broad question, sort of margins in general, it feels like the range has sort of now shifted comfortably up from where it was over the last handful of years. What is the longer-term outlook and thoughts? Just any sort of updated thoughts around the margin for the group generally? Thanks.
Thanks, Henry. The specific on margin mix in Controls that we called out was specifically Windy City Wire, where they get slightly richer margins in data center work, in DAS, antennae, 5G antennae work, then some of their more traditional business areas. But mix is a big component right across Diploma and probably worthy of an hour or two offline. But that was the one we specifically called out. In terms of long-term margin guidance, I'm going to ask you to be patient and wait for the full year. I think your observations are valid, but we're not going to sort of put out new long-term guidance at the half year.
That's great. Many thanks. Cheers, Chris.
Thank you. As there are no further questions in the phone queue, I will move now to our web questions. Todd, over to you.
Thanks very much, Sergey. The first question from the webcast from Charlie Huggins from Wealth Club. Are challenges in private equity from higher interest rates and lack of exits leading to better acquisition opportunities and lower valuations?
Yes, Charlie. Thank you for that. So what have we seen? I mean, most of our competition for assets is from private equity. I would say probably 75% of who we're competing with in these processes is private equity. I would say probably 18 months ago, 2 years ago, whenever it was, interest rates very, very low, etc., multiples very high coming out of COVID, etc., then I think we saw some pretty irrational valuations from private equity. Clearly, since then, earnings have moderated, and interest rates have gone north. And what I would say for us, at our level, therefore, what we don't see is private equity disappearing altogether like they may do from huge deals. They're still very much present, but they've become much more rational.
They always find a way to tweak their models to allow them to continue to be able to deploy capital, certainly at the level that we are talking about. But I'm very pleased to say that they are more rational in their approach. The peerless acquisition is a good one. We were competing with private equity and, as I said earlier, not necessarily the highest price, but at least a very sensible process.
Thank you. No further questions at the moment. Johnny, back to yourself for closing remarks.
Well, thank you very much, everyone, for joining us. We're pleased with the results. It's only the half year, so we'll get on with the second half of the year, and we'll come back and see you again in November. Thanks very much for your time.
Thanks. So.