Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and let me welcome you to the half-year results presentation for discoverIE Group plc. Now, I've been giving a brief introductory comment, and it will be brief, over a number of years now. Looking back at my notes, it's amazing how consistent some of the opening messages are, and I see that as a strength, which is a credit to both the company and the management team, that we're following that consistent strategy. I think you've heard me say, and Nick and Simon say, over the years, there are four key elements to that strategy, a strategy which we call a compounding growth strategy. So firstly, resilient organic growth. Secondly, robust and improving operating margins. Thirdly, growth accelerated through acquisitions.
And then fourthly, strong cash flow supporting a robust balance sheet, which gives you the capability to make the investments to support the growth. Now, those, those are the four key elements, but, particularly in challenging market conditions, economic conditions across the, the world, geopolitical as well, I think you have to actually look behind some of those elements at the drivers of those four key elements of the strategy, what I sometimes would like to think of as being almost super key performance indicators, super KPIs. So if we look at the resilient organic growth, I mean, what we're looking for there is, in normal times, to be doing rather better than the other participants in the industry, getting higher organic growth rates.
But particularly in more challenging times when things are tougher, then we want to see resilience in that organic growth, and flat, flat organic growth may well be a very good performance. And I suppose if you're looking at the key KPI that we are always looking at to see whether we're achieving here, I think the one that you'll hear Nick refer to is actually the design wins in the target markets. We've got a set of four target markets which give us this resilience, which give us this high, higher than industrial average growth rate, and if we can be achieving significant design wins, that gives us the potential for the, for future robust organic growth. Secondly, robust and improving operating margins. We can look at the operating margins, but what is it behind there that's driving it?
The first thing is solid, robust gross margins, and those gross margins really prove that we are providing something to the customer which is valuable, which they're prepared to pay for. So good gross margins, and then looking at the operating efficiency, which allows you to move those operating margins up over time. And we achieve that through clustering the businesses, having small management teams who are looking at a set of businesses that have common technologies and looking at ways of improving the cost by working together and cross-selling.
So that's the second element of margins. Growth accelerated through acquisitions. The key things that we're looking at behind that particular element of the strategy are firstly, the pipeline of acquisitions, and Nick will talk a little bit more about the strength of that pipeline, but very importantly also, return on investment from acquisitions.
Anyone can spend money on acquisitions and get growth, but the key is to actually get value-enhancing acquisitions, and we can see that through the return on investment. Then finally, strong cash flow supporting a robust balance sheet, which gives us the freedom then to make the investments. So hopefully, I've indicated some of those super KPIs, and we can now test Nick and Simon and see whether it stands up against it. I personally am pretty confident that you'll come away with equal confidence. Over to you, Nick.
Thanks, Bruce. Morning, everybody. Good to see you. Thanks very much for coming. Right, let's get into this. So, growth with efficiencies, good set of results. You know, this is, you know, continuing what Bruce has said, this is about keeping the growth growing, going even in a slower growth environment. So, you know, we grew sales over the last two years at around about 25% CER, not around, at 25% CER. This is obviously lower, at 4% with 1% organic growth, but that's very good. I mean, we've grown a lot over the last three years, and, and we're holding those strong sales plus a bit. But perhaps better than that is the operating efficiencies that we've received. Simon will take you through some of that, but we've really achieved some really good, operating improvements.
Margins up, 1.4 percentage points, 140 basis points to 12.9%. We're really pleased with that. Our margin target of 13.5% by March 2025 is well in sight. Cash flow, super, up 36%. Operating cash flow last 12 months with a 91% conversion. Super important to fund the acquisitions. Earnings per share underlying up 8%. And also worth mentioning, carbon emissions, they're now down in absolute terms by 45% since we started this in calendar year 2021, so a really big reduction there. We have, very, very strong design wins, and we have a very strong acquisition pipeline, both at, record high levels. So those are the two drivers of growth, and they're in good shape.
So all in all, notwithstanding a fairly, uncertain, sort of, wider economic environment, we're on track. We've delivered a very strong set of first half results, and we're on track for the second half. This just summarizes the four key strategic indicators, so operating margin on the left, our target now for the midterm is 15%, so that's around, FY 2028.... So we're really, you know, closing in on that well. We are internationalizing revenue on the second chart beyond Europe. 42% of our revenue now is beyond Europe, and I'll show you some more details on that in the operating review.
Target market, well, down one point to 76%, but that is, that's revenue, our revenue in the target market, and it's down a tad because of the diluting effect of acquisitions as they come in. We've made three sort of meaningfully meaningful size acquisitions in the last eight months, and that, you know, that has that effect until they get growing. And then carbon reductions, I've already talked about. So, with that, I'll pass over to Simon to go through the financials.
Thanks, Nick. Thanks, Bruce, and yeah, good morning, everybody. Okay, first up from me is the financial headlines. As you can see, it's been another strong period of profit growth, and that's given the various sort of headwinds that are out there, economic interest, foreign exchange. So you can see, profits up 17% at constant exchange rates. That's lifting our EPS, that's up 8%, and that's the growth differential there is linked to the higher interest rates and the stronger sterling that we see. You know, importantly, you can see that we, we've improved our gross, our operating margin significantly.
That's nearly at 13% now, and we're maintaining our ROCE around that target range of 15%, and that includes, don't forget, two acquisitions that we did just before the period end. And I've introduced another metric here. This is return on tangible capital employed. I think it's ROTCE. That's 42%, and that reflects, you know, the underlying returns that we're delivering on the business. It's a very capital-like structure, so 42% is a super bit of data. And I think all of these, you know, these numbers here just support the model. You know, it's about resilient revenues, it's about continued, you know, good growth in profitability, and it's about strong returns. You know, more on all of those coming up.
So, you know, first up is sales. So it's a, you know, a resilient set of sales. So sales up 4%, on those, you know, those high comparatives. So as Nick said, it's actually, it's up 55% in the last two years, sales, and it's actually more than doubled, since 2018. If you look at that 4%, you know, 1% organic, and that's across both, both divisions, and 3% from acquisitions. We've done three acquisitions in the last, last year, Magnasphere, Silvertel, 2J. And that's being offset mainly by, by currency. That's the, that's the strong sterling, you know, particularly, reference to dollar and, Nordic exposures that we have. So certainly, a very resilient set of revenues in these, in these conditions.
You know, lower growth sales, but we're still delivering that strong profitability, growth and margin expansion, and that's, you know, very much linked to operational efficiencies that we've managed to deliver in the period. There's, you know, it's a combination of, you know, good control of costs through the period. You'll see that on the next slide. But also a number of initiatives that we've been undertaking operationally. So the likes of, you know, moving production to lower-cost countries, the likes of Mexico, like Hungary. And we've also been doing intra-business production, utilization of other business capacity in the likes of the U.K., in the likes of the U.S. And all of this sort of builds on our growth that we've delivered over a number of years.
So we've delivered, 26%, you know, CAGR growth since 2018, nearly 5% improvement in the margin. And you can see we're well on track, as Nick said, to hit the 13.5% in a year's time, and 15% in the medium term. So this is a... I always think this is a good representation of the business, you know, through the period. It shows, you know, profits, GBP 25.6 last year, up to GBP 28.6 this year. The three bars that you see on the left, that's our organic operating performance. The big standout there is gross margin, so that's lifted by two percentage points, which is a super job through those operational efficiencies.
We talked also some mix, you know, within that. The OpEx, you know, we kept that down. The growth is only 5% in what is a, has been a very high inflationary environment. So we're, you know, we're very pleased with that. And you can see that three-quarters, roughly three-quarters of that profit growth is actually coming out of the organic, and a quarter, roughly a quarter from acquisitions. So it's a good, the chart's a good summation of our business model. So it's about organic growth, it's about operational efficiency, operational leverage, and it's about acquisitions. And, you know, hopefully, second half, you'll see a bit more action on the acquisitions. Next on to the two divisions.
So, you know, strong growth in profit and margin with both divisions, as you can see in the chart here, that shows performance against last year at constant exchange rates. So in M&C. Two percent organic sales growth. It's a mixed combination. Nick will talk about it in a bit more detail, but you know, very strong in the U.S., very strong in the U.S. Good strength, good growth in the Nordics, but offset by Asia, particularly through customer relocation, particularly to the U.S. So you're getting a movement in the growth rates. Strong growth margins in both divisions, you know, very similar, actually 2% in both.
here, you're sort of seeing, you know, only 3% OpEx. That's a really good performance to manage our OpEx base at that level. And through that, you're getting a 16% growth in operating profits, a 1.8% pickup in margin, up to nearly 15%, and that's up two and a half percentage points in the last two years. So really, that division's really motoring on nicely. In S&C, you know, 1% organic, 6% from the acquisition, which is, that's mainly Magnasphere, which has been in for the full year. The 1%, again, a combination. Strong U.S., good growth in the U.K., offset again by Asia. But you're...
We're putting more costs in that division, 7% versus 3% in the other, and that's because that houses most of the newer acquisitions we've had, so we're just sort of building up the cost base in those new acquisitions. But you're still getting a 13% uplift in profitability and a just over one percentage point pickup in the margin. So strong performances from both businesses. You know, Nick will, you know, give it a bit more color coming up. This chart then is, you know, PBT, EPS. You can see the walk there from operating profit down to EPS of 19.2. Obviously, the big jump out is the 70% leap up in finance costs. And as you know, that's all linked to the interest rates.
There's a little table down there. That's our three, you know, key borrowing currencies. We roughly borrow equally in those three currencies. I'm sort of guiding towards roughly a GBP 9 million interest charge, you know, for the year. Obviously, we've got the acquisitions we did in the end of the period and a bit of annualization of the existing charge. So 7% growth in PBT, a little bit of a tax rate coming in 1% lower. That's modeling at the rate for the full year. Last year, 8% EPS, out of which, you know, we've paid a 6% growth in dividend. And you can see that that EPS is all adding to what we've been delivering. So you've got. You can see the chart in the bottom right-hand corner.
That's 21%, you know, compound annual growth of EPS, so it's not too, not too shabby. Cash flow, you know, Nick, Nick remarked at cash flow at the out. So this, you know, we always look at last 12 months cash flow. The chart in the top there just gives you a walk from the EBITDA of £64 million down to free cash flow in that period of £30 million. The bars on the left, that's our capital investments. Working capital, just over £8 million into working capital.
And that, you know, that includes, you know, some, some, you know, we'd, we'd sort of see it as sort of extra inventory that we can take out, and I think with, with supply chains normalized now, we'd expect to see, that coming out, some of that coming out in the second half. So, so watch this space. CapEx, just under GBP 6 million. That, that's actually, one point three percent of, of, of, of top line. You know, we guide to around 2%, but typically we're, we're sort of coming in under that. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a capital-light model. We don't have big sort of automated, production going on, on out there. And, and, and if you remember that, ROTCE, that 42%, again, it aligns to that.
It's a capital-light base, you know. You know, we're a capital-light group, and that's driving some, you know, some strong returns. And you can see the, you know, it's generating strong cash flow. You can see that on the chart on the bottom. So 36% growth in operating cash flow, 26% growth in free cash flow. The difference mainly to do with the higher interest rates that we've experienced, and really good conversion, 91% operating cash conversion, 85% free cash conversion. So they're at or above our targets, and you can see the chart right at the bottom, which shows, you know, we're delivering strong, consistent cash conversion over 10 years. The average is sort of virtually bang on, bang on 100%.
You know, in terms of balance sheet, GBP 111 million of debt on the balance sheet. That's 1.6 geared, so it's at the lower end of our 1.5-2x range. And, you know, that should come down to around about 1.3, organically, assuming, were we not to do any acquisitions. And behind us, we've got a really, really strong, revolving credit facility to support us. So all of this, yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's our model. You know, we're capital light, we're very cash generative, and we're delivering strong returns. Next slide is just a reminder of our, capital allocation policy. You know, it's a simple one. You know, we invest in organic, you know, CapEx projects as they, as, as they arise.
You know, we pay a progressive dividend, and then the balance of our free cash flow, you know, we put into acquisitions, and you can see of the, there's a chart there at the top, which is, the capital we've used for the last six years, GBP 186 million of free cash flow. Roughly three quarters of that is going into those capital projects, and a quarter is going back to shareholders. So, you know, GBP 420 million, so we're getting on for half of the capital we've used is now coming from free cash flow. So we're really pleased with that. And at the bottom, you can see we, you know, we do, you know, we're disciplined in terms of the balance sheet.
You know, we haven't gone over—we've never gotten near the 2x geared level, despite that being the top. You know, there's no need for us to overstretch the balance sheet. And finally, just a reminder of our KSIs and our KPIs. You know, we've been reporting on these for the last sort of 10 years, so you can sort of see how we're getting on. Nick sort of run you through the strong performances in the KSIs. And if you look at the KPIs and down the orange column, you know, this year, you know, we're delivering at or above target. You know, we're pleased with that, you know, given, you know, particularly given the conditions.
If you look at the track record, we're delivering, you know, strong sales growth, strong EPS growth, and as I said before, you know, very consistent operating, strong cash conversion. So with that, I'll pass over to Nick for an operational review.
Great. Thanks, Simon. Okay, just to sort of step back from it all for a second, and this came out of some new investors that we've been talking to recently, and I thought it was worth highlighting for everybody, those that know us, and know who have known us for some time. But really, just to emphasize, we're a growth business. We focus on high-quality markets that have above-average growth prospects. We call them our target growth markets. They're markets also that are not highly cyclical, and we also avoid the highly cyclical markets, and that's been a deliberate decision taken sort of 12+ years ago. So we supply into markets that grow better in good times and that don't have the same degree of negative downside cyclicality.
And that means, for example, that we do not supply consumer electronic markets, we do not supply semiconductor equipment markets at all. The other key element of the markets we approach with the products that we offer is that the margins are very robust. We don't have products that commoditize over time, so we're able, and as you can see that through the results that we've delivered here and over the last two years, our margins at a gross margin level have been very, very robust indeed, and our operating margins, that has enabled with the operating efficiencies, the operating margins to develop very nicely. And all of that is making us more resilient in these weaker market conditions, so we're very pleased with that, but I just thought it was worth emphasizing. It's not by accident. There are two...
You know, if we cut everything back to what we really do, there are two things that drive growth in this business. Somewhat obvious, but I'll say it anyway. Organic growth, it's all about design wins, and acquisitions, it's all about building the pipeline of acquisition opportunities. Both of those metrics, which are, obviously, within our control, are at the highest levels they've ever been. So I'll talk a little bit more about both of those. So design wins. Our design wins in the period are up 23%. That's our estimated lifetime value. That's the estimated lifetime of the projects that we're winning, to GBP 190 million. And of those, 89% of those design wins are in our target growth markets.
That is, I always say that is the single most important parameter of this business. If we did nothing else, we would focus on this because that would drive and create new revenues. You can see in the chart there, the degree to which that's grown, and it should have grown. At this stage in the cycle, when the cycle starts to slow, customers start to accelerate their design activity, getting ready for the new generation of product launches, so we should see the growth. We've seen a very strong growth this period because in addition to that, there's been a bit of a freeing up from the previous supply chain bottlenecks and constraints that somewhat limited, due to component availability issues, some of the customers' sort of redesign projects.
But that's all freed up and hence the, hence the strong take-up. Behind that, there's a pipeline, an even larger pipeline, over GBP 1 billion in opportunities that we've identified, that we're working on with customers, that, you know, some of that will come through over the next, you know, one, two years plus into further design wins. So keeping that design pipeline fully stoked is, is super, super important. We're an engineer-led model. Our engineers work with these customers, so, this is the sort of the metric that they, they all work to around the business. And then the other, you know, driver of growth is the inorganic growth, it's the acquisitions. The top chart you'll be familiar with, that shows the, the EBIT ROI of, the all of the acquisitions that we've had for more than two years.
This is the value creation. It illustrates the value creation that we can achieve and that we are achieving by taking this long-term approach to compounding the organic growth. So we buy these high-quality businesses, we get them into the business, we sort of focus them in the areas that we want to be focused on, and that generates this above-market growth with returns. And as we touched on earlier, we've made three acquisitions, two in the period, plus one at the end of the prior period. Magnasphere, Silvertel, and 2J. Those are all businesses generating over 20% EBIT margins, and in aggregate, they're generating over 10% contribution to group EBIT.
And then below that on the chart, you can see on the slide—this is just a sort of a visual representation of the fragmented market that we operate in. On the left, you can see the geographies, and along the top, and then down the side, you can see some of the technology areas we work in. And what that chart is showing is that, one, that it's a very, very fragmented market, and secondly, that there are most of the spaces on that market we have low or no presence. So there's very significant opportunities for us to grow more by acquisition. And as is the trend these days, we've started to disclose the scale of our pipeline.
So you can see there that we track over 400 companies, 250 of, or around 250 of those companies are identified targets. Currently, 45 are in outreach and various stages of discussion, of which 15 are active, and there's over £100 million of active deal value there. And those represent, you know, significantly more than another 10% contribution to EBIT. So you can see from those two boxes on the right that we, we've got sort of 20%+ of EBIT contribution from acquisitions coming in, potentially, in addition to that, that we're generating through the organic model. So obviously, as we go into a lower organic growth environment, the contribution from acquisitions becomes, is gonna become more significant. Pricing multiples are coming down. Eight is the new ten.
And so these are starting to play a bigger part, whereas over the last two years, two-thirds, three-quarters of the growth has come from organic growth, and that's, you know, the cycle at play. So this is a quick summary of our track record. I've been told we've got to sort of big up our story a bit, so here I am bigging up. It doesn't come very naturally. So sales are up 100%. This is going back to FY 2018, so that's the period starting April 2017. Sales up 100% on ongoing sales in design and manufacturing, which is all our business is now. Operating EBIT, so this is the EBIT contribution from the businesses. In the second box, up 164%.
That, the operating EBIT is group EBIT less the, the central head office costs. EBIT margin up almost four points to 11.5% last year, obviously 12.9% now, so even more, almost five points, and then underlying EPS up 140 points. So, you know, we're trying to deliver a consistently strongly growing business that grows above the market, and hopefully, that convinces you that we are. And this is a new slide, which is, you know, one I just want to emphasize. So we talk about compounding organic growth. Our sales CAGR over the period since 2017 is 9% CAGR. But what this, the chart on the right here is showing is just what that really means in absolute terms.
So we've indexed that back to FY17, which is the period starting April 2016. And you can see that in absolute terms there, over seven years, the growth has led to revenue in that in the target markets that is 82% higher than it was back at 2017. That's the effect of compounding higher than average growth. And then at the lower chart, you can see how that compares with the other markets, which are lower growth in absolute terms, and they're more cyclical. So the difference between those two markets is about 65%, something like that. So the compounding effect of organic growth is tremendous, and that's a, you know, a really meaningful difference that our approach on these markets is delivering.
And the other thing, actually, just to say, those who know us well know that we always talk about strong growth in good times, as Bruce did, strong growth in growth in good times, plateau, strong growth again. And that's what the orange chart is also showing that effect. A little bit more on the geographic sales. You can see in the top right, the pie chart shows that the U.K., Nordic, and North America now account for 54% of revenue. That's meaningful because they happen to be the higher growth markets currently, and North America growing very substantially. In the bottom left, you can see the growth rates of the various countries and regions.
You know, the notable standout is North America, up 35% organically, Asia, down 23% organically. Quite a few moving parts in both of those. North America is up for two reasons. One, because there's some great infrastructure projects, electrical infrastructure projects that are just pure organic growth. Our largest customer is in that space. Some very strong organic growth in rail infrastructure. And then also quite a bit of production moving back from Asia into the Americas, you won't be surprised to hear. So those two are factors of what's driving that. And then in Asia, two things going on there.
China's down 9%, and actually, India is down quite a bit more than that because there's one customer that had grown very strongly last year that has overstocked, actually, and so they've been... Well, the demand has evaporated in this period, but that has meant that India is down by about... Well, on an underlying basis, India is down by about 20%, but if you exclude the large customer, then India is actually up 8%.... So, you know, one of the reasons our operating margins increased so much was partly because our gross margins are resilient. At a headline level, our pricing power with customers, we play a very straight bat with our customers. When costs go up, we pass those through, simple as that.
And so that has held the headline level pricing firm, as indeed it should do. The second contributing factor is we've had a bit of a tailwind from, as the semiconductor supply chain issues have eased, that's led to some of our higher margin businesses, improving. And thirdly, the efficiencies, which has been quite a significant factor this period. So, you know, when we buy a business and we bring them into a cluster, we look for ways to, to do stuff more effectively or more efficiently. So for example, two years ago, we bought a business with a facility in Hungary. We've now moved two and are in the process of evaluating, moving a third business, some of their production to there.
So we've moved production from the U.K. and from the Netherlands, and we're looking at moving some production from Germany to our facility in Hungary. And that has the effect of just a pure efficiency gain, just a pure margin gain. We've also moved production around the globe to make the sort of sourcing and supply chain routes more efficient. We've moved some production from the U.S. into Mexico. We've also moved production from the U.K. over to the U.S., and that also has the benefit of then qualifying for Made in America status. And thirdly, we've also started to use with greater sort of scale and geographic reach, it turns out we have facilities around the world that can make products and solutions for some of our other businesses.
And we are doing some intercompany production for some of our other businesses because it makes good business sense to do so. So from a production optimization point of view, we really have seen quite a few, significant benefits, this period. The other aspect that's not mentioned on this slide, but is, is also important, is that we've been able... You know, if this is production optimization, we've also done some engineering optimization, which again, is the cluster at work. So for example, in our sensors cluster, as we've bought businesses, we've gained some engineering expertise that has enabled us to reengineer or modify, perhaps, products for some customers to give them a technical advantage, and at the same time, give us a margin advantage. And, so that sort of enhances our position with the customer and increases our margins.
little bit on the geographies. I mean, not a huge amount to say on the, sorry, not on the divisions. There's not a huge amount to say here. They're fairly similar, and Simon's covered off most of it. Magnetics and Controls, you can see down the bottom, the list of acquisitions. You can see that the geographic split is quite similar to the group split, with a sort of strong U.K., Nordic, North America bias now. And obviously, North America is really becoming a very much more significant proportion for us in both divisions and similar Asian and American growth characteristics. Sensing and Connectivity, again, some very similar, stronger U.K. presence, but overall, the U.K., Nordic, North America angle is accounting for a little over half of the revenue.
A lot of acquisition activity, a lot more acquisition activity has been going on in the sensing and connectivity space, which we're very, very pleased with. It's been a good time to buy businesses such as 2J, most recently, because they are very, very well positioned to benefit both from the structural growth trends, but also from the cyclical market recovery, and the geographic split, also quite similar. Order book. Order book has normalized. We're back to five months of order book. Actually, what that is, is, there are two businesses that are running with slightly longer order books because customers in those spaces are, themselves, have long order books, and they're still a little bit mindful of the, the pain of the component shortages that they experienced, so they're running with longer order books with us. That's fine.
But the rest of the businesses are back to about four and a half months, so we're really back to normal. And so now, you know, what we're seeing as we came to the end of the period is order rates picking up, back to year-on-year growth, sequential growth, and year-on-year growth. And we've seen a little bit of that as we go into the new post-period end as well. So what that all tells us is that the inventory correction, at least in our space in the industry, has run its course, and customers are starting to place slightly larger orders to, you know, to get back to where they need to be.
So the outlook, as I say, orders return to growth since the first half. We don't yet know, obviously, what the organic growth rates are gonna be for the, you know, for the next six, 12 months, but it's good that the, the orders are returning to growth. Supply chains are back to normal. We've got record design wins, and the strongest pipeline of acquisition opportunity we've ever had. And those two factors are what can positions us well for, you know, for, for the growth as we go forward from here. So we're, you know, confident of delivering a good set of results for the second half, as we go into that, but also beyond. You know, whatever the market does, we're well positioned to do, as well as we can.
We've got the right focus on the right drivers. So that concludes the presentation. I'll pass over to questions. Has anyone got a mic? I think Tiger's got a mic. Oh, yeah, yeah, we're going, yeah. There you go. Andy.
Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for the presentation. Three questions, please, if I may. With regards to M&A, are you guys thinking about M&A in a different way, now that interest rates are up kind of 5%-6%, in terms of maybe more synergies? Or is it just a question of hammering down on price and waiting for interest rates to fall so you get the returns? Or are you doing anything differently from a management team?
Well, we have, we haven't changed our returns rates or anything like that. We, you know, we're generating, as we say, in the period, 19, just over 19% EBIT ROI. So obviously, that's, you know, well ahead of our cost of capital. So, that, you know, that, our, our approach doesn't change. But what we are seeing is, as we grow and we've got more scale, we're able to be more effective with the businesses that we bring into the cluster. So, so we're getting, that would come, those would come through anyway, actually. I mean, it's just particularly helpful at the moment as, you know, as interest rates are a bit higher, but actually, it would have happened anyway. Our approach is stick to our guns.
Interest rates will come down, we generate strong returns, and as the organic compounding growth chart showed, if we focus on creating the compounding organic growth, everything else will look after itself.
Then following on from that, second question. On the presentation slide, where you look at the ROI, the acquisitions-
Mm-hmm.
There's quite a few in the single-digit level. Is that recent acquisitions?
Yeah
... or is that things that you might think of disposing in the future?
Well, there's one that is on the naughty step, but the others are more recent. Yeah. There's always one on the naughty step.
There's always one. And the focus on operational efficiencies, I mean, it's a bit of a change, a bit of a switch from focus. Is that a one-off benefit, and then over time, as more and more acquisitions come through, you can kind of do again? Or is this like a fundamental shift that actually now is the opportunity to take a lot of cost out? Because it feels like there's a lot of upside from that even now, even though you've done a lot of work over the last 12 to-
It's not a change in emphasis, but it's having more effect. Because as we have a larger scale, so as we now have... You know, since COVID, we've got a lot more presence in the U.S.. So, for example, we're now able, and we've just moved production for one of the big rail customers from Europe to the U.S., because we can. We couldn't do that three years ago. We couldn't move production, you know, similar in Hungary. We've got very, very high quality production in Hungary from a business we bought two years ago. So we're able to do that. And so we're, as we buy more good businesses, we get more, we create more opportunities. So it's just something that's-
I think also, as we and Bruce talked about, you know, we're clustering much more now. I think as we cluster, those opportunities, you know, to share, you know, share facilities, you know, move production to another, that's a lot more easy.
Yeah.
So, for instance, you know, we announced when we acquired 2J that, you know, we're going to get some synergies out of, you know, bringing that together, you know, working more closely with Antenova. So you will see more of it, yeah.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Yeah, hi, Stefan. Sorry.
Yeah, hi, Stefan from HSBC. I have two, actually three. So you said orders are up since H1. So, in Q2, book to bill was 0.91. Are we now in positive territory? Are we above one now since H1?
Well, one swallow doesn't make a summer. But orders are ahead of sales at the moment, yeah.
Yeah. Okay, good.
Yeah.
And then end markets. Could you go into details about industrial automation, transportation, renewables, where we are?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, our industrial automation revenue was down very slightly, and that was because of four larger customers in that space have all been destocking quite actively. We've actually had some quite strong growth in other sectors, but it wasn't enough to offset the large customers. So it's quite a broad spread of growth rates in there, but the net is that that's down slightly. All the others are up, including renewables. So renewables also, you know, following the negative period last year, that's come back into growth this period.
Yeah, just on a follow-up then. Those four large that are still destocking-
Yeah
... when is the end of the tunnel?
Well, we think that has been destocked. Yeah.
Okay.
But that's what we saw in the first half, yeah.
And then the last one is probably on the margins, right? So we are at 12.9. You're guiding for 12.5. Sorry, I have to ask that, yeah.
Yeah.
You're guiding for GBP 12.5. FX has been already a headwind. How do you explain the guidance for the full year?
Well, I think, you know, ultimately, we would expect our margin, you know, to continue at our level. But, you know, there are headwinds out there, which are currency. So, you know, we're just being prudent. You know, it's your call, how you model your margin itself. You know, we're comfortable with the PBT and the EPS, but, you know, you model your margin how you think it's appropriate, I think. We should get-
You're saying we're doing fine, and FX is a factor towards-
I would assume FX will be the factor.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah. You're looking at, you're looking at, you know, certainly sterling against the dollar at the moment, it's, it's, it's, it's getting stronger and stronger. So, but, you know, we're comfortable with the, the profit, profitability side of things, which is the important thing. Yeah.
Thank you.
Mark.
Thank you. Can I ask a question around the, the design wins, which is obviously a very strong number? What sort of lag typically between design wins and revenue, and has that changed at all over time? And then in that same slide, you're talking about 85% recurring revenue... define recurring, that, that's within the long-term contracts that, that accrue on that, so they're still variable with demand?
Yes, they are. Excuse me. Yes, it's over 85% recurring demand, recurring revenue, so we know that we're going to get the revenue, but we won't know the absolute levels of revenue demand, typically any further out than four months, the order book coverage length. In terms of the lag from design, typically, the lag from design win to production start is about six-12 months before production starts. And then within the first year from production start, volumes typically reach about 50% of the estimated volumes, estimated run rate volumes. It varies a lot by customer, but overall, that's broadly where we get to. Obviously, against that very high design win, there's netting off of projects that come on end of life.
A large proportion of our customers are repeating customers, and within that, there's always some element of projects running to end of life. And so new design wins need to more than compensate that. So you don't just get a net uplift of 23%, you get the netting off as well, so.
Thank you. That's very helpful. And on the Asia exposure, I mean, earlier on, we were seeing India strong offsetting China weak. I'm assuming China stays weak, but it sounds like India was a more temporary feature.
Yeah, yeah.
Is that market, do you think, returning to something at least closer to flat in the last year or so?
Yeah, it feels as though it's been through quite a period of adjustment, and I think that within Asia, bar that one customer, all the other customers are growing. And I think that's indicative of what's going on in India right now. In China, it's a much more mixed bag, but China's not going anywhere. You know, rents are becoming more competitive, labor rates are already becoming more competitive, raw materials are more competitive. So, China's not going to disappear off the scene by any means. I think it's hard to say exactly where it all settles, but it feels as if it's been through the period of adjustment now.
Thank you.
Morning. Just follow on, on the design wins, if I may. Can you give us a little bit of color around perhaps the, the gross margin profile within those design wins, particularly whether there's any obvious trend? Also interested to hear how we think about the design engineers and the, the resource in there, and what's the limiting factor for further growth. And then finally, of the, of the three, if I may, just some commentary around pricing, what you're seeing in terms of cost base and, in terms of your own output pricing and expectations through the second half. Thank you.
Yeah. So in terms of pricing, gross margins, there's no discernible difference between the sectors actually. It's very much sort of a, it's a project-by-project pricing, and we try to apply the same, we do apply the same principles to pricing across all of the projects. So by business, I mean, some of our businesses have higher gross margins than others, and so they tend to, within the business, across sectors, they tend to be fairly similar. Obviously, in lower margin businesses, then we have programs to increase the gross margin, and that generally involves two things, more technically differentiated projects as we go into the next generation design phase and better pricing disciplines.
You know, generally, we're always trying to average up the gross margin through the next generation of design wins, and that's what's happened. That's what drives generally the organic growth. The other, what was the other question, Joey? It was on OpEx, wasn't it?
Yeah, what do you think in terms of the design resource that you've got?
Oh, yes, design resources, yeah. So, so our model is about growing the top line well and growing the bottom line with some operating leverage. So we scale the rate of engineers that we bring into the business gradually to sort of keep both developing well. What we don't want is a big step increase in engineering capability, because that will take two-three years to turn into future revenues. So in the short term, your operating margins are compromised. So we've had this very deliberate approach over the year, over the 10 years or so, to grow the top line well, good design wins, good customers, good gross margins, and scale the rate of OpEx investment gradually so that we get a bit of operating leverage, as well.
That's very much what we've done. In terms of the costs of the resources, you know, I mean, our costs, our OpEx are GBP 100 million, and if we want to grow and develop the business, then there's always new initiatives and new investments we need to make, but we view all of those in the context of, you know, things that we maybe don't need to be doing as, in the way that we were doing before. So for example, in one of our businesses, about 18 months, two years ago now, we decided that we had too many small, lower value, great applications, but lower value engineering projects going on, and our engineering pipeline was quite congested.
So we decided to cut that, we cut a third of that, cut the tail off, basically, so that we could use that resource more effectively in higher value, larger projects. And so that gave us a step up in operating profitability, and efficiency. So we, you know... So when Simon talks about a 5% increase in OpEx, it's because we're investing things that, you know, that we need to for the new initiatives, but we're also cutting things that we don't need to be doing in quite the same way as we were before. And that's... You know, that's just good housekeeping.
And the inflation equation for the group and the outlook?
Well, you know, I think a lot of that sort of washed through now. You know, I think you know, that you know, we sort of dealt with a lot of that this year, I would say. So that feels, you know, well controlled now.
Morning, Nick. Morning, Simon. You had a slide showing sales basically doubling since 2018. Can we assume the same leverage or the same level of growth for the next five years?
We'd like to.
Like to think so, yeah.
Uh, well-
Yeah.
We're trying to. Yeah, I mean, it's all about the design wins. We've got a huge focus on that, so we want 10% organic growth through cycle. That's what we aim for. You know, we do everything to achieve that.
So, you know, we've got a five-year... You know, we continually have a rolling five-year plan, and that would be the, you know, type of metrics we're looking at. Yeah. Yeah.
Stefan?
Yeah, to follow up on M&A, and actually, Andy's question: so we talked about the company on the naughty step, yeah? So for your operating business model, and correct me if I'm wrong, you have never sold a business in your electronic components. So what should we expect from you to turn that around? How do you operate internally to help companies to increase their performance? And what are the, let's say, red flags until that have to emerge until you sell a company?
Yeah, the red flags are growth rates, operating margins, and working capital. It's it becomes-- We get a lot of data coming into the centers, so we can see the metrics quite readily. If they're not achieving, you know, quite where they need to be, then it will... We'll get more involved with them. We'll create a plan to improve in an area that needs focus, and we give them time to do it, and, if they deliver that, then great. And we've, you know, we've had other businesses that have been through that in the past. They get tripped up for whatever reason, you know, customer or a market, you know, a regulatory change or something like that, but you just have to adapt. The beauty of these businesses is generally you can change things.
You can focus them correctly, and they'll recover if you give them a bit of time. We just put a bit of focus on it and give it a year or so, and we should see the, you know, the shoots coming through. We haven't ever sold a business. That's not to say we wouldn't in the future. I think as we get bigger, it becomes part of the sort of management of a portfolio, and I can imagine that at some stage, that does become part of what we do. But, you know, we haven't done it yet, but we wouldn't rule it out.
Sorry, just one more. Around the increased clustering that you're doing across the businesses, the balance between sort of the group and giving enough flexibility and autonomy to the operations is always a delicate balance. Might you get to the point, like Halma, where you introduce another sort of mid-layer of management? They have these divisional Chief Executives who run little clusters of companies and chair all their boards. Is that the sort of structure we might end up with here?
Yeah, we're sort of heading in that direction. So we've got two large clusters at the moment. The sensor one now has that. What they've done is there's a core business around which the cluster is arranged, and as that core business, over the last three years, under the same leadership, but has upgraded all of their management, so they've got a new finance director, new sales director, new marketing director, and a promoted operations director to manage the clusters. So, yes, we're doing that there, and we're doing similarly in our other cluster, not quite as well progressed, but it will come. Yeah. So-
Yeah, and we, you know, the 2J Antennas, you know, that's the sort of newest cluster we've got. Actually, we, you know, we brought in a new CEO to run those two combined businesses. Yeah.
Thank you.
Behind.
Thanks. You talked about valuation and M&A. Would you be able to say a bit more about kind of the attitudes of potential targets, their propensity to sell, and also anything about who you're competing with to buy those targets?
Yeah, so, you know, we target businesses... We like to buy businesses that, where the seller is, preferably wants to remain for a period, but is preferably looking for a sort of an ongoing legacy for the business, because that adds some balance to the whole, and longevity to the relationship. We, you know, we don't tend to do well when someone is just looking to get the highest price through an auction and isn't really so concerned about the outcome. You know, we want to pay a fair price, but we won't necessarily pay the highest price, but we want the ongoing sort of handover and longevity that comes with the, you know, the owner staying on board.
You know, generally speaking, where sellers are at now is they're more fearful, obviously, for the economic outlook. You know, a lot of the businesses we buy are privately owned, so, you know, the sellers have most or all of their wealth tied up in their business, so they're probably given the lower growth, macro growth environment, they're probably looking to de-risk a bit. In that context, we're a very good buyer. The right acquisition for us is, and we sort of have this at every stage of the acquisitions that we complete. There's this sort of moment where we both realize that we're very well matched, and that then sort of creates the common path to get the deal done.
And so those kind of sellers find us a very attractive buyer. And they're also mindful, you know, whereas a year ago, sellers were more focused on sort of the year ahead and the very strong growth figures and trying to get a high multiple on a higher, on a higher growth forward figure. Now, there's much more sort of balance come into that equation. People are considering that, you know, they know what, you know, they know where they've come from in terms of the past 12 months performance. They're more cautious about the future. They're more mindful of interest rates, and so finally, the effect of higher interest rates is having a dampening effect on multiples as well. So the balance has, I'd say, been restored.
So, it's also worth flagging that, you know, we're now working, you know, much more closely with the businesses, you know, to identify opportunities, you know, for them, but that will work as part of a cluster. And I, you know, I think that, you know, by going through that route, you know, you do get into a position where, you know, you're the sort of sole person looking to buy that company, 'cause it's not something they've really thought about. It takes time, but actually, it can be very fruitful, I think, in the end.
Okay. If there are no more questions, we might... I know there's-- Do we have any online?
We currently have no questions from the webcast.
Okay.
So over to you, Nick, for closing remarks.
Great. Okay, well, I think that, that concludes it. Thank you very much for coming, everybody, and see you in six months' time.