Thank you, Kathy, and good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking the time to join us today. I am joined here, as usual, by Dan, our finance director, and I'll just take a moment to summarize some important points in our IMS before we take the questions. To begin with, I'd like to thank all of our employees for their excellent efforts and continuing dedication to our strategy and to our purpose,B reakthrough Engineering for a better world, particularly given the current global events. Group revenues were up 9% versus the Q1 of last year and up 5% organically, while Q1 margins were slightly improved compared to the same period last year. This is obviously despite the ongoing supply chain constraints and considerable inflationary pressures impacting our sector.
Despite that supply chain disruption, our customer-led strategy saw the Precision division achieve record customer satisfaction scores and order momentum continues, with Q1 orders for Precision and Hydronic combined exceeding sales by 8%. Our book-to-bill ratio was 1.08 in the Q1 for those two short cycle divisions. The Critical order book was broadly flat despite the impact of Russian sanctions. We now have over 40 Growth Hub teams running globally, which have more than doubled the rate of order intake in the Q1 and remain firmly on track to deliver GBP 40 million of orders in the year. For the balance of the year, we are reconfirming our 2022 EPS guidance to exceed 100 pence.
Following the exit of the Russian market, we have updated guidance for Critical, though, with revenue and operating margin now expected to be in line with last year. We also continue to make real progress on our strategy launched in 2019 to deliver sustainable profitable growth through our customer-first complexity reduction and market-led innovation initiatives. Given this progress, we are raising our expectations for the group's sustainable margin delivery. Over time, we now expect IMI to become a 20% margin business through the cycle while continuing our investments for growth. Delivery of these better returns will be supported by the benefits from an extension of our footprint optimization program. This will increase total program costs by GBP 35 million. With that, I'm gonna hand back to Kathy, who will manage the Q&A session for us. Thank you, Kathy.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two to withdraw your question. If you're streaming via web browser, kindly press the flag icon on your web browser to ask a question. In the interest of time, please keep to one question per person. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Max Yates from Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your questions.
Thank you. Just my first question is around the comments on margins. You talk about margins being sort of slightly up year-over-year. I just wanted to understand, does this comment sort of pertain to all the divisions or is it only sort of Precision and Hydronic? Maybe just as an extension of that, obviously we've seen a lot of costs taking another leg up in March and April.
Uh-
I just wanted to understand kind of is there any risk that we see kind of a temporary dip in margins in Q2, as we start to see those sort of higher costs internalize? Or do you still feel relatively comfortable with how price cost is evolving over the next couple of quarters, even at these higher raw material rates? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, Max. Across the three divisions, Precision is pretty close to last year on underlying basis. Hydronic is slightly up, Critical slightly up, Max. That gives you a sort of view on how it's going across the divisions. Precision had a more difficult comparator because of, you know, from the IMS, the ventilator surge was still continuing. I think it was about GBP 8 million worth of ventilator surge in Q1 last year. On an underlying basis, Precision's doing well. You know, I think what the divisions are demonstrating is really good pricing power. I went through this on the last call, so I won't go through it all again, but it's obviously around their differentiated technology, strong brands, you know, all of that.
Plus what we've built really in the last couple of years is, you know, stronger pricing capability around data analytics, around commercial awareness and all of that side of things. Yeah, I was really pleased in the Q1 because there was a steep ramp-up in costs in the Q1 , as you know. Our labor cost basically hits us from the first of January. The remaining costs that you're referring to that you know, potentially could hit us are more around the sort of materials and energy side, which we watch carefully. I think out of all the quarters, Q2 will be the most difficult quarter, I do agree. You know, we certainly hope that you know, by the half year, we're sort of at least equal with, if not slightly better than last year.
That's our overall position, Max.
Okay. I mean, actually, sorry, it was only one question, so I'll go back in the queue. Thank you.
Oh, thanks, Max.
Thank you. Our next questions come from Michael Sheridan from HSBC. Please proceed with your questions.
Yes, good morning. Michael Sheridan. One question for me, I guess. Just in terms of supply chain disruption and orders, are you seeing any evidence of people ordering to kind of safeguard future supply? I guess, curious about the duration of the order book and whether or not we're starting to see activity that's perhaps not entirely related to underlying demand. Thanks.
Yeah, thanks, Mike. Mike, I mean, in Critical, I would say no, broadly, because it's just not the way that business works. As you probably know, it's very much project based. You know, you don't order two Critical valves for an LNG compression station, right? In Critical, I'd say broadly no, and it's about a 9-month order book. In Precision and Hydronic, probably because, you know, same as us, we were obviously putting in stock. I mean, our on-time delivery out of Hydronic in the quarter was about 95, 96%. Obviously, with the amount of supply chain disruption going on globally, in the short term, you have to have extra buffer stocks to enable you to do that.
Mike, we've said consistently, you know, we are gonna favor market share gains, customer service over working capital efficiency, you know, at this point in what's happening in terms of disruption. I would say that there's bound to be some of our customers doing the same things in Precision and Hydronic. There's also pent-up demand, you know, the other way. Clearly, when we talk to our construction customers in Hydronic, for instance, they will tell you that they're short of other parts, and that's actually, you know, been worse in the Q1 and in April, where they can't get things like even boilers because they're, you know, they're supposed to be coming out of China, and that's holding up construction projects, which is holding up, you know, the demand for our products.
I think you've got two effects going on, and it's highly complex to see, you know, what real end demand looks like. I'm sure you're wrestling with that. At the moment, what I'll say, that's why I gave that 1.08 number in, because we don't normally give those numbers. On the short cycle business, the fact that orders were 8% ahead in Hydronic and Precision combined, at least in the shorter term over the next sort of month or two, you know, shows that demand for us at least is still good.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next questions come from Mark Davies Jones from Jefferies. Please proceed with your questions.
Thanks. Morning, Roy. Just a quick one on China. You mentioned it just briefly there, but are you seeing any new impacts in terms of supply chain issues as a result of recent lockdowns? Is that impacting either your own production or your ability to source some key components?
Mark, not right now. In fact, our China position, I mean, I've got to say, you know, our people have been absolutely heroic in China in terms of, you know, what they have done. I think by the end of this week, you know, we'll have 50 people back in the factory, which is quite amazing, really. Obviously we're looking after those people, absolutely to the best of our abilities. Actually, China is 9% of our overall sales. About 5% of our factory production comes out of China, and most of that feeds China mill. We are not seeing any particular new issues yet from the lockdowns. You know, I think inevitably for our customers, it's gonna slow them down at some point, right?
Because I, you know, we all know the amount of boats, you know, not processing through the major port, you know, there's bound to be an effect at some point. What we all hope is that the lockdown does ease. I did read that they, you know, were able to at least get outside for a while over the weekend. You know, our sort of base case, Mark, is that this eases by the end of Q2 , right? You know, things get better from there. I really hope for the sake of the people, that's the case. The answer to the question is no, not right now, but there's got to be some secondary effects at some point from this length of shutdown, I would think.
Thanks. Makes sense. If I can sneak in a just a clarification. In terms of order growth and indeed revenue growth, can you give us some indication of what the price element of that versus volume might be? 'Cause obviously price is now coming through pretty strongly from you, one imagines.
Yeah, it is. Yeah. Price overall for IMI is at sort of the 3%-4% level. It's higher in Hydronic, obviously. You know, because of the raw materials that Hydronic uses, obviously, it uses a lot of copper, it uses a lot of zinc, you know, it uses quite a bit of energy, Mark, so that's been hit hardest in terms of inflation. Precision is slightly above the average and obviously Critical's below. Because in Critical it's you know, price, as I've explained before, Mark, you know, you're often creating a brand new valve. It's not comparable to what you did last year, so you price it, you know, as you're basically quoting it. Works in a slightly different way. If that gives you an overall feel of where we are.
Great. Thank you very much indeed.
Thanks, Mark.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Aurelio Calderon Tejedor from Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, good morning, Roy. It's Aurelio from Morgan Stanley. My question is around the Critical order intake, and I guess obviously you flagged very strong aftermarket, but OE implied was down quite significantly. I wonder how much of that is just phasing of new projects and how much of that is Russia business that you're not doing anymore. I don't know if you can disclose a little bit more around that.
Yeah. Russia. Critical is hit hardest by Russia, Aurelio, as you probably noticed, right? For Critical, Russia was about 4% of the business. That's why we're saying this year we think Critical will be broadly flat, in line with last year, partly because of that Russia impact. Critical is also a lumpy project-based business, right? Much more than the other two businesses, which are much more sort of short-cycle flow businesses. What we think is that it is just order timing. Order opportunities in Critical would point to the fact that this year we're gonna be broadly flat. Aurelio, you probably hopefully caught the capital markets event on Critical last year, which says that over time, we will increase the aftermarket content of Critical. That's good for two reasons, really.
One is because obviously the margins are a lot higher in the aftermarket. Two, it's less cyclical, the aftermarket, right? It's very important that we drive what we call our upgrade valve strategy and keep pushing more of our valves into the field to solve customer problems when they get a valve, either one of our valve, you know, that's coming towards the end of its life or a competitor's valve that we can then replace, and then we get the parts annuity after that. That's very key to, you know, creating the sort of business we want Critical to be. This year we would expect aftermarket orders to be up a bit and new construction orders, you know, to be flat to sort of slightly down by the end of the year.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Alexander Virgo from Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks very much. Morning, Roy. I wondered if you could just give us a bit of an indication of phasing and cadence of your incremental costs on restructuring and when you would anticipate seeing the benefits and perhaps how we should attribute that across the group. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Alex. Spot on. Dan, obviously at the full year results, was that three months ago, Dan?
Yeah.
Published all of the phasing of everything except for the GBP 35 million. I'm sure Alex is referring to the GBP 35 million. We think, Alex, that we will obviously I'm sure everybody on the call knows what we do is we, you know, we consult locally with our people first, you know, before we give anything specific away on you know public calls like this. What we think, Alex, is that that will be announced early next year in terms of announcement, which means the charge will probably go into next year in terms of a P&L charge. The cash flow, the cash outward flow on that charge would happen probably mid to late next year, most of it. The benefits.
Broadly this year, we're getting about GBP 10 million worth of benefits from the overall program. Next year, Alex, we think that'll be over GBP 15 million because of the timing of the projects. Right now, we're actually consolidating three larger factories, and the projects are all going on time to budget. In fact, some of them even come in slightly under budget now. You know, progress is good, and that just means that, you know, more than GBP 15 million worth of benefits will drop through next year.
Great. That's super helpful. Thanks.
Thanks, Alex.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jonathan Hurn from Barclays. Please proceed with your questions.
Good morning, guys. Obviously just one question. I wonder if you could just sort of dig a little bit deeper and give us a little bit more information about the strength obviously you saw in Industrial Automation with growth 16%. I mean, obviously PMIs are slowing with Q1 peak, and things can obviously sort of start to wind down as you go into Q2 and Q3. Just sort of the outlook comments there, as well, please.
Yeah. I mean, really pleased with that, to be honest with you, Jonathan. You know, I think you saw it at the capital markets event, right? Beth has reorganized precision around its markets, and I'm just really pleased with the team in there. You know, they're starting to make some real progress, you know, with the innovation programs starting to deliver in terms of customer intimacy and really approaching our customers to solve their problems with that mindset. Industrial automation, you know, is an area which is absolutely prime for that sort of differentiation. I'm really pleased with what's happening. Great growth. Obviously 16%, you know, is against, I would say, a slightly weaker Q1 last year, Jonathan. It, you know, it's not gonna continue quite at that rate.
As I indicated across precision, orders are still coming in well, you know, right up to date, Jonathan, right up to this last week. You know, if you think about the makeup of precision, transportation orders are pretty flat, right? That's because our customers are constrained. Actually it is IA still that's doing well. What's interesting is, I mean, you know, we obviously look at our own capital budget, Jonathan, and we always consider, you know, 'cause everybody's talking about the possibility of a European recession and so on. Of course, you know, the way we think about it, Jonathan, is we've still got great opportunities to invest our capital in automation, you know, more broadly. Right now we're sticking with plan A, right?
We wanna invest, we wanna get the returns, but of course we do have a plan B if things turn, Jonathan. That's the way we think about the world, and other people I talk to, you know, are taking a similar approach. You know, right now for us, it's still about, you know, investing that capital and getting those returns.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks, Jonathan.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Fielding from RBC. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah. Morning, Roy, Dan, thanks for taking my question. Can I just ask, sorry, I did miss just the very start of the call, so you might have clarified this, but.
When you've talked about the new group margin target increasing to 20%, the sort of around that, the GBP 35 million that you put for that's a cost number. Have you given an indication on, you know, the likely benefit number that we're aiming to from that? I just want to be clear because that was the cost side. I suppose within that then, are there any divisional changes given that, you know, if you put together your divisional targets and knock off central costs, you don't get to quite 20%? You know, is there any particular bias to divisionally to where things are happening? The final bit of that same thing is what do we think about the timeline for this 20% number?
Thanks, Mark. Right. Well, good to hear from you. Well, in terms of the overall group margin, well, let's do the divisions first, right? By division, we now think they're all 20%+, right? They've all got room to move above 20%. Clearly, you know, Precision Engineering is cyclical, Mark, and that's why we're saying 20% through the cycle, right? I think I know that everybody on the call appreciates that, but, you know, I just wanna remind you of that. In terms of moving to the 20% target and the GBP 35 million, Mark, I mean, we think we're gonna get GBP 13-14 million of benefit from that particular project. Obviously, that builds on, you know, what Dan presented at the full year results.
We will give you know, that normal full detail on the restructuring charge and benefits at the half year results and put the normal table together. You know, as I said, about GBP 13-14 million benefits from that GBP 35 million. Obviously, not all of the GBP 35 million is cash, Mark, as well.
Yeah.
Something like 5 is non-cash.
Yep. Just for rounding out that bit at the end. Just, you know, when do you think about this 20% number as an achievable number?
Yeah, I mean, you know, it'd be over the next few years. It'll, you know, there's so much going on in the world right, Mark, that we focus on what we can do. As you know, since what is it? Two and a half years now that we presented the strategy, you know, we've gone from sort of 14% margins to over 17%. You know, we've got great momentum in the business. But, you know, there's some external factors and you know what they are, supply chain effect, you know. Which to be fair, today, haven't really slowed us down. But, you know, in terms of that mix, the secondary effects of what's happened in China and all of that, there's so much to play for that.
I think the best way to say, Mark, is over the next few years, you know, we'll be there.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks, Mark.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Max Yates from Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you. Just a quick sort of follow-up. I mean, just thinking about obviously everything that's happening in Europe with energy security and trying to reduce oil consumption. I mean, I guess there's some kind of fairly obvious sort of potential benefits around LNG for your business. Maybe if you could just walk us through when you look at that situation in Europe and you think about kind of energy security more broadly, where would you expect to see kind of the biggest benefits? If you could kind of help us just walk through how we should think about that for your business, that'd be helpful.
Yeah. Thanks, Max. I mean, obviously we, you know, see opportunity, right? I would characterize most of it as sort of medium term, Max, because as you know, it takes a while to actually build an LNG receiving terminal. Germany are talking about building, you know, a couple. I actually think that Europe is absolutely serious about this now, so I think it will happen over the next few years, personally. I think it has to happen, right? You know, the sort of broader areas that we see are things like LNG. Receiving terminals for us, you know, they're worth about GBP 3-4 million each, and obviously there could be quite a few of those happening across Europe. We see opportunity in the compression stations on the LNG side, that can be GBP 10-15 million.
You know, obviously, you know, they're starting to build more capacity. They're increasing the capacity in places like the Middle East. So we see areas that, you know, is obviously. If the pipeline gas isn't coming through, there will be more global LNG capacity. So as you said, that's good for us, and then we get the parts and valves after that. You know, there's strong margins on that. Shorter term, probably some of the gas and even coal-fired power stations, you know, there'll be life extensions. Obviously, you know that you know, we're doing about GBP 50 million-GBP 60 million in the aftermarket on coal, something about the same on gas as well. You know, that again, that's high margins. Nuclear, you know, for us, very important. It used to be very important.
It used to be about GBP 50 million a year on the new construction side. Obviously post-Fukushima, the new construction side, you know, came off completely. For us, again, we can do sort of GBP 10 million per reactor. If, you know, again, this is medium term, I would say, Max, but in the medium term, that will give us opportunities. You know that we won the projects on Hinkley Point. We're well-positioned on all reactor types, actually. We're also working with a big U.K. customer on the SMRs as well. Now, small modular reactors won't be important till probably 2030, and they won't really take off till 2035, right? Again, that's another sort of good opportunity for us in the future.
Then lastly, I think is, again, it's sort of more medium term, but hydrogen, right? We're now winning orders in about five applications in hydrogen. So these are the five we focus on. Again, I went through in some detail, so I won't go back through all of that. But we, you know, we're starting to win some nice orders, and it tends to be sort of GBP 1 million, GBP two million, GBP 3 million at this point. But we're certainly getting interest. We are building our plant in Sardinia, a new plant. We're moving it effectively, you know, a kilometer or less. And we've got fantastic engineers there. It's the Remosa acquisition we did in 2012.
In the plant we're moving into, it's gonna be carbon neutral, and basically that's using our valves, actuators, and control systems to create hydrogen when it's sunny using the solar panels and then use the hydrogen to create energy when it's not. It's quite interesting because we've actually now got a letter of intent for that system to go into another factory, a third party, and that's important because that's a reference. You know, we can see opportunities that other companies will wanna do the same as us. You know, we think we've got the solution to that. Hydrogen sort of medium term, I would say, Max. Yeah, they're probably the big areas. Have I missed any there, Dan?
No, no. I mean, we've already talked about the cryogenic hydrogen and the valves that we do.
Yeah.
The vacuum insulated. That's just our engineers and our technology positioned really well there.
Yeah. That's right. Max, I think you know, that gives you the sort of broad scope. Yeah, you know, obviously in the medium term, there'll be opportunity across those.
That's helpful. Just a very quick follow-up on capital allocation. I mean, I guess we sort of look at valuations and things are kinda coming down across the market. I mean, do you see this as an opportunity, or is the uncertainty kind of making it difficult to engage with companies at the moment? I guess the question is thinking about how easy is it to try and get deals done in this environment and maybe in the balance of this year? Or are you thinking maybe leaning more towards kind of share buybacks and continuing to return capital to shareholders as you did last year?
Just trying to understand whether that was a sort of more of a one-off or that's something that may continue going forward.
The way I would say it, Max, is we obviously prioritize organic growth and capital for organic growth, right? Acquisitions. Really, you know, we're delighted with Adaptas. It's had an excellent first quarter, and it's the opportunity that's just building. In fact, one of the three factories, you know, that we're consolidating, we're actually consolidating its life science precision dosing technology that we're consolidating into Adaptas because it's got a really good manufacturing campus. That's not the only reason. The reason is that it has such intimate relationships with the big customers that the cross-sell capability of things like that precision dosing, you know. Again, this will not happen overnight because these life sciences customers, they have platforms and you know, you generally have to wait for the next platform. Not all the time, but generally you do.
We're really excited about that. Because we put the business development team into the divisions and because we've more than doubled the resources, actually our pipeline does look pretty good, I would say. You know, you never get an acquisition till you get it, right? It's one of those sort of binary events. I would say the opportunities at the moment, Max, look pretty good particularly in building efficiency areas and particularly in Industrial Automation. Right now, those areas, I would say that, you know, there's some potentially some opportunities in there. We will do share buybacks when our balance sheet starts to become inefficient, like it was becoming last year.
When we don't think, you know, that in the immediate future, the sort of, you know, opportunities to do the right sorts of acquisitions. Our priority will be growth, build the company, do the acquisitions. Dan, anything you would add to that?
I think the pipeline is there, so we're gonna. We feel pretty comfortable with our balance sheet as it stands today. As you know, we're nice and cash generative every year, so that just continues to build the dry powder. We will do share buybacks when we're comfortable that that doesn't restrict us for more bolt-ons, Roy.
Yeah. Good point. To answer your question, okay, Max?
Yeah, that's perfect. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Max.
Thank you. One final reminder, ladies and gentlemen. To ask any further question, you can press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you are streaming via web browser, kindly press the flag icon on your web browser to ask a question. In the interest of time, please keep to one question per person. We currently have no further questions. I'll hand you over to your host, Roy, to have closing remarks.
Well, thanks again for joining us today. I appreciate your questions and your interest. I hope we've given you know, another sort of sense of the accelerating momentum across IMI and you know, how we continue to execute on our strategy and how we, you know, remain confident of delivering higher growth and better returns over time. Thank you very much, everybody.