Good morning. Welcome to the interim management statement. My name is Charlie. I'll be coordinating the call today. If you'd like to ask a question at the end of the presentation, you can do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I'll hand over to your host, Roy Twite, to begin. Roy, please go ahead.
Thank you, Charlie. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking the time to join us today. I am joined here, as usual, by Dan, our Group Finance Director. I'm just going to take a moment to summarize the highlights from the IMS before we take your 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, breakthrough engineering for a better world. It has been another strong performance as we recorded our seventh consecutive quarter of organic growth. Group revenues were up 10% versus the third quarter of last year, and up 4% on an organic basis. While year-to-date margins continue to increase versus the same period last year. The organic order book is up 8% at the end of the quarter.
We continue to see great momentum in our Growth Hub and sprint teams right across the divisions. We now expect to deliver over GBP 40 million of orders from these projects in 2022. Our restructuring program continues to reduce complexity. We remain firmly on track to deliver the expected benefits. IMI Precision Engineering delivered organic revenue growth of 3%, led by our Precision Fluid OEM business, which delivered strong organic growth of 9%.
Adjusted revenue in Precision was up 16%, and we are really pleased with our recent acquisitions, Adaptas Solutions and Bahr, which are integrating well and contributing positively to the division's performance. You will also have seen our announced acquisition of CorSolutions LLC last week, which nicely complements our analytical instruments offering in life sciences. IMI Critical Engineering had another excellent quarter with organic order intake up 21%.
Momentum in the aftermarket continued with 24% growth. We also saw a pickup in new construction activity. The order book is 11% higher than the same period last year, reflecting strong demand in LNG, oil and gas, and power. IMI Hydronic Engineering organic revenue was up 3% as we continue to see demand for our energy-saving products. I am extremely pleased to announce the proposed acquisition of Heatmiser. It's one of the U.K.'s leading smart, digitally enabled HVAC control manufacturers. Heatmiser will become part of IMI Hydronic Engineering and provides an opportunity to accelerate our growth in smart buildings. Adjacent to our existing HVAC product offerings, Heatmiser will provide an attractive entry point into connected residential thermostatic control, which is a fast-growing market where Heatmiser is already a U.K. leader.
The demand for smart temperature controls is growing rapidly and is expected to accelerate further with more than 200 million buildings in Europe requiring renovation to upgrade their heating and cooling systems. There are significant opportunities to leverage IMI Hydronic's strong brand and market presence to scale Heatmiser's offering across Europe, as well as leverage Heatmiser's proven connected technology capabilities across both our existing and new products. We expect to generate significant synergies as a result, and of course, exceed IMI's strict acquisition hurdles, delivering attractive returns for shareholders. We expect to close the acquisition before the year-end. Given the continued momentum in the business and based on current market conditions, we are upgrading our EPS guidance for the full year from above GBP 1 to now be in a range from GBP 1.03-GBP 1.06.
We remain confident in delivering our group growth targets of 5%+ and operating margin target of 20% through the cycle over time. With that, I'm going to hand you back to Charlie, who's going to manage the Q&A for us. Thank you, Charlie.
Of course. Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question by the telephone lines, you can do so by pressing Star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press Star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. As a reminder, that's Star followed by one on the telephone keypad now. Our first question comes from Max Yates of Morgan Stanley. Max, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Just my first question was around pricing. If you could give us any indication for what pricing looked like, and maybe particularly in the Hydronic divisions, trying to understand whether volume or to what extent volume growth was still positive there. That would be my first question.
Thanks, Max. Max, we're obviously not going to give too much detail on pricing because as you probably appreciate, it's pretty commercially sensitive subject. What I will say is that our pricing across IMI is now slightly above single mid digit across the whole piece, and it is slightly higher in hydronics. You can deduce from that, the hydronic volumes are slightly down versus the same quarter last year. Remember in Q3 last year, volumes in hydronics were 9% up because obviously there was a bit of a rebound from COVID and installers were working weekends and flat out not taking holidays to compensate for what happened during COVID. The other thing, Max, is we are getting a little bit of wholesaler destocking in Hydronics as well. I think that's probably slowed their overall unit growth.
I think I was with a bunch of customers last week in Sweden, and the overriding message was that versus two years ago even, that energy saving is right up the agenda of our customers. Actually, I think Hydronic is in a pretty good position.
Okay.
Thanks, Max.
Just a quick follow-up on Precision. If we think about the changes that you've made to the business, there's obviously been quite extensive restructuring across the group and in Precision. I guess when you look at the division and you think about potentially seeing growth turn negative in 2023 and potentially a industrial recession, how do you think about the changes that you have made affecting the margin resilience of the business and your ability to defend margins? Maybe if you could just comment a little bit, if we do see a sort of -5%, -10% for Precision next year, where would you think that margins would trough out? Do you think what you've done has made the business more resilient?
I think firstly, the restructuring has obviously improved IMI's margins from 14%-17% plus. I think, it's clearly dropped through to the bottom line. Typically, our cash paybacks have been less than two years. What we've done principally is consolidate some of our poorer performing sites into our best performing sites, often in low-cost countries. We put proper structural cost savings into our business. I think as you indicated though, Max, on top of that, it hasn't just been about cost because the sites we've integrated into have higher employee engagement, they have higher customer Net Promoter scores and a higher customer service ethic culture. Undoubtedly, better lean systems, which I think is one of the real positives of the last sort of eight years, is the lean systems and how that's gone into factories like our ones in Brno, Mexico, Shanghai, Czech Republic.
I think right across the board, those factories we're consolidating into are more flexible, they are leaner, they are able to react better to a reduction in volume. If that does happen, I do feel better placed. I think the other thing you got to remember, Max, is that our restructuring is on budget, it's on time, and that will deliver GBP 20 million of savings into next year, GBP 15 million of which will go into Precision, which would help to cushion if volumes do indeed come down in Precision.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thanks, Max.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Alexander Virgo of Bank of America. Alexander, your line is open. Please proceed.
Morning, Roy. Morning, Dan. Couple of questions from me then, please. First one, just on PE to follow on a little bit from Max. I wondered if you could give us a bit of regional color. I guess in particular, thinking about IA, commercial vehicle a little bit more obvious, I guess. Thinking about IA, it looks like you slowed pretty materially in the quarter. I just wondered if you could give us a little bit more color around the drivers of that, perhaps both regionally and even end market. The second question, just on Heatmiser. Appreciate you've given us an EBITDA implied margin, which looks to be in the 40s. Is there much in the way of D&A in the business? Can you give us any steer on PPA? Thanks very much.
I'll do the easy one on Heatmiser, which is actually EBIT is very, very similar to EBITDA. There's very, very little in terms of D&A in that business, Alex. I'll let Dan take the complex PPA one after I've taken the other one on IA. Yeah, it's very, very close. It's a good margin business, and that's principally because it adds tremendous value for its customers. I've actually got the Heatmiser system, put it in a few years ago, and it's tremendous in terms of making sure that you're not wasting energy with a building, that you hit the temperatures that you're comfortable with at the exact time of day that you want them, which right now is more important than ever, I think. Yeah, no, it's a high margin business. It's been growing double digit.
It's in a nice space, I think explained the plan in the notes reasonably well. Nice strategic acquisition. On PE IA, I would say that the U.S. is-- Overall, IA Precision is doing pretty much what we expected. We've got slower growth in IA. IA does sort of follow the PMIs. We do want to break that trend over time, obviously. For the last couple of decades, IA has pretty much followed PMI, and that's pretty much what we expected it would do. U.S. is still slightly more positive than Europe, Alex. Europe has pretty well flattened out. I think it might have been minus one or something in the quarter. Again, pretty much what we expected. China is the other issue, obviously. The China lockdowns has hit both IA and our CB, our truck business in the quarter.
I'm not going to predict what's going to happen in China on lockdowns. I've noticed today that the incidences of COVID are increasing again. I hope that they can find a different way through this, obviously, and the business will pick up again.
That gives you the overall geographic position. Dan, do you want to comment on figures?
Yeah, Alex. We're obviously just getting into that fund accounting activity. As we look at it, my expectation is it'll follow very similar to the acquisitions we've done earlier this year. We'll go through the exercise. There will be some intangibles that we'll put on. There will be goodwill. It'll match similar ratios of the deals that we did, like Adaptas.
Okay, great. Thanks, both. If I could just follow up quickly, Roy. Any kind of indication of how much you would attribute to China and China lockdowns sort of hampering the business in the quarter? Just so we can get a better feel perhaps for the underlying business.
APAC for us was slightly negative for IA. About half of IA is China for us, which has been the major drag on that, Alex, just to give you a sort of overall feel. Normally Asia for us is obviously growing mid to double digit. For our overall growth trajectory, normally it's quite a significant change.
Great. That's helpful. Thanks very much, both of you.
Brilliant. Thanks, Alex.
Thanks.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to submit a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. Our next question comes from Jonathan Hurn of Barclays. Jonathan, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Good morning. I just had a few questions on Critical, if I may. Firstly, just obviously on the strength of the order book at the end of Q3, obviously +11% for the year. Can you just sort of break out how you think about that order book going into 2023 because of the different terms of growth? That was the first one. I'll just take the other two as well while I'm here. Second one was just on the aftermarket, obviously good strength, but can you just give us a feeling of how that's breaking down? Is that the upgrades coming through or is it parts and labor? Which is the main sort of driver there? The third and final question, I just wonder if you could just give us a little bit more color on the trends you're seeing in LNG and power.
Obviously, you flagged it's been there as a strength, but how long do you think that's going to go on for? I've been seeing a lot of sort of upgrades coming through in power. Just need a bit more color there. That'd be very helpful. Thank you.
Brilliant, Jonathan. The Critical order book, obviously up 11% and strong aftermarket growth. Aftermarket now up 19% year to date. Total orders up 10% year to date. We feel good about the order book, and we feel good about the quality of the order book. We did pick up a couple of larger orders towards the end of last year, so I'm not quite sure if we'll finish at +11% for the year. As you know, Jonathan, I'm not going to make too many predictions about next year. I don't think wise people are doing that right now. In terms of Critical, we do have a 9-month order book, and so that order book strength does bode well for next year.
I think if there is a recession that affects Industrial Automation in particular, it's nice to see that Critical is doing what it normally does, which is counter-cyclical and shows a real benefit of the portfolio of the fluid control businesses. It's a good position to be in, and it was a good strong quarter on top of a previously strong quarter. I'd say that, and this sort of goes a bit into your next questions really, that we're not yet seeing the investments that will come as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As I said on the last call, we won't really see that until about the second half of next year, just because of the way the lead times work on even new LNG compression plants.
This is good news, it's a continuing trend in our aftermarket, obviously heavily supported by the growth of projects, Retrofit3D, Aerosol, the ones we presented at the Capital Markets Day. I'm really pleased with that. In terms of the nature of the aftermarket, it's pretty broad-based actually, the strength in the third quarter. We're seeing good strength in upgrades still. Upgrades in the quarter are up 29%, Jonathan. The very profitable parts were up 19%. It's pretty good. You know that we get that annuity from the parts business from achieving the upgrades. Obviously, once we've got the installed base there, those parts flow at very good margins.
I think we did a rough calculation the other day, now over 50% of the profits in Critical are coming from the recurring revenues of the parts business, which obviously bodes well as that goes into the future. Just in terms of LNG, well, as I said, we're not really seeing the benefits yet of any recent investments. LNG strength, I think, is going to be there, well, certainly for the medium term. We think LNG is going to be strong certainly for the next three to five years and potentially well beyond that. Power in China is putting some more conventional power in place, it will be doing that over the next few years. As you know, we're well-placed in the severe service applications on turbine bypass on those power stations.
Yeah, I think certainly versus even probably six months ago, the outlook for Critical over the next sort of medium term is actually pretty good, Jonathan.
That's great. Thank you. Take care.
Great. Thanks, Jonathan.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Davies Jones from Stifel. Mark, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Morning, both. Two unrelated questions from me. Maybe one for Dan. Obviously, the acquisition today slightly muddies the water in terms of the cash flow performance for the year. Can we just check, are the expectations for working capital working down through year-end as they were, or any change to that? That would be my first one.
Yeah. Hey, Mark. Yeah, we're seeing some reduction in working capital. I don't think we'll be back to an overall normalized level. I suspect we'll see that come out as we watch the supply chains into next year. In the note, we gave the guidance with the Heatmiser acquisition, putting ourselves around a 1.8-
1.8, yeah
If you run the math there, you'll see that's supported by some working capital coming out in the second half.
Okay, thank you. The other one was around Hydronic. You've mentioned the energy efficiency focus, which is clearly very topical. How does that offset against what are some quite sharp slowdowns in construction activity and forward expectations in the construction market, particularly in core Europe? Do you think the specifics of that energy play can offset the broader slowdown in construction and RMI?
Yeah, I think that's the million-dollar question, isn't it, Mark? We are absolutely focused on growth in Hydronic, and have a very strong plan B in place. I think my obvious detailed memory is 2009, when industrials were dropping 10%, 15%, and Hydronic dropped 4%. Actually, its profits increased because the price of the raw materials that it uses dropped significantly, and obviously it's got very strong pricing power. I think what tends to happen, again, meeting with these customers last week, is that they very much switch their focus during a recession to refurbishment because they are still being hampered by a lack of other products to finish their projects. Things like heat pumps, for instance, are still on very long lead times. That means there's pent-up demand for the projects they're doing that will tend to move to refurbishment.
I think in 2009, the vast majority of what our customers were doing was refurbishment, because obviously new construction, certainly by 2010, had pretty well ground to a halt. I think that's one effect. The second effect is obviously governments, and certainly these customers last week were saying this is what they expect to happen this time. Governments incentivize energy-efficient refurbishment on top of the existing legislation because, one, it drives local employment. Obviously, all these people are working within their own countries. Two, obviously they want the energy efficiency, particularly now. Yeah, I expect Hydronic to be reasonably resilient, even if things get tougher in terms of consumer spending next year, Mark.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Mark.
Thank you. As another reminder, if you wish to submit a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad now. Our next question comes from Bruno Gjani of Exane BNP Paribas. Bruno, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to follow up on Mark's question on working capital, specifically as it relates to inventory build. In H1, we saw inventory rise quite notably, and I think at the time you said that reflected supply chain constraints and also a conscious effort on your side to build some stock of some components. Could you provide just some color on how inventory levels developed in Q3, whether you started to see that unwind, and how we should be thinking about H2 overall? I have a slight follow-up on the back of that.
Hey, Bruno. We did start seeing some of that come down. We're particularly to focus on ensuring we keep the customers and delivery in good shape. We're managing that as we go through. We did see some cash come off the balance sheet in terms of that, and we expect that to kind of come through like it did last year, if I'm perfectly honest. If you look at the trends last year where we did build stock in the first half and then draw that down, that's part of the seasonality of some of our businesses. Again, if you back calc against the leverage position, I think you can see that that's going to come through. We will also see some benefit from debtors coming down again. That's also some seasonality there as well.
Got it. It doesn't sound as if you're thinking about the need to cut production to clear inventory levels. How should we think about that? Is there any risk as we look towards next year, particularly in this weaker macroeconomic backdrop, that you might have to underproduce to perhaps clear some inventory, and the implications that might have for margin development or not really?
It's Roy now. Thanks for your questions. Obviously we will match production at the appropriate levels. I think, some of the stock that we've got, some of the excess stock is around the site moves as well, Bruno, right? Which is obviously the sensible thing to do. As you know, we're consolidating three sites at the moment in IMI Precision Engineering, and that is what's going to generate that GBP 15 million of savings for next year. As we're doing that, effectively what you're doing is moving people or jobs, I should say, from one site, typically in a high-cost country to a low-cost country, and simply we'll employ less people in those low-cost countries to match the production rate required for the appropriate stock level. I think there's plenty of opportunities still on working capital.
I think as Dan said, he described what's going to happen this year and plenty of opportunities still for next year, depending on how global supply chains perform. As Dan said, we will always prioritize customer service and growth, but it still remains a nice opportunity for us, I think, Bruno.
Got it. I just wanted to follow up on the acquisition. It's great to see Hydronic allocate good capital, and I think the last deal of significance might have been in 2007 with TA-matics. Am I wrong?
Yeah.
This acquisition, it seems to be aligned.
It's good to be back.
with the big theme around, it runs in line with the big themes around energy transition. I was just wondering if we can expect more capital to be allocated towards Hydronic going forward. Does this mark a step change in divisional capital allocation priorities that has been taken by you, or is this just reading too much into it?
No. I think, I was actually running Hydronic when we did the last two acquisitions. I reminded Phil of that the other day. The team, actually. I think, no, seriously now, Phil and the team have done a fantastic job. We bought this company through the relationship with the family. It's a wonderful family, the Kay family, and I was really pleased that their strategy to expand across Europe fits exactly with what we wanted to do and what we talked about at the Capital Markets Day and many times, Bruno, which is find a company with a really fast-growing product that has limited distribution across our core markets, where we can really expand that distribution, preferably in the connected smart space, because that's the bit that's growing the fastest. This company absolutely. We've been following it for a long time.
There's more exciting opportunities in the Hydronic funnel. Yes, over time, you can definitely expect more acquisitions in Hydronic, and I think this is the start of that trend reawakening, if you like, from more than a decade ago. We're really excited, same as you are, about the trends on energy saving in buildings, particularly, but not only Europe now. I think the U.S. is starting to take it seriously. As I said earlier on the call, certainly our customers are really feeling that pull now in the market. Yeah, I would expect over time, more capital to be allocated to growing Hydronic. Yeah.
Just following up, I was just wondering if you could perhaps put some numbers around the revenue synergies that you're targeting. It's a great U.K. business. Where do you think you can take this in say three to five years? What are you going for?
Yeah. We expect it to produce returns above our cost of capital, which we've obviously revised up, given what's happening in the economic systems. We expect it to be above that in three years, and we expect it to be barely dilutive. We've moved our overall ROIC. We moved the whole incentive system for IMI top management to ROIC. In ROIC, obviously in the denominator, we've got all of the goodwill of the investments that we made. We put that in the annual report, as you know. We've moved that from, I think it's 11.3%, roughly from memory, to over 13% in the last two or three years, Bruno. We don't want to be dilutive on that number. We are incentivized on that number. Certainly within a five-year period, we expect Heatmiser to be contributing at about our overall returns rate of 13%.
Got it. I'll leave it there. Thanks, guys.
Brilliant, Bruno. Thanks for your questions. Appreciate that.
Thank you. At this time, we currently have no further questions. I'll hand it back over to Roy Twite for any closing remarks.
Excellent. Well, thank you very much for joining us today. For me, the absolute highlights were obviously critical orders and the order book in critical, which I think sets us up well for next year. The growth of momentum, I think the fact we're now going to go over the GBP 40 million of orders, clearly that is contributing to critical aftermarket success as well. Obviously the acquisition of Heatmiser, another absolutely strategic acquisition for us that will help accelerate that growth within the Hydronic division. Of course, lastly, raising the guidance, upgrading again. Really appreciate everybody joining the call today, and I hope you have a great closeout for the rest of the year. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.