Good morning, everyone. I'm Duncan Tait, Group CEO, and I'm joined by our Group CFO, Adrian Lewis. Here's today's agenda. I'll give an update and overview on market and market context. Adrian will then run through 2025 results. I'll sum up and discuss the outlook for 2026. Today's presentation is available on our website, and a recording of today's session will be available later today. After the presentation concludes, we'll take your questions. Let's begin. Inchcape delivered a strong 2025 performance against the backdrop of tariff-related disruption and economic uncertainty, reaffirming the strength of our diversified and scaled business. Our colleagues in the Americas and the Europe and Africa regions posted record PBT performances. Against a number of challenges, APAC delivered a better H2 performance, and we're working with our OEM partners and across the value chain to drive further performance improvements.
We continue to execute against our Accelerate+ strategy, winning more distribution contracts and executing an acquisition in a new market for Inchcape. During the year, we returned around GBP 340 million to shareholders through dividends and buybacks, grew EPS and DPS by 13%. With leverage of just 0.4 x, we're ready to go again in 2026, starting with a new share buyback program of GBP 175 million. Now, this slide shows how we delivered against all of our key growth drivers on the left-hand side of this chart. That includes the financial metrics I mentioned, including our resilient margins as well as vehicle volumes, customer and colleague-related metrics. On those dynamics, we continue to build on our strong customer reputation in the industry with a 6% increase in our scores on Reputation.com.
In addition, our employee engagement score of 81%, up four points from the previous year, is a clear signal of Inchcape's collaborative, entrepreneurial, and high-performance culture, which is a testament to the caliber and talent of our 16,000 people across our 40 markets. Last year, we generated GBP 315 million in free cash flow, which clearly highlights our cash generative and capital-light model. This capital was deployed to drive growth and shareholder returns. With a 13% increase in dividends per share, GBP 238 million invested in share buybacks, and GBP 35 million utilized on the Iceland acquisition. We have a healthy pipeline of bolt-on M&A opportunities in place to supplement our organic growth. This delivery of our strategy enabled us to deliver return on capital employed of 29% and helped us grow EPS by 13%.
We continue to execute against our Accelerate+ strategy by scaling and optimizing our regions. Our objective here is to develop our OEM partner portfolio and geographic footprint, thereby enhancing the resilience in our earnings profile. This will help to drive our progress against our ambition to achieve 10% market share across our markets. Last year, we grew distribution contracts won in previous years, with these contracts being a key driver of our organic revenue growth. We were also awarded 10 new distribution contracts with existing OEM brands, including New Holland in Ethiopia and Kenya, BYD in Lithuania and Latvia, XPENG in Colombia, and GAC AION in Greece, as well as new partners smart in Colombia, Uruguay, and Ecuador, and Iveco in Hong Kong. To drive operational execution, we continue to optimize our business in a number of ways.
We further rationalized our brand portfolio, mutually exiting four immaterial contracts with Komatsu in Ethiopia and three Geely contracts in smaller markets in the Americas. We continue to recycle capital by divesting non-core assets, and we grew our third-party retail network, enabling broader in-market coverage in a capital efficient way. We continue to drive the penetration of value-added services, in particular, growing our distribution of relatively high margin OEM certified parts, as well as delivering and developing financed insurance products by utilizing our global scale and partnerships. We also optimized our business by further collaborating with our OEM partners on product and inventory management, supported by our consistent execution and differentiated technology-based sales and operations planning processes.
To that end, we positioned ourselves well for the second half of the year from a stock perspective, successfully reducing the buildup of inventory in the first half with inventory cover at the end of 2025 remaining flat year-over-year. Our sales and operations planning processes are supported by AI in a number of areas. In our parts business, we run pricing, optimization, and demand models, which enable us to trade tens of thousands of parts at optimal price points. We're also leveraging AI to drive innovation across our business. For example, we recently launched a vehicle pricing algorithm in Chile, which analyzes price to volume elasticity to ensure we price vehicles even more accurately. Back to our optimization activities. We've also taken decisive action on our cost base, reinforcing our devolved operating model, driving efficiencies, and tackling challenges in certain markets.
To that end, during the year, we initiated a cost reduction program across the group with a particular focus on the APAC region. I want to discuss our diversified and scaled OEM portfolio. We have long-standing relationships with many OEMs, some of which go back for over 50 years. Our role in the automotive distribution value chain is more important than ever. We continue to support these manufacturers in an increasingly complex and fast-moving environment, growing their volumes and market share in existing markets and helping them to enter new markets. We also have some relatively new OEMs in our portfolio on the right-hand side of this slide, who we've worked with for just a few years. I wanted to highlight that we are seeing BYD continuing to insource distribution in medium to large-scale markets in Europe.
This is a BYD-only dynamic. We are seeing our other OEM partners rely on Inchcape more than ever before. On the next slide, here's some market context in what was a transforming automotive industry in 2025. In general terms, the new energy vehicle transition is becoming more of a multi-powertrain story. Importantly, as a powertrain-agnostic business, and with our deep specialist market knowledge, Inchcape is well positioned to support our OEMs in their individual new energy transition journeys. Overall, market volumes across our markets grew by 2% in 2025, with the indirect impact of tariff-related disruption affecting demand in our markets in the first half of the year. Inchcape outperformed the market, growing our volumes by 3%.
The macro environment improved in the second half in a number of our markets, particularly in the Americas and the Europe and Africa regions, offsetting a challenging backdrop in Asia. In the Americas, market volumes were up 8%, with a multi-drivetrain approach playing out. In Chile, our largest market there was a 3% TIV growth during the year with a stable market environment. Colombia and Peru experienced strong market growth, while there was a weaker growth in some markets like Costa Rica. In Europe, another multi-drivetrain story. Southern European markets like Greece and Bulgaria remained strong, while there was weakness in certain Northern European markets like Finland and Estonia. In APAC, BEV adoption continued to accelerate, partly as a result of the successful rollout of BEV in Asian markets. Chinese brands have grown market share across the region in recent years.
These dynamics have created a highly competitive environment in most markets in the region. The premium segment in APAC remains weak, with consumers in that market segment continuing to hold off on buying higher value vehicles. To date, we've not seen any similar weaknesses in the premium segment in our other regions. On APAC, Australia, one of the largest vehicle markets in which we operate, remains resilient, but it is an increasingly competitive environment. That's it from me for now. I'll hand over to Adrian.
Thank you, Duncan. Good morning, everyone. I'll take you through our results for 2025. We generated revenues of GBP 9.1 billion, with organic revenue growth of 1% and resilient operating margins of 6.2%. Distribution contract wins were the significant portion of growth during the year. Adjusted PBT was GBP 443 million, up 3% in constant currency. Our PBT performance was supported by a contribution of GBP 17 million from the gains arising from the divestment of non-core assets, while translational currency headwinds were approximately GBP 19 million. Excluding the disposal gains, our operating margins were 6% and in line with our medium-term targets. Return on capital employed was again very strong at 29%, highlighting the high return capital light nature of our business.
Free cash flow delivery was a highlight as we produced GBP 315 million with a stronger performance in the second half. This was a 104% free cash flow to adjusted profit after tax conversion rate and in line with our medium-term targets. Closing leverage was 0.4 x, down from 0.6 x at the half year and well within our self-mandated headroom of 1 x. Adjusted basic EPS was GBP 0.808, up 13%, predominantly as a result of a lower share count from our share buybacks. Today we declared a final dividend per share of GBP 0.228, taking the total dividend per share for the year to GBP 0.323, up 13% from the prior year.
In summary, our performance in 2025 was a reflection of our continued operational delivery and progress against Accelerate+, which ensured we continued to deliver value for shareholders. 2025 was a year of two halves, and as expected, and as we highlighted during the course of 2025, our second half performance was much stronger than the first half, supported by a wide range of product launches across our business. As a result, we saw stronger half two growth rates across our regions, supported by product launches. Subsequently, our volumes and revenue swung from negative growth in H 1 to positive growth in H2 , helping to drive profits and cash flow in the second half. For the year, we delivered organic volume growth of 3%, outperforming the market, which grew by 2%.
As a reminder, we have published our usual market tracker today, which shows the key market trends. Now let's look at each of the regions, starting with the Americas. We built positive momentum in the region during 2025, supported by improving market conditions, our excellent performance, and our growth profile in the region highlights the success of our acquisition of Derco in 2022, as well as the other historic acquisitions and contract wins in the region. These transactions have helped us to build scale and market share. As key markets have turned to growth, we have similarly seen a stronger performance. Market volumes and organic revenue were both up 8%, with growth from our core brands offsetting the impact of the brands we exited in 2024. This ensured we achieved stable market share across the region.
There was a strong performance in our scaled markets, including Chile, Colombia and Peru, offsetting the weakness in certain markets like Costa Rica. Operating margins were up 70 basis points to 7%, this reflected resilient gross margins and operating leverage from higher volumes. In addition, we continued to efficiently scale our business through cost discipline and capital recycling with a GBP 8 million contribution to profits from non-core asset divestments. For 2026, we expect the market environment to remain supportive, with a typical seasonal weighting towards the second half resulting in a profitable growth for the year. In APAC, our market volumes, which were down 1%, our organic revenue declined 12%. As expected, our second half performance was an improvement on the first half as a result of product launches.
In Australia, our largest business in the region, it is increasingly competitive and our business remained resilient, supported by our growing and diversified brand portfolio. However, we underperformed in our Asian markets with a proliferation of Chinese brands increasing the competitive intensity, particularly in markets where BEV penetration is high. Additionally, in some markets, the premium segment remained weak. As a result of lower revenues, operating margins contracted by 60 basis points to 7.2%, despite a GBP 9 million contribution to profits from non-core asset divestments in H 2. Actions were instigated during the year to protect margins, including our enhanced collaboration with our OEM partners on product positioning. We also initiated a cost reduction program focused on the regional headquarters and certain underperforming Asian markets to ensure we are more agile in a fast-moving and dynamic environment.
For 2026, Australia is expected to remain stable, challenges in other markets in the region are expected to continue. We expect operating margins this year to be supported through the ongoing implementation of the management actions I mentioned. Additionally, production disruption is expected to impact certain APAC markets in H1. This disruption relates to production reconfiguration by some of our OEMs, which will have a short-term impact on supply. On to Europe and Africa, where we again delivered well and outperformed in a growing market. Market volumes were up 3%, with our organic revenue growth ahead of the market at 6%, supported by a contribution from distribution contracts won in recent years. As Duncan mentioned earlier, BYD continues to insource automotive distribution in medium to large-scale markets in Europe.
We have a contract with them in Belgium and Luxembourg, which contributed less than 5% of regional revenue and around one-third of our 6% regional organic growth. At a group level, this contract represents less than 2% of group revenue and less than 1% of group adjusted PBT. It's a financially immaterial contract in the context of the group and the region. While we have performed well for BYD in BeLux since our appointment in 2022, given the commercial approach in medium to large-scale markets in Europe, we do not anticipate that this contract will be renewed. It expires in Q3 2027. Our role in the value chain is a critical part of how OEMs access markets where we specialize. As Duncan mentioned, we are not seeing other similar moves by other OEMs.
Now back to my regional review of Europe and Africa. Our acquisition in Iceland is performing well, and there was a particularly strong performance across our business in Southern Europe, supported by good consumer take-up of a range of hybrid products and strong growth in the market. Africa continued to grow through distribution contract expansion. Operating margins were down 10 basis points to 4.6%, but in line with historical norms, with gross margin resilience and operating leverage from scale offsetting the initial dilution from immature distribution contracts. During 2026, growth rates are set to slow in certain markets, which will be partly offset by the full contribution of Iceland, as well as continued operational execution and momentum across the region, and the growing contribution from the multiple contracts won in recent years. On to our financial performance, and this slide shows our income statement.
We delivered adjusted operating profit for the year of GBP 563 million, down 1% in constant currency. Regional mix impacted gross margins, this was largely offset by the continued cost discipline where our overhead to revenue ratio fell by 20 basis points. Adjusted net finance costs decreased by GBP 19 million to GBP 123 million, driven by lower average net debt and a more favorable interest rate environment. Adjusting items amounted to an expense of GBP 37 million, this was primarily driven by one-off costs relating to acquisition and integration of GBP 10 million, mainly in relation to the final stages of the Derco integration. There were also restructuring costs of GBP 23 million, broadly split evenly between the cost reduction actions that I mentioned earlier and the continuation of our back office restructure following the U.K. disposal.
An adjusted PBT was GBP 443 million, 3% higher on a constant currency basis, and the effective tax rate was flat at 31.4%. Adjusted basic EPS was up 13% to 80.8 pence and up 17% in constant currency, so well ahead of our medium-term target. This was supported by a reduced number of shares in issue as a result of the share buyback programs executed during the year and the effect of averaging from the buyback program in 2024. Now this slide shows our net debt bridge. Inchcape has a strong balance sheet supported by consistently strong free cash flow generation, which ensures we can execute a disciplined approach to capital allocation.
Having generated over GBP 300 million in free cash flow, dividend payments amounted to GBP 101 million, and share buybacks amounted to GBP 238 million as we executed our capital allocation policy. There was net M&A spend of GBP 29 million, including the GBP 35 million in cash invested in the Askja deal. The net of these elements saw leverage fall to 0.6 x EBITDA, down from the 0.6x seen at the half year, providing the group with capacity to continue to allocate capital to drive growth and shareholder value. Which brings me to our capital allocation approach, which remains disciplined and returns-based. We will continue to pay dividends at 40% of earnings.
We will continue to act with discipline in the balance of capital allocation between the value accretion from share buybacks and value accretive acquisitions whilst running leverage below 1 x EBITDA. Having completed the Iceland deal last year, we will continue to activate our healthy pipeline of bolt-on acquisitions, acting with discipline on valuations. We see merit and strategic value in expanding the scale of the group. However, a large deal is not currently in our consideration set in the near term. Since August 2024, we have repurchased GBP 400 million in shares through our share buyback program, reducing our shares in issue by around 13%. Today, we are announcing a new share buyback program of GBP 175 million, which is expected to complete over the next 12 months.
It is worth noting that of the 2025 buyback program, where we repurchased 9% of our equity, only around half of this has been recognized in EPS with the effect of averaging, and this will have provide a tailwind to EPS for 2026 of around 4%-5%. Our capital allocation policy will help to drive EPS growth and deliver further value for shareholders whilst retaining the capacity to expand through acquisitions. To sum up my section, here is a reminder of our medium-term targets, which we are reiterating today. To the end of 2030, we expect to generate GBP 2.5 billion in free cash flow. We will deploy this free cash flow to drive shareholder value with a consistent dividend policy and in excess of 10% compound growth in EPS. That's it from me. I'll now hand back to Duncan.
Hey, thanks, Adrian. I wanted to give you a midterm review of how we have transformed Inchcape's investment proposition over the last six years, driving growth and value for shareholders. Over that period, we have become a pure-play automotive distribution business, divesting of a number of retail-only assets and ensuring our business is more resilient, higher margin, and generating better returns and more cash. Over decades, we have built an unrivaled, diversified portfolio of global OEM partners, winning over 50 contracts with a range of the world's best manufacturers since 2019. As a distributor, our powerful commercial relationships with these partners operate across global, regional, and local levels. We have continued to deliver a strong performance for them, supported by our differentiated data-driven approach, nearly doubling our distribution revenues.
We've also delivered a 200 basis point improvement in our operating margins from 4% in 2019 to 6% today, increasing return on capital employed over that period from 22% to 29%. Driven by this growth and strategic focus, we've generated GBP 2.3 billion in total free cash flow and raised around GBP 900 million in cash from the divestment of non-core retail-only assets. This has enabled us to return GBP 1.3 billion to shareholders through dividends and buybacks, while we continue to invest in value accretive acquisitions. EPS grew 35% over the period. I hope that by reinforcing our track record of delivery, this gives you a sense of what we expect to deliver in the coming years as a capital light automotive distribution pure play.
We have a compelling capital allocation policy and clear medium-term operational financial ambitions, which we are very confident of delivering against. To that end, as a management team, we're extremely excited about the future for Inchcape. Now, this is a reminder of our Accelerate+ strategic framework, that's enabled our performance as we continue to scale and optimize our business. We will continue to deliver against our medium-term ambitions, supported by our strategic enablers outlined here. Finally for me today, onto the outlook for 2026. We expect to deliver a year of growth at constant currency in line with our medium-term guidance. This will be achieved by the delivery of organic volume growth towards the lower end of our 3%-5% guidance range, supported by contract wins.
We expect continued momentum in the Americas and Europe and Africa regions, while we are decisively addressing the challenges in APAC. We expect to deliver resilient operating margins of circa 6% this year, in line with our medium-term guidance, supported by further penetration in aftersales and finance and insurance, enhanced collaboration with our OEM partners, and our actions on cost reduction. We also expect to deliver free cash flow conversion of circa 100% and EPS growth of more than 10%. Our performance this year will be skewed to the second half due to usual seasonality in the Americas and supply chain phasing in APAC. We also reiterate our medium-term targets, which will be delivered through our highly cash generative and capital light business model and a disciplined approach to capital allocation to deliver greater than 10% EPS CAGR to the end of 2030.
Just to sum up, Inchcape delivered a strong 2025 performance, reaffirming the strength of our diversified and scaled business as we continue to execute against our Accelerate+ strategy. We expect to deliver another year of growth in 2026, our confidence about our prospects for the year is underlined by our new GBP 175 million share buyback program.
Great. Well, let's take your questions. Thanks very much for all the questions so far. For those of you who want to ask a question, you can just type it in the Q&A box at the top-hand right of your screen. First question is around AI. I think this is for you, Duncan. Can you just talk a little bit about how we're using AI within the business, and do we see it as a threat or an opportunity?
Very good. Thank you, Rob. We use AI in two ways. We've been using machine learning for some time. Machine learning is used right throughout the business to price parts. We have tens of thousands of parts in our markets which AI is pricing for us. AI is also helping us with machine learning sense and to determine what part holding we'll have in a country and what vehicle volume we should request from OEMs to serve demand in a particular market. Now, if I talk then about GenAI. We're using GenAI in a number of ways. It produces a lot of our marketing material in places like the Americas. We're using GenAI in certain places to engage with customers around service booking and which models people might be interested in.
We are also using it in our functions across the business such as legal. Now, in terms of is it an opportunity or a threat, I think for us, Rob, it's an opportunity to continue to improve customer satisfaction, improve the way we work with our OEM partners, and the way we deliver our financial results.
Great. Thanks, Duncan. Quite a few questions on capital allocation, Adrian, and particularly around buyback. I'll try and aggregate them as much as possible. Can you discuss around the buyback? How do you think about it in terms of valuation share price?
Okay.
How do you think about it in terms of paying down debt? If the share price stayed the same, at the same level this time next year, what would be your thinking around buybacks in terms of, in terms of size?
Thank you very much, Rob, and thank you for the question. A lot to unpack there. If I look back on last year's share buyback, which as most of you will all know was around GBP 250 million. We deployed around GBP 238 million of that within 2025 specifically. Over the program, we bought back 9% of our equity, and that takes us to about 13% of our equity since August 2024. I think I look back on that overall program as an excellent use of capital for shareholders. It provides a good return, we think in the low-to-mid teens from a post-tax return on invested capital or an IRR for our investors.
So it's a good use of cash. If I think about where it sits against leverage, we started the year at 0.3x, 2025. It went up a little bit about half year to around 0.6x, and then came back down to around 0.4x. So the balance sheet is in good shape. At only 0.4 x leverage, we have capacity to continue to invest. When I think about the GBP 175 million buyback that we have announced for 2026, think about it in the context of the free cash we're going to generate. We start the year having generated GBP 315 million of free cash flow last year.
We have continued to guide consistently, as we have done in our medium-term guidance, profit after tax to cash at 100%. A similar, if not slightly larger number for 2026. Dividend flows, we expect to be about GBP 110 million. After GBP 175 million, the balance sheet retains its capacity to invest in organic growth through acquisitions, which is consistent with our capital allocation policy. Really, as I said in the video and last Tuesday, this is a returns-based equation. We look for optimum use of shareholders' funds. We were very pleased with the Askja acquisition in Iceland in 2025. We think the pipeline is healthy for 2026, but we'll continue to be disciplined. Longer term, I'd point you back to our medium-term guidance.
Free cash at 100% of profit after tax. We'll continue to pay 40% of EPS in dividend flows, and we'll continue to deploy the balance in either share buybacks or acquisitions based on whichever is the best returning return for our shareholders.
Thanks, Adrian. On a follow-up, and maybe this is for both of you actually. On M&A, can you just talk a little bit about the, the pipeline and the prospects for deals in the next 12 months?
Sure. Do you want me to go first?
Go for it.
Thank you, Rob. As we said last Tuesday, the APAC team have got some work to do, but we kind of have a healthy pipeline across our Europe and Africa business and our Americas. Very much shifted to bolt-ons. We saw value in the Iceland acquisition, to Adrian's point, relative to share buyback returns. If we see value for M&A with the right OEMs in the right country, subject to where our share price is, then it would make sense to activate our pipeline.
Very good, thank you.
Yeah. Just from a geography perspective, focus more in Europe and Africa, focus more in Latin America. Asia Pac, we're focused more on operational execution in the near term. That's the area of focus for the pipeline.
Great. Thank you very much. Couple of questions on Chinese manufacturers. Firstly, is the BYD insourcing, is that something that we could see from other players? First question. Second question is around oversupply from Chinese OEMs and how that's impacting our markets and could it impact it even further going forward. The third question is, do we see any opportunities with Chinese OEMs going forward?
Right. 3 questions. Keep me honest, Rob, that I do answer the question. Do we see Chinese OEMs as an opportunity or a threat? I see them as an opportunity for our business. We've won over 50 contracts in the last few years. 70% or more have been with Chinese OEMs. I think we'll continue to get some contract wins to the business over time, Rob. We've been a big part of Chinese OEM growth, particularly post the Derco acquisition we made in Latin America, which gave us 20-year plus relationships with OEMs. To your BYD point, look, we don't see our other Chinese OEMs bringing back in-house distribution contracts. I'll go back to what I just said about contract wins.
The majority of those contract wins are with Chinese OEMs that we have a relationship with. Remind me about the last question.
The, the oversupply, and the impact on our markets.
Yeah, sure. There has been pretty aggressive expansion by Chinese OEMs overseas. It's also clear at the same time that the China market itself has been very difficult for Chinese OEMs in terms of their ability to make money and their dealer networks. When I'm talking to Chinese OEMs, they are talking about making sure they don't replicate that outside of China. Losing money in China and then outside would not be a good blend. In terms of oversupply, I go back to what I said about AI. We are absolutely using our sales and operations planning processes and AI to make sure that we land the right amount of stock into a market. You don't have excess inventory.
We can't legislate for what others do, but I guarantee you, we will look after our own inventory levels in markets because that's good for margins.
Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Duncan. Next question is around the current global environment. Given the uncertainty and the volatility, if the car market went into a downturn tomorrow, how resilient would Inchcape be?
I think you could answer this.
Yeah, okay. Yeah. Very, very happy to. I mean, if you, if you stand back and look at the car market that we operate in, the global market is about 90 million cars. The majority of those cars are sold through the large markets of the world, such as the U.S., Germany, France, the U.K., and these sort of and China, and these very scaled markets where Inchcape doesn't necessarily have a role to play for our OEM partners. Our job is in the markets that we operate in, more complex, at times lower scale in their nature. Places like Colombia, places like Chile, Peru, Indonesia, Philippines, Bulgaria, Greece, to name but a few. That's a car market that's only about 11 million cars in and amongst the 90 million. Naturally, that market sees more volatility.
We look at our end markets, and we see markets both growing at 20% a year, but also seeing markets that aren't necessarily seeing any growth at all. We're used to dealing with volatility in our end markets, and our business is structured to accommodate for that. We have flexibility in how we, how we respond. If there is a global downturn in the context of the geopolitical environment that we're seeing today, then our business will respond accordingly. We'll flex our cost base, we'll flex our supply, and we'll flex the products we offer into our customers to make sure we are most relevant in that particular moment. That's our role in the value chain, and that's what we are what we are good at doing.
Thanks, Adrian. A follow-up on that. On FX, how sensitive is the business to currency fluctuations given current global issues and our global footprint?
We think about FX in two ways. I'll describe both. Firstly, there's transactional FX. Many of our businesses around the world buy cars in Japanese yen, renminbi, US dollar, or euros, the major currencies of the world. Then we sell them in our local currencies, whether it be Colombian peso, Chilean peso, Aussie dollars, or euros. Our business takes hedging positions to eradicate effectively the short-term volatility you see, because we're of a view philosophically that structural shifts in FX rates end up in price, be it good or bad news, for pricing for consumers in the end market, and consumers in our markets understand that. From a transla- Effectively, that is all margin agnostic.
It's built into our cost of operating, so you shouldn't see any impact on our trading results. From a translation perspective, part of the Inchcape model is that we have businesses around the world, and that means we have profit centers in different different currencies. Australian dollar, euro, U.S. dollar, Chilean peso are the major currencies. We do give a guide on the translation effect of shifts in those against our reporting currency of the pound, where broadly speaking, a 1% move is the equivalent to GBP 1 million of translational impact, headwind or tailwind. There is another disclosure in our annual report and accounts around those currencies that represent a 1% move, that represents around GBP 500,000 .
We give guidance at the end of every year on the impact of those translational effects on our currency, but it does flow to results, good and bad.
Great. Thank you very much. Another one for you, I think here, Adrian on remuneration incentivization, h ow invested are the management team and how are you remunerated relative to the success of the business?
I would say that both Duncan and I, and the majority of, and the management team across the group are heavily incentivized around our medium-term framework. You'll note there are a number of components to that medium-term framework, but fundamentally it's all about driving EPS growth. Some of the changes we've made in recent years are very consistent with that, where we have EPS as the lead indicator. We also have free cash flow and return on capital employed, but EPS is the predominant and majority of our incentive program.
More recently, you'll see some changes that are coming where we'll introduce a TSR measure, which will closer align Duncan and I, and the management team's experience with that of shareholders. That's going forward in April for a vote at the AGM and has been consulted through our RemCo chair with directly with some of our shareholders. I would say very highly incentivized, very well aligned to our medium-term targets and fully invested.
Great. Thank you very much. Couple of questions on EVs. Do you see EVs an opportunity or a threat in the business, and then what are the different rates of EV rollout in the various regions and markets? Maybe that's one for you, Duncan. Then in terms of profitability of EVs, are they more or less profitable for distributors compared to ICE vehicles?
Okay. Thank you, Will. What's very clear is the pace of move, of a market move to EV is different by market. You see some of our markets with less than 1% EV penetration. You see other markets that are 86% penetration with EV. Each moves at a different pace. It's our role to make sure we have a portfolio of brands that is able to move at the pace that a market moves to a lower carbon future. It means we have to have hybrid products and EV products from our OEM partners in each of those markets. I don't see it necessarily as a threat. We need to make sure that we are moving at the right pace, and it's largely about OEM portfolio end markets.
Great. Thank you. Profitability?
Profitability. Look, our role is to provide our OEMs with a route to market, whether it be for ICE cars, hybrid cars, or EV cars, and our approach with that is very consistent with, as we've brought in different products. From a margin perspective on vehicles, it's largely agnostic. We are agnostic to those aspects. You tend to find EVs have a slightly higher selling price, but from a percentage perspective it's very consistent. From an aftersales perspective, it's a very important part of our value chain and value equation. There's a few offsets.
I think naturally the amount of gross profit available in the near term on EVs is a bit lower with fewer moving parts, but we expect EVs to stay in the value chain effectively for a longer period of time due to the complexity of them, and those two things will offset against each other.
One last-
Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
No, I was saying but that dynamic has quite a long way to play out given that only 4% of our sales are EVs.
Very good. Thank you. Couple more questions, one on medium-term guidance. What's the biggest risks to achieving the 3%-5% volume growth, for or top-line growth over the, over the coming years?
Me to take that?
Sure.
The 3%-5% volume growth is made up of two components. One, there is market momentum. We think our markets in aggregate will grow between 1%-2% on a compound basis. That's gonna be a mixture of + 10s and +20s and - 10s and -20s, 'cause we know all of our markets are volatile. And then because of the contracts we've been winning, and we've won over 50 of them in the last 3 or 4 years, we would anticipate our market, our business to outperform, as we did last year when, where our volumes grew 3% in a market that grew 2%.
In terms of risks to that, I think, look, you know, the market, you know, big component of our growth is going to be the market and how that moves, and whilst we accept there's volatility, we also do expect with our markets being typically seeing higher GDP growth environments and lower motorization rates, we do expect them over the longer term to grow. I would say the biggest risk to that is we don't see that growth in our markets and in our broad footprint. Ultimately, this is a diversified business.
We've got presence in over 40 markets with an appetite for organic growth and the potential for us to Inorganic growth, I should say, and the potential to expand that footprint to create diversification, which will create that sort of growth driver that underpins 3%-5% volume growth.
Thanks very much, Adrian. Couple more final questions. The share pricing is relatively cheap compared to the cash generated by the business. What do you think the market is discounting or missing about Inchcape?
Look, I think there's a little bit of uncertainty about global autos, Rob.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe a little bit about certain emerging markets. Look, fundamentally, if we look inside our company, the midterm targets we put in place in March of last year, said we're gonna grow EPS by greater than 10% per annum. We have to continue to put scores on the doors. We've delivered year one of our Accelerate+ targets. Adrian and I and the team have to come back and do exactly the same in 2026, and 2027, and 2028, just to reinforce what a great investment proposition this company is. The reason I say that is, of course, we did see EPS come down a little bit in 2024 before it went back up. We have to consistently knock the ball out the park on EPS growth.
Very good. Thank you. Final question. 10 contracts won last year. What's the outlook for contracts going forward? You've got new distribution contracts.
Look, a few things. We have won an awful lot of contracts over the last years. A lot of it, of course, with Chinese OEMs as they have moved out of China pretty aggressively. We've gone through that contracting period. Generally, I'd like us to win high single-digit numbers of contracts each year, depending on where we are. It'll be a bit lumpy, Rob. Don't expect us to be winning just under 1 per month to give us our, you know, around 10 or so per annum. They are a bit lumpy.
Got it. Very good. That was all the questions. Duncan, I don't know if you had, wanted to sum up for 30 seconds.
Very good. Thanks, Rob. Thank you, Adrian. Look, we had a good 2025. We delivered EPS growth of 13%. Business, we have good momentum in Europe and Africa, good momentum in the Americas. We've got all sorts of good things going on in APAC to get that business back to where we want it to be, and our objective is to grow EPS by greater than 10% in 2026. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you to the management team for joining us today. That concludes the Inchcape Investor Presentation. Please take a moment to complete a short survey following this event. The recording of this presentation will be made available on Engage Investor. I hope you enjoyed today's webinar.