Good morning and welcome to the International Workplace Group first quarter trade-in update. Hosting today's call will be Mark Dixon and Charlie Steel. This call is being recorded, and I'll turn the call over to Mark to begin. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning and many thanks for joining us today to listen to our results for the first quarter of 2025. As the global market leader, we've continued to build our network and with that, a moat around our business as we continue to sign and open significant numbers of locations to grow our network and the platform for our customers and our partners alike. To put the scale of the growth into context, in the last 12 months, we've added more locations to our network than several of our closest competitors combined have in total. The commercial market itself is changing as more and more companies and workers want to move to a more flexible, more platform way of working, and that is continuing in spite of some of the stories you may read online or in the press about people coming back to offices per se.
They are coming back to offices, but those offices are in completely different places to where they were before. The real change is people using technology to do commuting rather than bringing everyone together in inconvenient locations. More people are working on platform. In fact, also there is a growth in home working, but home working more and more is about support workers, back office people, very easily manageable jobs that can be done from anywhere, and that continues to grow. It is a significant part of the growth of our business in the service area. What we do is good for companies. Why do they seek it out? They are looking to become more capital-like, pretty much universally, they are trying to become more capital-like.
I had a meeting with the CFO of one of the largest companies in the world, in fact, certainly one of the ones with the strongest cash flow, tech business, huge cash flow, even though they want to be capital-light. They just do not want to be spending capital on things other than their core business. They want to be capital-light, they want to rentalize more of the cost, and they certainly do not want long-term liabilities of any kind on their balance sheets. This, by the way, was a company reporting under U.S. GAAP. IFRS 16 customers are even more aware of the problem of balance sheet risk and balance sheet liabilities. They also want flexibility in terms of where they can put their workers, where they can hire people, and also just to have outright flexibility in terms of whatever liabilities they take on.
We're very much in the right place at the right time. The overall trend towards a more outsourced and capital-light world is very much what we're part of. It's clear that for workers, it's also a great thing. If you can give people back an hour or two hours a day, less commuting, you will clearly get workers that are happier. Many, many studies now show that workers are more productive if their commute is less. It's not about homework or office work. That sort of dialogue and narrative really is really off the market. It's not what our customers are saying. If we then look at the investment side of our business, which is working with partners to grow the network, here we continue to see very strong demand.
Our investor partners, the people that own the buildings and invest in the buildings, can very much see our type of activity as being a good long-term investment that provides superior returns to whatever else they could do with the building. That continues to grow, and you can see that in this quarter result numbers. We have got a unique proposition both from our partner side of the business, but also from the customer side of the business and the user side of the business. We have got excellent momentum, and you can see that in these Q1 results.
You can also find more and more research papers, and it is well worth looking at them as they talk to this movement in workplace, which is about it becoming more outsourced, about it becoming more and more about platform working as opposed to everyone being asked to come to a single place. Very much they are talking about it becoming the norm for a large percentage of the workforce. Not for everyone, but a large percentage. Remember, there are two competing narratives here. One is property owners saying everyone is going to come back to city centers. The other narrative, which is the more researched one, is about how workers want to work and how companies want to support their people. What is clearly happening in our business and with our customers, and we have hundreds of customer conversations every day with significant corporations, is this is what they want.
This is the way they are moving. Quite big changes in the macro at the beginning of this year with tariffs and more uncertainty. Look, so far we have not seen any changes, but we remain cautious. We have seen the opposite to negative effects. We actually saw record inquiries and sales in March. I think it is too early to say whether that is as a result of companies seeking flexibility because they do not know, or was it just a good month? We are obviously very happy with that, but we do remain cautious in terms of the sort of global macro. We can see that whilst that may affect demand at some point, it is not affecting demand at the moment. We think it will also help us get more supply.
We think that less companies want to seek out longer-term contracts, will move more to the flexible, and owners will see that. Owners of buildings will look to other options such as ours to create cash flow on their existing investments. Market potential here, we've said it many times, it is huge. It's not getting any smaller. We're well positioned to capture the market, and we are doing so in network growth and continued revenue growth. We're very happy with this quarter. We're very happy with the momentum in particular as we kick off the year. We think it's another important step forward on the journey. We continue to deliver, which is something that Charlie and Richard and I have talked about pretty much every quarter now for several years.
We can see the business working on all levels with network growing, coverage growing, fee revenue growing, and most importantly, in these uncertain times, and I say at all times, is increased cash flow production. All the while focusing on returning cash to shareholders. Remember, the business generates cash, doesn't consume much cash these days. It gives us the options now to continue with our progressive dividend policy and include the share buyback, which we announced this morning that we will extend. Charlie will talk about this more to $100 million. System-wide revenue up 2%. We're very happy with that. Capitalized strategy continues to deliver. Lots of new locations signed. We're catching up more and more with the openings, which is what's important. Critically, converting openings into full centers, which create revenue, which drive the fees. All of that good in that area.
Company-owned up 3% on open centers. Remember, this is all about margin target, and we continue to edge closer to our target margin here, which is 30%. With that, I will not talk about any more numbers, Charlie. I will leave that to you. Charlie Steel, our CFO, is going to run through a bit more detail in the numbers.
Great. Thanks very much, Mark. As Mark said, Q1 saw revenue momentum year- over- year, and we delivered system-wide revenue of $1.057 billion, representing 2% growth. Our business continues to deliver in line with what we have previously communicated to the market. That is fee income growth in managed and franchised, margin growth in company-owned as Mark just mentioned, and cash flow generation continues to deliver. More signings and openings in 2025 than 2024 so far, and we continue to see that momentum going into April as well. In line with our capital allocation policy, we're sharing the proceeds of our business with debt and equity holders whilst maintaining a commitment to the investment-grade BBB flat credit rating. Our managed and franchised business delivered year-over-year system revenue growth of 23%, driving fee income growth of 44% or $23 million. System revenue is evolving as expected.
As we previously outlined, it takes an average of 10 months in signing to opening and then a further 18 months to revenue maturity. We exited Q1 2025 with 44% more rooms open than at the end of Q1 2024, with over 200,000 rooms, and we have signed a further 192,000 rooms that are not yet open. RevPAR is also evolving as expected. The results of this pipeline is that once all of these nearly 400,000 rooms have opened and matured, the system revenue generated by the managed and franchised business is expected to be $1.5 billion per year, which in turn will generate a very healthy fee income and cash flow. The company-owned division saw a return to reported revenue growth driven by 3% growth in revenue from open centers.
As we said previously, and as Mark just mentioned as well, we'll continue to manage the estate for margin, and margins continue to expand on a year-over-year basis. Note that we continue to sign and open new locations in this business, but the vast majority of these have no CapEx requirements to the company and no minimum leases. In line with our guidance, re-signing and opening more locations in 2025 than 2024, we signed 6% more locations across the IWG network in Q1 and opened 16% more as we continue to expand our networking coverage. Digital and professional services saw underlying revenue growth of 2%. Reported revenues have been impacted by the exited contract that we've mentioned before. It is worth noting this contract will impact reported revenues throughout 2025, but the impact by Q4 will be minimal and has been minimal in Q1 as well.
Our capital allocation policy has been very clear since its introduction at the investor in December 2023. Cash generation has improved markedly, and it's pleasing to report that net debt has fallen by $83 million since the end of Q1 2024 and fell further during the first quarter of 2025 to $708 million, despite the $10 million of shares we bought back in Q1. This strong cash generation and deleveraging has resulted in the group increasing the size of the buyback from the already announced $50 million to $100 million this morning. Whilst the group's activities are not directly impacted by trade tariffs, we are cautious given the macroeconomic uncertainty and volatility. As Mark mentioned earlier, we've not seen any impact on our business.
March is a record sales month in the U.S. and globally, and lead indicators such as tours and inquiries are at an all-time high in the U.S. Accordingly, we reiterate our guidance as outlined with the full year results on the 4th of March. That is that we expect pre-IFRS 16 EBITDA for 2025 to be in the range of $580-$620 million on a constant currency basis. Net debt to EBITDA as a ratio continues to fall. Center openings and signings above the 2024 levels. We maintain our commitment to maintaining an investment-grade credit rating at BBB flat and medium-term EBITDA guidance of $1 billion. We expect U.S. GAAP to be implemented for the half-year 2025 results, and we will host investor workshops to discuss the impact of these changes before the interim results. Thank you very much for that.
Now with that, we hand over to Q&A.
Thank you, Charlie. If you would like to ask a question, please click on the raise hand icon. Once you hear your name, you'll be prompted to unmute your microphone before asking your question. We'll now take a few moments to collect your questions. Our first question comes from Michael Donnelly. Please, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Mark, the last time you spoke to us, you mentioned some exciting projects in workplace consulting that I think no one else was doing at the time. Can you talk to us about how that demand specifically is developing within digital services over the first quarter?
It's looking short. It's quite small. Charlie, numbers there, I think it makes five or six million, something like that.
It's a few million. It's definitely not double-digit millions.
No, it's sort of single-digit millions. But we're only doing it today here, Michael, in the U.S. and the U.K. We're expanding that globally. So look, consulting is not necessarily a high-margin business, but it's a business that generates more business for the group. So whilst it's profitable, it's more people-intensive, but it sort of helps companies make the change from doing what they were doing to a new sort of outsourced platform, and it's very useful from that point of view.
Got it. That's great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Daniel Cowan. Your line is now open. Please remember to unmute. Your question, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, gents. Two questions, please. Firstly, on net debt and the share buybacks, where would you think we should think about net debt for the year-end this year based on the new share buyback amount you've announced this morning? The second question is on fee income within the company-owned segment, please. I remember that in 2024, that was down year- on- year. Have you seen growth reemerge in that segment in Q1 following the normalization last year, please?
Yes. So down, first of all, on the net debt, I'd expect net debt at year-end to be around the $700 million mark. As I said, we continue to expect deleveraging on a net debt to EBITDA basis throughout this year, but we'll see the majority of that deleveraging coming from EBITDA growth rather than net debt reduction. However, as we say in the statement, and this is very important, if we start to see changes in the cash flow generation of the business, we'd slow down the share buyback to maintain that deleveraging profile and the credit rating. Those two things trump the rate of share buybacks. As I've said so far, we're not seeing that, and that's the reason why we've increased the share buyback today.
In terms of the fee income, I think you said fee income within company-owned, so I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about. Are you talking about the capital light centers within company-owned or something else?
No, no. I just recall that in addition to the workstation revenue, that you also have the ancillary services that you charge to your tenants. That is what I'm asking about specifically, the sort of fees for ancillary services, please.
Overall, Charlie, the answer is with 3% up open center on an open center basis. There are your 3% up revenue. You have closures and openings in there. The important thing on there is the progress of the margin. That is what that focus should be. If you have 3% open center revenue growth, that is helpful.
I think, Dan, when you're thinking about the ancillary revenue that goes with the company-owned revenue, that's been performing very well. We've seen some good momentum, in particular, around things like short-term meetings and office space as well.
Fantastic.
Thank you. Thank you.
Our next question is from Steve Wolff. Please unmute your microphone before asking your question.
Steve, I meant Steve. Are you there?
Yep, that might help. There we go. Hi, all. Just to follow up on that company-owned section, the open center growth of 3%. Just trying to get a sense of where that might have come from, improvements in utilization, whether that's pricing. Any comments around pricing, where rent has gone up to help alongside that margin point. The 3%, any breakdown you can give of that to start with. The evolution of the managed and franchised. Are we still seeing that principally coming from the developments of landlords, or has there been a sort of higher uptake of the private entrepreneurs section? Thirdly, in terms of the pricing overall, any thoughts you could give there. The regional expansion on the managed and franchised. Is that still principally America?
Would we put 50% of that in the U.S., or is it far more broad than that? Thanks.
I'll go on the back ones first. Charlie, I'll go. It's mostly landlords, Steve, not private. You've got people coming back and doing more, but they're mainly landlords. We are expanding the type of landlords. We're getting some really good traction here with repeat business and new entrants. The makeup of the growth is changing in a good way. We're still doing a large number in the United States, but we're starting to now see more accelerated signatures, for example, in larger Europe and some parts of Asia. We're starting to get more of a balance. I think it's fair to say, Charlie, just trying to remember the numbers, that it was more than half would have come from the U.S.
Now, whilst the U.S. is still doing really good numbers, it's balanced up where we've got more network growth coming in Europe and some Asian countries, which is exciting. What we've done here is there's more investment gone in, and we've improved the management, many, many things, actually, to pick those up in these countries. It is changing in a good way. Overall, the key thing is to keep the growth rates improving wherever possible. Our ambition is to do in excess of what we're doing at the moment. Whilst we're saying, I think this year, Charlie, what's that guidance here?
It's just higher than last year.
Higher than last year. Again, we'd like to do that more. Remember, this is quite a new program. What is it? Two years old, two and a half years old. We keep improving it. Some of the improvements, we've invested more in the team and in the structure, and we've learned more about it. That's starting to come through in improved numbers. That's good. I think coming back to the increase in revenue, it's a bit of everything. It's a big mix thing, but it's a bit of price, Charlie, a bit of occupancy, and a bit of service. I mean, 3% small, but it's helpful. The key thing is costs. Charlie, what are we saying about costs?
We haven't given any cost guidance, but where we are on cost so far is pretty much flat year- over- year at the moment.
Overall, Steve, and this is, again, we're very focused on the costs, and we've got rents are not necessarily moving in an upwards direction, let's say. Some are. Again, it's all mixed. It's all to do with inflation, index leases, not index leases. Overall, increases are being absorbed by decreases and better cost control and all sorts of things. The key thing is translating performance into higher margin from the company-owned. It's a key deliverable for us over the next couple of years.
Perfect. That's great. Thanks, Mark.
Finally on that, I say again, within the company-owned, you've got things closing and things opening. We're not breaking those out. We look at that, but we're not sort of trying to bore our investors with asking them to look at it. You're improving the quality of the company-owned the whole time by adding things in that are much more like management contracts. They have a lot of very attractive aspects and very low, if not no CapEx. The CapEx is the thing that's really different. Anything to add, Charlie, on that?
Yeah, nothing else to add.
Okay, thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please click on the raise hand icon. Our next question comes from Samuel Dindol. Please unmute your microphone before asking your question.
Morning, guys. Hopefully, you can hear me.
Yep.
Brilliant. Thank you. Two questions from me, please. Firstly, on digital professional services, are you able to give a sense of what's going on under the surface? I mean, if the worker app's now up and running or any color you can give there, that'd be great. Secondly, on the buyback, should we see that as an ongoing program and you're sort of incrementally adding to it through the years as your cash flow continues to improve through the evolution of the business? Or any thoughts on that would be great. Thank you.
Charlie, do you want to do buyback, and I'll do pro services?
On the buyback, we definitely do want to see that as an ongoing program. I'd love to increase it again. When we first announced the $50 million at the full year, we just wanted to get going with it, show that we can buy back a decent amount of shares. We've shown that we can do that already. It would be wonderful to be able to announce further buybacks at the half year if we feel confident with that program.
Just dealing with the professional services part and digital, lots of activity here, Simon. We are getting some good traction that will give us more revenue growth as we go through the year. We have invested more. We have saved some costs. We have streamlined some of the operations. We are confident this not only is a very important part of the overall offer, that it will become a sort of third leg, as we said from the beginning, of revenue growth and profit contribution in the years to come. The short answer here is we are gaining momentum. It will take time for that to come through into the numbers. You have certainly got legacy things that we have to keep talking about. Underlying, I think this business is now starting to look in great shape. There are multiple platforms, just to be clear. It is not one platform.
There are lots of them. The key thing here is sort of app usage and more companies taking the app. That is what counts here.
Brilliant. Thank you.
We talked earlier, I talked about consulting. If you go back to the previous results for the full year, you'll see on there an excerpt from our sort of presentation to customers. There you'll see the whole range of services that we do. Now, what's happening is customers are buying more and more of the range. They're less seeing us as a space provider and a service provider only. They're starting to buy the fuller range of the offer. We can see quite strong demand here. It takes time to convert this into real revenue improvements.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have no further questions. I'll now hand back to Mark for closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you all very much for joining us this morning. As usual, we'll be available for questions and follow-ups as and when required. Appreciate your time. Thanks very much.
Thank you. This now concludes the update.