Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Keller 2026 Capital Markets Day. I think I recognize pretty well everybody in the room, but for anybody who does not know who I am, I am James Wroath, and I am the CEO of Keller. I hope that watching that film you can share the enthusiasm and the confidence that I have for the future of Keller and in the difference that we make out into the world. When you see that video on our webcast later, unfortunately, we cannot keep that music. The fees for doing it get too expensive but thank you to Nicola for making a great music choice to accompany it as well. Thank you everybody for joining the Keller Capital Markets Day. Thank you especially to those of you who have traveled to be here in person.
I know we have got people joining online and hopefully lots of people will watch the recording in the future. Keller does something that is technically demanding, physically difficult and absolutely essential. We help create the infrastructure that people rely upon, the roads and railways that they travel on, and the buildings in which they live and work. And yet we do this at the same time as creating value through really specialist engineering. However, I would say that even among people who followed Keller for many years, and there are lots of people in the room in that camp, there is not always a full understanding of what we do and why we are different or what the opportunity looks like that is ahead of us. Today, the team and I and the presenters that you will see, we want to change that.
Okay. So how are we going to achieve that?
The first thing that we want to do is to explain. We are not going to be able to turn everybody in this room into a geotechnical engineer by the end of the afternoon. Brent from our team will probably tell you that it takes a little longer than a couple of hours of the Capital Markets Day to do that. But we do want you to understand what Keller does, why our work matters, and where we really add value. The second thing we want to do is we want to position. And we want to demonstrate why Keller can deliver organic revenue growth in the range of 5%-7% over the medium term while sustaining our group operating margin of around 7%. And both numbers really matter to us. This is not a plan that depends on continual margin expansion.
It is a plan to sustain the stronger specialist margin we have and grow the business from that base. The third thing we want to do today, I hope, is to excite you. We believe we have got attractive markets, an excellent portfolio, a strong management team, and the financial capacity to invest. I want all of you to leave today sharing the confidence and the excitement we feel about what this business can become. And to do that, we have got a pretty full agenda for you. We are going to begin by explaining a bit more about who we are, what we do, and where we fit in general, into the construction industry. David is then going to join me to bring the financial and the commercial perspective. We are then going to go deeper into our strategy.
We want to show you what we do, where we do it, and how we do it really well. Because the compounding conclusion from that story, we believe, is there are lots of opportunities for our growth. For the strategy section, I'm going to take you through our portfolio, Brent will explain the operating capabilities behind our performance, and then I'll return to set out the growth opportunity and the pipeline. In many ways as a business, we're all about geology and geography, the what we do and the where. When it comes to geography, we may be global in reach, but I'm sure you've all heard us say many times our markets are local. They're very local.
That's why after the break, we've got Scott, Peter and Deepak showing how our model works in their specific markets in North America, Europe and the Middle East, and Asia Pacific. Then finally, David will bring it all together in a financial framework and our medium-term targets. Then we'll finish with questions. All of today's presenters will join me on the stage for us to do that. Then for those of you that can, after that, there'll be some drinks afterwards and the team will be around to have individual discussions. Okay. Let's start with the basics. Who are we? What do we do? Why does it matter? Keller is the world's largest specialist geotechnical contractor. We design and build foundations. We strengthen and we improve ground, and we remediate contaminated sites so that land is safe and ready to be built upon.
We employ approximately 10,000 people. We work on around 5,500 projects each year. Our operations span 35 countries using a fleet of approximately 1,100 specialist rigs and pieces of equipment. In 2025, the group generated GBP 3.1 billion of revenue and GBP 218 million of operating profit. That scale that we have gives us access to people, to equipment, engineering expertise and techniques that smaller competitors cannot easily reproduce. But the word that I really want to emphasize is specialist. We're not simply another general construction company. We operate in a technically demanding part of the construction process where knowledge, judgment and execution matter enormously. We also operate against clear values: safety, people, excellence, and integrity. They shape how we select, design, and deliver our work. The map on this slide is also important because it shows our global-local dynamic. We operate in 35 carefully chosen countries.
We're not trying to plant a Keller flag everywhere. We choose markets where we build strong local positions and where we can manage contractual risk, and importantly, where we can operate within reliable legal and payment frameworks to earn an appropriate return. North America is the anchor of the group, representing just under 60% of our revenue, and we do see significant further opportunity there. But more than 40% of the business lies across Europe, the Middle East, and APAC, giving us exposure to different economies and patterns of construction demand. Keller is a genuine portfolio business. It's diversified across where we operate, what we do, and the work that we undertake. This slide sets out the investment case that we want to prove today. We're a diversified and sector-agnostic portfolio with strong commercial and operational execution. We have local focus combined with the power of our scale.
We have attractive long-term growth drivers and a track record of strong margins, cash generation, and returns. Keller has not held a Capital Markets Day since 2017, and we have not previously given this kind of medium-term framework. Today, we are setting out why we believe Keller can deliver organic revenue growth of 5%-7% a year and to sustain an operating margin of around 7% while maintaining those strong returns and cash generation. Therefore, the central question for the day is pretty simple: Why should you believe we can both grow at that rate and not compromise on the quality and the discipline of the business? Everything that follows today is intended to answer that question. As I have just said, we have a team globally of 10,000 colleagues, but this is our executive team. Success in Keller is very much a team activity, and it is a team responsibility.
This group of people combines deep Keller experience with important newer perspectives. Scott, Peter, and Deepak, as I have said, lead our three divisions. Together with Brent, they bring almost 70 years of Keller experience, and Brent leads our construction capability globally. David has been central to the improvement in the group's financial and commercial discipline. This team is supported by leaders responsible for people, safety, technology, communications, legal, and governance. Some of these people have spent decades with Keller, others bring experience from outside the group, and that balance gives us deep knowledge of the business and a willingness to challenge how things have traditionally been done. You are going to hear from many of them, as you have seen on the agenda, directly today.
Just briefly, because today is, of course, mostly about looking forward, but it is worth a few words about our heritage because many of the capabilities supporting future growth have been built over the 160 years of Keller history. Johann Keller founded the company in Renchen in Germany in 1860, and on that same site, our KGS business still designs and manufactures specialist machinery today. The acquisition of Hayward Baker is also worth highlighting in 1984 because it established the foundations of the North American business that we have today. Keller's history combines engineering innovation, local entrepreneurship, and acquisition. The most relevant thing is that all three of those remain essential to our strategy today. I also wanted to highlight at this point the whole area of acquisition, because acquisition is also not something that just sits at the edge of Keller's history.
It is one of the principal ways that this group has been built. Keller has acquired strong local companies with specialist people, with customer relationships, market knowledge, and techniques. Our more recent success has been in bringing those businesses together more effectively. They have retained the local identity and relationships that has made them so successful, but they have also now shared expertise, equipment, customers, and opportunity more readily across the group. That is central to the improvement in performance, and it is why selective bolt-on M&A can still create further value. Before we look further forward, I am going to ask David to come up now to take you through the financial journey that has brought us here. David.
Thank you, James. I have had the privilege, and thankfully only occasionally the stress, of living through the last six years of this journey. This chart goes back to Keller's listing in 1994 and shows a business that has grown substantially through very different economic and construction cycles. The dotcom downturn, the financial crisis, and the pandemic all had an impact. Keller is exposed to construction activity, so we are not immune when the world stops building. From a medium and longer-term perspective, our revenue has resiliently grown, matched by cash generation as we have maintained and grown the ordinary dividend every year since listing. Furthermore, we are not tied to one construction subsector. Our broad range of techniques and local operations allow us to move towards the activity taking place across the markets we serve. The more recent chapter is particularly important.
Between 2021 and 2025, underlying operating profit increased from EUR 89 million- EUR 218 million, average annual growth of approximately 25%. The current consensus estimate for 2026 is around EUR 242 million. Over the same period, the group operating margin moved from around 4% to circa 7%, where it has remained in recent years. That improvement did not happen by accident. We shaped the portfolio, changed the commercial structure, strengthened execution, and brought the businesses together more effectively. This slide shows the result. This next slide explains why we believe the improvement is structural rather than temporary. There are four principal elements. First, portfolio optimization. We exited subscale and low-return markets where the balance of risk and reward was not attractive. We were prepared to give up revenue where the quality of that revenue was not good enough. Second, commercial discipline.
We introduced more rigorous risk-adjusted pricing, shifted the culture from volume towards margin and return, and strengthened the bid review process for larger and more complex work. Third, operational excellence. We improved project execution and consistency and materially reduced the number of loss-making contracts. With the scale of profitability we are now achieving, individual project issues no longer have such a volatile impact as would have been the case in the past. Fourthly, integration and large project capability. The clearest example is One Keller in North America, which brought the U.S. Foundations businesses together through structural management and cultural change. They now share customers, people, equipment, and technical expertise far more effectively. These four changes reinforce one another. Better portfolio choices concentrate management time and capital where we are strongest. Better commercial discipline ensures that risk is understood and properly priced.
Better execution delivers the return we priced. Integration allows us to use Keller scale where it creates genuine advantage. That is how we moved from a margin of around 4% to circa 7%. Because these changes are now embedded in how the business is managed, we believe around 7% is a sustainable specialist margin and not simply a temporary peak. The improvements we have made on margin have translated into bottom-line growth. Since listing, Keller has grown revenue, operating profit, and shareholder distributions very materially. More recently, shareholders have benefited from total shareholder returns of approximately 30% per annum over the last five years. The direction is clear. The business has grown, the quality of earnings has improved, cash generation has strengthened, and shareholder distributions have increased. The platform we have today is therefore a much stronger one than Keller had several years ago.
Our responsibility now is to preserve the discipline that created that improvement while using the platform to grow. James is going to explain more about what Keller does and why its specialist position supports these economics. James, back to you.
Thanks, David. Okay, so you've seen how the financial performance has developed. Let me now take us a little bit more below ground and try and make what we do more tangible. So at a very high level, our role can have three parts. We have engineering and design, we have construction, and we have monitoring and quality control. The construction work falls into five broad categories that the team are going to describe a few times today in more detail as we go through the presentation. Under those categories sit different techniques, again, many of which you'll see and hear about later. But beyond the complexity of that, our job is pretty straightforward. We need to understand the ground, we need to understand what the customer wants to put on it, and then design and build a safe, cost-effective, and environmentally responsible solution.
At this point, though, I just wanted to mention our Suncoast business. Those of you who know us well will know this is our post-tensioning steel business in the U.S. It's a great business, and Scott's going to talk about it a bit more later on when we get to the North America section. But what Suncoast does, and the products that it sells, are fundamentally different from our core foundations and ground improvement business. Suncoast sits outside of the solutions that I've just described. We've therefore decided to exclude it from a lot of the data that we talk about today because it behaves quite different to the majority. But I wanted to reiterate it does remain an important part of the Keller Group. Okay, so this is where the specialist knowledge begins.
Above ground, we need to understand the structure, we need to understand local regulations, supply chain, and construction practices. Below ground, we need to understand the geology to understand what groundwater conditions are like, what seismic conditions are like, and if there's any potential contamination. All of these things can vary enormously. They can obviously vary enormously within a country, but they can also vary within a state, and they can even sometimes vary within a single site. So the crucial question for us as a business is not whether the customer is building a hospital or a data center, a bridge, or an industrial facility. It's what's happening below the surface, and what does the structure that's being put on it require from it? Our local teams build up decades of knowledge of those conditions, of their customers, and construction practices.
But as I have mentioned local quite a few times, at this point, you might be asking, if all of this knowledge is so local, what is the point in having a global Keller Group? The answer to that, I think, is fairly simple. It is because of the group creating a multiplier effect. Expertise that we develop in one market can be deployed in another. Specialist engineers can support a branch on an unfamiliar challenge. Equipment and techniques can move to where demand is strongest. So local knowledge is the starting point, but global capability strengthens that. In terms of the whole construction industry overall, where does Keller fit in? Our work generally represents only around 0.5%-1.5% of a total build cost. But it de-risks approximately 85% of the structures and finishes spend that follow after.
Also in 2025, total construction spend in Keller's markets was more than GBP 6 trillion. So even around 1%, if anybody is underwhelmed by the 1%, is still a pretty meaningful number. We are one of the first contractors on site, and once our work is complete, the rest of the structure is obviously built on top of it. But that means that if a building has a problem with its windows or similar, they can be replaced. It might be an expensive process to do that, it might be quite disruptive, but it is possible. But if the ground solution beneath a completed building is wrong, remediation is significantly more difficult, and at the extreme, the whole project can be quite literally undermined. So when customers buy from us, they are not simply buying piles or grouting or ground improvement, they are buying certainty for their project.
That means that we may be a small part of total cost, as this graph says, but we are mighty in terms of the consequence that we have on the process. That is why specialist knowledge, dependable execution really matter, and why I believe that Keller earns margins that are more akin to a specialist rather than a general contractor. The main thrust of this or point of this slide is also really important to me. At Keller, we self-perform. So there are a lot of construction businesses in the world who primarily design, procure, and manage third parties. That is absolutely not Keller's model. We are doers. We employ the people who design and deliver the solution, and 1,700 of them are qualified engineers. We own and operate equipment, and we are physically on-site carrying out the work. I think those qualities make Keller's work pretty AI-resistant.
We still need our people and our equipment to do the work that we do. It also means we are in control over much of our supply chain. Around half of the projects that we do are design and build. But whether or not Keller actually designed the original solution, we build what we commit to deliver. Our people, our in-house engineering expertise, and our rigs give us direct control over execution, and that is where Keller's scale begins to create a genuine advantage. We also serve a broad range of end markets. Keller is organized geographically, not by sector. We do not have a global data center division that can only work on data centers. We do not have a rail division that sits idly waiting for rail investment to show up.
A branch may work on a data center, it might work on a warehouse, a bridge, or an an industrial facility.
The end market changes, the local knowledge, the people, the equipment, and the techniques do not. That is what we mean when we talk a lot about sector agnosticism. It does not mean we are immune from construction cycles, but we are not wholly dependent on any one sector. As demand moves between the subsectors that sit under these main sectors, we can move towards it. Hopefully you now understand what we do and why the work matters. David is going to explain where we sit commercially, who buys from us, how we contract, and the competitive market in which we operate. David?
Thank you again, James. Approximately 75% of our work is for EPCs or general contractors responsible for the wider build. They engage Keller to deliver a discrete geotechnical package, either design and build or build only. The remaining approximately 25% is contracted directly with asset owners, particularly in sectors such as energy, resources, transport, and infrastructure. The commercial relationship matters because our work happens early. When we are involved before the solution is fully fixed, our engineers can often identify a safer, faster, or more economical approach. That creates value for the customer and gives Keller a better understanding of the technical and commercial risk before we price and commit. The strongest relationships are therefore built through technical credibility, early engagement, and dependable delivery over time. This next slide is central to understanding the quality and sustainability of our earnings.
At one end of the spectrum is fixed-price contracts, where the contractor accepts most of the risk and expects a higher margin. At the other end is cost-plus, where the owner retains more risk, and the contractor earns a lower margin. Keller typically operates between these extremes, estimating costs and pricing contracts with remeasurable bill of quantities. In simple terms, we take responsibilities for the risks we can control, particularly our own productivity. But we seek protection against risks that sit elsewhere, such as third-party delays, design changes, or material changes to scope. That discipline continues after a project is won. Teams measure productivity, cost to complete, cash variations, and key risks through regular project reviews. If conditions change, we assess and document the impact and agree the commercial treatment rather than allowing unpriced work to accumulate. Material issues are escalated early. The objective is not to avoid responsibility.
It is to ensure that the risk Keller accepts remains understood, controllable, and properly priced throughout delivery. We will not take every project at any price, and we will not accept risks we cannot manage simply to win work. That commercial discipline is one of the most important reasons the quality of our earnings has improved. Furthermore, given the portfolio of contracts, we are not reliant on any small few highly profitable contracts in any given year. This next slide is on the competitive landscape. The competitive market is highly fragmented. At one end are a small number of multinational specialists and integrated general contractors capable of bidding for the largest and most technically complex projects. Then there are the strong national and regional specialists, and beneath them, a long tail of local businesses focused on one or two techniques and most likely a particular city, state, or region.
These local businesses should not be underestimated. Many have excellent customer relationships, deep knowledge of local ground conditions, and low cost bases. As projects become larger, more technically demanding, or require several techniques, the competitive pool does become smaller. That is where Keller's combination of local presence and global capability becomes especially valuable. We can offer the responsiveness and knowledge of a local specialist supported by engineering breadth, specialist equipment, financial capacity, and resources from right across the group. That commercial context leads directly into the strategy James is now going to explain.
Thanks, David. Okay. We have described the business, we have described the customer proposition, and we have taken you through the commercial model. We are now going to spend some time diving deeper into our strategy for long-term value creation. Our portfolio gives us choices about where to compete and which capabilities, sectors, and project sizes to pursue. The performance part of this chart is our ability to convert those choices into attractive, sustainable returns through local knowledge, technical expertise, specialist assets, and disciplined execution. If you put the two of those things together, they create a pipeline of opportunities from which we can grow. Simply put, as the chart says, our portfolio multiplied by performance equals pipeline. I am going to begin by taking you through a bit more detail on portfolio. Brent is then going to show you what sits behind our performance.
Then I will return after that to explain how the two combine to produce our growth opportunities. Beginning with portfolio. Our portfolio is both a source of growth and a source of resilience. It lets us move towards attractive demand without becoming dependent on any single market or type of work. Whichever lens you use to look at our business, the portfolio is balanced. As I said earlier, North America is our largest division, but we do have meaningful further exposure across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific. Our business is also balanced across our product and service range, including Austral's broader civil and marine capability, which Deepak will talk to you a lot more about later. Finally, we serve a wide range of end markets with a balance of contract size.
That final dimension is particularly important to us. Small and medium projects keep branches close to customers, they support utilization, and they help us to develop our people. They also create relationships and local knowledge from which our larger opportunities often emerge. The larger projects allow us to deploy Keller's scale and expertise where they can create the greatest value. The strength of the business is in the combination, not in pursuing size for its own sake. This whole picture gives us selectivity. A business with only one technique or one sector or one project type may feel compelled to chase the work available to it. Within Keller, we have a much broader opportunity set. We can direct ourselves towards the work where our knowledge is strongest and the risk and returns are most attractive. Back to the map.
This map shows locations where we've chosen to operate. In some of these, we already have a leading position, such as parts of the U.S. and Australia, Canada, and Europe. But in many others, we have an established position with still meaningful room to grow. You will hear more about our locations in each region from our divisional presidents later. The opportunity is not simply to add more countries. It is to deepen our position within existing countries and local areas, building capability, competing for greater share, and applying more of Keller's technique portfolio. Selective acquisitions can accelerate that process where they add density, relationships, or capability, and I will talk more about acquisition and our strategy later. The map should therefore be read as an opportunity map. A clear part of the medium-term growth opportunity is straightforward growth within places where we already are.
I promise you, I am not going to read out every technique on this slide or take you through each one, but the point of putting them up there is to illustrate our breadth. There are many local competitors who will specialize and be really good at a small number of these techniques. But Keller can focus on the customer's problem rather than the product we happen to want to sell. We can value engineer an existing design, or we can propose a less materially intensive solution. We can combine these techniques and then self-perform the answer that we recommend. Combined with local knowledge and engineering expertise, this is a really powerful proposition, particularly on larger and more complex projects. When you look at the history, the broad mix of our core techniques has remained pretty consistent as Keller has grown. I think that tells us two things.
Demand for our principal solutions is enduring, and the growth story does not depend on one technique becoming unusually fashionable. Acquisitions such as Moretrench, RECON, and Austral have broadened the offering that we have, but the customer's ground conditions, the project needs, continue to determine the right answer. These three projects show the breadth in practice. At the Wharf in Washington, we combined eight different techniques to enable five mixed-use buildings. On the Bruce Highway in Queensland, six techniques were combined across several sites. In The Hague, a building I am sure many people are familiar with, construction of a tunnel beneath an important historical building required four techniques to investigate and strengthen the ground, to underpin the existing structure, and to monitor movement throughout the work. In all these examples, the customer did not need to assemble a different specialist for each element.
Keller was able to assess the challenge, combine the techniques, and take responsibility for delivery. That broadens our opportunity set and our ability to deliver the full solution gives us a genuine competitive edge. Again, I am sure you have heard David and I say this many times in meetings and discussions, but sector agnosticism is a key feature of the Keller business. As I explained in the opening, the same techniques and local capabilities can serve many end markets. The broad sector mix has remained relatively stable over the years, but the activity within it has shifted as demand moves. From warehouses post-COVID to data centers or between rail projects, roads, ports, and water. That is how Keller responds to changing demand without reinventing the underlying business. Turning to contract size, on this one, where there has been more of a visible change.
Projects worth more than GBP 10 million now represent approximately 28% of our revenue. As David explained earlier, stronger integration, particularly with our One Keller initiative in North America, has made us much better able to bring branches together and manage complex work at scale. Approximately 72% of the remainder of the portfolio remains with small and medium work. As I said earlier, that base still really matters. We have increased our capability at the top without abandoning the repeatable local work beneath it. That is really important from a risk perspective.
The larger work can create attractive economies of scale, longer utilization, while the broad base of smaller projects prevents the group becoming dependent on the timing or outcome of a handful of contracts. I-40 is a particularly powerful example of a portfolio and scale coming together. I am sure many of you have seen our two recent RNSs on this project. It is without question the largest project in Keller's history. In this instance, a long-standing local relationship created the opportunity. We were then able to mobilize people, equipment, and engineering support from across North America to respond to a critical infrastructure emergency and to earn significant repeat scope. Rather than me describing it further, let me show you through the power of video.
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The scale of that project is mind-blowing. David and I are, along with some others, going to see that for the first time in two weeks' time. Very much looking forward to seeing the super nasty, hard drilling that is on-site. Yeah, enormous scale and a perfect segue, really, into the next section of our presentation today, which is around performance, because you do not get awarded projects like I-40 without having really strong levels of performance. The strong portfolio that I have just taken you through gives us opportunities and choices, but it only actually creates any value if we can execute consistently and convert those opportunities that we have into sustainable returns. Over the past year, I have spent a lot of time getting under the skin of how Keller operates.
I have visited every one of our business units around the world, and what I have found universally to be true is a terrific business. Whether that is being on the Hudson River in New York with a project we were doing there or a port expansion near Chennai or a residential development in Warsaw, Poland. Everywhere I have been, I have seen advanced technical capability, high quality, and exceptional diligence, and I have seen and met people with extraordinary experience, commitment, and passion for what we do. I believe very strongly that Keller's current level of performance is repeatable, but I also want you to hear that from our Chief Construction Officer. Brent knows the business from the project site upwards, and he is responsible for the standards and capabilities supporting delivery across the group. Brent, over to you.
Thanks, James, and good afternoon. Like James said, my name is Brent Byford, Chief Construction Officer for Keller. I have been with Keller almost 20 years, and I have been in the general construction industry for over 25 years. We are going to start with talking about performance. There is a lot to see on this slide. What we want to do is we want to start in the center. Keller is a global company, but performance is created branch by branch and project by project, as has been described, by the local people who know the customer, they understand the ground conditions, and they take responsibility for the execution of that project. Around those branches, we also do bring the capability of the broader group, the specialist engineering we talked about, shared learnings, skilled people, and a market-leading fleet. We also bring more than 50 techniques.
I am not going to describe them all. Do not worry. We also bring KGS, which we will talk about, the use of technology, and an embedded approach to safety and sustainability. James has already shown you that our work represents a small share of the customer's cost, but it does remove a disproportionate amount of the risk. My job is to show you the capabilities behind that certainty and why disciplined project selection, accurate pricing, consistent execution, support the specialist margin. The operating flywheel is pretty straightforward. Local density creates more opportunities, more projects deepen our knowledge, better knowledge improves our design, pricing, and risk selection. The strong execution builds reputation and repeat business. That in turn improves our utilization of people and equipment. None of those are dramatic on its own, but like we said, we have 175 branches.
Over those 175 branches, it is very powerful. We can use Texas to show how this looks in reality. Everything is bigger in Texas, as everybody knows. Dallas and Austin, they share similar project types. The ground conditions are similar as well. You move across to Houston, and the soils are very different. Around Dallas, we work in clay, we work in rock, the big nasty drilling that James was talking about. Around Houston, though, we tend to deal with very soft soils. The solutions and the risks are different, and that is why the business cannot run effectively from a central office. Our 175 branches do build up decades of project history. What the ground looks like, the techniques that really work, where the risk tends to emerge, but most importantly, how those local customers operate.
The next project begins with what we learned in the last one. That improves our design, improves our pricing, most importantly, improves our project selection. It gives us the confidence to say no when we do not understand the risk or it is not properly rewarded. It also helps us move between sectors. That same local team can support a data center, an industrial facility, or an infrastructure project like I-40. The end markets change, but the branch's knowledge of the ground, the supply chain, and the customer base is what remains relevant. However, we do not want to portray that local means isolated. When branches face complex challenges, we draw on the specialist engineers, product teams, our vast equipment fleet, and the lessons we have learned across those 35 countries we work in.
A really good example of this is a project a few years ago in India, where the local business needed a technique that they did not routinely do. We brought in resources from the U.S. and from Europe to help work alongside the team to deliver that project successfully. That is the global scale in practice. It is not the center taking over, but specialist capability on demand and leaving local teams stronger afterwards. The same applies to our equipment and learning. Our machines can move across countries as demand changes. Our product teams work to ensure that one branch does not have to relearn a lesson we have already experienced. As we talk about all this, there is one thing that is evident for the entire discussion. People are the key. We do employ around 1,700 engineers.
They are supported by rig operators, field leaders, branch leaders. We invest in their development. That goes from technical trainings to operator trainings to project management and senior leadership, but includes practical programs that we do such as driller schools and project management academies. There is even structured development for senior leaders and future branch managers. Why does it matter? Specialist capability is not built. It takes years to build, sorry. It cannot simply be bought. We cannot just buy it when the market becomes busy. Equipment alone does not deliver the project. It is the judgment of the people using it. They have to react to ground conditions. They have to understand what is happening on site and know when to adjust, most importantly. But they do need the right tools. We do own approximately 1,100 rigs and cranes, but the advantage is not the number.
It's the breadth of the fleet. We can match the technique to the equipment and to the size of the project. Before I explain one distinctive part of our capability, let's hear from some of our talented people behind it.
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Yeah. So it is exciting. I think what is fun about it is if you knew any of these people, they could probably stand up here and talk to you for the next 5 hours about why Keller is great and why they enjoy engineering. One of the other cool things, James had mentioned that the start of Keller was in Renchen, Germany back in 1860. As he said, it is still a vital part to our landscape here in 2026. KGS, who is our in-house specialist equipment business, is still based in Renchen. So after more than 160 years, we are still designing and manufacturing equipment that is solving today's engineering problems. So they build purpose-designed machines and monitoring systems, particularly for techniques such as vibro and jet grouting, so that when feedback comes back from the business, they can make those changes and design changes effective immediately.
It is instant feedback. But they also support it through the life of the equipment with spare parts, maintenance. We also send specialist technicians around the world to assist with challenges that arise. So it is that combination of field experience, the design, the manufacturing, and the lifecycle support that improves the fleet productivity, and it gives us a specialist capability that is difficult to replicate. But most importantly, it also shortens that learning loop. Once that problem is identified by the So increasingly, these equipment issues also can be diagnosed remotely, which reduces the downtime on site. So equipment is great. I would like to talk about equipment all day. But the technology behind it is also what is Our proprietary data acts on those What does that do for us? It improves our quality control.
We can make faster decisions, and it gives the customer greater certainty in our. If the data shows something is not behaving as expected, the team can make a change immediately, and we could. Anything else done. Years ago, we did not always have that kind of visibility. We have learned from experience, and we have embedded better systems and controls, and that is another reason I believe that our performance is sustainable going forward. However, through all of this, the equipment technology does not supersede the expectation that we have to keep our people safe on a daily basis. This is very personal to me. As Chief Construction Officer, every day, we have thousands of people working on Keller sites around the world. So the expectation is simple. Work safe, go home safe. So our accident frequency rate, as you can see, is at 0.04.
It is very strong for our industry, but it is never going to be good enough while incidents are still occurring. Very sadly, we did have a fatality in September at a site in Singapore. It was the first incident of this severity in many years. When an event like this happens, it forces us to stop and take stock. We did hold a global safety standdown, and we followed it through with our annual Global Safety Week last week. But safety is not created by one initiative. It has to be earned again and again on every site and every shift, through planning, learning, training, and most importantly, a willingness to speak up. So every individual on our sites has the authority to stop work. If something does not look or feel safe, they have our full support to stop the job.
It is regardless of time or title with the company.
We will also act to see patterns. Two years ago, we had repeated hand injuries, and most of that was done with our guys handling or people handling steel. So we launched a hands-off steel program. Wherever possible, mechanical means are now used to control the steel rather than people handling it. So that is what we feel is an embedded safety culture looks like. We identify the risk, we take a practical action, and we share the learning across the group. That culture protects our people, but it also supports a reliable execution for our customers. We have mentioned design and solution selection as well through this. But why does that matter? Because the biggest opportunity is to improve the solution early.
Before techniques, materials, and dimensions are fixed, we can choose a lower impact technique, we can substitute lower carbon materials, and we can optimize the size of solution. So what does that mean in practice? A 1-meter diameter column may be the initial answer. If our engineers and designers demonstrate that an 800-millimeter diameter column provide the same support, that means less material, less spoil, fewer equipment moves, and less time on site for us. So the same principle can apply to technique choice. James shows we have different techniques, from foundations to ground improvement. Ground improvement may remove the need for more material-intensive deep foundation solutions altogether. Very often, the lower carbon solution is also the more efficient and cost-effective engineering solution. A really good example is the project that is going on right now at Luleå in Sweden.
SSAB was developing a major fossil fuel-free facility on reclaimed land. The original concept relied heavily on concrete piles, so it created significant cost, schedule, and logistical challenges. Working with the customer, we developed an alternative solution. We combined stone columns, dynamic compaction, and deep soil mixing. What was the result? It was a reduction of more than 50% in the foundation cost. Also, it was 80%-90% reduction in the carbon emissions from a traditional solution that was first designed. It is also a good example of, we have talked through, we mobilized expertise from 11 countries to come to do this project around one design and one safety standard. It is a strong example of why customers involve Keller early. We are not simply there to install a specification. We can help create a solution that is safer, simpler, less expensive, and lower carbon.
We talk about customers. Why do they choose Keller? Bain did some customer research, and the results show that price, it still matters, and we have to be competitive. But as James showed, sometimes a cheap solution can cause further delays, redesigns, and can be no bargain at all. Customers do want experience, similar structures, similar geology. They also want crews and equipment to meet the program. They care about safety, they care about reputation, and they care about our track record. There are practical ways in which we can remove risk. We do complete around 5,500 projects per year, and we mobilize, every day, 22 new sites. That does create an enormous base of practical experience. Rather than take my word for it, let us hear from the customers.
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I think the film brings the point to life, and the feedback on this slide supports it. The positive net promoter scores in every region and relationships with leading organizations around the world. But the real value is what happens next, because a relationship built on one project or in one market can be supported by Keller's wider network and onto another opportunity. That's how repeat business, knowledge, and reputation compound. Let me close where I started. Performance is created locally, but what we've built around our branches is the difference. Specialist engineering, shared learning, skilled people, a market-leading fleet, KGS, and an embedded safety culture. We're more selective about the work we take. We're better at understanding and pricing risk, and stronger in our visibility and controls.
We shared learning more effectively, and we invested in the people and tools that allow branches to deliver with greater certainty. It's why I believe the margin we are earning is sustainable, and why we can grow without compromising the discipline that has improved the business. With that, James, back to you.
Thanks, Brent. The last section that we want to cover before the break is about our pipeline, bringing the last piece of the strategy together. Hopefully you've now seen why we believe that the improvement in Keller's performance is structural. On top of these improvements, there's also more that I think we can do. Following my first year with the company, there are four broad focus areas that I have. The first one is greater talent identification and development. As Brent described, we believe, and we think there's pretty good evidence to say, that we've got the best people in the industry. But I think we can be much more intentional about how we develop those people and to make better use of the breadth of the group to achieve that.
The second area is in our customer relationships, and you've just seen some fabulous customer testimonies there. We do have excellent customer relationships. But I think there's an opportunity for us to learn more about them. The opportunity to do that will come from our new ERP system when implemented, which has an embedded CRM. That will allow us to dedicate more time to nurturing key relationships and taking a more focused approach to how we manage those customer relationships. The third link to that is our systems improvement. The ERP and our new project management software will deliver efficiencies on its own, but it'll also deliver enhanced data that will open up powerful opportunities for us to look for greater deployment of AI.
Finally, leading nicely into this next section, I think we can build out a bit more of our business development, our corporate development focus. I recently made some internal changes to our ExCom, adding a Chief Strategy Director, Will Reed, who's here today, to the team. Will's been with Keller since 2012 in numerous senior finance roles, but from December, he's going to move into this new position that's going to focus on developing and executing Keller's corporate strategy and identifying new value creation opportunities. He's also, as I say, going to lead Keller's corporate development capability looking as we increase our focus on acquisitions and other strategic initiatives that support long-term growth and shareholder value. To recap, we have our portfolio, we have the capability to execute it. The next question is: where does our growth come from?
This first chart is intended to show that across the geographies and sectors in which we operate, construction output is forecast to grow at approximately 5% a year to 2030. Energy and utilities and infrastructure are expected to grow a bit faster at around 7% and 6%, respectively. Commercial, residential, and institutional activity remain robust. We think that is a pretty useful starting point for the growth target that we're outlining today. Because the target that we're talking about doesn't require an extraordinary construction boom. It's broadly anchored in our addressable markets. In doing that, we're not asking you to believe in a heroic top-down forecast. We're starting with sectors and geographies where capital is already committed and where Keller has an established operating presence.
We also believe Keller can meet or outperform that market by moving capability towards stronger areas of demand and growing further local share. The market gives us the base. Our portfolio and our execution give us the opportunity to do even better than that. The global mega trends are also supportive, and we believe that Keller is positioned superbly to benefit from them. Urbanization and infrastructure renewal create opportunities. So do energy transition and climate resilience. Demand, as many of you will know, is also growing for data centers, but it is also growing for advanced manufacturing, defense, and critical infrastructure. At the same time, buildings are becoming larger, taller, and more likely to be built on constrained or brownfield sites. All of this increases the technical demands placed on the ground solution. It means we are not reliant on any single theme.
Our local network, the geographic reach we have, and our breadth of techniques gives us access to demand across several of them. In here, the themes also reinforce one another as far as we are concerned. Data center growth creates demand for power generation and grid capacity. Climate resilience creates work in water, transport, or coastal infrastructure. Constrained urban sites increase the value of specialist design and low disruption techniques. There is a multiplying effect. In our whole presentation today, this is one of my favorite data slides, particularly as I saw most important markets over both a longer period and a more recent one. In the U.S. Keller grew approximately 7% a year from 2018- 2025, compared with construction spend growth of around 6%. More recently, we have grown at 9% against around 3% for construction.
Our Canada business has also performed exceptionally strongly, with around 8% performance against 6% over the longer period and 15% against 5% more recently. Germany is a steadier story. It has been broadly in line with construction over the longer period and ahead of a much weaker market more recently. Australia shows that we do not outperform every market in every period. It is a highly competitive market for us, and our relative scale advantage has not historically been as strong as it is in parts of North America. That is the point. Across a diverse portfolio, Keller has a track record of meeting or exceeding its underlying markets. I hope it gives you confidence that our organic growth target is achievable rather than simply an aspiration that we chucked up on a slide today. This is a chart that many of you will be familiar with.
We presented our full and half year results, and it shows our order book. It is our order book that provides us with the near-term evidence of that demand that we see. At the half year, the group order book stood at approximately GBP 1.9 billion. The underlying North American order book was at record levels, even excluding the exceptional I-40 contribution. However, including I-40, the group order book now sits at an impressive GBP 2.4 billion. It is important to understand what that means in our business. We operate very early in the construction process, and we are usually appointed project by project. Around two-thirds of the projects that sit in our order book will unwind from that order book within six months. Our order book will naturally be shorter in duration than that of a general contractor, but it does provide strong visibility of near-term revenue.
Beyond the data in this chart sits an active pipeline of tenders and identified opportunities, typically valued at about two to 2.5 times what you see here in the order book. That pipeline is built from branch-level customer relationships and local market intelligence. Our teams often know about projects or design changes or likely procurement timing well before an opportunity becomes a contracted order. We are not presenting all of that as committed revenue. Projects can move, they can be delayed or cannot proceed at all. But it does give our local teams visibility and allows us to plan for what is coming next. Hopefully you have seen that everything I have described so far supports our very robust organic growth target. But M&A is an opportunity for us to go even further. Our purpose for M&A is to accelerate the core Keller model by filling white space.
We would not do M&A to create unrelated businesses or to move into markets that we do not understand. When we think about M&A, we think about it from a white space argument, and we think about it from white space in three different angles. Firstly, we think about geography. Can we deepen our presence in attractive locations? Secondly, we think about techniques. Can we add capability into geographic markets that we do not have today? Then finally, there is sector or customer access. Can we bring relationships that Keller can support with a broader range of solutions? The value comes when the acquired business and Keller make one another stronger. This means that M&A is an accelerator. It is not a requirement for our organic target.
We are not going to buy revenue simply to fill a gap in the plan, and we are not going to enter unfamiliar countries merely to make our map look more impressive. David is going to return later to talk more about the financial disciplines that will apply around M&A, which I know will be very important to people in this audience. But first, let me take that theory and show you what successful bolt-on M&A can look like. Coincidentally, this is the last acquisition that Keller did in 2021 of RECON. But I do not choose it as the last one. I choose it because it is a very good example of what we are aiming to do. We acquired RECON in 2021 for about GBP 30 million.
In doing so, it increased our local presence in Texas, in the Gulf Coast, and on the East Coast of the U.S.
It added environmental remediation and industrial service capability, and it increased our exposure to energy infrastructure customers. In short, it ticked every one of the three white space boxes that I have just outlined to you and would sit right in the middle of that Venn diagram. As a result of that, the story did not end at the completion of the transaction. RECON has used Keller's customer base and capabilities while Keller has brought more of its techniques and relationships into RECON's markets. As a result, the acquisition delivered cash payback within three years and continues to generate organic growth through cross-selling in our North America business. The absolute key in doing it was considered integration. RECON retained the specialist expertise and customer relationships that it had and that made it attractive, but gained access to a much broader Keller platform.
That is the model we seek to repeat using M&A to accelerate our core strategy. Let me bring the first half together. The portfolio that we have gives us choice. Gives us choice across geographies, across techniques, across sectors, and across project sizes. The performance and the quality of the business allows us to convert those choices into sustainable returns. Brent has shown you the people, the assets, the technology, and the operating disciplines that sit behind our execution. Pipeline is what follows when those two things come together in supportive markets. Our markets are supportive, and we can pivot within those markets towards attractive subsectors. That means we can deliver organic revenue growth at the same time as sustaining those group operating margins. Then on top of all of that, inorganic growth is a feasible and affordable additional opportunity for us.
As I said right at the start, after the break, Scott, Peter, and Deepak are going to put some more local color behind that group story and show you some of the differences that exist within their regions. But for now, we are going to take a short break and reconvene here at 3:00 P.M. Thanks very much.
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Hey, welcome back everybody. Hope you enjoyed the cookies. We had those cookies yesterday and even our Americans in the team were impressed. I think they were pretty good. Okay, so you have heard about the group model, but when David and I first started talking about this event, we wanted to make sure that it was different from just our full year and half year results presentation. We wanted you to hear more from more people in the team and deeper into the business.
Now I would like you all to see how the group model that we have just described works in practice across our three division. Each division has its own market and it has its own opportunities. There are similarities, but there are differences. Scott, Peter, and Deepak are going to show you where the growth comes from and how the group model is being applied locally. We are going to begin with North America, with Scott. Scott, over to you.
What a great picture here, by the way. We saw the film earlier of our employees. This is Kelly. She works in our Georgia office. She started in 2023 as an operator, and is still with us today. It is just great to see smiling faces, people like work. Good afternoon, everyone. I am Scott Nichols, President of North America. I have been with Keller for more than 20 years, and in this industry for more than 30. When I joined the business so many years ago as a young project manager, I certainly did not imagine I would be standing in London in front of a room of investors, right? But I am pleased to be here because North America is a business I know closely and I care a great deal about.
I want to explain why it has become such a strong business, how we have changed it, and why I believe there is still significant growth ahead. A little bit about the North American business. North America accounts for more than half of Keller's revenue. We have over 80 branches, around 4,900 employees, roughly 800 engineers, and we perform approximately 2,500 projects each year. Though we are the largest specialty geotechnical contractor in North America, the branch network is what makes us unique. It gives us proximity to customers and detailed knowledge of the local markets in which we operate. We have a strong North American business with significant opportunity to still grow. Operationally, I think about the division of three complementary platforms. U.S. Foundations and Canada form the core geotechnical business. Moretrench and RECON extend us into environmental remediation, industrial work, and heavy civil construction.
Suncoast is our post-tensioning business. Together, they give us a broad and diversified North American portfolio. That breadth matters because North America is not one construction landscape. Ground conditions in Canada, the Gulf Coast, the Northeast, the Sun Belt, the western states differ, and customer base ranges from general contractors to industrial asset owners and hyperscalers. We are positioned to meet that changing demand. U.S. Foundations and Canada provide design build solutions across deep foundations, ground improvement, specialty grouting, and earth retention. They serve infrastructure, industrial, commercial, and data centers, among others. As James and Brent have already explained, the local branch is the engine. We can deliver a $1 million or $2 million project for a local client with a local team, but we can also combine branches, engineers, equipment to address work at a completely different scale.
That is not a capability North America had to the same degree five or 10 years ago. Moretrench and RECON broaden that core platform. They add environmental remediation, industrial and heavy civil capability, and take us closer to asset owners in power mining, chemicals, and industrial infrastructure. James just used RECON as the group example of a successful bolt-on M&A. From an operating perspective, the value of the overlap. Our foundations team can bring geotechnical capability into Moretrench and RECON's customer base. Moretrench and RECON can bring remediation and industrial capability into relationships held by foundations businesses. That is One Keller in practice, using the customers and the capabilities of the whole organization rather than keeping good businesses in separate boxes. It also changes the quality of opportunity set.
A relationship that began around remediation can lead to foundations work, while a geotechnical customer can gain access to a broader industrial environmental solution. Suncoast is different again. It is a leading unbonded post-tensioning specialist in North America, with 10 fabrication facilities across the U.S. It serves residential and commercial construction through post-tensioning materials, engineering, and field services. It is largely a standalone operating model with less direct cross-selling into the foundation's businesses. It gives North America exposure to a different part of construction that has provided balance when parts of the geotechnical market have been softer. As many of you are aware, residential conditions are currently more challenging, but Suncoast retains a strong position and remains an important part of the portfolio. Unlike the rest of Keller, Suncoast is much more closely linked to the residential construction market.
When residential activity is strong, demand for post-tensioning tends to increase. When housing markets slow, Suncoast feels that more directly than our foundations business. You can see that relationship in the chart. Revenue grew strongly through the residential recovery and peaked in 2022 before moderating as residential conditions became more challenging. The other factor to bear in mind is steel. Because steel is a major component of the products Suncoast supplies, movements in steel prices influence both revenue and profitability. From a group perspective, that residential exposure is actually valuable. Keller today has relatively limited exposure to residential construction overall. So Suncoast provides diversification and access to a different part of the construction cycle than the infrastructure, power, and industrial markets that drive most of North America. This slide brings the portfolio together. U.S. Foundations is the largest business.
Canada, Moretrench, RECON, and Suncoast add geographic, technical, and sector diversity. No single end market dominates the division. We have meaningful exposure to infrastructure, power and industrial, office and commercial, and residential demand. That means we are not waiting for one market to perform. It also means the division is not simply a data center and an I-40 story. Those are important and visible opportunities, but they sit on top of thousands of projects across a broad customer and sector base. We have moved capacity from electric vehicle manufacturing to our data centers, and we see power generation and transmission becoming increasingly important from here. Medium-sized work remains the heart of the portfolio, giving us a dependable flow of projects and keeping local team and equipment utilized. At the same time, we can now take on much larger work where the risk and the return are appropriate.
The growth has been broad-based. The graph on the left shows how deep foundations and ground improvement remain the core. While Moretrench and RECON have added environmental remediation capability. Looking at the sectors on the right, infrastructure and power and industrial work have grown consistently. More recently, office and commercial has accelerated, driven in large part by data centers. The point is not that one category has replaced all the others. The whole platform has grown, and we have been able to direct more capacity towards the strongest opportunities as they have emerged. As James showed at group level, larger contracts have become a more important part of the mix. For North America, that change reflects the integration of the foundations business in 2020, what we call One Keller. Before that, individual companies could be constrained by their own people, equipment, and balance sheets.
Today, we can combine branches and specialist resources across the division. In an ordinary week, we may sign several contracts worth less than $2 million. On I-40, we secured a $650 million variation. We can do both. The local project base still matters. It keeps us close to customers, develops people, and diversifies risk. But when the right major opportunity appears, we can now mobilize and deliver it as one North American business. The market outlook is supportive, particularly in infrastructure, energy, and utilities. Aging infrastructure requires repair and replacement. Population movement into the Sun Belt is creating demand for development and public assets. Brownfield sites need to be remediated, and extreme weather is increasing the need for resilience and reconstruction. Forecasts are useful, but they are never perfect. The strength of our portfolio is that we do not need every forecast to be exactly right.
If one sector slows, the same branches, people, equipment, can move towards a stronger demand elsewhere. Data centers are the most visible example today. We began developing customer relationships before the current level of activity was obvious. Our local branches then converted these relationships into work across the country. A few years ago, electric vehicle plants were a major source of activity. That market slowed sharply, but the business was able to move towards data centers. As data centers increased demand for electricity, we see the next pool of opportunity to power generation, grid capacity, and transmission, and we are building these relationships in advance of this demand. Our confidence does not depend on one sector growing at an exceptional rate forever. It depends on our ability to move with the market, and we have shown that we can do that.
The techniques used on a data center site are not unique to that sector. If the market moderates, these people and assets can support power, infrastructure, industrial, or commercial work in the same local geography. This map shows why we have captured the opportunity. We already have branches in many of the markets where investment is concentrated. Where a project emerges in a less established location, nearby branches can support it and mobilize the necessary people and equipment. Customers also value this consistency. A relationship developed on one project can travel with that customer to the next market. For customers building across several states, Keller can provide the reassurance of common standards and technical depth while still delivering through teams that understand each local market. That combination of local coverage and national reach is difficult to reproduce. This Texas project shows a model in practice.
The customer was redeveloping an existing data center. The original concept involved deep foundations, but existing drilled shafts created a constraint, and the customer needed a faster alternative. Our local team understood the conditions and worked with the engineers to propose an aggregate pier solution. We installed over 1,400 piers in approximately six weeks, which was multiple weeks faster than the original drilled shaft solution. The customer gained speed and certainty. Keller combined local knowledge, design capability, and sufficient crews and equipment to deliver a safe, quality project at pace. The important moment was a willingness to challenge the original foundation concept. Because our team understood both the ground and the wider technique portfolio, it could propose a faster answer rather than simply pricing a solution that had been handed.
It is a good example of how a relatively small part of a total project can remove a much larger delivery risk. Let me show you one more example, the I-35 Capital Express project, known as CapEx.
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We do some really cool stuff. That is a really nice video. You guys have some good ones, too. That film brings to life what I have just described. North America is large, but is not concentrated. We have broad capabilities, exposure to several end markets, and a balanced project mix. We can deliver the local project that keeps us close to customers and scale the full Keller platform when a major opportunity appears. We have demonstrated that we can move toward demand from electric vehicles in the data centers and now towards power, infrastructure, and resilience. I know these businesses, the people who run them, and the markets in which they compete. I also know the standards we now applied to project selection and delivery. That is why I am confident North America can continue to grow while sustaining the discipline and strong performance that brought us here.
Peter, over to you.
Thank you, Scott. Yeah, we too have smiling people. This good-looking rooster is Gregor. He is actually a senior site engineer from our Hungarian business, working on that Luleå project you saw earlier in northern Sweden, so 50 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle and starting to get a bit cool. Look, Europe and the Middle East is very different beast perhaps to the North American business in very much that it is a portfolio within the global Keller portfolio. We operate across countries that are connected geographically, but they are very different in language, culture, regulation, construction practice, ground conditions, and importantly, political and economic cycles. So whilst it looks like a patchwork of local businesses, our success has to come not only from the individual markets, but also the strength of collaboration that we can generate between those markets.
It is less about creating or hoping for one big uniform market. It is more about being agile and moving our capability intelligently across a collection of distinct and variable markets. So I have been with Keller for nine years now, first in APAC, and for the last four years in the Middle East and Europe. Before Keller, I spent 26 years in a large U.S.-listed design company, and most of that time was across Asia Pacific. So I have been managing portfolios of different geographic operations for quite some time. Over those years, I think I can generally count four easy years. There is always something happening. But navigating through difficult markets is where good portfolio management matters the most, and I guess in these tough times is where you can build lasting market differentiation. So let me tell you a bit more about the portfolio.
We generate about EUR 900 million of revenue, EUR 40 million of operating profit. We have around 3,400 employees. 600 engineers deliver about 2,500 projects per year. We do that across 28 countries. So most of Keller's countries. But we organize those countries. So we are organized into five business units, with each business unit built around one strong core market. Those core markets have had consistent strength, consistency of opportunity for us to allow us to establish strong pools of technical and functional talent. So Germany anchors our northwest business, Poland anchors our northeast business. France anchors Southwest Europe. Austria and Sweden provide strength across Eastern Europe and the Nordics. The UAE anchors our Middle East business. Therefore, around those core markets sit a series of adjacent countries that have good, attractive markets to us, and we have established a presence.
We can leverage the skills of those core markets and take up the opportunity in those markets to grow our total pool. Further afield, we have our emerging markets, where we may see selective opportunity from time to time, but we do not need to overcommit. Right now, that would include the Baltics with the Rail Baltica program. Hungary and Romania are currently good examples. What is important is that whilst they will provide a good selective attractive project from time to time, we can also build up skilled resources in those markets that are transient. We can have people like Gregor able to go and assist us when we win a big project in Sweden. We can support the busier naving projects in other times. This structure, it gives us flexibility in two forms.
Capacity, so the ability to move capability towards demand as markets strengthen or weaken. Technical, the ability to move people, specialist equipment, and technical expertise across borders to where we can differentiate ourselves. It is important to us that each of our businesses remain deeply local and strong, because we operate in local languages, as you would have saw in some of the videos. We operate in local cultures, local business environments. In doing so, we build client trust. Clients will generally always prefer to buy local where they can. They want to know who they are dealing with, and they also want to see construction as an economic multiplier, and they want some of those funds to stay locally. Looking at the comparative of how that portfolio breaks down, you will see from the pie chart that no individual business unit dominates our divisional revenue.
We do reshape the business units from time to time as markets ebb and flow over the medium-term outlook. We have strong product positions in deep foundations, ground improvement, specialty grouting, and we work across the larger sectors of infrastructure, power and industrial, commercial, and residential. As James said earlier, balance is not an end in itself. The value comes from how you proactively manage that portfolio. We use collaboration and agility to ensure that we can maximize our position in the stronger markets. Each business has to be strong in its own right. As we have said, the portfolio is there to create the additional value when knowledge, people, and equipment move effectively between them, and we can improve our returns.
It is fair to say the European construction market is not generally regarded as one of the world's great growth markets over recent times at least. We have grown the division from approximately EUR 640 million in 2020 to around EUR 900 million in 2025. That is not just a COVID rebound. More importantly, what we have done is we have improved the quality of that revenue. We have lifted bottom line returns. As David explained in his opening, Keller has exited markets where the risk and return were not attractive. For my part of the world, that included completing our withdrawal from our disparate African operations and some parts of the Middle East. We are not prepared to retain revenue simply to make the business look larger.
We have replaced lower return activity with better quality work in markets where we have stronger positions and a clearer right to win.
That's why this revenue chart shouldn't be read simply as a recovery from 2020. It represents a division that is larger, more focused, and better balanced than the one we started with. Deep foundations remain the largest product area, as that's the prime demand of the infrastructure market. But for Keller, our technical differentiation is strongest in ground improvement and grouting, where we can use our deep expertise and the specialist KGS equipment that Brent spoke to. These products are seeing strong growth, which is important to us. The sector mix, as we've said with the other parts of the business, gives us flexibility. Public infrastructure remains the largest part, government spending. But we are seeing power, industrial, commercial demand driving and providing for us important growth. We'll continue to pivot following the sections of the market that are actually buying. That's our approach.
When it comes to project size, similar to North America, we are seeing an increase in those larger projects, the 10-million plus projects. They've been the fastest-growing part of our portfolio since 2020. In EMEA, that's actually been client-driven. We are seeing customers are increasingly wanting one specialist contractor able to take responsibility for a multi-technique geotechnical scope. If we can, the associated enabling work, civil works. What that gives customers is the ability to deal with one supplier, fewer interfaces, design and delivery risk can then be easily managed for them, and gives them the opportunity. For us, control a number, not for anybody preparing the ground ahead of us for our works. We can do that ourselves. You'll see an example of this. We're going to show a video soon on it.
This trend particularly benefits Keller, because we're one of the few businesses largely across Europe that have the technical range, people, equipment, and balance sheet to deliver that work consistently across most of the broader European markets. But we don't pursue size for its own sake. The small and medium portfolio, which you see have remained very steady for us there, they give us permanent local presence and customer relationships largely for where a lot of those large project opportunities come from. It's very important, we do local consistently better than any other sizable competitor. We use that position to scale up quickly when the opportunity arise without us needing to overcommit locally and end up with a large business when that market wanes. We look at the external data. Generally available external data suggests growth of 5%-6% across the principal sectors.
Now, I need to admit, I've been in charge of Europe for three years, so I regard these forecasts as a bit of useful context rather than the basis for a plan, because the actuals just haven't been there. Our strategy is based on what our local teams can see emerging over the next two to three years. We see aging infrastructure requiring renewal, investment in grids, energy security, emerging data center demand coming on now, higher defense and resilience spending, and also some good, strong, continued government-backed development across the Gulf. Some of these themes are obviously more developed and more advanced in North America, so we see that as giving us confidence that they'll provide an additional tailwind to our businesses, committed programs like the German 500 billion program, get translated into live projects. But we can't wait for a broad economic boom.
We are already moving capability toward visible demand today. If I take Austria, for example. Austria is one of our very strongest business historically, but it is not having a very great time in terms of local market generation at this point. But our Austrian teams remain amongst our most busy. They are busy supporting projects in Czechia, Slovakia, Sweden, and other neighboring markets. For me, that is the portfolio working as it was intended. We are not trying to produce identical growth in every country every year. We are dedicated to producing consistent, profitable growth across the division as a whole. Talking of sexy projects, you would have seen some photos from this one during the earlier videos. The Rauheberg Tunnel. This is a critical section of Deutsche Bahn's high-speed rail network.
It is a tunnel, it is about 5.3 km long, but it is a particularly challenging section in the middle where two geological planes cross, and the tunnel is starting to deform, or was starting to deform. We spoke with Deutsche Bahn, they invited us in. We came up with a solution using jet grouting, permeation grouting, tailored to the ambition. Did a solution within their budget using EME expertise from across the thing and some specialist equipment out of KGS. At around EUR 120 million, this was our largest order in Germany's history. We had to put 150 people onto this project. Delivery took place over a five-month window around the clock. I visited the project. Look, this is a German winter. Snow. You are in a remote area. You are inside a long, dark railway tunnel for eight-hour shifts. We had to take everything in with us.
The teams worked 24/7. There was a team on site on Christmas Day. There was a team on site at midnight, December 30, 2024. We had to have it finished because the trains were to run on a set date. The real portfolio story for me in that is how we resourced it. For such a critical project, we concentrated our core German team, branch managers, technical specialists, on this tunnel. We then brought in teams from Poland, Romania, and Czechia to help deliver other German work for other German clients. That allowed us to execute an exceptional project without weakening the repeatable local business that supports that business. It gave the people also the opportunity to take back that experience back into their own countries as they finished off. For me, that is resource flexibility and capability development at the same time.
We had our challenges. Complex ground engineering is not about assuming nothing will go wrong. There was some major water inflow into the tunnel. Because of our strong client relationships, our engineering depth, and our delivery capability, we are able to respond strongly and positively when that happens. The Rauheberg Tunnel shows how Keller works at a major project scale. As I alluded to earlier, this next film shows a similar operating model, putting that all together on a smaller complex office development in Poland.
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You can imagine my surprise when I found out that the bridge was a building project as a civil engineer. I want to leave you with a couple of points here before I finish off. Europe and the Middle East must be managed as a portfolio. It's just the way it works. We actively shape it, we strengthen chosen markets, and we remove resources towards opportunity. The outcome we're seeking is consistency of growth and a sustainable margin of around 5% across a very competitive and diverse region. Growth is coming from building market share and deploying capability where demand is strongest. It's not dependent on a good project, even though a billion-dollar project would be nice to have or one individual country. With that, I'll hand over now to Deepak.
He's going to take you through Asia Pacific, a very different portfolio, one I'm familiar with his own set of opportunities. Thanks, Deepak.
Thank you, Peter. I think it is fair to that most of our Keller employees are very smiling. Lee and Zajich. Good afternoon, everyone. I have spent more than 20 years with Keller and all of them in Asia Pacific. I joined Keller India as a graduate engineer and the second employee in the business. We were a startup in every sense. It went to the extent that Keller office was operating in a residential apartment. For my initial year or so, that is the office where I lived at. The growth of APAC is not abstract to me. I have seen the businesses develop, the difficult choices that were required, and the capability that has been built over time. Since then, I have worked across India, Singapore, and Australia, building businesses, reshaping parts of the portfolio, and helping develop the strategy we are pursuing today.
This is a region I know from the ground up and a business that is incredibly important to me. With that introduction, let me bring you to APAC portfolio. Asia Pacific generated approximately GBP 400 million of revenue in 2025, which is approximately 13% of the group revenue, and we delivered around GBP 30 million of operating profit. The division has three business units, Keller Australia, Keller Asia, and Austral Construction. Approximately 72% of revenue generated in Australia and 28% in Asia. Across the division, we have around 1,600 employees, operations in six countries, and we deliver approximately 300 projects every year. These markets are very different in regulation, labor model, ground conditions, and customers' requirement. Australia is a developed and highly competitive construction market. India offers significant industrial growth, and Southeast Asia requires very selective choices about where Keller can build a scale and earn the right return.
The central challenge has been to be clear about where Keller has the right to win. Let me first start with Austral Construction, which is an important and distinctive part of APAC portfolio. It is a national civil and marine contractor with around 70%-80% of activity in Western Australia, which supports iron ore transport infrastructure. We describe that activity as pit to port. The railways, roads, bridges, stockyards, wharves, and port facilities that move iron ore from the mine to export facility. The Pilbara map, what you see there on the screen, though it looks pretty tiny, but it is as big as the size of Spain. Projects are remote. The rail networks extends over hundreds of kilometers, and much of the field workforce operates on a fly-in and fly-out model. That environment creates challenges.
You need people, equipment, logistics, local experience, and above all, the trust of customers whose assets must continue to operate. Mobilization itself is a capability. Crews may travel long distances, often two flights one way. Equipment has to be maintained in remote conditions, and every activity must fit around the customer's live operations. Austral is not arriving for an isolated construction package. It is embedded in maintaining infrastructure that has to work day in and day out, creating a repeatable flow of sustaining, maintenance, and expansion works. Austral represents approximately 43% of divisional revenue, Keller Australia around 29%, and the remaining 28% in Asia. Alongside Austral civil and marine activity, the Keller businesses provide deep foundations, ground improvement, earth retention, and grouting. Power and industrial work, driven substantially by mining, is our largest end market, with infrastructure and public sector work also significant.
As you have heard from James and other divisions, balance by technique, sector, and contract sizes creates resilience. For APAC, it also gives us options to move people, assets, and investment towards the markets where demand and returns are strongest. This chart needs a bit of context. At first glance, revenue over the full period may appear relatively unchanged. In fact, the business has changed materially. In 2018, I relocated to Singapore to help lead turning around of Southeast Asia portfolio. Following a strategic review, we exited activities and markets where we lacked sufficient scale and where the risk and returns were unattractive. Those decisions reduced revenue in the short term, but they were the right decisions. We were not prepared to retain volume simply to report a larger business. Following COVID, we moved from reshaping the portfolio to rebuilding it.
The core Keller techniques have grown, and Austral has expanded through mining and infrastructure demand. The growth you see today comes from businesses and markets we understand, have chosen, and believe can deliver sustainable returns. That is the same portfolio discipline David described earlier. Mining is APAC's largest subsector, with Australian iron ore at the center of the opportunity. Our growth case is not simply a forecast on the commodity price or a bet on new mine development. A large part of what we do supports infrastructure that already exists and must continue to operate. At the mine, Keller provides foundations, water management, and cut-off walls. Across the transport network, Austral works on rails, roads, and bridges. At export facilities, we support wharves, ports, stockyards, and bulk handling. Across the life of the asset, we provide maintenance, renewal, remediation, and ultimately, decommissioning support.
That gives us several routes to growth: sustaining existing infrastructure, supporting expansion and optimization, and helping customers with decarbonization, water management, and responsible restoration. The recurring maintenance and renewal element is important. This is not solely a new build opportunity. Much of the addressable work is generated by assets already in operation and required to perform day in, day out. The nature of the APAC market, it lends itself to the larger projects. Many sites are remote. Mobilization is significant, and the infrastructure itself can be very large. Contracts over GBP 10 million account for approximately 36% of the divisional revenue. While medium-sized projects, which is GBP 1 million- GBP 10 million, remain the core at around 50%. The important point here is how APAC develops these larger works.
We may begin with a smaller package, mobilize people and equipment, and prove that we understand the site and can deliver safely and reliably. Once the customer has confidence in the team, it can be more efficient to award additional work to an existing contractor compared to mobilizing a new contractor into a remote operating environment. The customer gains continuity and lower interface risk, while Keller scales the project from an established base. That is particularly valuable in remote locations, where bringing in another contractor can mean additional mobilization, induction, logistics, and safety interfaces. Now let's look at the future. The outlook across our core APAC geographies is supportive, with forecast construction growth of approximately 7%-9% across the principal sectors. We can see specific sources of demand.
Australia's infrastructure pipeline, India's industrial and semiconductor build-out, accelerating data center investment, energy transition and critical minerals activity, and defense and resilience programs. In Australia alone, the infrastructure pipeline is approximately AUD 242 billion over the next five years. It is spread across transport, utilities, housing, power, and resources sector rather than concentrated in any one sector type. The growth case is not dependent on everything developing in the same way. We already have people, customers, and operating capabilities in these markets. We are not trying to arrive after the opportunity appears. We are on the ground and able to direct capability as demand develops. Let me demonstrate this through two cases studies. The first one is the major Australian iron ore export facilities, which exports 100 million metric ton of iron ore every year.
Austral is delivering four interconnected packages across marine and landside infrastructure with around 150 people on site at peak, all while the facilities continue to operate. We began with a more limited scope. By delivering safely and reliably, we built the customer's confidence and earned additional work. That progression from an initial package to four interconnected scope is the organic growth model in very practical terms. The project also demonstrates the value of the wider Keller Group. The ground included extremely hard granite. We transferred down-the-hole hammer technology and expertise from Europe to Australia and adapted for a live marine environment. We also deployed one of the largest jack-up barges in Australia to provide a stable and safe working platform over the varying tidal conditions. For me, this project shows the APAC model clearly.
A trusted customer relationship at a local level, Austral civil and marine capability, Keller technology and expertise, and delivery that earns further scope. It also shows why the ownership structures matter. Austral could access a technique and a specialist from Europe without losing the local accountability that customer values. After seeing this remote project, let's look at an urban project from our Australian geotechnical operations.
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What an exciting project. It really brought the engineer in me. It also demonstrates how an engineering vision turns into value creation. Over the last 20 years, I have seen APAC develop from a number of small operations into a focused division generating approximately GBP 400 million of annual revenue. This journey has not been always straightforward. We made difficult choices, exited activities that didn't meet our expectations, and rebuild around markets where Keller has the capability and customer relationships to succeed. Today, we have a strong positions with important customers supporting long-term markets and access to Keller's global people, technology, and equipment when a local opportunity requires it. We know these markets, we know our customers, and we know how to grow while continuing to deliver safely, profitably, and with discipline. With that, let me conclude my presentation, and I hand you back to James. James.
Thank you, Deepak. Thank you to Scott and Peter. You've now seen how the group model is applied in three different portfolios and where each division sees the opportunity ahead. But I'm very conscious that in a room containing investors, analysts, and bankers, ultimately, you want all of this translated back into some numbers. I've seen how many of you are doing like the newspaper and turning to the sport pages at the back before we've even got to it. I know people have already got to David's section. Anyway, I'm going to ask David to come up. He's going to add it all up for us. David.
Thanks again, James. Let me bring the discussion back to the group perspective. There are three questions I would expect you to be asking. How sustainable is the performance we have delivered? How much financial capacity do we have? How will we use that capacity to create value over the next three to five years? There are three parts to that answer. First, the underlying business must continue to perform. None of the discussions about acquisitions, buybacks, or capital allocation matters unless operational delivery remains strong. Second, we will invest and grow with discipline. James has set out the opportunity. Part of my job is to make sure we pursue it without getting carried away. Third, we are committed to maintaining and growing shareholder returns.
All three are underpinned by the same improvements you have heard about today, commercial discipline, rigorous project controls, and much better management visibility. The order is deliberate. The business performs first, that creates the cash and capacity, and we then allocate that capacity between investment, growth, and returns. I am not going to talk through every number on this slide, but taken together, they tell a clear story. Revenue has grown. Underlying operating profit has more than doubled since 2022, and the margin has moved from 3.7%- 7.1%. ROCE has increased from just under 15% to more than 30%. Free cash flow, earnings per share, and the dividend have all increased materially, and the balance sheet has moved from a leverage of 1.2 times to a net cash position. This is not simply a margin story or a cash story, and it is not the result of one large contract.
It reflects deliberate decisions about where Keller operates, the work we take on, and how we price risk and how we manage delivery. The improvement is visible across the financial profile rather than in one isolated measure. That is why I regard it as a stronger and more durable platform. You have already heard how we moved the margin from around 4% to over 7%, so I will not repeat that transformation story. This slide is about what we believe Keller can sustain. Our view is that around 7% is a sensible group baseline over the medium term, built from the divisional margins of approximately 9% in North America, 5% in Europe and the Middle East, and 7% in Asia Pacific. There will be movement around these numbers. Projects, markets, and currencies will have an effect, and I am not promising a ruler-straight line to 2030.
But in a normal construction environment, I am comfortable that the group can sustain around 7% because the improvement came from the factors within our control, portfolio choices, commercial discipline, project selection, and execution. Our plan does not rely on margins moving continuously upwards. These are competitive markets. If a contractor begins earning exceptional returns in one pocket, customers and competitors tend to notice. The ambition is to sustain a good specialist margin and grow the business from that stronger base. That operating performance needs to translate into cash. In 2025, Keller generated approximately GBP 176 million of free cash flow and delivered operating cash conversion of 108%. There is an obvious blip in this chart, the negative number in 2022. That was a difficult year for profit and cash.
In parts of the business, we had placed too much emphasis on revenue rather than profitable revenue, and we were also emerging from COVID into a rapidly increasing labor and material costs, and some contracts did not protect us adequately against the rapid inflation in such a short timescale. The effect was visible in profitability, working capital, and cash. We learned from it. We strengthened bid reviews, risk-adjusted prices, and contractual protection. We increased accountability for cash and working capital at project and business unit level and improved management visibility. Since then, free cash flow has been approximately GBP 103 million in 2023, GBP 193 million in 2024, and GBP 176 million in 2025. I do not regard 2022 as a number to be ignored. It was an important point in the transformation, and the lessons learned directly inform the actions that support today's margin and cash performance.
There will still be annual movement because of working capital and project timings, but the underlying business is highly cash generative. When we perform at the level we are targeting, annual free cash flow of roughly GBP 150 million to GBP 160 million provides a reasonable planning base. That is what gives us confidence in the cumulative target I will return to shortly. That cash generation has materially reduced leverage. Since 2018, we have moved from 1.7 times net debt to EBITDA to a net cash position at the end of 2025. Our target leverage range remains 0.5- 1.5 times. I believe that is appropriate for Keller. More efficient than sitting permanently in net cash while remaining prudent for the risks and cyclicality of the business. The range is a framework, not a target we will force the balance sheet to reach on a particular date.
There may be periods when we sit below it because the cash has not yet been deployed or because the right opportunity is not available. I would much rather explain an under-geared balance sheet than a poor acquisition. The funding position is straightforward. We have no debt maturity before 2030. Our GBP 400 million revolving credit facility is fully undrawn, supported by nine lending banks and running until June 2031. We also have approximately GBP 219 million of fixed rate U.S. private placement debt maturing in 2030 and 2033. So we have a diversified, well-staggered funding structure and the flexibility to support investment or the right bolt-on acquisitions. Financial capacity is an option. It is not an instruction to spend. James has explained the strategic role of M&A. My focus is the financial discipline. We are looking for bolt-ons rather than transformational transactions.
Generally, self-funded businesses valued approximately at GBP 100 million or less. The strategic rationale must be clear. Geography, technique, or access to an attractive sector or customer group. Those are the same three routes James described in the pipeline section, so I will not repeat the strategic case in detail. Strategic fit is not enough. A transaction must make financial sense. Be earnings accretive, offer a credible route to value creation, and fit within our leverage framework and preserve the quality of the group. Revenue synergies are particularly important. I know often investors treat them with skepticism, and in many cases rightly so. For Keller, they are not a decorative line in the model. They are the purpose of the deal. Connecting an acquired local business or capability with Keller's customers, engineering equipment, and technique portfolio so that both sides can win work neither could address as effectively alone.
Then there's integration. Buying a business is the easy part. Integration creates the value. Any acquisition must become part of Keller sharing customers, capability, people, equipment, and expertise. We will walk away where the quality, price, or integration case is not right. Over the period from 2026 to 2030, we expect Keller to generate approximately GBP 800 million of free cash flow. Our first priority is to invest in the existing business, maintaining our people, fleet, equipment, and technology, and supporting organic growth. We expect gross capital expenditure and working capital investment to remain broadly steady at approximately 3.5% of annual revenue. Our second priority is a sustainable and progressive ordinary dividend. The 2.5 - 3.5 times cover framework creates a clear link between earnings and dividend growth. Across the period, we expect approximately 40% of free cash flow to be allocated to ordinary dividends.
That leaves approximately 60% for inorganic growth and additional shareholder returns. The split between bolt-on M&A and shareholder returns will depend on the quality and timing of opportunities. If an acquisition meets the strategic, financial, and integration tests, we can pursue it. If it does not, we will not hold surplus cash indefinitely in the hope that a suitable transaction might appear. Where cash is genuinely surplus, we will return to shareholders. This is a medium term framework, not a rigid annual quota. The proportions can vary from year to year. The discipline is what matters. Invest in the business, maintain a sustainable ordinary dividend, pursue only value accretive bolt-ons, return surplus cash, and operate within the leverage range. We have created a strong set of choices. Our responsibility is to exercise them in the way that produces the best long-term return for shareholders.
Let me bring that together in the medium term targets. Organic revenue growth of 5%-7% per annum. A sustainable group operating margin of around 7%. ROCE of approximately 30%. Cumulative free cash flow of approximately GBP 800 million between 2026 and 2030. Dividend cover of 2.5 times to 3.5 times, with the dividend progressing in line with earnings over the medium term. The most significant new commitment is the organic growth target. In the past, when investors asked how they think about Keller's growth potential, I would often say GDP plus. Not necessarily wrong, but it left quite a lot of room for interpretation. The better reference point is construction spending in the markets and sectors where we operate. The external forecasts point to the underlying growth of around 5%. The markets provide the base. Our portfolio and execution provide the opportunity to grow.
We believe we can do that because of our local positions, the breadth of the technique portfolio, and the ability to move towards stronger sectors. Our capability on complex projects where relatively few competitors can match us. The approximately 30% ROCE target is also important. We want to maintain strong returns while continuing to invest and pursuing the right acquisitions. We will not protect an artificially high ROCE number by refusing to invest in opportunities that create long-term value, but nor will we deploy capital into acquisitions that materially weaken the quality of the return. The GBP 800 million cash target gives the framework substance. It allows us to invest, grow the dividend, pursue acquisitions, and return surplus cash.
Now I am conscious that standing here as a CFO and trying to excite people may sound slightly unusual to those who know me, but I want to be clear about my own view of these targets. They are not stretch numbers designed simply to win a headline today. I would not be putting them in front of you if I did not believe we could deliver them. They are based on improvements we have already achieved, the opportunities you have heard from the divisions, and the financial capacity we have built. They also fit together. Growth is not being pursued at the expense of margin, and the cash target is not being achieved by under-investing, and the return target remains a discipline on how we deploy capital. I know where the improvement has come from, and I know the controls and disciplines now in place.
When I say Keller can grow organically at 5%-7%, sustain a margin of 7%, maintain a return on capital of approximately 30%, and generate around 800 million of free cash, I am comfortable that those are achievable commitments. We have a stronger business, a stronger balance sheet, and a range of attractive choices. Our job is now to execute with the same discipline that got us here. James, back to you.
Thanks, David. Thank you to the whole team for their presentation. At the beginning of the afternoon, I said we wanted to explain, to position, and to excite. Here is what I hope we have achieved today. We have explained what Keller does, why it matters at a group and a local level. We have shown you in quite a bit of detail what we do, where we do it, and how we do it really well. I hope we have made clear that the compounding conclusion from that story is that there genuinely are lots of opportunities for the growth of the business. We have shown you how Keller enables modern infrastructure and living, and we have shown you that in doing this, we create sustainable growth. We are a specialist engineering partner.
We operate at a critical early stage of projects, and our work may be a small share of total cost, but it removes a significant share of the risk that follows. We have also positioned the business. Keller has a diversified sector-agnostic portfolio and a repeatable operating model, and the improvement in our performance is genuinely structural, and we believe the current group margin is absolutely sustainable. Lastly, we have shown the opportunity ahead. Our markets are supportive. We can move towards demand. We have disciplined M&A opportunities, and we have got the financial capacity to invest and to return capital. As we move into the Q&A section, I am going to leave this slide on the screen. You have already seen it today. I am not going to present it again. But it captures both the investment proposition and the targets behind it. I will leave it up there.
But I think almost most importantly, you have met the team that is going to deliver it. Our strategy is achievable, and we have the people, the portfolio, and the financial capacity to execute it. Keller has an exciting future, and I hope from today that you can share in that and can see the value that we are able to create from here. Thank you very much for your time today. I am going to invite my colleagues back onto the stage, and they will join me in answering any questions that you may have. Just bear with us a minute while they bring up their chairs. We are running ever so slightly behind time, but only a couple of minutes. Conscious we have a hard stop at 4:30. While they are doing that, we are very much looking forward to having your questions.
If I could ask, please, when you ask a question, could you state your name, your organization, and from full year results, we know how these things work. If you could keep it to a maximum of three questions to start with, that will help. If we run out and people want to come back and have more, then we can go back for more, but that way we can get as many as possible. If you could direct the questions towards me, I will then allocate out answers as I see fit. Okay. Thank you. I am not sure. Am I responsible for choosing, Aynsley? Have we got the microphone?
Very much so.
He has got three.
Thanks. Got the mic. Three questions from me. Aynsley Lammin from Investec. Just firstly, on the organic growth, 5%-7%, just interested where the current utilization is of employees and kit. Do you need to invest significantly in that to deliver that growth or is there still quite a bit of spare capacity, at least in the first few years? Second question, just in terms of the free cash flow, obviously the 800 million, and if you were to operate, say, 1x leverage, is the right way of thinking about that? You have $1.1 billion or so of financial capacity and capability.
Third question, it will be interesting to hear maybe from each divisional head, where they see the biggest gaps and where they would be most excited to fill those gaps if you were to do M&A in each of the three regions.
Thank you. Okay. I will take your first one. David will take the second one, and then we will ask each of the divisional presidents to cover the third question. From a capacity utilization perspective, it is not a straightforward calculation because a lot of it depends on what that growth looks like. You will know that the average contract size within Keller is about half a million. If that growth all came in half a million contract size project, that would be a problem in terms of the capacity that we have. Equally, at the other end of the spectrum, if it all comes in a couple of large projects each year, then that is much easier for us to resource because the number of experts you need is exponentially less.
What I would say is that the growth targets that we presented today are in line, as you have seen from the data, are in line with our historical averages, and they are a growth rate that we think we can keep up with constantly increasing our capacity as we go. We do not have capacity to grow at that compounded 5%-7% over the next three to five years. We will need to increase resources as we go, but I think we have proven that at that rate of change we can achieve that. David, free cash flow and the leverage?
Yeah, I think you are right, Aynsley, to think of it. We deliberately called it free cash flow. Therefore, if we were to be up at the 1x, then that gap is additive in terms of the funding that would be available. I think we are very comfortable about where we have the leverage at the moment, and we are comfortable about that financial capacity. If we did go on a spree in terms of acquisitions, we feel we have got the funding structure to support that and actually accelerate the growth, which is one of the strategic rationales associated for us doing the acquisitions. As I said in the session, it is a framework. We do not feel the need to be at 0.5 or one. It really depends on what the opportunities are that are available.
Any major gaps in the regions, Peter?
Yeah, look, I think we would like to build out the larger support structures. You would have saw the Poland project, deep basement, more and more of those projects. Europe is quite congested. Most of the tall construction will be in built-up areas. So there is opportunity for us to build that up in more places. We do that well in Poland, we do that well in France, but there are other areas we could do that. We are also in the Middle East. We are very good at building new islands. More of the infrastructure in the Middle East now as Dubai tries to catch up with its growth and Saudi Arabia is trying to introduce new growth outside of the mega projects. The heavy foundation support through that part of the world is important to us. So we are working on both those cases at the moment.
Very good. White space in Asia Pac, Deepak?
I think Asia Pacific, I guess our target markets are India and Australia. India particularly over the last 20 years, we have built organically. I think through last few years, what we do is we do technology transfer from Australia, particularly CFA Piling last year we did to create more market and opportunity, the range of techniques. At the same time, while doing this land-based technology, we are also building a new vertical for marine. India marine particularly as government invest in the marine and leveraging Austral from Australia, as well as we have hired experts from Netherlands who are based in India. That is the organic growth white space, I will say. While in Australia, there is an opportunity, particularly in defense and energy market, as I talked about big pipeline over the next five years.
These are the markets probably I would say we got an opportunity.
Very good. Last but not least, Scott.
Yeah. I look at it more as rather where the gap, where the opportunity, right? We have opportunity and current market share that we can grow. There's a possibility that it's an acquisition that helps us do that. There are white spaces we look at that we see if it's worth the investment, we'll look to acquire there and grow that. Then there's the opportunity of a new pipeline, whether it's getting into power, nearshore marine, we're constantly looking at that to see if that'll help grow the portfolio as well.
Very good. Thank you. Bye.
Thank you.
Do I have my-- Do I try this on?
Right, that is better. Mark Housden from Singers. Just first question, I have got two questions. Obviously, Keller is a service company, but that is backed up by quite a large fleet of assets behind that. Can you give us a feel for the sort of the average age of the assets base at the moment and split that by the regions? Are you happy with the fleet age where it is? And does that 30% ROCE target assume the fleet age remains where it is? That is the first question. Do you want to do your other one and then [inaudible].
Yeah. The second one, obviously, I did not hear that much said today on technology. Is there anything technology can do to help you sort of improve the deployment, utilization, reliability of the fleet, and also the design and service offering as well? Thanks.
Perfect. Thank you. And good news, Brent, they are both for you.
Yeah, our average fleet age for the rigs that we spoke about is somewhere between 10 and 11 years. So that varies across where you go, and we feel comfortable in that. We have brought that down over the past five years. But we feel comfortable because in certain markets, trying to take a new machine is not really realistic. So we try to keep that age around that 10 years. As far as technology goes, yeah.
Sorry, Brent. The 30% ROCE, David, that is based on maintaining that?
Yeah. The other—
Sorry, Brent.
—point that was in the presentation was around the fact that we will continue to invest in CapEx. We usually do about EUR 100 million a year, along with the working capital makes up to 3.5%. We do not see any change in terms of that mix during this medium term.
Excellent. Sorry, Brent.
Yeah. I guess, do you want to repeat your question just so I'm clear? The second question.
Give the microphone back. It was just on anything about technology. What could that do to improve the deployment, utilization, and reliability of the fleet, or the design and service offering? Thanks.
Yeah. Both. What we're seeing is, obviously, being able to handle the fleet more remotely is key. Most of our fleet is able to be, we can see it, we can utilize it, we can understand what's happening remotely, so we can start to diagnose problems before they're bigger problems. From the technology standpoint, and also going forward, is how we take that data and then make it more efficient, make the equipment more efficient for us. From a design standpoint, we're also seeing it as well, where we can start to code faster. Our engineers, whether they're creating apps or doing other things from a design standpoint, AI is helping code so much quicker. It's helping us be able to deploy things a lot faster than we were before.
I think what I'd, absolutely. What I would add to that is data is a bit of a gap in our business. It's partly because when you go into projects, everyone will tell you about how different everything is, and it's true, right? We've talked a lot today about how local site conditions make such a difference to what we do. But there are some common threads in there, particularly around equipment utilization. We're moving quite quickly along that technology curve and as Brent says, we're controlling more of that centrally. Lady here.
Thank you. Camilla Ayling from Legal & General Asset Management. First one for you, James. You talked about changing ExCo and Will Reed's appointment. Should we read into that that's an uptick ahead in these smaller bolt-ons, given the net cash position? I know you said nothing transformational, but should we be expecting more M&A on that front? Second question maybe for Brent or David about, in the video, there was a lot of talk from the customers about optimal price. Keller's great for optimal price. Clearly, price plays a key part as well as specialist technology. How much are you able to put through price increases when you need to, given that's a focus of the client? Then finally, on the slide 94, which is the capital allocation slide.
If I was being critical, I could say that changing the name of the company and the GBP 800 million free cash flow, you could have this slide representing a lot of U.K. businesses just in terms of priorities of capital allocations. It would be great to have a bit more clarity on sort of return hurdles and that capital tension between those different ones. Thank you.
Very good. David, you're going to get second and the third question, just so you're ready for it. Look, on the M&A one, there was a lovely bit in David's speech about making sure, he didn't say me, but not getting carried away. We do have an absolute ambition to do M&A. I said in the very introduction, Keller, as a business, its DNA has been in M&A and acquisition and bolting things together. We've had a bit of a pause on that whilst Mike and David in particular had worked on properly integrating this business. In my view, I've now joined a business that is ready to do some more M&A. However, the financial hurdles that David set out are critical to us. Finding opportunities that genuinely drive revenue synergies, like the RECON example, I think we're setting a relatively high bar with that.
We're not just going to buy businesses just to spend the cash or to boost our revenue numbers. We want to find stuff that genuinely drives capability, be that geography, sector, or technique into the business. But we have an active pipeline. When I say active, that means we're having conversations. It's not just desktop. It's not saying anything's imminent, but it is active, and that's why we're bolstering our team to be able to do that. David?
Yes.
Sorry. The first question then is about pricing.
Yep
And how easy we can pass along increases, and the second one is make our capital allocation less generic.
Yes. On pricing, yeah, we do, and you have heard it from all of the three divisional presidents, we do operate in a very competitive market, and price is by far the biggest concern from a customer perspective as well. In terms of material cost increases that come through inflation or wars,
We are a short order business, so we are able to pass on pretty quickly any increase in prices pretty swiftly with the turnaround we have in contracts. Where we have longer-term contracts, we will contractually protect ourselves. As I mentioned in the presentation, because we were not doing that very well four or five years ago, but we are now much more attuned to that. If there is a longer-term contract, we will have escalators and/or we will price the risk in itself. In terms of the generic nature of the investment decisions, I think I would refer back to James's answers to the question in respect of, we have options given the high cash generative nature of the business.
I think we talked about the financial framework associated with the 30% ROCE, and we will be looking at that in terms of any potential acquisitions in which we do. That kind of leaves the surplus cash for shareholder returns, be it further increases in the ordinary dividend or special dividend or further buybacks. I think we are kind of not committing to that because it is very difficult to lay out a path for that in the next five years. We will just take that as we go in the coming years.
Yeah, I think if I link the first and the third question, what I would like to do next time I stand up here at a Capital Markets Day or in one of our results rounds, it would probably be a little bit more specific about how much we are going to spend on M&A each year. The reason we are not doing that now is because we have not done any for a few years. We have got to get the muscle trained again. We have got to go through, make sure we integrate properly, make sure we deliver on all of the financial hurdles that we have discussed.
Once I am confident that we can do that, and once I can understand exactly how much the business can cope with each year alongside how much we can afford, then I think we can be clearer about how we will split that 800 million free cash flow.
Today, I do not want to stand up here and say, Oh, I am going to spend half of it on M&A, because you would rightly say, Well, hang on a minute, where is that number come from? We will continue to work on that, but I want to get started. A number of hands. Yeah.
Thanks. Jonny Coubrough from Deutsche Bank. Thanks for the presentations. Just be interested to hear how you think you are able to manage or maintain improved commercial discipline as you move into more of a growth phase targeting mid-single-digit revenue CAGR. Also, you mentioned that some of the profitability has been helped by scaling into larger projects. Does risk multiply with that, and how does that change? Then perhaps a follow-up question for Brent relating to the fleet. What was the trade-off between owning your own kit versus renting it, and has that balance changed over the past five years? I will leave it there. Thanks very much.
Thanks. I will take the commercial discipline one. Scott, I will ask you specifically about North America and larger projects, and then Brent, absolutely on own versus rent. On the commercial discipline, I hope what we have persuaded you today is that the changes that have been made in this business and the chart that David showed that took us from the 3.7 - 7.2, they are structural changes. They are embedded. The processes around review of risk, review of contracts are embedded in. Actually, sat in the front row here as an example of that, we have Catherine Shuttleworth, who is our first GC. She has been with the business now just over a year, joined not long before me, but the first GC that Keller has ever had.
That is the sort of structural change that has been made to ensure not that we suddenly think we can negotiate all contracts centrally, but that we have group governance over the contracts and the terms that we do. I absolutely believe it is structurally embedded. Scott, just example about how we manage larger project risk versus smaller project risk.
Yeah. I mean, the larger project, I-40 is a great example, right? It underpins our portfolio. We are able to lean on other branches to help support a large project like that while we can still continue. It does create a stronger discipline when we look at work, when we have a large project in a branch, just because we do not want to make sure we overextend ourselves, right? It does create that bit of a challenge, but that is a challenge I look forward to because it means there is some good work out there that we are going after.
Brent, own versus rent.
Yeah, it's definitely changed over the past five to 10 years when you look at what the availability is, but that's very specific to markets as well. The U.S., they're readily available. You can rent a machine, what we would call a more generic daily drill rig, you could rent. You go to different other markets, they're not as available. So we're going to have to make sure we're focused on there to actually procure and own. But we still want the specialized equipment. So some of the bigger rigs, some of the specialized equipment, we're still going to have to own. And with the amount of work we have, we're able to keep that utilization pretty high.
Thanks. I think I saw a couple more hands. I want to be respectful of time, but we're just, yeah. Ben, and then, yeah.
Yeah. Thank you. Hi, it's Rob Chantry at Berenberg. So yeah, three questions quickly. Firstly, obviously you've talked about an absolute ambition to do M&A. Given the rigor in resetting your commercial risk management, et cetera, is it hard to do the due diligence to find good stuff at a good price? Secondly, could you talk about the shift of the infrastructure stimulus, I guess, from IIJA to BUILD America 250 in the U.S.? And then thirdly, German infrastructure, is there anything happening on the ground in terms of big spend? I assume not, but any idea when it might start, what it might be focused on? Can you guys win? Thanks.
Brilliant. Thanks, Rob. Okay, so German infrastructure, the straight answer is no. We haven't seen anything on the ground yet. But Peter, do we any-
Probably the earliest signs coming through are through Deutsche Bahn. A large part of that money was allocated, I think $30 billion a year to Deutsche Bahn. So like that Rauheberg Tunnel, we now have about three or four other projects, not in tunnels, luckily, out in the open, working for Deutsche Bahn on that rail renewal. So that's an early sign there for us.
On your first question around M&A and due diligence. Yeah, look, the nature of bolt-on is that the risk does go up. One of the things I'm very clear and passionate about is that we don't give a check to the people that do the work. When we're buying a business, we need to make sure that the people that are doing the work can have the expertise, because hopefully today you've heard very clearly that people are so critical that when we buy a business, we're retaining the people, and we're retaining the key expertise, and that somebody else is getting the money and going elsewhere. But I wouldn't say it's particularly any more risky. Because we want to stay within our own knitting from a technical perspective and from a product perspective, we understand our targets really well.
Therefore, the due diligence can be focused more on the legal and the financial risk than the operational risk. Scott, it's a very big question about U.S. infra, but in general, how are you feeling about.
Yeah, it's strong. We are still looking at a lot of opportunities related to the infrastructure. We don't see a slowdown. I don't see a lot of projects hitting the ground yet, but we know they're out there because we're helping budget and work through some of that.
Yeah, I think data centers is a good example, and we sort of expected to get a question about some of the noise around data centers in the U.S. But if you just start at the headline, the data we've seen says that the U.S. is building about eight times more capacity than any other country in the world around data centers. India is the second one. Our view, not that you asked this, but our view in terms of the noise is that, okay, there might be some projects canceled, there might be some public pressure, but that's coming off a very high starting number. We're confident that will keep delivering us with work. Then the other part about the U.S. is it's just so federal, right? So state specific. New York, I talked earlier about the Hudson River project.
There always seem to be states in the U.S. that are investing pretty big in infrastructure. Okay, I think we've time for just one more. Ben, did you?
Thanks. Ben Varrow, RBC. I'll just do two, please, to finish off. Firstly, on the new targets, and particularly the growth, intrigued whether that changes internal targets at the business unit level, or is it more so a change in external communications? The second one is on capacity, just coming back to that topic, particularly in the U.S., given the I-40 contract and the underpin there, just intrigued whether you intend to accelerate the capacity in terms of headcount into next year.
Okay. So David, maybe you can do the capacity one. The targets, absolutely this is as much internal as it is external. We went through a process of bottom up. Budgeting in a business with a short order book is quite an interesting process, right? Because a lot of it is about projects that we foresee, and a lot of it is about looking at market data. But we've made sure that this is all completely consistent throughout. On capacity, David?
Yeah. I think with particularly the I-40 project coming through, there's about 250 people. It's an underpin in terms of our future, and it gives us more visibility than what we're typically used to. I do not particularly consider that we're going to do anything different in terms of the 5%-7% growth rates that are in there. That just is a step change increase, which we've been doing for a number of years. It is more based on a stable business as usual growth for the divisions.
Thank you. Okay, thanks everybody. Apologies for slightly overrunning, but it's good to get some questions. It just remains for me to say a huge thank you to you all for coming. Thank you very much to James Rudd and the Investec team for hosting us today. I'm not going to make the mistake of trying to do individual thanks of my team, because you always end up forgetting people. However, I'm also going to break that by mentioning just one person, and that's Nicola Rogers, our IR director. I always think IR director is a really interesting role. She's kind of responsible for everything from strategy development to sandwiches, and everything in between. But she's done a phenomenal job. Hopefully, you agree with me this has been an incredibly professional presentation. So much of that is down to Nicola and her organization. So thank you very much.
And thank you all again.