Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Keller's preliminary announcement for 2023. First, on safety: there are no planned fire alarms today, so if the alarm does go off, it is for real, and we'll all be following James out of the building, which I believe there's a fire escape in both directions. Second, could I ask you all to switch off your mobile phones, please? Thank you. We have a great set of results to share with you today, as you'll see as we go through them. They're slightly ahead of the consensus which was established after the trading statement in January, and they are, you know, as you go we go through them, some really interesting things for you to see. The results also evidence the step-up in performance compared to prior years. Go through the cautionary statements, and we go on to our agenda.
This is our normal agenda. I will give you a summary, and then David will follow with the detail in terms of the financial results. I'll then go through business performance and our strategic progress during the year, and then wrap up with a summary and an outlook going forward before we move into questions and answers. Okay, the summary. Well, you know, frankly, the summary of the results is actually in the banner line. It's been a record performance, and it's as you'll see that as we go through all the different measures. You know, revenue is up slightly year-on-year, but it's a record itself. Operating profit is up 80% compared to the average of the previous five years. Again, a record.
And those two together serve to actually generate an operating profit margin at 6.1%, which is the highest in the last five years, and a ROCE at 23%, which is the highest in the last 15 years. In terms of underlying operating profit, what's the story behind that? Well, that gain year-on-year is characterized by three things. The first one and the most material is an improvement in margin in terms of our North American business. And this we believe, as you'll see as we go through it, this we believe is sustainable because it's basically drawn out of things which are systemic and cultural and which we believe we can carry forward into the future. The second item is pricing resilience at Suncoast, which has been a material non-recurring benefit in the year.
We'll again, we'll talk about that as we go through, both David and myself, as we go through in a little bit more detail a little bit later on. Then finally, there's been a number of ebbs and flows in the year which basically offset each other. I've drawn attention there to Keller Australia and a disappointing performance in Europe, but frankly, there are a lot more items as you'll see as we go through. Earnings per share at GBP 153.9p, 53% up year-on-year, driven by the operating profit. The dividend. You know, the dividend, the board took a decision to move the dividend up by 20%, you know, evidencing our confidence as we move forward and, you know, evidencing the performance in the year. I stood here last year and I said that, you know, we'd had a good year but not a great year.
To quote our Chairman, Peter Hill, he said that this year we'd had a truly excellent year. He's correct. He's absolutely correct. What is more, as we move forward, we've got plenty of other ideas how to improve still further as we move into the future. With that optimistic summary message, I'm going to hand you over to David, who will take you through the financial detail.
Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everybody. In the financial results section, the key highlights to watch out for today are the outstanding underlying operating performance, so I'll share with you the year-on-year movement. Following from that, the very strong cash generation compared to last year and the resultant strong balance sheet. Finally, we'll go through some look-ahead modeling considerations for 2024. Okay, let's start with the P&L. So this is the full P&L showing underlying operating profit of GBP 180.9 million, non-underlying of GBP 27.8 million, with a resulting statutory operating profit of GBP 153.1 million, an increase of 126% versus 2022. So let's look at underlying first. So just on revenue, not a year of big growth for us. Year-on-year, 2023 increased by just GBP 21.4 million, a little over 1%.
Volume was down in North America by 6.4% due to the drop-off in revenues following the completion of the large LNG project in region and the reduced volume in Suncoast, driven by the contraction of the residential sector. Despite tough market conditions, Europe did increase revenue by 4.2%. EMEA increased revenue by 34.1%, driven predominantly by large infrastructure projects in Australia and the execution of the first work order on NEOM. We are very pleased to see our underlying operating profit increase by 67% and our margin rate increasing by 240 basis points to 6.1%. I'll bridge that operating profit performance in the next slide. Net finance costs increased by GBP 12.4 million, driven by increased interest rates, with average borrowing levels reduced year-over-year. Taxation at GBP 38.8 million is at an effective rate of 25%.
That has increased since the interims due to the mix of profits coming from the U.S. The underlying earnings per share has increased by 53% to 153.9p, driven by the improved underlying profitability with higher finance costs and increased tax rate preventing the full profit increase drop-through. The board will propose a final dividend of 31.3p to the AGM, bringing the total dividend to 45.2p, a 20% increase on 2022. This significant increase underpins the rebase of the group's profitability and outlook. We'll now move on to the operating profit slide bridge. So moving from left to right, starting with last year's underlying profit of GBP 108.6 million, there's no FX impact due to the average rate alignment between 2022 and 2023, and coming to the North America division first, which is up GBP 88 million year-on-year.
The first block of GBP 77.5 million related to foundations represents a phenomenal turnaround for the business after the issues of 2022. This improvement is predominantly margin-driven. Following the actions put in place in the second half of 2022, we now have a better quality business being delivered through more disciplined bidding, excellence in execution, and variation order management. There are three jobs that contributed higher than normal margins, but the impact of these was offset by increased legal claims, loss on legacy jobs, and a reduced performance from our Canadian business. The next block on Suncoast, where overall volume was down due to the general residential market, but pricing proved more inelastic compared to the lower strand input costs in the high-rise sector, resulting in a significant level of improved profitability.
Revenue is down year-on-year following the completion of a large LNG contract, which was a significant contributor to profit in 2022. Now turning to Europe, where it was GBP 27.8 million down overall with the backdrop of tough market conditions and specific contract execution issues. Volume was up by GBP 3.7 million, but contract issues in Norway and Sweden had a significant adverse financial impact of GBP 17.3 million. Mike will talk later about the actions taken to turn that around going forward. The market in Europe was particularly tough, leading to margin contraction across other business units of GBP 11 million as the residential and commercial sectors remained challenging. We pull out Northeast Europe separately. It was a tough year volume and margin-wise, with the specter of the Ukraine war looming and the dampening effect of the October elections in Poland.
The EMEA division was up GBP 16.2 million with well-executed infrastructure projects in Australia delivering a great year-on-year performance for the business. The MEA region, including NEOM, traded very well with the work order one delivered in H1. The profitability was impacted by standing time as we awaited a second work order on NEOM timeline. On Austral, as highlighted at the interims, the business has turned a corner after the issues of last year. The legacy contracts have been worked through, and the business has generated good profits in the second half, resulting in lower full-year losses year-on-year. EMEA other is predominantly made up of the ASEAN business, which reduced volumes from good profitability in 2022.
The GBP 4.1 million of central items is predominantly driven by increased professional fees for the investigative and subsequent control work after the Austral fraud and the swing in senior-level bonus in LTIPs given the low levels in 2022. So moving to the next slide, I'll cover off non-underlying items. Again, the income statement, but this time focusing on the middle column, non-underlying. The analysis box shows the items that make up to GBP 27.8 million, down from GBP 40.8 million in 2022, which we have split between cash, being predominantly ERP, and restructuring comprising of market exits from Egypt and Kazakhstan, and non-cash, being acquired intangible amortization and the impact of GBP 12.1 million on the impairment of goodwill on the U.K. business, with us applying a more skeptical view of the forecast in the current market and the impact of reducing HS2 volume. Now move on to talk on cash.
This page shows the summary net debt flow from underlying operating profit down to net debt. We are really very pleased with the free cash flow generation of GBP 103.2 million given the outflow last year, despite the increase in interest and tax payments. In line with our flat growth, we have not soaked up much working capital, allowing the improved profitability to drop-through. This year is really a great representation of what the group is capable of on cash generation. There's no M&A or growth levels to muddy the waters, and we're virtually flat, and we can pop out with growth levels virtually flat, we can pop out a free cash flow in excess of GBP 100 million.
The other callouts are cash tax is a significant increase driven by increased profitability from the U.S. and the impact of the 2022 liability being paid in 2023, and the cash outflow from non-underlying is increased given the ERP costs and the payment of a claim on legacy projects that was provided in 2022. In the bottom box on the right, we highlight the net debt on an IAS 17 covenant basis of GBP 146.2 million, and leverage on a lender covenant basis is 0.6 times in the lower end of the target range of 0.5-1.5. Be more on net debt later. Next slide is the summary balance sheet. This slide shows the balance sheet with comparators for last year. For reference, we set out the movements in the boxes, which are pretty standard with no particular callouts. So I think we can move on.
This next slide provides some more detail on the net debt profile during the year. The improved cash generation from operations has driven the reduction in net debt. Looking at the trend, you can see we had a storming second half and that the GBP 146 million level was delivered on the back of strong cash collections. There is covenant detail on the slides, and we are well within all our key metrics. We also set out our facilities, and at year-end, we have GBP 425 million of undrawn borrowing facilities and cash of GBP 151 million. So a really strong balance sheet as we look to the future. The next slide shows some look-ahead modelling considerations. North America foundations, we consider the operational improvement in 2023 to be sustainable. Suncoast, pricing will normalise, so the associated margin levels of 2023 will not repeat.
Europe, the market generally will continue to be tough, but we do expect improved project performance in the Nordics given the actions taken. Austral, we do expect a full year of monthly profits, and Australia, we expect to drop back to normalized trading levels given the reduction in government spending. We are, in 2024, going to restructure the divisions, just impacting Europe and EMEA. So we're creating a division called EMEA, being the Europe division as now, plus the Middle East and NEOM, and following our decision to exit Sub-Saharan Africa. And then APAC, being India, ASEAN, Keller Australia, and Austral. And there's a slide on page 28 of the PAC that shows 2023 in the new structure. On cash and debt, we should be towards the bottom end of our range throughout 2024. That's it for me. Thank you for your attention.
I'll now hand you back to Mike, who will take you through the business performance.
Thank you, David. Okay. I'm going to start with safety. Safety, John Raine and the team, I think, have had another very, very good year. Accident frequency rate at 0.1 is flat year-on-year. That represents 27 accidents across 10,000 employees for the whole year, 10 of which we classified as critical, which is actually quite a high bar. Similarly, TRIR come down. We've had fewer recordables this year, which is very pleasing to see. And we have been increasing our monitoring in terms of near misses and leading indicators as well. When you look beyond that and you look at some of the actions we've taken, it's very pleasing to see that the assurance program, which we've invoked, is actually proving to be very successful. This is basically making sure that all of our processes and standards are actually embedded in the company.
I think this process of trust and then verify will be something which we'll implement across various different functional streams. Here, it's working particularly well, and it's pleasing to see that, with a few exceptions, things are actually embedded. Global Safety Week, we ran for the second year. That was incredibly successful. I was actually traveling at the time and came back and came to a whole host of very positive feedback from employees at various different levels. It actually did achieve what we'd set out to do, which was excellent. And you can see there we continue our support both of UNICEF and also of Keller's own foundation, which is supporting our Ukrainian employees and their families. And both of those initiatives are enjoying both financial and indeed personal support. In terms of another aspect of ESG, carbon reduction, some very good progress here as well.
If you look at scope two, we're now 48% below our threshold that we established in 2019. And this year, we're very confident we'll get through that 50% threshold. And that's ahead of our target in terms of becoming net zero by 2030. Similarly, with scope one, some very good reduction there, a 20% reduction year-on-year from recollection. And that's measured per pound of revenue, some of which was actually helped by the mix of product, but also there's actually a good portion in terms of the use of different materials, but also the use of electronic rigs. And you can see there the KBO-E, which we launched during the year. And it's actually proving to be much more successful as a prototype than anybody thought. So we're pretty hopeful there. And then finally, scope three.
Scope three is the biggest element we can attack, but it's also the most difficult. There's been lots of training going on there. There's been lots of workshops in terms of material substitution. I think quietly, I think in the next five years, we can see a lot more progress with that. But it is something which you have to influence more stakeholders, and that will just take a little bit more time. Moving on to the order book. This is at more or less record levels. It's just below the absolute record. Pleasingly, it's a good mix of steady run-rate business. In all divisions, it more or less covers us for six months, and it sets us up well as we go into 2024, as I'll come back to in a moment. This is a good position to start the year. Moving on to North America.
This division has had a really, really good year, tremendously pleasing. Coming off of 2022, which the first half was very poor, they put in place a lot of actions in the second half of 2022, which worked their way through the order book and basically came to fruition during 2023. And that's what you see in the results today, the work that was put in place in the second half of 2022. And this, as I repeated earlier on, this covers the three different aspects which I talked about earlier. You've seen a major step forward in terms of the performance of foundations. The block off the bridge slide, the GBP 77 million, that's a big step forward, which we believe is sustainable. And why do I believe that? Well, because if you look at the list there, the introduction of standard operating procedures, that's enduring. That will last.
Improved project performance and project reviews, more and more that's getting embedded in the psyche and the DNA of the management. System for tackling variation orders, that's just bringing more discipline about the way in which we follow up changes to the requirement given to us by the client. And they can be either forced changes or requested changes. Again, it's more systemic. It's more repeatable. And we've changed a number of the business unit leaders to hone on commercial as well as technical skills. And all of those things in combination have driven that forward, driven that performance. And as I say, all of things by character are things which will endure. The second feature of the results has been Suncoast, where the strand price has decreased in the year, and we've been deliberately quite slow in passing that benefit onto clients, as have our competitors.
So we haven't lost any market share. It's just been something which we've all gained a small, say smallest, GBP 22-25 million worth of benefit in the year. But it's been transitory, and as margins normalize out, it won't repeat in 2024. And then finally, there's been a lot of pluses and minuses. Canada has had a relatively poor year. We've had the benefit of the three projects which David mentioned earlier. And there's been some legacy legal claims. So there's been puts and takes across the patch, which have more or less offset each other. But overall, North America has been a very, very pleasing set of results, and hats off to the team for their achievements. Moving on to Europe, this in contrast has been somewhat disappointing. The market in Europe has been very tight. It's been very attritional. Volumes are down.
People have been scrambling for market share, and that's forced pricing down, which overall has led to a margin squeeze. Frankly, it's been a little bit more difficult in that respect than we'd anticipated at the beginning of the year. I'm sure we're not alone in feeling that squeeze. On top of that, however, we've also had some self-inflicted wounds in the Nordics. There's been a number of projects there which have been executed as well as they might have been. In terms of cost management, again, there's things which we could have done better. Now, the good news with that is the fact we've taken steps to correct some of those things. Some of those will be instantaneous in their impact. Others will take time to work through in 2024.
But that for us represents an upside, and I'm sure that we'll see a significant rebound in the European results as we go into 2024. That said, we're not expecting any favors in the market either. There have been pockets within Europe that have done very well, though. Central Europe, there's been a big challenge there in terms of markets, and the team there have pivoted from their traditional work in terms of residential to doing more infrastructure work. And elsewhere across Southeast Europe, there's been some very, very good, challenging but good results coming out of the operation. So it isn't all bad, but it's something which we can definitely improve upon. In terms of EMEA, EMEA at the end of the year basically ended up where we thought it was going to.
Overall, after a disappointing start in terms of Austral, the year has actually ended very well. If we go through the different business units, Australia had a boom time in terms of infrastructure with a lot of both federal and state-sponsored infrastructure projects, probably at record levels, and they executed them very well indeed. So you had high volumes at a high conversion, which was brilliant. Austral, they worked on their legacy contracts in the first half, and there were losses. Second half, they turned to profit, and that profit we believe is going to be sustainable all the way through 2024. So again, there's going to be a turnaround there. You go through ASEAN and India, steady performances. Middle East, a steady performance. Middle East, of course, had the benefit of NEOM in the first quarter of the year. And we're waiting for further news on that front.
That having been said, we have won an order for Trojena, which is an $80 million project which we'll execute during 2024 and complete in that period. But overall, EMEA is in good shape as we move forward. Moving on to strategic progress, this is our strategy slide, which is unchanged since 2019, in fact. And if you look at the two paragraphs there, the first one really directs us to where we were going to do business and what the circumstances were we'll turn up. And the second piece is how we actually execute our business and how we go about converting it. If we look at what we've progressed in 2023, you'll see there we've had further steps we've taken in terms of shaping the business.
We've been both organizing our existing business in terms of reshaping the business units in North America and basically pulling together business units of similar character and therefore making them more effective and more efficient. But also in terms of the decision to pull out of Egypt, Sub-Saharan Africa, and other activities, we're basically withdrawing from businesses which, from our strategic point of view, don't give us the right level of returns. You'll see there in the performance section some of the things which I've already talked about in terms of the performance in North America, Australia, and the turnaround in Austral. The actual pricing control around Suncoast, it's not a trivial thing. Tim and the team there were very disciplined about the way in which they split out the market and gauged the market sensitivities and actually slowly gave ground there.
Four years ago, that wouldn't have happened. They would have just immediately given up pricing. So the team there is maturing quite nicely, which from my position, I think is very good indeed. Looking forward to 2024, I think there'll be continued refinement of the portfolio, both in terms of where we play, but also how we structure ourselves. David made reference earlier on to the structural change, and that's really a refinement to, again, to make us more effective in terms of our management span of control and therefore execute better. There will be targeted acquisitions if we manage to get things which we like at the right price, but we clearly will maintain our discipline over that. And in terms of performance, clearly having talked about 2023, there are opportunities which we can improve in 2024. Europe is undoubtedly top of the list.
We'll see a continued turnaround in Austral as well. There are other opportunities which we can improve year on year. There are opportunities where we continue to embed best practice across the group. So some of the things we've learnt in North America, we do fully intend to systemise and run out across the whole of the group and make sure we're getting that benefit everywhere. And again, making it more embedded and more sustainable. And you'll see that encore after encore after encore in terms of that approach. So moving on to the summary and the outlook. 2023 summary, it has been, as the banner says, a record performance, and we're very pleased with that. It has been drawn from a sustainable improvement in terms of the North American foundations business. We have had the material non-recurring benefit of Suncoast.
But again, I'd hold that out as something which I'm particularly pleased with, albeit that it's transitory. And has been an ebb and flow of other items. Now, some of those items do provide us with further opportunities to learn and improve, and we won't miss those. We will take those as opportunities and exploit them as we move into 2024. And pleasingly, the rebasing of the dividend by 20% evidences the board's confidence as we move forward. It evidences the performance in the year. It evidences the cash flow that we've generated. All of those things give us the solid confidence to make that decision, which at the board was actually a very short discussion. People could see the rationale and the logic for doing it, and it was actually quite an easy decision for the board to take.
As we move into 2024, we have got a strong momentum, no doubt about it. We are cautious in some respects because there's continued political and macroeconomic uncertainty. Most of the places we operate around the world have got an election this year, and some of those elections undoubtedly will have impacts. That having been said, we've proven ourselves to be agile. We've got ourselves a good, strong business momentum as we come into the year, and we've got a good order book. There's no reason to believe that we won't be able to weather that. We just have to be mindful of it and respond accordingly. We also have a number of self-help initiatives, which, as I mentioned earlier, we will learn from our mistakes, pick ourselves up, and move forward and improve. We will continue to refine the shape and structure of the business.
Strategic execution, we will continue both organically and through targeted M&A. In doing so, we'll be busy building the foundations for a sustainable future. I think, drawing to a fitting conclusion, we've had a record performance in 2023. We've got a strong momentum as we move into 2024, and our strong balance sheet and our proven strategy sets us up well beyond that. With that, we'll open to questions.
Hi, Rob Chantry from Berenberg, and thanks for the presentation. Three questions from me. Firstly, clearly a big increase in the North American EBIT margin to 9.6%. Could you just talk around the dynamics of that EBIT margin in 2024, specifically how much exposure remains on steel strand? Are there any particular areas of strength and weakness within it? Secondly, US non-residential, do you feel you're getting more than your fair share of work in that market or in line with the market? And then thirdly, on the foundations business, clearly a huge step up in profitability year on year, a lot of focus on more disciplined bidding. Are there any points in the commercial contracting or pricing that still worry you or give you kind of opportunities to improve that discipline further? Thank you.
Okay. In terms of the North American margin, if I answer these and you chip in with any additions. In terms of the North American margin, clearly this year has benefited from, for the whole of the division, has benefited from the pricing in Suncoast, and that is now abated. It's one of those things which ebbs and flows every four years or so. So you will see it coming down from that peak. I would expect our margins in North America going forward to be in the 7%-8% range on a sustainable basis. So you'll see it coming down in 2024 into the top end of that range, I think.
So from that point, and I do think that given what we do with the North American market being as strong as it is at the moment overall relative to the rest of the world, I think that's eminently possible. In terms of your second question, was it non-residential exposure you were after?
Yes.
The non-residential exposure, I mean, we operate in North America in lots of different sectors, and we are reasonably agile, actually moving between those sectors depending upon what the technique and where you are in the U.S. So from that point of view, having exposure in any one area doesn't limit us. I think at the moment you're seeing in North America, there's a lot more activity in the Southeast than there was certainly two years ago along the coastline. You've seen a lot more activity in terms of microchip fab plants, the likes of some of the electrical automotive and battery-type plants coming on board. And some of those specialist industrial units, you're actually seeing a lot more of. You're seeing less warehouses being built, less logistics centers than probably two years ago. I suspect that's the hangover from COVID.
But as I say, we've just pivoted to wherever we need to do. I think one interesting feature from our point of view, which I've observed, is there are more clients who are time-sensitive in terms of delivery. And that certainly, I don't know whether it's a permanent feature or not, but it's certainly something which plays to our strengths at the moment. And then foundations. Contractually, I mean, we are in a business where in some way, shape, or form, you're taking on unknown risks in terms of ground risk. I mean, frankly, that's how we make money, by managing those unknown unknowns for our clients. What we do try and do, though, is everything we do know about as far as possible to either contractually or operationally mitigate those risks and manage them as much as you can.
And some of them, like weather risk, for instance, you will know that in certain parts of the world, you will have certain weather patterns, and you'll make a best estimate of what that impact will be on your business and your production. And sometimes the weather will be better, and you'll have a better production rate. Sometimes it'll be worse. There's nothing you can do about it. You just have to deal with it. And those sorts of things you know about, and you have to make a best estimate for. Others, in terms of ground conditions, you don't know till you hit them. And in some places, you can protect and claim, and some places, if it's just a productivity rate, we just have to manage it. I don't think that's really changed.
What we have got tighter on, especially in North America, though, is rise and fall on materials. And that has got a lot better. I think the only thing which is still out there in that respect is delivery. And that's something which is actually quite difficult to manage, especially in terms of short-term supply like cement and concrete, aggregate.
Yeah, I think, yeah, that last one in terms of getting materials on time so they're scheduled, we can work to schedule, is just trying to contractually protect ourselves with that on the longer-term projects. I think on the short-term ones, there's not much contractual protection around that. And that really did hurt us in 2022. But that's abated really in 2023.
I would say the teams are actually a lot sharper, and this is across the globe, but particularly North America, a lot sharper at managing those. One of the projects which David referred to earlier, one of the three, the key to that project was actually securing the aggregate. And it's like a lot of building materials. The cost of transport is a large portion of the actual cost. So the closer you can get the supply, the more opportunity and more margin you'll have. And they were pretty ruthless at tying up all the quarries and sources before the bid went in. So we were pretty confident we were well placed for that before we even started. And that was good because they had multiple sources and weren't dependent on any one place.
Three for me. One for you. No, because w here you go sort of be useful to get more of a sort of idea of pricing and how things are evolving. I mean, you obviously refer to Europe being quite difficult compared to the. But it'd be useful to get a bit of an update as to how that flowed through. Sorry.
No. It's been recorded. So Clyde Lewis at Peel Hunt. Just on pricing, again, I suppose just more of a general catch-up just as to the trends through the back half of last year and how this year has started would be quite useful to hear about. Secondly, on acquisitions, I mean, I suspect it's going to be very North American-focused. Given your higher profitability and margins and performance across a lot of the groups, is the bar now easier to hit in terms of finding deals that make sense? And again, it'd be interesting to hear about what sellers' expectations are like around their expectations on price. And the last one's on European margins, obviously just giving us an indication of where you think North America would be. Where do you think Europe can get to on a sort of a medium-term basis in terms of sort of margins?
So many ifs in terms of sort of geopolitical issues, but any sort of help there would be useful.
Okay. In terms of pricing, I think North America, I think, is the firmest end of the spectrum right now. It's quite interesting actually because Australia, Melbourne, and Sydney, I'd say 12 months ago, they'd run out of capacity of certain service lines, D-Walls and Hyper CFA. There was no more capacity left in the market. So if you had a machine, you could name your price. And that's beginning to abate a little bit now. And that was 12 months ago, that would have been the place where I would have said pricing was at its peak. North America, I think, is actually generally in good shape. On the West Coast, it's still pretty soft in certain areas, especially in California. But elsewhere, people are busy and nobody's buying work.
There's been one or two contracts in the Northeast in terms of infrastructure projects, which have been reasonably challenging, where there almost haven't been enough bidders on public tenders to make the actual process valid. It just shows how much is out there. I think North America is okay at the moment. It's not glorious, but it's okay. Europe is tough. Europe is very tough. Volume is down. There's surplus of capacity in a lot of places, and people are fighting for market share. I think we'll see a bit of a shakeout. Indeed, some of our competitors, we know, are in tough places. Frankly, we understand that. A lot of that's because their geographic exposure is supposed to ours, but it's a tough gig.
Then across EMEA, we tend to focus on individual projects there, which tend to be the more technically challenging ones. Therefore, it's not necessarily as price-sensitive as it could be. I think Hari and the team in India have done a very good job on winning one or two public tenders by this much compared to the level two competitor, which to me evidences the fact that they do show astute cultural awareness and commercial awareness as to where to pitch their pricing because that is against other competitors, and they just reverse engineer what they think people can achieve with the same given the same circumstances. So overall, it varies quite a lot. In terms of acquisitions, you're absolutely right. North America would be the right place for us at the moment. We have been looking at some opportunities.
We've got probably half a dozen that we're looking at at the moment. We do have a gated, disciplined process. To date, for a variety of different reasons, things have not made it all the way through that process, and we'll continue that discipline. North America has more opportunities, and it'd be easier to assimilate, and the business is in a good shape. Whereas Europe, frankly, I'd rather get it back on stream and working well before we look at anything there. European margins. Do you want to talk about European margins?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, obviously a very disappointing 2023, but we do expect that to turn around in 2024 just by virtue of eliminating some of those contract issues in the Nordics. I think from an ongoing perspective in the short term, 2024 to 2025, 2026, getting that up to between 3% and 4% margin is kind of where we're aiming at.
Lewis Roxburgh, Investec. Sorry. Yeah, there we are. Lewis Roxburgh, Investec. First question's just on NEOM. Obviously, you've got that $80 million project for Trojena. But just looking sort of more long-term, what's the sort of total market opportunity there? I know that you're being sort of conservative in committing to work, but it'd be very helpful just to get an idea of the total opportunity for NEOM. I'll take it one by one.
Okay. NEOM is incredibly difficult for us. The project itself, the whole vision of NEOM, is split up into seven or eight different sub-projects, and each of them have different opportunities in terms of structural foundations. Trojena, which is the one I've referred to earlier on, there's an anchor and micropile job there, which very few people could actually do. And it's up in the mountains, and it plays to our strengths, and we'll make reasonable money out of that. And it's a discrete piece of work, which has to be done before they start building the ski resort. And there will be other elements like that in other bits of the project.
The big one, which we talked about, which executed at the beginning of 2023, the works order one on the line, that particular piece, they've moved their area of operation to what's known as the hidden marina, which is closer to the Gulf and where they feel like the most prestige part of that development will be built. But before they start work, they have to remove something like variance between 30-40 meters worth of sand before they can get down to the level where we'll actually be working. And they're busy doing that now. And because it's close to the sea, they've also got to do water extraction because it's below sea level. And it's a massive, basically, footwell they've got to work a way through.
In terms of when that starts again and who gets all of the awards beyond the 4 that they've already awarded, it's a bit of wait and see. What we're doing is being agile and responsive to that. The kit that we had working on works order one, all but three of the people and all but three of the machines have been redeployed on other work. What we'll do is we will wait and patiently see what comes out in terms of opportunities. If something comes at a particular price that's attractive to us and terms we agree with, we'll go and execute it. What I don't want to do is become slowly sucked into it and dependent upon it because that would be a waste of the company's resources.
We have to be conscious of both the opportunity but also how it's executed because it has to be done the right way as well.
Second question's just on Europe. Just how much of that sort of disappointment and performance was just due to one-off project issues versus just continued weakness across the market? And how does that sort of translate to the outlook moving forward in that region? And also just you mentioned that it's a difficult environment, potential shakeout. Could you see potential consolidation in that area? You're just looking exclusively in the U.S. at this point for any acquisitions.
Do you want to do the business?
Yeah. I think in terms of just the specific contract issues, I'd just look at the number in the bridge of GBP 17.3 million and just eliminating that. I think the market itself is much harder to call. It has been pretty grim in Europe during 2023, and we don't see that changing all that much actually in 2024. And as I said, I think we're kind of aiming for 2024 to be between that 3% and 4% margin level.
Good morning. Charlie Brent at Liberum. I'm going to ask three questions and maybe take them in turn. Firstly, on the dividend, clearly a big increase there. Could you just remind us of what your dividend policy is, please?
Our dividend policy's historically been, you could phrase it as paying a dividend throughout the cycle because the world in which we work is cyclical, and there have been ebbs and flows over time. But we've always kept a progression to that dividend. And I believe it's just the CAGR for the last 30 years is just under 9%. And every year in that 30 years, we've paid a dividend through thick and thin. And we step up by 20% this year, recognize as a step change in the business from here on, and we'll continue to progress it. And traditionally, that's been roughly 5% per year.
Thank you. Secondly, on Austral, clearly a turnaround opportunity there. Could you give us a sense of the performance in 2023 and where that performance could get to in steady state?
Yeah. I think we had a tough first half just working through those legacy contracts. But the management team did a very good job swiftly organizing themselves such that by the time we hit July, we started to have underlying operating profit. We expect that to carry on through for the full year in 2024. It's a roughly GBP 100 million business, and we expect decent margin from a general contractor type business.
They're in a good place. It's one of those really interesting things when you get a fresh pair of eyes on because Deepak Rama has gone in there. He used to run India, then run ASEAN, then run Austral. He challenged a few of the people in terms of some of the way in which they were pricing certain emergency jobs. He just showed them how far they could push it and what the value was to the client as opposed to the cost to us. It makes a hell of a difference. People got their mojo back pretty quickly, which is good.
Then finally from me, please. On working capital, going back to 2022, you had a GBP 110 million outflow, and then 2023 seemed to be more normal. Just wondering what we expect for 2024, 2025. Or is there any reversal from what happened in 2022 still to come, or are we now in sort of normal?
I think we're now into normal. There was a bit of a flip, actually, in 2023 between the inventory. We had excess inventory at the end of 2022, which did come back, and then we kind of normalized out our payables during 2023. I think from now on, that's a normal profile. If we continue on the level of growth, low single digits, I'd expect that the operating profit that's coming out of the business to be dropping through into cash.
The working capital sales ratios should be constant at the 2023 level?
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thanks. Jonny Coubrough from Numis. Congratulations on the excellent year, firstly. Could I ask on the capital base of the business? Capital turns materially improved the past few years, and presumably that's the benefits of top-line inflation on a well-invested capital base. But at what point do you have to start investing again because presumably kits are becoming more expensive as well? So can you sustainably keep CapEx in line with depreciation unless you're moving to much less capital-intensive applications, which you may be? So just your thoughts there, please.
Yeah. I think our policy is to keep our CapEx in line with depreciation. I must say from the business, we don't have people clamoring for more CapEx. We don't feel we need to change that. The return on capital employed, kind of keeping that over 20% is kind of where we're aiming for. We've had an exceptional year in 2023, but I think going forward, it's around that level. We don't feel like we've got to we're building up a head of steam whereby we've got to go and reinvest in our CapEx.
To an area where we are in the next three years, I think we'll be doing a lot more thoughtful management, if put it that way. Our CapEx, to my knowledge, we've never turned down a project which made sense. From the capital rationing point of view, that's never really constrained us. But what we do need to do is to be more mindful as to the mix between generalist equipment and specific equipment and what we rent and what we buy. Because if you're in a remote area where demand's hit peaks and troughs, it's far more sensible to hire the equipment and then return it. If you've got steady state, for instance, CFA in Miami, we own all the equipment there. And the teams actually are getting a lot smarter at making those decisions.
If you take, for instance, the assets which we bought in NEOM, those eight rigs were slightly more expensive because they were generally equipped rigs, and they were pretty high spec. We knew that de-risked them because you could redeploy them, which is what we've done. Instead of having eight rigs which are stranded assets, you've got eight which are highly useful and can be redeployed. Those sorts of decisions were historically, when I joined the company, we were having asset impairments and write-offs quite regularly, and that's decreased.
Thanks. Perhaps a follow-up question to that point about NEOM buying general equipment. In terms of the rejig of the divisions, putting Middle East with Europe, I think the strategy for AMEA was predominantly to focus on more specific projects. Should we read this as Middle East is now becoming more of a steady state business with margins more similar to Europe as opposed to kind of large, lumpy projects?
It's certainly an area where we intend to have permanent establishments that run run-rate businesses. It's not all about the big projects. Clearly, NEOM was a step out from that. But both Saudi and the Emirates have a reasonable volume of medium, small-sized projects, which in the UAE in particular, we've had two years where we've executed them really well. The Middle East has been an underperformer for Keller for the last five years up until the last two years where we've actually beginning to get back on pace.
Yeah.
I think we've honed in on the Middle East as part of the restructure because we're disposing of the Sub-Saharan Africa. So we lose the A in the Middle East and Africa as part of this. I think that's all part of the fact that we're just hunkering down in the higher profitability countries in that region.
Thanks. Last one from me. Great to see the increase in the dividend, as you say. I mean, in addition to that, given the delevering of the business, given the free cash flow profile, and how attractive the shares are, is the most accretive thing you can do today not just to go and buy back your shares and shrink the share count?
I think that's a really interesting point. I think all things being equal and in terms of the capital allocation, there are clearly a number of opportunities that are available to us as we go through 2024. And I don't doubt as we get into the second half that the board will have a considered discussion and decision on some of those options. Clearly, we've got some M&A opportunities which we wish to pursue, share buybacks versus supplementals. It's really a function of value versus the share price at the time. And I know buybacks are now back in vogue. And we'll kick those ideas around later in the year. I think what it highlights, though, is the strength of the balance sheet and the fact that we are in a good place.
I mean, my trailing remarks there, we are in a good place because we've got a strong balance sheet, and we've got a strategy which we know works. It's worked organically, and with a bit more M&A, we can add a bit of a turbo to it. I'm very confident.
Thanks.
Seems to be it. Well, thank you very much, everybody. Some very good questions. I enjoy the Q&A bit better than the presentation piece because it brings it more to life a little bit more. So thank you for that, and thank you for your attendance. And what is a very busy day for everybody, so thank you.