Good morning, and welcome to the ME Group International plc investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged and could be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll, and I'd now like to hand you over to the management team. Vlad, good morning, sir.
Good morning, Lily. Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the ME Group 2025 annual results presentation. My name is Vladimir Crasneanscki, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, and sat next to me is Stéphane Gibon, who is our CFO. We'll start with an overview of the financial highlights for 2025, and we'll then provide a brief reminder of our business, our key activities today, and the evolution of our business mix. We will then talk about the financial performance and our key geographic regions, followed by an update on our business areas, and we'll conclude with a summary of 2025 and the outlook for 2026. In terms of highlights, I'm pleased to report that 2025 has been another solid year for ME Group.
We achieved record profitability with year-on-year profit before tax growth of 6.5%, and we generated GBP 115.5 million of cash from operations. The highly cash generative nature of our business is a key strength, which funds our investment in future growth. This includes further expanding our Wash.ME operations, a key strategic focus with a record 1,326 new laundry machines installed in 2025. This is compared with 1,168 net new machines in 2024 and 780 in 2023. We continue to roll out our next-generation photobooths, and by the end of 2025, we had a total of around 3,100 machines installed.
In addition, innovation remains at the heart of the business as we evolve our machine estate to meet the ever-changing needs of consumers. Innovation highlights include the launch of the new AI photo booth functionality, a new Wash.ME App, and the successful launch of our dog washing product. We will talk about these in more detail later on. As always, we are committed to delivering shareholder returns and will return GBP 32.6 million to our shareholders in respect of 2025. About us. I'll now provide a brief overview of our business and the evolution of our operations for those of you who may be newer to ME Group. ME Group is a leader in automated service equipment space aimed primarily at the consumer sector.
The way to think about ME Group is we have two commonalities between all of our products and all of our geographies. All of our machines are serviced by the same technicians, which gives us operational leverage, and we tend to operate in the same commercial model, i.e., we pay our site partners a percentage of revenue rather than rent or machine sales. We operate more than 49,000 machines across 16 countries, spanning three key regions, continental Europe, which is our largest region, followed by the U.K. and Republic of Ireland, and then Asia Pacific. We have long-standing and well-established key partnerships with high-footfall site owners, including well-known brands such as Morrisons, MFG, Transport for London, and Tesco. More recently, Shell in the U.K. and with Intermarché and SNCF in France. The group has two core activities, which are photo booths and laundry operations.
While historically we have best been known for our photo booths, laundry has been a key area of growth in recent years, supporting diversification of the machine estate. Our ancillary activities include printing kiosks, children's rides, photocopying services, and food service equipment. These activities are often co-located with our core activities, leveraging existing site owner relationships and benefiting from maintenance by our dedicated field engineers. We'll talk more about the evolution of our core and ancillary activities later in the presentation. Our in-house R&D team supports innovation and diversification of our product range to meet the ever-changing needs of our consumers, and we have a significant competitive advantages across our key markets with a dominant market position and high barriers to entry.
We have a dedicated focus on return on capital, and we aim for a typical payback period of approximately 18 months for laundry machines and photo booths. Our key strengths underpin the group's investment case and position us well for long-term success. For those that are new to ME Group, I hope the above was useful in understanding more about our activities. Our products. On this slide, you can see the different types of products that sit across our core and ancillary activities, and we think it's useful for you to see some of the units that we're talking about. In regards to the evolution of business mix, innovation and diversification have driven the evolution of our business mix in recent years.
While photo booth vending revenue remains the largest contributor to the group's revenue, the proportion of vending revenue from laundry has increased significantly in recent years. In 2021, laundry vending revenue represented a quarter of our total vending revenue. Today, it represents more than a third. We often hear from investors their concerns about our photo booth business, and while laundry has more than doubled in the period, it is worth noting that photo booth revenue has increased by 35% since 2021. In regards to this slide, it also tells a similar story on the EBITDA level. In recent years, laundry has been our fastest-growing business area in terms of machine installations, vending revenue, and EBITDA contribution.
What's important to note here, we'll go into it later, but the EBITDA margin on this product, the laundry product, is stronger than the photo booth product. In 2021, laundry represented just over a third of group EBITDA, and today it's closer to half. The increase in corporate costs has not matched the overall percentage increase in EBITDA, showing that we have become more efficient over time. These, you know, the last two slides really illustrate the ongoing evolution and diversification of our businesses. It's a key strategic focus for us, and we are very focused on the growth of our laundry product. Well, I'll now hand over to Stéphane to talk through the 2025 financial performance.
Thank you, Vlad. We are pleased to report another strong performance. The positive trading momentum in the first half, driven by our expanding laundry operations, continued into the second half of the year. Total revenue increased by more than 2%, reflecting a strong performance in our laundry business and continued resilience in Photobooth. At constant currency, revenue increased 3%. This growth was across all our geographic regions. Group EBITDA increased by more than 5%, up 6% at constant currency, driven by a 17% increase in laundry EBITDA. Reported profit before tax increased by 6.5% and was up 7% at constant currency. We continue to be a highly cash generative business, and we use this cash to fund maintenance and gross CapEx. Cash generated from operations increased by nearly 9% year-on-year.
As planned, our CapEx increased by 20% to GBP 65 million. This included GBP 32 million in laundry expansion, GBP 13 million in upgrading our photobooth estate, GBP 7 million for refreshing our printing kiosks. The increase in CapEx resulted in a 3% reduction in net cash. Figures for gross cash, net cash, and cash generated from operations have been restated for 2024. The group remains well capitalized with a strong balance sheet and financial position. Diluted earnings per share for 2025 increased by 4.5%, supported by the record profit performance. As a result of the strong performance, the board has declared a total dividend of GBP 0.0864 per share for 2025, a 9.5% increase from the prior year. Overall, GBP 32.6 million will be returned to shareholders.
Laundry has continued to be the key driver of revenue growth, and during the year contributed just over GBP 9 million more than in 2024. Photobooth's revenue was around GBP 7 million lower than in 2024. This was mainly due to three factors. One-off supplier issue related to printers, which was resolved in the first half and we've received compensation from the supplier. The end of a UK contract in 2024 impacting year-on-year revenue. A change to official photo ID regulations in Germany. New rules in Germany, which came into force in May 2025, affect how our passport photos are sourced and citizens are now required to do this either directly at the citizens' offices or by a certified photographer. In total, Group revenue increased by 2.4% and increased 3% at constant currency.
Looking at profit before tax, an increase in total revenue performance delivered GBP 7.5 million of additional profit on the prior year. The group saw a GBP 1 million benefit from the reversal of impairment in the period. More favorable currency exchange rates resulted in a GBP 2.9 million contribution to the group's profit compared with 2024. Amortization and depreciation were GBP 3.4 million higher, which reflected the increase in the number of vending units in operation compared to last year. As a result, profits increased by 6.5% and was up 7% at constant currency. Cash inflow from operations amounted to GBP 115.5 million, which continues to reflect the highly cash generative nature of the group's operations.
As mentioned on the previous slide, CapEx rose mainly to ongoing investment in laundry operations, as well as updates to our Photobooth and kiosk estates. Taxation for the year was GBP 21.4 million, GBP 3.9 million higher than the prior year. Dividends in respect of 2024 amounted to GBP 29.8 million. As a result, the closing net cash position at 31 October 2025 was GBP 26.5 million. As previously mentioned, 2024 figures for gross cash, net cash and cash generated from operations have been restated due to a reclassification of cash in transit. I will now talk about the performance across our three core geographies. Continental Europe is the group's largest region, which holds more than half of the group's total vending estate. The region accounts for more than 68% of the group's total revenue and 80% of total group EBITDA.
While Photo.ME remained the largest contributor to revenue, our laundry operations once again performed strongly with Wash.ME vending revenue growth of nearly 7%. This performance was supported by estate expansion, particularly in France, with growing demand for convenient laundry services. While revenue was impacted by some of the factors mentioned earlier, total revenue for Continental Europe increased by 3%. Due to the challenges mentioned, operating profit was marginally lower at GBP 67.6 million. U.K. and Ireland revenue increased by almost 2% and contributed 16% of total group revenue. Again, this was driven by a strong laundry performance with vending revenue from Wash.ME up 18% at GBP 32.2 million. Our strong Wash.ME performance reflected the continued expansion of our laundry operations, and this performance was achieved despite softer consumer demand in the summer months which were warmer than usual.
We installed a further 415 net new laundry machines. The winding down of a contract in 2024 impacted Photo.ME vending revenue. However, due to the nature of this contract, this has a limited impact on profitability. The performance of our higher margin laundry business paired with our focus on operational efficiencies helped deliver a 4.6 increase in operating profit. Asia Pacific delivered a resilient revenue performance with revenue growth driven by a 2.2% increase in Photo.ME vending revenue. Operating profit grew significantly by 61%. In addition to Photo.ME, we operate 426 orange juice vending machines in Japan and 41 in Australia. I now hand over to Vlad to take you through the business review.
Thanks, Stéphane. Our growth strategy. Looking at our growth strategy, we've made good progress, and I wanted to pull out a few highlights. We acquired 116 photo booths in Belgium from APS, a local competitor. This, alongside the continued rollout of photo booths in the Netherlands, has expanded our presence in continental Europe. We've added new features to our photo booths to broaden our offer, which we'll talk about in more detail later. We also launched our new Wash.ME app, which currently has over 60,000 users, even though it's only been launched for a month and a bit. We're very happy about that. This provides consumers with a more seamless and integrated experience when using our laundry services, while enabling them to benefit from our loyalty scheme.
We've also successfully launched our new dog wash product, situated alongside our laundry machines in France and Ireland. We have approximately 70 machines rolled out to date. On the following slides, I'll talk through our business areas, starting with our core photo booths and laundry activities. While the business mix has evolved significantly, photo booth operations still account for 62% of our machines and are our largest contributor to revenue and EBITDA. Our Photo.ME business performed resiliently with a total revenue of over GBP 168 million. The revenue decline was primarily due to the previously mentioned challenges. As a result of these factors, average revenue per machine was slightly lower at GBP 5,437 per machine. 2024 was a year of particularly high levels of investment in our photo booth operations.
The comparatively smaller level of CapEx in 2025 reflects this. Despite the factors above, EBITDA has remained stable. We continue to roll out next generation photo booths in France, which has been a major focus, and these photo booths offer new functionality, enabling us to deliver multiple services and features. At the year-end, a total of around 3,100 next generation photo booths have been installed in France, and by the end of October 2027, we plan to have a total of 8,000 next generation photo booths installed. Innovation remains at the heart of our business and is essential to how we develop our services and meet the needs of our consumers.
We have launched new generative AI capabilities on our next-generation photobooths, providing an enhanced end user experience, including visually experimental photo products, easy download options via a QR code, and enabling consumers to share images via social media directly from our photobooths. The AI integration in our photobooths is really focused around that fun photo element, which we believe will be a big growth driver for the group, moving forward. As evidence of that, notably, we've recently had a strategic campaign with PSG in France, leveraging the club's success during its Champions League campaign. We remain committed to investing in our existing photobooth estates and new geographies where market dynamics make this attractive. On to laundry.
Laundry remains our fastest growing business area in terms of machine installations, revenue, and EBITDA contribution, and is the group's highest margin activity. The 17.3% increase in total revenue was driven by the ongoing expansion in our target geographies with a record number of machines installed. This led to a total laundry EBITDA growth of 18.1%, with an EBITDA margin of 49.4%, an increase on the prior year. Investment in laundry expansion saw CapEx increase by 25%. We installed a record 1,326 new machines in the year. We were very proud with this figure as we had set ourselves the ambition of 1,200, and this consisted of 1,172 net new machines and 154 relocations.
We removed 181 old or unprofitable machines. As a result, the net number of machines increased by almost 1,150. In 2026, we are targeting the ambition of installing more than 1,300 net laundry machines, which would be another record. In addition to implementing our expansion strategy, we're also investing in innovation to create a more efficient and seamless service for all our consumers. As previously discussed, we've launched our new Wash.ME app, which is an all-in-one loyalty system, which allows our users to generate points when using our machines and then redeem those points for free products. In addition, we have one-time code usage, and we can send push notifications to our users to tell them about new offers and new machines installed nearby where they live.
As of the start of this year, the app is currently live in France and will be launched more widely into all countries when the app is available. The new Wash.ME app reinforces the group's commitment to investing in innovative solutions aimed at improving the experience and services for our consumers. On the next few slides, I'll talk about our ancillary services. Our Print.ME operations consist of high-quality digital printing services. The performance remained robust, with the total revenue down slightly at GBP 11.1 million, while vending revenue has remained flat at GBP 10.8 million. In France, we installed 649 new Speedlab kiosks in place of our old or unprofitable machines. The new Speedlab kiosks offer enhanced functionality, improved experience, and drive stronger revenue per machine.
Average revenue per machine during the year increased 1.5% to GBP 2,389 per machine, and the continued program to install new machines is reflected in higher CapEx, which increased to GBP 6.7 million compared to GBP 700,000 in the prior year. While an ancillary activity, we continue to commit investment to this part of the business where attractive target returns can be achieved. The group will continue to focus investment in PrintMe on the replacement of old machines, and we expect to commit CapEx of around GBP 3.8 million to this program in the current financial year. In regards to other vending, this consists of profitable ancillary activities, including Feed.ME, Amuse.ME, and Copy.ME. Performance was robust, with total revenue of GBP 23.3 million, which is broadly in line with 2024.
Vending revenue, which excludes the sale of equipment consumables, spare parts, and services, increased by 2% to GBP 10.1 million and at a constant currency was up by 5.1%. CapEx for the year was lower at GBP 1.6 million and was focused on Amuse.ME, Feed.ME, and Copy.ME. Our other vending operations consist of more than 6,500 units, and we operate 470 freshly squeezed orange juice vending machines in the Asia Pacific, with most of these situated in Japan and Australia. We also sell pizza vending equipment on a small scale in continental Europe and the U.K. and Ireland.
While other vending remains a small business area in terms of total revenue and EBITDA contribution, it provides high margins as an incremental service at high-footfall sites where we have existing operations in place. Recapping on our performance and outlook. We are pleased to report another year of record profitability. There was further strategic expansion of Wash.ME operations with a record number of machine installations, and the rollout of next-generation photobooths progressed well, enhancing the functionality and attractiveness of our machines. Innovation and diversification remains at the heart of the business as we continue to evolve our offering to meet the needs of our consumers. We remain highly cash generative and are committed to delivering shareholder returns. We returned GBP 32.6 million to shareholders through dividends in respect of 2025.
Looking ahead, five months into the 2026 financial year and trading has been in line with management expectations. The group remains focused on delivering against our long-term growth strategy, driven by further progress in our core photo booth and laundry activities. We plan to install 1,300+ net Wash.ME machines in the current year, and we're targeting on deploying a total of 8,000 next-generation machines by the end of 2027. Our focus on innovation and diversification will see the new Wash.ME app rolled out to all major countries where we operate laundry services, and we'll install 50 KeyMe cutting machines in France under an SNCF contract and plan to continue to roll out our Dog Wash product. These are new ancillary activities for the group.
We will also launch our share buyback program to acquire between 15 and 20 million shares in GBP. You could see the RNS this morning announcing our GBP 18 million share buyback. Our business is in a strong financial position, and we're well-placed to capitalize on future growth opportunities. Thank you very much for listening. We really appreciate it. We will now take some questions.
That's great. Thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via Investor Dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. Can I please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.
Thank you very much. We'll start with the first question. Are you planning to increase product prices? Well, last year's figures do not include any pricing increases. This year, we are planning on doing a moderate pricing increase in France on the photo booths where the prices lag behind other European countries. For reference, in France, we charge EUR 8 for a ePhoto. In the U.K., that figure is GBP 10. In Germany, it's EUR 10. You can see France is a little bit behind. We'll be considering an increase in the price of specifically the ePhoto product in France to a moderate degree. The next question is the reduction in the share buyback program because you have less cash than you previously thought?
Yeah, I mean, yeah. Stéphane, why don't you take that one?
Yeah. No, I think that we had the opportunity to raise a loan. To be clear, we wanted to be sure to face the growth of the number of installations in terms of laundry for the year. We think we will be able to do it organically, but we prefer to raise a loan. We had a loan at a very low condition, so for five years at 2.8% rate of 2.8%, which is an opportunity. It will also be used maybe for a future acquisition if needed.
The next question is, please can you explain how the error to previously overstate cash and cash equivalents arose?
Yeah.
The lack of explanation creates uncertainty.
It's a technical error. It's a problem with reclassification of the credit card suspense because we were classifying the cash in transit that we calculate. It's a provision that we calculate every year and also the credit card suspense in the cash and cash equivalents. It's a double account that we have done for years. The new team of Mazars has detected that and has asked us to reclassify the credit card suspense elsewhere in the balance sheet.
Okay. Have the company considered releasing FY results earlier? This would remove the risk of suspension if there were any issues with the audit and/or auditors. There's a question later on about why the annual report was delayed. We'll answer more fully then. We were intending to release the annual report this year, midpoint of February. We were already anticipating doing that. Unfortunately, there were a number of delays, and we'll talk about that a little bit later on. The next question is, can you expand on the pet washing business, which appears very attractive with a large total addressable market? Also, your comments related to the acquisitions in a potential new strategic category. Any additional color would be appreciated. Thank you for the question.
We are very excited about the Dog Wash, primarily because it's very easy for us to roll out. All of our existing laundry customers will be customers for this product. It's very, what's the word? It's very, very well situated next to our laundry, so we already have the customers there. In terms of installations, all of the utilities required for the Dog Wash machines are the same utilities we need for the Revolution. The installation and rollout pace should also be very good. It's a big market. Currently there's lots of fragmented players who mainly buy units from third-party suppliers and then install them with small entrepreneurs.
We think we have a really strong opportunity to aggressively expand this business because we have the operational capacity and the maintenance teams that are ready to service these machines, but also we have the existing client base who will, well, who are already showing very strong interest in this product. Okay. Can you advise of the reason that the results were delayed? As you can probably imagine, over the last month, we've been very focused on getting the results released. We will, of course, do a full investigation into why there were significant delays. We're very pleased that in the results you can see there were no material adjustments. As far as we're concerned, a clean bill of health for the company. We have worked with Mazars for a number of years.
The difference this year, there are a few different things this year. Primarily, we had a new audit partner, who was in charge of the audit, and we had an expansion in the number of countries that were under.
Under scope.
under the scope. It went from Stéphane, from what to what again?
We had traditionally around seven countries that were audited because they were the major entity of the company. It was in November, we were informed that we will have now 17 entities that were audited. Plus the fact that we considered that the requests were multiplied by around three. It was extremely complicated for us to organize so late, and it was part of the delay, but not the only delay. I think that was maybe something.
We will obviously conduct our investigation. Obviously, we're very disappointed with the two separate delays. We will have an investigation following our roadshow. Okay. The next question is, you said changes to photo ID regulations in Germany requiring passport photos to be taken in the citizen's office or certified photographers was part of the reason for the fall in photobooth sales to FY 2025. What does this actually mean for all machines? Does it mean that they are no longer generating sales from photo ID purposes? I assume that's a large proportion of the total photobooth sales, but could you mention how much as a percentage?
Is the next-generation photobooths that you're already rolling out in France meeting the German standards, or do you have to update them? A longer question on Germany and one we're happy to answer. In Germany, they've moved to a live enrollment system where the German government has decided to say that all photos taken for passports need to be taken by someone in person. Obviously, we pointed out to the German government that our photobooths have biometric built in, or we guarantee that there was a live person when the photo is taken.
Regardless, the regulatory changes meant that citizens need to have their photo taken by a live person or in the local mayoral offices, which is really what they're pushing. That this has led to a reduction in volumes on our photo booths, but not so much as you may imagine. We're seeing between 20% and 30% in terms of a reduction in volume on the photo booth. That still means there's a very healthy business there, and there's lots of other use cases for the photo booth, and that figure has stabilized. I think that demonstrates the diversity of user types for our products, but also the fact that the photo booth business in Germany has a future.
We will continue to operate our photo booths there, albeit with a reduction in volumes due to the changes in regulation. We also have strategies in terms of how we're going to increase volumes and combat this change in regulation, which we feel is onerous. We will continue to take those actions. Okay. Do we have a sense of when growth in the Wash.ME area of the business is expected to stabilize? We have ambitious targets in the Wash.ME division. We are continuing to invest into it, and it is the primary focus of our CapEx, but also of our management focus. We think there's a large total addressable market that we haven't yet captured in the countries we already operate in.
Of course, there are new geographies as well that are of interest to the group, some of which we launched recently, such as Australia. Well, we won't see the laundry business stabilizing in the near future. We have really strong growth ambitions. We're seeing a lot of commercial interest in our products. We anticipate that the number of units we install per year will keep growing. I said this a few years ago on our webinar, but you know, I said, we're a photo booth company today, we will be a laundry company tomorrow. I think we're delivering on that.
Nearly 50% of the group's EBITDA was laundry in 2025, and I anticipate that very shortly we will be a laundry company with a historical cash generative photo booth business. Next questions. How does a dog washing machine work? Animals do not like to be contained. Fear not, it's not like a laundrette where you put a dog in the machine and close the door. It's a unit where dogs can sit on a platform, and then there is a hose for the user to use alongside shampoo, conditioner, hairdryer. It's very much a spa treatment for the dog, we like to say. There's no contained space, total control for the owner. Yeah, please let your fears be allayed. Okay.
The next question, what exposure do you have in your washing machines to rising energy prices, and when might your operating costs start to experience inflation? Very good question. We already have experience of this with the Russia-Ukraine conflict, when energy prices rose significantly. When that happens, what we tend to find is that performance on the machines on a per laundry machine basis actually increases because consumers are very conscious of their energy costs at home and would rather utilize our machines where we can promise and guarantee a fixed cost. The other important thing to note is for the majority of our site partners, they pay the energy costs, not ME Group. That means that we're well-insulated from energy shocks.
The only impact that we see is that it can impact the pace of our rollout, where site partners are less enthusiastic to install new machines due to concerns around energy. Although this is a short-term impact, we're hoping to avoid much disruption. The good news is it generally leads to higher revenues per laundry machine. With the Photo.ME business in decline, with the recovery post-COVID lockdowns, a recovery from a low base, there are obviously far more cost-effective ways to obtain passport photos given current technologies. What is the impact if a Photo.ME location no longer wants to retain a photo booth? We'll have to agree to disagree. As you can see from our initial slides, our Photo.ME business is not in decline. In fact, we're experiencing moderate growth year on year.
2025 being an abnormal year due to one-off headwinds, such as the end of a contract in the U.K., and a printer issue primarily affecting France. Our photo booths are very profitable, very cash generative for the group, and a business area that we see as a sustainable one continuing over many years. One of the things we're always keen to point out is that we have a lot of U.K.-based shareholders, and the regulatory environment in the U.K. is unique. It's not copied across the rest of the world. In the U.K., they launched the selfie system, where you're able to take your passport photo on your phone in 2017. We're still trading incredibly strongly in the U.K. nearly 10 years later.
Something that I'm sure many investors didn't predict would happen. As I said, the UK is a unique regulatory environment. Across the rest of our markets, we don't have another market where you're able to take your passport photo on your phone through a selfie system like you do in the UK. We still think that the regulatory environment across Europe is very, very stable. The most important country for us in regards to photo booths is France. France is a very stable regulatory environment. We're very close to the French authorities, and we work hand in hand with them as we're the largest provider of passport photos there. We are very positive about the photo booth business, and we anticipate stability moving forward. Okay.
We're trying to make sure we don't miss out on a lot of questions. There are a lot coming in, please forgive us. The value proposition and profitability of Wash.ME are clear to me, clear to see. How can you predict your competitive position in this division? We have significant barriers to entry in the laundry division. There are, I mean, I could sit here for half an hour talking about them. I think the most important ones are, firstly, they're very CapEx intensive, and you as a company take a risk, right? You have to invest money into the site. You have to invest money to bring it to site, and you have to invest money to install it on site. It's quite a significant investment up front.
Of course, with the way that the contracts work, you obviously share a percentage of the revenue to the consumers, but they don't pay any upfront costs. You're taking on that risk. Now, the way we're able to benefit and operate in this commercial environment is we have a lot of data from our machines, so we can make really informed decisions on where to invest our CapEx. New entrants to the market don't have that information. On top of that, the CapEx required to grow this division is intensive. So that rules out a number of different actors. Secondly, you know, if we didn't have the existing photobooth business, I don't think we would be successful in the laundry business.
Now, the reason I say that is when we launched our laundry business over 10 years ago, we already had a lot of the locations we wanted because we already had them as photobooth customers, and we already had our operational coverage. To develop those two things when you don't have them requires a significant amount of time and capital to be able to match us. The final barrier to entry, not the final one, but the final big one is we have a significant first mover advantage. If you were to try and copy us and try and become our competitor in the laundry business, you would want to install machines where we currently have no presence. Because when we install a machine, we capture the market around that machine.
Yes, we still have a lot of machines to place, and there's a large total addressable market, but we already have, you know, nearly 8,000 locations. We're installing over 1,000 a year. It's taken us 10 years to get up to that pace of installation. Any new entrant will be starting with much more modest rollout numbers. I think that the first mover advantage is a key competitive advantage for us. Okay. Can you help me understand approximately how much a next-generation photobooth and a Wash.ME laundry machine cost to produce? I'm thinking CapEx was GBP 32 million for Wash.ME during 2025, and you installed around 1,300 machines, at least capping the cost of GBP 25K.
I imagine it could be well below that due to some of the CapEx being maintenance CapEx.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. The CapEx of one machine of one laundry is not GBP 25,000 because it's a bit less than 20,000, but we have GBP 5,000 of installation cost. You know that we have to create a concrete platform to get the electricity and the water and so on. That's why. For the photobooths, the cost is approximately GBP 5,000-GBP 6,000.
Great. Okay. In terms of geographical expansion, do you see a presence in the U.S. over the medium to longer term? There are a number of U.K.-listed companies that have promised an aggressive U.S. expansion and then not delivered on it. We are very interested in the U.S. market, but we have no concrete plans at present to launch there. Of course, it's an interesting market for us. Are you concerned that other European countries take the German approach? We are not, and we will explain why. The regulatory environment in Germany was is significantly different to the rest of Europe, primarily because our main competitor in Germany is a company called Bundesdruckerei, who are in part owned by the German government.
This is a peculiar situation and not something we see replicated in other countries. I think that in part did lead to some regulatory changes. Your balance sheet is and has been historically very strong. If acquisitions did present that were more transformational in nature, what is your comfort zone in terms of leverage net debt to EBITDA for the right deals? Thank you for your question. We are in a very strong position financially. You know, we are always looking for interesting opportunities. I think it's important to note here that we're very selective when it comes to acquisitions. We want businesses that we can operate, so our technicians can go and look after the machines.
We want businesses that have a similar model in terms of payback time and margin to our laundry business, because we always think to ourselves, with this acquisition opportunity, if we took that money and invested it into laundry, what would the returns be? That obviously sets a high bar in terms of the quality of acquisitions that we're looking at. We will continue to be selective and opportunistic in the market moving forward. Obviously, we are well capitalized and are able to take on moderate leverage to capitalize on transformational opportunities. We're always looking and always attentive to the market. We've answered the washing machine production costs. How many users per week do you require to make a Wash.ME machine profitable?
Could they be installed by developers of large apartment blocks with, say, 200 flats? Excellent question, and certainly someone who's paying attention. Absolutely. We love to install units in locations where we have captive market, and apartment blocks, council housing, areas are a key area of growth for us moving forward. In fact, I'm very pleased to announce that we've just installed our first machine with Lambeth Council in a council estate, which is excellent because we're obviously located close by to where people live, but also we're providing a valuable service to a community that doesn't have one. Certainly, we can install in locations such as that.
In terms of the average users per day or how many users we require for a machine, it's a bit more of an art than a science because different machines will have different types of users. You know, you may have a more B2B user, which is frequent, high volume. You might have more residential who are using a 9-kilo load. It very much depends. We utilize our data to ensure that we make the correct decisions in regards to where we want to install machines. You've written that Wash.Me performed well despite slightly softer consumer demand during the unusually warm summer months. I'm trying to understand the consumer and customer behavior. Can you explain why warmer weather causes people to use the Wash.Me machines less? Great question.
It's really very simple, but it's one to get your head around. When we see very warm and dry weather, dry is the key point, we see the usage of our dryer decreasing. Because what people will do is wash their clothes in our machines but then prefer to dry at home, line dry, for example. Now, last summer was a really great summer for weather, so it was very dry and very warm, which is great personally, but professionally, we really do want some rain and some moisture, because that helps to drive the utilization of our dryer. Now, this impact was felt more in our more northerly countries such as Ireland, the U.K., and the north of France. Last year we had unseasonably and abnormally warm weather.
Sorry, not warm weather, dry weather, which was the critical factor. You must also remember that in 2024, by contrast, it was a very wet summer. What we had is a very wet summer the year before, and then 2025 was a dry summer. That impacted our dryer utilization, which can be as high as 40%-50% in Ireland and the U.K. I hope that explains why that abnormally dry summer impacted our dryer utilization and therefore the overall revenue per machine. Stéphane?
Yeah.
Would you be willing to separately disclose the growth and maintenance CapEx for the various businesses?
This is effectively something that we could do, but you have to know that so far there is absolutely, I would say, really weak. Sorry, it's really weak. We have no real maintenance CapEx. When we do some intervention on the field, this is directly done in the P&L. I would say maybe one day we will have to replace the machine, but our fleet is extremely young, around six years old, on average per machine, so it means that this is not the case so far. It will be the case maybe in five or six years.
Great. Okay. The next question. We're trying to answer all the questions. It's been a while since we've spoken to you, so we want to be as thorough as possible. There are a lot of questions coming in, so if we do miss any questions, please feel free to send them to me and Stéphane separately, and we'll look to get back to you as quickly as possible. What is the impact to the company if a location no longer wishes to retain the machine/booth? Can they be relocated, resold? Yes, this is one of the big advantages of ME Group.
If we have a machine that is no longer profitable or a site partner, for example, closes a store for a refurbishment or sells a location, if they do not wish to retain the machine on that site, we can pick it up and move it to a new location very easily. Now, with the photobooths, it's particularly easy because all we have to do is unplug it, put it on a truck from our engineers and drive it to another location. We can even swap photobooths between countries, which is really useful. The laundry is very much the same. The only difference with the laundry is because it's plumbed in, we do have to make good the site installation costs afterwards.
It's a little bit more tricky, but they are also movable and transportable machines, and we can also move those between countries. It's one of the big advantages. Actually, the next question is related to that. You mentioned that you removed some Wash.ME machines, like 180 or something during the year. I understand that, like, these machines aren't relocated. Why not? Essentially, we removed some machines during the year. There are a number of factors. One of them is that the machines were not living up to our revenue expectations per machine, so we would rather pick it up and move it to a better location to become more profitable and ensure that we're hitting our average revenues per machine that we require.
We also had certain factors last year which didn't help us, such as, unfortunately, Homebase going into administration. We've just launched a rollout program with them, 20-odd machines or so. We had to remove those. All of those figures are counted in that, how many machines we removed, figure. I would say last year was higher than we would have anticipated. I expect it to be a lower number this year, barring any large bankruptcies from our site partners, hopefully. Okay.
Do you have some more?
I think that's all of the questions that we have the time to answer, I'm afraid. We are here to answer any questions that our investors may have, so please feel free to email me or Stéphane, either from our emails or to Hudson's team. We'll be more than happy to answer your questions. We thank you very much for your attention and your thoughtful and insightful questions. Yeah, thank you for your continued interest.
That's great. Thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close the session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.
Thank you very much. Bye-bye.