Our half year results for 2022. I'm gonna do a very brief introduction. Steve will go through the financial and operational review, and then I'm gonna spend some time looking at the outlook after that. Very pleased. Record first half results despite really significant inflation and market headwinds. I'd actually like to really thank our teams of people up and down the country who've had to deal with this inflation, which has not been easy, and a big thank you to everybody. Our balance sheet is really, really important, and we continue to be completely committed to having significant daily cash. In these times of inflation and other market headwinds, our operational rigor, contract discipline, and risk management could not be more important, and we're really, really homing in on that.
We've got a high quality order book, and actually it's the quality of that order book, how much embedded margin is in that order book and how much risk is much more important than the size of the order book. We're very, very pleased with where our order book is. Very pleased to increase the dividend 10%. Clearly we feel pretty good about life because we now expect to deliver a result for the full year 2022, which is slightly ahead of our previous expectations. Over to you, Steve.
Thanks, John, and morning, everyone. As usual, I'm gonna do the financial and operational review. In summary then, as John said, it's been a record first half for us, and this is despite the significant market headwinds we're all facing. Revenue's up 9%, operating profit up 4%, profit before tax up 3%, all going in the right direction. Now, the operating margin was down slightly to 3.4%. No one particular driver behind this. More just simply the result of divisional and project mix. EPS was up 3%, and our interim dividend of GBP 0.33 per share represents a 10% increase on last year, reflecting how positively we feel about the business and the future prospects. This slide just gives a high-level split of the results by division. Just a few immediate standout points to note.
Continued margin growth in Construction and Infrastructure. Margin up to 3.2%, giving profit up 7% to GBP 24.1 million. Fit Out has once again demonstrated what a high quality business it is with profit up 10% to GBP 21.2 million. Continued progress also at Partnership Housing. Profit up 15% and a return on capital of 20%, all against a backdrop of significant market headwinds, John is gonna cover in a bit more detail in his section. I'm gonna try not to mention inflation too much in this bit. Now on to cash. Now, the six-month cash flow is never really very representative of too much, but you can see here that the operating cash flow for the period is an outflow of GBP 40.4 million.
Now, within this, the main driver is a working capital outflow of GBP 84.7 million. A big number on the face of it, however, within this, GBP 57.4 million of it is investment in the regeneration activities of Partnership Housing and Urban Regeneration. Of this, it's real assets, mainly bricks and mortar type inventory. The key takeaway overall is that there's been no significant change to the underlying profile in debtors and creditor payments. On this, I've included a slide in the appendix which shows our latest reported payment practices to the supply chain and which remains a key strategic competitive advantage for us. Now this is our usual slide, which shows our daily bank balance for every day of the period. That's the blue line this time around. Look, it's the ultimate disclosure on cash flow.
Our average daily net cash for the half year was GBP 264 million, slightly lower than last year's really strong performance. Now, nothing to get too concerned about other than just the usual ebb and flow of working capital movements and the significant investment we've had in regeneration in the period. Based upon where we are now and the profile of cash movements in the second half, we expect the average daily cash for the full year will be slightly lower than the GBP 264 million we've just reported. Now importantly, the lowest level of cash on any one day was just over GBP 200 million. Plenty of headroom and comfortable. Therefore it allows us to continue making the right long-term decisions for the business to best position ourselves for the future.
Net cash at the period end was GBP 274 million, so cash-wise, we're in really good shape. Now briefly on the balance sheet, I've talked about the cash. No pension issues, so a really good platform to support us as we move forward. On the workload and at a group level, the total order book was up 2% on the same time last year to a very healthy GBP 8.5 billion, albeit 1% lower than it was at the year end. Now within this, on the left-hand side, the construction order book was up 14% whilst the regeneration order book on the right was down 9%, both measured against the same time last year. As John said, more important than just the headline number is that we've not compromised on the quality nor compromised on our expected returns.
We've maintained the right risk profile for us, and with this high quality order book, we feel really well set up for the future. Just looking at the specific divisional performances now. I'm just gonna focus on the past, the last six months, and leave the outlook to John. In Construction Infrastructure, firstly a really positive performance. Its margin up to 3.2%, giving profit of GBP 24.1 million. On the Construction side in the green boxes, we're doing well, reflecting the benefit of keeping focused on operational delivery and disciplined contract selection. With revenue up a strong 16%, its operating margin was 2.9% for the period, giving a profit of eleven point three million, which is up 40%. Construction's order book was up 17% from the same time last year, and it's all good, high-quality work.
Now much of the growth has been the conversion into final contract of work where we were previously preferred bidder. At the same time, we've also replenished the preferred bidder pot with another GBP 701 million worth of additional projects, which are also now at the pre-contract stage. On the infrastructure side, the blue boxes, revenue was down as expected on last year due to project timings and the nature and type of the work. Although revenue was down 14%, the margin grew to 3.4%. Notwithstanding this, the lower revenue led to lower profit, down 12% to GBP 12.8 million. On the order book front, infrastructure's order book is long term and tends to come in big chunks, mainly through frameworks and the likes, so there's no concerns about a 6% reduction since last year.
At around GBP 1.8 billion, it's still a very sizable workload. For Fit Out, as I mentioned, another excellent result, a profit of GBP 21.2 million, up 10% on last year. In the blue boxes on the right-hand side, you can see the analysis of revenue by type of work, sector and geography. In short, the London commercial office sector remains the most important for Fit Out. Now I'm not gonna dwell on the order book too much. Again, leave that to John. However, it suffices to say that demand here remains very strong, and with an order book of GBP 869 million, up 50% on the same time last year, we have better forward visibility in this division than we've ever had before.
Property Services, here revenue was up 10%, even though some planned maintenance programs still remain slow in getting started. This gave operating profit of GBP 2.5 million, up 4%, and was adversely impacted by inflation and the time taken to administer the adjustment mechanisms in the client contracts. Now the division's order book is long-term here, with contracts tending to be up to 10 years or so in length. At GBP 1.3 billion, and with over 80% of it for 2024 and beyond, we've got really long, good long-term visibility of work streams here. The three more recent contract wins, which are noted here in the green box, will all have mobilized by the end of the year, increasing the run rate further going into next year.
Partnership Housing, revenue was up 5% to GBP 284 million, profit up 15% to GBP 13.9 million, and margin up to 4.9%, all evidence of real progress being made, and similarly for return on capital at 20% for the last twelve months. Again, I'll leave build cost inflation and sales pricing to John. However, strategically, we're making progress with the size of our mixed tenure sites increasing, now at 169 open market units per site, up from 122 units per site at this time last year. The order book at GBP 1.6 billion, up 10% on the same time last year, gives us confidence here that we're really moving in the right direction with momentum.
Now as I mentioned earlier, we've had a period of significant investment in Partnership Housing, with capital employed at the period end of GBP 191 million. We expect the average for the full year for Partnership Housing to remain at around this level, in the range of around GBP 190 million - GBP 200 million. For Urban Regeneration, there's lots of activity going on here. On top of the GBP 2.2 billion order book, there's also many sizable schemes currently being bid. These schemes are long-term and take time. On that basis, we're not concerned at all with the order book being down year on year. Now the headline profit of GBP 7.3 million and a return on capital of 12%. However, that result does include a GBP 7 million provision in relation to Building Safety.
If we were to add this back, the return on capital for the last 12 months would be 20%, and this is a much better indicator of the real underlying performance of the business. Now just on building safety, as I'm sure most of you already know, the new Building Safety Act came into force during the first half. In addition, as we announced earlier on in the year, Partnership Housing signed up to the Developer Pledge, along with most of the major UK building industry back in April. Now as a result, this has cost us something in the first half.
Not material in Partnership Housing, and the GBP 7 million I've just referred to in Urban Regeneration. Now, what's happened since though, is in the last few weeks, it's become clear that a wider population of industry beyond the first wave of house builders and developers will now also be approached and asked to sign up to similar pledge-type obligations. This will now include our Urban Regeneration division. Now amongst other things, the additional pledge obligations include the upfront reimbursement of amounts already drawn under the Building Safety Fund on developments which have been or are being rectified. Plus the requirement to actively fund upfront any works as quickly as possible and ahead of any contractual claims to recover being made.
A consequence of this is therefore a timing difference on the accounting between the expense which will need to be recognized immediately versus the recognition of income from recoveries through contractual remedies which would come later. To reflect this position, we've disclosed a contingent liability in the half year accounts, flagging that should Urban Regeneration also sign up to pledge type obligations in the second half, then the likely result would be for us to recognize an accounting provision this year, which we would estimate at this stage could be in the range of GBP 40 million-GBP 50 million. Which, if so, we'd need to show separately as an exceptional item due to its size and nature. As and when we get recoveries against these amounts, they'll then be shown as exceptional profits, but will be spread over a number of years.
Just going back to the half year, in summary, a record performance, and this against a difficult market backdrop. All divisions are on good form, and we've got a high-quality, visible workload. The balance sheet remains strong, and we've increased the interim dividend by 10% to GBP 0.33 per share. Thanks. On that, let me pass you back to John.
Thank you, Steve. I would like to spend a bit of time talking about inflation because it is a considerable headwind for us. Now we think prices of materials have gone up about 23% over the last year, and the labor element about 10%. Now, clearly, it's not as simple as prices going up on a gradual basis. It comes in big lumps and not always when you expect it. It takes quite a lot of managing. It affects our different divisions in different ways, and I'll talk about it when I go through each division. There are some things that we can mitigate across the group, and a few of those are things like a lot of our jobs are reimbursable cost, where inflation isn't a problem for us, or we have contracts with inflation clauses, which again help significantly.
We're also buying a lot of our materials on a 12-month rolling basis. Because we have lots and lots of small jobs relative to our size, we've got a pretty good idea of jobs that we're going to win, even if we haven't already won them, and we're buying materials for those as well. Now, that doesn't get rid of the problem completely, but it helps to mitigate. We've also got a Supply Chain Family, which we established about 20 years ago. This is where we work really closely with our supply chain, allowing them access to our pre-ordered materials and indeed access to our group discounts. That really does make a big difference.
Working with the supply chain, having a really good supply chain who we look after, tend to look after us in the bad times as well, particularly as we're able to give them consistent long-term work. We think inflation ain't gonna go away anytime soon, and we gotta learn to live with it. I go through each of the businesses. Construction, just to remind you, the medium-term target is an operating margin between 2.5% and 3% and a revenue of GBP 1 billion. Now, it's the margin that is our primary target and the revenue is a secondary target. If the market gets tougher and the work isn't available at the right margin, we will not go for the turnover, we will go for the margin. Now here, inflation is a headwind, particularly in slowing down contract awards.
As you know, for us, it's not a contract until we have a signed fixed contract to go ahead, whereas a lot of our work is won on two-stage tendering. Often it's a year between winning it or as preferred bidder to actually getting the order. Inflation in that time can actually really cause a problem. Clients may have to reduce their spec, find some extra money from somewhere, but it is actually slowing down order intake. That is quite a considerable headwind. Having said that, in construction, demand is very strong, very strong indeed. As you can see, 'cause our order book is up 17% on this time last year, as indeed our preferred bidder is up 8% as well. All the work is good quality work delivered through negotiation, framework, or two-stage tendering process.
I think we can actually expect this year, the margin to be around the top end of the range and real progress towards the revenue target for the full year. With the order book we have, the preferred bidder situation we have, we can be pretty confident for 2022, 2023, 2024 and beyond. Infrastructure, again, an operating margin and a revenue target, a margin of 3.5%-4%. Revenue of GBP 1 billion. Again, the revenue is the secondary target to the margin target. Inflation headwinds here are also a real problem when it comes to order intake. Indeed, some jobs, a couple of jobs, are unlikely to go ahead as a result. A lot of our jobs in Infrastructure, though, are cost reimbursable.
Actually, the inflation, once we win the job, is less of an issue than it is for other parts of the group. As Steve said, the order book is down 6% on the prior year, but we shouldn't worry too much about that because the order book tend to be lumpy, and they come in big chunks. Around 95% are on frameworks, so this is good quality order book, and 78% of it is for 2023 and beyond, so we've got pretty good visibility. Now we expect here revenue to be lower this year than last year as expected, but for the margin to be towards the top of the range. The margin we made last year of 4.3% was actually above the range, and we said that at the time when we issued the new medium-term targets.
Now with Fit Out, the medium-term target is an operating profit of GBP 40 million-GBP 45 million, and that is an average through the cycle. Now we have a strong market in Fit Out at the moment, and it's not necessarily the market we might expect because the market is based on lease renewals, new builds where prelets were done a few years ago, and indeed making buildings more energy efficient, which is also a big driver in Fit Out. It is not so much repurposing after COVID, and I think that will be quite a surprise to quite a few people. We think COVID is really going to just accelerate trends that were happening anyway, and we think we're gonna end up with less square footage used as offices and poorer offices.
Space will either have to be rebuilt or repurposed, which could be good for other parts of the group. Having said that, we believe that this price that people will spend per square foot on Fit Out will increase considerably. As you can imagine, a fit out which has loads and loads of desks is a cheaper fit out than with a lot of collaboration space, leisure space, and what have you. We see the demand strong at the moment, but the repurposing will be coming through later. A lot of our bigger clients are still coming to grips with what it's going to look like and what their office accommodation is going to be. Order book, you know, up 50% on this time last year is obviously very, very significant.
GBP 394 million relates to the second half, which is 23% higher than last year. GBP 475 million, i.e. 55% of the order book, is for 2023 and beyond. The equivalent figure last year was GBP 260 million. We expect the profit to be materially ahead of the top end of the target range for the full year. The larger and longer order book gives us real confidence for 2023. Now Property Services, we have an operating profit target of GBP 15 million. Now this is a very stable market. It's not the most dynamic market, but it's very stable. We have some very strong inquiries for longer term contracts, and it's the longer term contracts that we'd like to win. Contracts which are 10 years, but perhaps extensions to be longer.
These are jobs which take quite a lot of mobilizing to get efficient. Actually, jobs which have short-term durations are not really the ones that we are going for. Inflation, and indeed labor shortages, are real headwinds in this business. The jobs are index-linked, and that usually is once a year, the index for inflation, and that's once a year. There's usually a bit of a lag and then some catch up, which gives us some mitigation. Clearly, the order book is going up 31% on last year. 80% is for 2024 and beyond. The order book is about 8x current revenue. We expect here the order book to grow faster than the revenue. We're looking to make this as close to an annuity income as possible, and we expect steady progress.
In the second half of the year, we expect slightly higher revenue and progress towards the medium-term targets. Partnership Housing, again, two targets, an operating margin of 8% and a return on capital towards 25%. Now here, the scale and the number of schemes that are visible to us are at record levels. We're looking to continue to increase the average job size. Cost inflation is currently mitigated by house price inflation. We're doing more contracting than normal, as a lot of clients are looking for contractors to do the bigger contracting schemes that have a really good balance sheet, and those jobs tend to be index-linked for inflation. The order book is up. Mixed tenure up, not quite as much as contracting. Contracting is very strong at the moment.
We see the capital employed and scale of this business continuing to grow, such as it is, it is a really major growth area for us. We expect continued progress towards its target this year. Urban Regeneration, the medium-term target is a three-year rolling average ROCE up towards 20%. Here at the moment, there are a large number of very significant schemes that we have some visibility of. Schemes that hit our sweet spot. These are large, complicated, mixed-tenure schemes in partnership. Inflation, though, is affecting the viability of quite a lot of schemes. We'll win a job, and within that, there'll be lots of individual schemes. Some of those are hard to get across the line at the moment, where build cost inflation is higher than the value of the inflation of the office building or whatever else we're doing.
That is affecting us to some extent. The building safety issues are felt strongest in Urban Regeneration. Although the order book is down 19% on prior year, I wouldn't be too worried about that because the visibility we've got of some big schemes coming in the next year, 18 months are very strong indeed. The orders here are gonna be lumpy because they're big. The prospects for the medium term are very strong indeed. The ROCE is expected to improve in the second half with progress towards its target for the full year. If I could just sort of summarize, there's absolutely no change to our organic growth strategy. We're in the spaces we wanna be in. These are growth areas, and we just wanna make those businesses better and better and better for all the stakeholders.
We're committed to a strong balance sheet with significant daily cash every day. It's just no change. We're just driving that forward. Our focus now is delivering those upgraded medium targets that we set back in February. We don't think inflation is gonna go away for some time, and we've just got to live with it. As I said earlier, we expect to deliver result for full year, which is slightly ahead of our previous expectations. Thank you.
I guess, is there any questions?
Thanks. Joe Brent at Numis. A couple of questions, please. Firstly, on Fit Out, given the stronger market, are you able to do much on pricing there? Are you seeing pricing improve within Fit Out? The second one, beyond Partnership Housing, just keen to hear what's driving the increase in average site size. Quite a big move. Is that new larger sites coming on or are you finding ways to expand existing sites? Thanks very much.
On Partnership Housing, this is where we're investing money, and we are driving the business to do bigger sites and to be a bigger business.
Fit Out pricing.
I think Fit Out pricing, because the jobs tend to be relatively short-term, or even if they are a big job, they tend to be in phases. Inflation isn't such an issue, but clearly pricing is going up as costs are going up. Indeed, what I think is very interesting is how the average price of a Fit Out has grown substantially more than inflation over the last 20, 30 years, and we see that trend continuing. Fit Out now ranges from about GBP 150 a foot to up to GBP 300 a foot, which isn't so much less than the cost of building the office in the first place.
Keep asking the questions to John.
Hi, from Liberum. Just sticking with the Fit Out, clearly there's a really good order book and underpinned by one very large contract. Can you give us some indication whether there is any inflation protection within that contract? Secondly, on the Developer Pledge, clearly it was signed only on behalf of Partnership Housing originally and not Urban Regeneration. Can you just give me a bit more of a detailed understanding as to why that was the case?
Yes. Simple, the simple answer is to the large Fit Out contract, yes, it's a whole series of small jobs, so, or smaller jobs. Yes, there is an inflation. It's fine.
I think on the pledge, it's quite simple, really. They're completely different sectors. Partnership Housing is part of the house building sector that was approached initially by the government to sign the Developer Pledge, whatever you wanna call it. It was the top 50 house builders. Urban Regeneration is a mixed-use urban regeneration business, so it's very different. You know, at the time, it was just sort of unknown as to what the approach was gonna be taking. We've continued, obviously, fulfilling our obligations and doing the right thing, and hence you've seen the GBP 7 million that we took in the first half. It sort of doesn't change behaviors as such. It, to an extent, just changes the accounting.
Thanks very much. It's Anand Bahl from HSBC. Could you just run us through where suppliers or subcontractors do come to you and say, "Hey guys, it's tough." Could you outline how you approach them? How you take the decision, "Okay, we're gonna support you. We might not support you," or whatever it is. Secondly, is it too early to think about you winning extra work because you're seen as one of the few partners that will be around in three to five years' time, and presumably that number has shrunk? Then lastly, I appreciate it's a bit sensitive, but to what extent are customers now not happy about but incorporating higher prices. Therefore, if inflation was to fall, you know, us with our spreadsheets, we'd say, "Oh, that's good for margin." Would you try and pass that back to them?
I appreciate that's a bit sensitive.
I'll deal with your last question first. I think clearly everybody reads the newspaper. They know inflation is an issue, so they're really happy to talk to us. They may not be happy about it, but they understand. And I really look forward to a situation where we have deflation and that problem to deal with. We don't see that at any time soon.
On the second question in relation to, are we seeing people coming to us as a result of balance sheet, I think yes. Definitely.
More than usual now?
I would say so, definitely, and particularly private sector. Certainly that's where we see balance sheet as a real competitive advantage for us. Yeah, in these times, even more so, certainly. I'm struggling to remember your first one, to be honest.
Sorry. It's just around.
I did write it down, but.
No. If I come to you as a supplier or subcontractor and say, "Hey, guys, I'm really struggling here," obviously that's got to be managed very carefully.
Yeah.
There is a big risk to margin in the group, you know. I mean, not the group, but margin. Could you almost give us an outline of how you would approach that, or is it utterly ad hoc?
It's utterly ad hoc. We don't have a policy because you can imagine some people perhaps trying it on, and other people genuinely need help.
It's horses for courses, very much so. As John said, because we have this sort of decentralized, sort of a structure and philosophy in the group, decisions are made at an absolute local level, project level by the empowered people. You know, it's not as if we have a sort of a group-wide policy. That would never work. It's right down, case by case, situation by situation, and people make the decisions.
Sorry. On the secured workload, you've always told us, and you've mentioned it again, that it's only once we're 100% confident this is going ahead. Have you had any instances where something has fallen out of secured workload because the budget doesn't work anymore?
If I answer it, the one that springs to mind that was in insecure workload through a framework was smart motorways, and we'd reduced that amount obviously significantly, but that was done six months ago. On the whole, once we have a secured written contract, that means the job is going ahead because you've gone through the negotiation, you've taken the price, you've built the price up, you've taken inflation into account, so it goes ahead. Where things do stall, where John said, is that sort of second stage where you've put in a stage one price, you're building it up, and you come back with a figure which is higher than the client budget. That's when it can fall down. Once you've signed a contract, invariably, it's there.
Should be done, yeah. Thank you.
Alastair Stewart from Shore Capital. A couple of questions. The first one follows on from one of the previous ones. Your Supply Chain Family, are you now applying some of the same rigors and selection that it sounds like your clients are applying to you, looking at the balance sheet strength, reliability and so on? A bit of color on that. The second question, in terms of Infrastructure, you say that the inflation headwinds are slowing order intake. What sort of sense from your bigger Infrastructure clients are you getting? Is it they're putting it on hold for X number of months on average, or could some of these actually fall out of the hopper?
Some of them might fall out of the hopper, and some of them are being put on hold for a bit, and I think some might well go away, and I think everybody's sort of waiting to see what the new prime minister and the new regime will do and where they will spend their money. I think on your first question, it's a really good one because I would say the rigor and the way we look at our supply chain is probably even more than our clients look at us. So we really want to know who else they're working for, particularly where quite a lot of people in the sector have some weak balance sheets, and that's a really important aspect. What are their balance sheets like? Where they're at risk?
That's a big thing for us.
Could you give an example, say, you know, compared to about three years ago, pre-pandemic and so on and in a normal market, how many were in your Supply Chain Family then and how many now? Has it changed much?
No, it hasn't changed dramatically, and it may well be that we just don't want to give somebody too much work if we think they're working with too much risk elsewhere. It's a bit of a measured thing, really. We have some very good, honest relationships with them where we can talk about these things.
Is there any churn in that or you just stick to the same?
I'd say there's probably a 10% churn every year.
Yeah. Fine. Thanks.
Yeah.
Morning. Toby Thorrington. One for Steve and a general contracting one, Nick, please. Steve, the working capital regen split out that you mentioned, GBP 50-odd million, did I read it correctly that that's not expected to flow back in the second half?
Unlikely.
Yeah.
Unlikely. It's investment in developments. If you assume the churn on assets in Partnership Housing a couple of years, you've got to assume in all that with our investments are ultimately gonna give us the right level of returns.
Yeah.
That should or will not just out, you know, switch back in the second half. No, that's there for.
Got it.
its investment.
Thank you. Could you just update us, John, on the sort of situation at Sellafield at the moment? I think some change in contracting going on there, what was your pre-change position and what's your expected outcome?
The main contract that we're doing at Sellafield is a 20-year contract, and I think we're in about year 4, so it's not gonna change anything dramatically. There's a lot of different contracts at Sellafield, as you can imagine.
Yeah. Any new opportunities or threats?
There are always some opportunities, but we're not building them high. If they happen, great, but we're not banking on anything.
Understood. Thank you.
If I could just ask on the contingent liabilities, you mentioned about contractual coverage within Urban Regeneration. I'd be grateful for a bit of detail over what those are. Thanks.
Well, I guess we are a mixed-use developer and part of the business model or a key part of the business model is to offload contractual coverage to a whole number of other parties, because invariably we don't do the building out of the development company.
Mm-hmm.
It's. There's a whole lot of avenues open to, and routes to potentially recover. That has always been in the, as I say, a key part of the business model of a mixed-use developer. You know, we will be pursuing those as we would do in the ordinary course. You know, this doesn't change behaviors on the ground. As I say, it just changes the way ultimately you gotta show it in the books. We'll continue doing what's right.
Sorry, guys. Just one more. I think you said in the past that you're not exposed to one individual subcontractor of more than 5%. Is that still right?
Even if it's as much as 5%, I think it's probably less.
Yeah. 'Cause we are pretty well spread business. Each business has a completely separate supply chain really. Across the group, you're not gonna-
I just wanna check.
You're not gonna get it.
Any other questions?
I don't know if we've got the capacity to get some questions online. There's somebody sort of flagging us to say yes, so.
Thank you. For all analysts and investors on Zoom who would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. Our first question comes from the line of Andrew Nussey from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning, guys. Just a couple left from me. First of all, on the Fit Out business, you obviously said that mix dragged first half margins. I just wonder, when you look at the order book, over the next couple of years, is that mix likely to continue to impact margin and maybe running at a slightly lower rate than it has done historically? And secondly, on Fit Out, with cost inflation obviously running high, are there signs of customers looking to downgrade specification a little bit? I mean, I was conscious of your comments, John, where you were sort of saying, you know, you'd still expect.
Yeah.
Fit Out averages to remain high. I'm just curious in the shorter term, could there be a little bit of pressure there?
I think I heard you okay. No, we think clients are going to spend more money on Fit Out, because if you actually look at the cost of occupying office space over the last 20-30 years, the cost of the office, including Fit Out, has fallen significantly compared to the cost of employing people. We think most of the clients we're talking to now really see they have to have a really good quality office if they really wanna get people coming back to work, working in collaborative space, and actually it helps with recruitment as well. We're not seeing that at all. The first part of your question, I think, was do we see a difference in the split of the work? We don't.
It should be seen more as an H1, H2 margin differential, Andrew. If you look back in, you know, the last few years, it always tends to be second half loaded. A lot of jobs complete in the second half and due to our prudent profit taking. You know, that's when we would take a much more of the end when the client is final account is all final accounted. We see it as an H1, H2 piece rather than any long-term trend. You'll note the medium-term target for Fit Out, we're very careful just to put a profit number. The margin will move around within a band. At 4.6%, you know, let's not get too worried. That is still a very strong margin position.
Got it. Okay. Thank you.
Our next question's from the line of Stephen Rawlinson from Applied Value Limited. Please go ahead.
Hi. Can you hear me, chaps? Good morning.
Morning.
Yeah. Good. Just a quick one and a technical one, probably more for Steve than anybody else. You mentioned, John, the cost inflation going away, interest rates are going up. Should we expect a meaningful change going forward in the interest line in terms of adjusting the PBT? Would the GBP 260 million odd cash actually yield a better return in the future in your minds than it does today? I don't know how you handle those cash balances, you say.
I'm not sure I caught that, but I'll have a crack and I think it's to say, are we happy with GBP 264 million of cash?
No, no. I'm content with that. I understand why you have that, Steve. It was more to do with the return on that cash, because obviously, bank interest rates are higher now and I just don't know how you handle that in terms of, your banking relationships.
I'm having to guess here. A little few words blocked out. You know, it's only one time we have cash on deposits. I'm not sure what more I'd say. We would obviously prefer to be investing in our business. We would obviously prefer to be getting 25% return on capital out of our Partnership Housing business, and that's really where we want to be focusing all our attentions. Obviously, you know, treasury management, we'll put the cash to get the best return.
Okay. Yeah. My apologies, a bad line. Forgive me.
No worries. Hopefully, that answered it.
Thank you.
Further question.
No more? No. Any
Anything you want to talk-
Obviously happy to answer in due course. Thank you very much.
Thanks very much indeed.
Thanks.