Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the QinetiQ FY26 interim results. Thank you all for being here, and thank you all who are watching us online. Without further ado, I'd like to hand over to our CEO, Steve Wadey, and our CFO, Martin Cooper. Thank you.
Thank you, Stephen, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to our half-year results for FY26. Whilst we continue to operate in challenging market conditions, we have taken decisive action to improve our short-term performance and drive long-term growth, creating value for shareholders. Thanks to the dedication and hard work of our highly skilled employees, we've continued to support our customers' operational needs, delivering mission-critical technologies and services. Today, we'll take you through our half-one results and the actions we've taken to address both near-term challenges and strengthen our market positioning for the long term. A great example is shown here, which illustrates the successful completion of the synthetic trials we undertook with BAE Systems to demonstrate how drones can operate alongside combat aircraft like Typhoon. This was a significant milestone in developing critical sovereign capabilities needed to defend the U.K.'s national interests.
Let me start with our key messages for today. First, in tough near-term market conditions that have delayed orders in the U.K., we have delivered robust operational performance, and our restructuring program in the U.S. is on track. Secondly, our mission-critical capabilities remain highly relevant to our customers' needs in a growing defense market, and combined with our significant order book and substantial pipeline, provide very good visibility for long-term growth. Thirdly, despite near-term headwinds in our home markets, we have focus and visibility to maintain our full-year guidance, and we continue to deploy capital with discipline. In summary, we are delivering the actions to improve business performance in the short term and are well positioned to capitalize on increasing defense spending so that we deliver compelling value creation for shareholders. Our agenda this morning expands on these messages. I'll start by giving you our half-year in review.
Martin will provide a commentary on our financial results. I'll then come back and give you an overview of our strategic outlook. Finally, we'll open up for questions. To our review of the half-year performance. In response to the market backdrop, we have taken proactive and disciplined portfolio actions, achieving good progress on our US restructuring program as well as right-sizing other areas of the business. The improvement actions are delivering benefits and building resilience that will improve both short and long-term performance. Overall, our first-half financial performance was robust in tough near-term markets. We saw this particularly in the U.K., where we experienced delays to orders on our engineering services and R&D framework contracts, in part due to our customers prioritizing major equipment programs. This reduced our underlying book to bill to less than one, excluding the LTPA contract award.
We achieved two strategic milestones that strengthen our company for the long term. In May, we secured the GBP 1.5 billion extension to transform the LTPA for future warfare through to 2033. As a result, we closed the half with a significant order backlog and substantial pipeline, providing very good visibility for long-term growth. In September, we announced the strengthening of the EDP contract to accelerate defense productivity by expanding the partnership and augmenting our high-value engineering skills with artificial intelligence. Together, these strategic milestones show how we are playing our part in delivering on the ambitions of the U.K. government's strategic defense review. As normal, we delivered a healthy cash conversion, enabling investment in the business and increased shareholder returns through our progressive dividend and multi-year share buyback program. Looking forward, we have approximately 90% of revenue under contract for this year, which is the same as last year.
Whilst market headwinds continue, we're focused on execution and have visibility to deliver our full-year forecast. Martin will take you through a bridge of this later in the presentation. I now want to address our half-one performance and the progress we are making in each of our segments, starting with EMEA services. Due to market conditions in the U.K. and ongoing defense budget pressures in the Australian market, we delivered flat revenue with good margin. In the U.K., we grew 2% as a result of delayed orders on our framework contracts, and in Australia, our revenue was lower, predominantly due to the loss of the Land Systems Work Package under the MSP framework. In response to these dynamics, we took some resizing actions to build resilience whilst protecting core skills for the future. Our performance was underpinned by successful program execution across our long-term contracts.
On the EDP contract, delivery performance was strong, with 98% of all milestones delivered on or ahead of schedule. In September, we announced changes to the LTPA that will make it easier and cheaper for SMEs and new entrants to use our test and evaluation capabilities across the U.K. The launch of our T&E Innovation Gateway will help drive greater defense innovation and support wider economic growth across the U.K. Notable new contracts in the half include the strategic win, GBP 25 million, to deliver collective training for the Royal Navy to improve warfighting readiness at pace. This five-year contract will see us deliver an immersive virtual training environment that realistically simulates the threats and missions that Navy personnel can expect to undertake in the future. Whilst near-term trading conditions remain tough, we have a clear pipeline of orders to win and deliver in the second half. Turning to global solutions.
During the first half of the year, we've been focused on executing our plan to address the market challenges and operational issues that we highlighted in May. We've made good progress on the U.S. restructuring program. Key actions completed include the disposal of the US Fed IT business, significant headcount resizing and cost-base reduction, as well as an improved control of labor rates and inventory. This progress puts us on a stronger foundation to move forward. As we forecast, revenue declined with lower margin compared to the prior year. Half of the decline was due to a lower volume of non-U.S. product sales versus a strong prior-year comparator, and the other half was in the U.S., principally due to the impact of DoD on our Fed IT business that we have now disposed of and our planned resizing actions.
As the U.S. market changed, we repositioned the business to build resilience and be better aligned to national security priorities. Our strategy is now focused on four capabilities where we have differentiated long-term incumbent positions and see good growth potential. These four areas are space and missile defense, maritime systems, advanced sensors, and persistent surveillance. During the half, we secured $290 million of funded orders with a U.S. book to bill of 1.5x . Whilst we continue to focus on improving operational performance and winning longer-term programs, this strong book to bill underpins our second-half forecast for global solutions. To summarize, we're making good progress. Whilst we finished the half with a smaller U.S. business, it is more aligned to national priorities and is well positioned to deliver long-term growth. I'll now hand over to Martin to take us through our financial results.
Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone. As usual, I'll start with the financial highlights before moving on to the key financial metrics at a group level and details on our two reporting segments. I'll finish with capital allocation and guidance. For reference, the US dollar rate for the half averaged 1.34 compared to 1.29 last year, which has provided a headwind to the reported values. Turning to the results for the half. Order intake for the half was GBP 2.4 billion, which drove a closing order backlog of GBP 4.8 billion, both reported records for the group. Revenue was 3% down on an organic basis at GBP 900 million, resulting in a book to bill of 0.9 times, reflecting the sale of our Fed IT business and trading conditions in H1, which impacted contract awards.
Underlying profit was down GBP 10 million versus H1 last year at GBP 96 million, but margin at 10.7% was ahead of our half-year expectations and underpins our full-year target of around 11%. Underlying basic earnings per share of 14.2 pence were in line with last half as the lower profit was offset by the enduring benefit of the enhanced level of share buyback. Turning profit into cash remained strong at 85%, which again underpins our full-year guide of around 90%. The strong operating cash performance, combined with the sale of our U.S. Fed IT business, has enabled effective and value-accretive capital deployment. This has enabled us to not only reduce net debt half on half, but also to significantly enhance shareholder returns, which totaled GBP 101 million, as we made excellent progress on our ongoing two-year share buyback program and paid the final dividend. Return on capital employed remained strong at 21.1%.
Moving to the key group financials and starting with orders, the book to bill of 0.9x , as Steve raised, resulted from delays in contract awards in the U.K. impacting EMEA services. Within global solutions, the year-on-year impact on the federal IT market was particularly stark in the order flow in the business we've now disposed of. Whilst book to bill was down, total orders at GBP 2.4 billion was a record when incorporating the five-year LTPA award. This meant we closed the half with an order backlog of GBP 4.8 billion, which does include GBP 0.4 billion of U.S. unfunded backlog, providing good visibility for future growth of core long-term business frameworks. Revenue at GBP 900 million is down 3% on a like-for-like basis when adjusting for FX and the sale of the Fed IT business. EMEA was lower on reduced volumes in Australia, where we lost the competitive Land Systems Work Package.
As Steve mentioned, despite being impacted by delays in orders, the U.K. business did grow 2% half on half. Global solutions declined due to U.S. short-cycle revenues, of which a significant part was in the business now disposed of. In addition, our restructuring activities have resulted in us exiting some business lines as we focus on four major areas for long-term profitable growth. Within global solutions, our products business was lower against a high year-on-year comparative, but demand and outlook remains robust, and we expect a better second half. Recognizing the step-up required in H2 to deliver our revenue guidance, we have detailed on the chart the drivers that bridge us from half-year to our year-end assumption of circa 3% organic growth, like-for-like growth. Taking each in turn. Revenue cover at the half stood at 89%, in line with last year's assumed outturn at this stage.
That includes the core frameworks of EDP and LTPA, established positions on the likes of naval combat systems and MSCA, maritime training following the MCAST win, and in the U.S., the TARS persistent surveillance contract and the work we do with the Space Development Agency. Secondly, our period seven order flow has added a further 2% to the cover and includes the mission-critical Typhoon Support Uplift. Thirdly, we have around 7% of orders, which are extensions of current positions or where we are close to finalizing the awards. Examples include the Dragonfire laser weapons contract and target sales with predominantly repeat customers. Finally, we have good visibility on a pipeline of further awards that we assume we shall win and deliver in year to cover the remaining around 2%.
Whilst there are clearly market headwinds prevailing in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, we currently have good visibility and are hence maintaining our full-year guidance. Moving to operating profit, which was down GBP 10.6 million against last year, reflecting lower revenue and the impact of the group's restructuring activities. Margin at 10.7% was ahead of expectations at the half, with good consistent program execution against our backlog, especially in EMEA services. In May, I talked about rebuilding margin from 9.6% to around 11%, and we are on track through driving strong program execution, cost-based efficiency actions, and the portfolio actions in the U.S. As usual, we have detailed the table reconciling underlying operating profit from segments to statutory profit. The income from RDEC and intangible amortization are standard reconciling items and predictable. The other two major reconciling items reflect the actions being taken to improve the long-term performance of the business.
Firstly, our digital investment has increased in the half, driven by a major rollout to over 60% of the business. As a reminder, this is part of a wider program to enable growth strategy and wider business efficiency. Secondly, we have booked a further GBP 22.6 million of restructuring costs, driven by the portfolio work in the U.S., coupled with a right-sizing activity in Australia and ongoing efficiency activity in the U.K. To complete profit, the sale of the Fed IT business led to a GBP 0.5 million profit on disposal. Now turning to the segmental split of the group performance, starting with EMEA services, which had a good operational half in difficult near-term market conditions. Orders increased to GBP 2.2 billion, excluding LTPA.
The book to bill was down to 0.8 times, with delays in contract awards in the U.K. and Australia driving the shortfall, albeit, as mentioned in the revenue bridge, some of those orders have come through since period end. Revenue was broadly stable, with the U.K. defense delivering growth, but this was offset by order delays and lower revenue in Australia with the loss of the land MSP work package. Program performance and cost control was good, ensuring consistent margins at 11.5%, and funded backlog is now at a record high, GBP 3.9 billion, which supports second-half delivery and longer-term visibility. Next, global solutions, which posted orders of GBP 247 million at a book to bill of 1.3x , including annual funding on our core U.S. franchise contracts of Tethered Aerostat Radar System, Strategic Capabilities Office, and Space Development Agency. These contracts also saw good on-contract growth.
Securing these orders in the half helps to de-risk second-half revenue, given the ongoing government shutdown. Orders were down half on half due to restructuring of the U.S. portfolio and timing of targets and product awards. These dynamics impacted revenue, which was 16% lower at GBP 192 million. As covered in the bridge, the book to bill gives us a foundation to drive the required second-half performance. Margin was down half on half at 7.4%, but up from last year as we work through the U.S. restructuring actions and was in line with our expectations at this stage. Moving to cash, where operating cash flow continued to be good at GBP 128 million and was in line with last year, delivering a high conversion ratio of 85%. Capital expenditure was GBP 36 million, of which GBP 21 million related to the LTPA.
In line with guidance, we would expect higher spend in the second half, with a total for the year around GBP 100 million. To complete the cash analysis, the movement in net debt from year-end is shown here. We generated GBP 63 million of free cash flow, and with the proceeds from the Fed IT sale, that allowed us to deliver a significant step-up in shareholder returns at GBP 101 million as we accelerated the pace of the buyback program and grew the dividend 7% in line with our progressive policy. Net debt therefore closed at GBP 180 million at a leverage ratio of 0.6 times, up from year-end, but a GBP 10 million lower net debt than last half-year. Turning to capital allocation, which is unchanged, the business is delivering good consistent cash flow, and the focus and priority is driving sustainable organic growth at good margins whilst investing in the business.
We maintain a rigorous approach to the deployment of our capital, scrutinizing organic investments against shareholder returns and ensuring we have a balanced and value-accretive deployment of capital. During H1, we have demonstrated our disciplined capital allocation policy by investing in our organic growth through CapEx, research and development, digital, and major competitive bids. We provided a 7% progressive dividend, completed the sale of our non-core Fed IT business in the US, and used the funds from the sale to accelerate our share buyback program. We have a strong balance sheet, which gives us flexibility to drive organic growth and provides optionality for value-accretive capital deployment in excess of the GBP 200 million share buyback already announced. Pulling all that together and moving to guidance, which is unchanged.
Per the revenue bridge, we still expect to deliver a circa 3% organic growth on a like-for-like basis when adjusting for the sale of the Fed IT business and the higher exchange rate versus original guidance. Margin we expect to be around 11%, and with the buyback progressing at pace, EPS growth at 15%-20%. Cash we expect to be around the 90% conversion level and leverage around 0.5x at year-end. As usual, to help with your models, we've included additional technical guidance in the backup slides. This has been a robust half against a difficult market backdrop, and with the action taken and in train, have the visibility to deliver this full-year guidance. I'd like to thank all our teams for delivering critical capabilities to our customers and for this half-year result. With that, back to you, Steve.
Great. Thank you, Martin.
To our strategic outlook, let me start by explaining why we are a differentiated company, highly relevant to the increasing threat, with strong fundamental growth drivers, structurally aligned to the increasing defense spend. The threat environment has changed the market dynamics. We are in a new era of defense. Our customers have committed to long-term spending increases, as we have seen across NATO, and are driving major procurement reforms as they seek to rapidly scale existing capabilities and create new disruptive capabilities to overmatch the threat at wartime pace. We are not standing still. Our mission-critical capabilities, shown here on the right, are highly relevant and are directly aligned to our customers' priorities. We are a horizontal integrator, developing new technologies, testing new platforms, and delivering frontline mission support.
We play an essential and vital role in helping our customers accelerate capabilities into service and increase warfighting readiness to counter the threat. As the market is changing, we have adjusted our strategy to increase focus in three areas. Firstly, partnering more closely with our customers to help them build greater resilience, rapidly modernize, and deliver innovation at pace. Secondly, continuing to pursue focused growth in each of our key domestic markets. Thirdly, leveraging our capabilities to expand and grow into European NATO markets. Let me take each of those in turn. We are increasing our competitive advantage through greater partnering and innovation with our customers and industry to deliver operational advantage and drive growth. We are a strategic partner to the U.K. government and the fourth largest defense supplier to the U.K. MoD.
Our capabilities are aligned to the ambitions of the strategic defense review, and we have increasing opportunities to leverage our expertise in partnership with the government into major export programs, such as our engineering services and mission data capabilities into the recent win of Typhoon into Türkiye. On Monday this week, Luke Pollard, the Minister for Defense Readiness and Industry, visited us in Farnborough and has welcomed our commitment to proactively transform the way that mission-critical engineering services are provided to the U.K.'s armed forces that I mentioned earlier. This includes our investment in new digital and AI technologies to augment our high-value engineering skills, significantly increasing U.K. productivity and innovation. To stay ahead for the long term, we remain focused on investing capital into our people, technology, and capabilities.
We achieved a major milestone in the half with the successful transition of U.K. and Australian employees onto our new digital workplace to improve our ways of working and business efficiency. Investing in cutting-edge defense technology continues to be a key driver for our future growth. Our long-term R&D created the laser technology that is critical to the growing Dragonfire Laser Weapon Program. Investing in the business is core to our strategy to ensure we have a differentiated portfolio and are well positioned to capitalize on increasing defense spending and drive organic growth. The longer-term opportunity in our domestic markets remains significant, and our mission-critical capabilities are focused on areas of priority for our customers, which are robust and set to grow. In EMEA services, we have deep expertise that we are leveraging on next-generation technologies, capabilities, and programs.
This includes the launch of our DroneWorks initiative to help SMEs access our expertise and facilities to accelerate drone development for rapid deployment. We are delighted with a recent significant competitive win to further develop our disruptive laser technology for next-generation laser weapons beyond Dragonfire. In global solutions, we now have a U.S. business with much greater focus on the four differentiated capabilities that I described earlier. As a result, we have delivered significant on-contract growth across our large multi-year contracts that Martin described: SCO, TARS, and SDA. We see significant growth potential for space and missile defense, where our capabilities are highly aligned to multiple U.S. space programs. From a wider product perspective, we are continuing to invest in our maritime, targets, sensors, and secure navigation capabilities, where we have differentiated offerings to drive organic growth.
Our portfolio is now focused and structurally aligned to national security priorities of our domestic customers, underpinning our long-term perspective. We're also increasing our focus to position the business and drive organic growth in adjacent markets by leveraging our core capabilities across the AUKUS nations and into European NATO and allies. We are collaborating with our customers across the AUKUS nations to develop new opportunities. Examples include sharing laser technology from the U.K. into Australia, leveraging our R&D expertise. We're also sharing our engineering services experience to help shape the future of the EDP and MSP contracts. We are applying our world-leading maritime T&E capabilities in the U.K. to support the T&E opportunity for the AUKUS submarine program in Australia. Over recent years, we have made good progress with European NATO and allies, where we have differentiated capabilities.
We've grown the use of our unique U.K. test and training capabilities from nations such as Germany, Italy, Spain, and most recently, Japan. We're also increasing our export focus, and a key opportunity progressing well is the export of our electronic warfare and mission data expertise into Belgium. Whilst Poland remains an upside opportunity, we're actively shaping further persistent surveillance opportunities in Eastern Europe and the Middle East beyond our U.S. program. We're also well positioned to capitalize on NATO's increasing defense spending, and we see our addressable market growing. With a focused approach to our international expansion, we are creating value across the company to drive further organic growth. Having secured the LTPA extension, we have a significant order backlog of GBP 4.8 billion, providing a firm foundation for the company.
This backlog, combined with our qualified pipeline of GBP 11 billion, provides good long-term visibility at eight times our FY2025 revenue. We've built this visibility by focusing on our customers' needs, partnering with industry, and winning larger, longer-term programs. On the left, I'm showing our major domestic programs, where we have strong incumbent positions that build up to approximately 70% of our annual revenue. This solid base in our domestic markets gives us a platform to deliver on-contract growth and win new programs in our pipeline. This solid base also gives the platform to leverage our capabilities to expand internationally, shown here on the right, including opportunities to leverage both our services and product capabilities into European NATO markets. Whilst we may not win all of these, our pipeline is robust and prudent, with many additional growth opportunities beyond the GBP 11 billion shown here.
Overall, our significant backlog, combined with our healthy pipeline, gives us very good long-term revenue visibility and underpins our confidence in creating long-term value for shareholders. In summary, we've taken the necessary actions in tough near-term market conditions, strengthening our portfolio to improve our performance. The fundamentals of the business remain strong, and our mission-critical capabilities continue to be highly aligned to our customers' needs in a growing defense market. Combined with our backlog and pipeline, this gives us very good visibility for long-term growth. Whilst near-term headwinds continue, we're focused on execution and have visibility to maintain our full-year guidance. Ten years ago, we launched our growth strategy. As you can see from the chart on the right, this year is a transition year. Having taken decisive action and significantly grown our backlog, we have a strong platform to capitalize on increasing defense spending.
This gives us confidence to drive sustained long-term growth and deliver compelling value creation for shareholders. Martin and I would be happy to take your questions. Okay. Rich, first question.
Morning. It's Richard Paige from Deutsche Numis. Could you just give a bit more detail about what's going on in Australia, please, and circumstances there? Second one on U.K. intelligence. Again, a sort of dig between there because it feels as though you're reasonably confident that there hasn't been a significant deterioration in trading in that business. And then thirdly, just on exceptional and digital innovation, if you could just outline thoughts for the full year on both of those numbers and particularly digital innovation, how long that persists as an exceptional charge, please.
Okay. Maybe Martin, I'll start on Australia. Maybe we do exceptionals, and I'll finish off with U.K. Intel. Okay.
I mean, I think on Australia, I think it's a tough market. In some ways, the Australian market has been very similar to some of the dynamics that we've seen here in the U.K. It's absolutely not unique to us, as you heard in my presentation. Right at the start of the year, we had a loss of a competitive work package. Whilst we're not the prime through the team that we're on under the MSP program, that has resulted in lower revenue for us. I think we need to put that in perspective, Rich. Australia now about 6% of the group. I think what's been important is that in understanding that market dynamic, whilst we've taken the resizing actions, we've also taken actions to strengthen the portfolio and focus on the programs that are going to give us long-term underpinning growth looking forward.
Those key areas, if you are interested in those, there are really four big drivers that we're focused on for the future in Australia. The customer is going through an exercise in the coming calendar year, so 2026, looking at what program will replace MSP. It's called Future MSP. We expect there to be an RFI and RFP for that, and we're in a market-shaping phase. I mentioned sharing experience between the U.K. and Australia customers to secure a prime role and position ourselves for the next phase of engineering services. Secondly, we're continuing and we're delivering really well on our threat representation business through the acquired Air Affairs business. That's under our JATS contract. We expect a renewal of that contract imminently, and that provides long-term underpinning growth. Thirdly, you'll have heard me talk about lasers. We have quite a lot of progress on lasers.
I'm sure we might get some questions on this in the U.K. in a moment. It's really a strong long-term growth driver, but there's a lot of collaboration between our customers and our teams looking at next-generation lasers in Australia, where we're very, very well positioned. The final driver that I mentioned in my presentation is related to the AUKUS submarine program, again, where we expect over the next one to two years a significant program opportunity on providing the range capability or the test and evaluation capability for both the AUKUS submarine program as well as surface fleet. Yes, it's been a tough year. It's not unique to us. There are plenty of businesses, as you'll know, having to take resizing actions and improve business efficiency we have.
We need to put it in perspective, and we've got some really good solid positions to grow going forward. Do you want to do exceptionals?
Yeah, thanks. I mean, I think on, as I covered in my script, then we've had a pretty significant rollout in the first half across a lot of our workforce on one major work stream within that package. It was just over GBP 12 million in the half. I'd expect the second half to be a little bit less, but if you model, I'd model about GBP 22 million for the year. We would expect it to start to step down next year and then finally complete in fiscal year 2028 for us.
On U.K., sorry. Sorry, any other exceptions that you're expecting in the second half?
Clearly not by the nature of exceptionals, but I mean, you'll notice just to cover the restructuring point.
I mean, I think that could be split into two major halves, one around sort of roughly 50/50 around headcount impact and headcount reductions. As I mentioned, again, as a reflection of some of the work streams we have either exited or really rationalized down in the U.S., there were around GBP 10 million plus of further write-downs in the U.S. that went through that line. You should think of it as headcount reduction and then sort of final balance sheet cleanups. Obviously, we would not expect anything else material in the second half on either line.
I think on U.K. intelligence, I mean, you will know U.K. intelligence had a tough year last year. This year has really much been a transition year for U.K. intelligence.
I describe the wider context of the U.K. market has been tough, and we've seen a delay to orders, particularly around the R&D, DSTL areas, and engineering services. I think that UKI is positioned well for this year. It actually did relatively well on its orders in the first half and has got a very good pipeline to deliver a much stronger second half performance that we are planning on. Included in that, the business is also well positioned. You've seen me mention a couple of export-related orders, particularly in the EW mission data area, where certainly in the next, let's call it one year, we would expect some of those export-related orders to positively contribute to the rebuild and next phase of growth for U.K. intelligence. Thanks, Rich.
Morning. George McWhirter from Berenberg. Hey, George.
Maybe coming back to Australia again, just in terms of the competitive land systems package that you mentioned that you lost, can you just talk about the size of that contract, please, and what lessons you can take from that loss? The second question is on the U.S. What proportion of the business would you say is shorter cycle now that you've disposed of the federal IT services business? Have you seen any impact from the government shutdown? Thank you.
I think you'll need to start on the Australia size. I'm happy to talk about lessons.
Fine. George. The value of package of work was about AUD 50 million. Most of that was reflected in our guidance at the start of the year. We had hoped to perhaps pick up a little bit of subcontract work, but that's not really materialized.
Around $50 million impact, but it was baked into the guidance, in essence, at the start of the year.
I think lessons, George, I think is similar to what we've discussed before, and certainly I'm seeing that is our focus in the U.K., which is really understanding the pressures and the drivers on our customers. All of our markets, our customers, whilst defense is a high priority, they're all trying to get more for less out of their budgets. Therefore, really thinking through innovative proposals and being focused on areas where we can differentiate and be more competitive is absolutely key. There are many examples I could talk about in the U.K. where we're doing that.
The four areas that I mentioned in answer to Rich's question is really about how we become more competitive and more innovative to differentiate and then build those longer, larger sustainable positions going forward.
Shall I start on the U.S.?
Yeah, short cycle.
I mean, I think, George, to sort of turn it around a little bit, the four major sort of work streams we're focusing on now that Steve outlined reflects more than 80% of the revenue work that we now do in the U.S. I think, as you remember, as we went into this year, we did not include really any material values on the likes of robots and sort of short cycle book-to-bill work. The coverage that we have got through the half-year book-to-bill relies very little on short cycle impact at all. That is where it is.
Now, you'll all know that in the U.S., you do also have annual contracting, so you could describe that as short cycle in some instances as to where it is. A lot of that real sort of what you would have traditionally called a short cycle volatility was stripped out at the start of the year and is not in our bridge for full year as we look forward. I think in respect of the government shutdown, the reflection that we had a very strong book-to-bill in the first half, and most of those big contract awards on the likes of TARS, SCO, SDA, the forward-funded contracts came in in September, which drove the strong book-to-bill, which has given us that cover now.
Like all defense contractors and all contractors, if there is another government shutdown in January again and/or these things get protracted, obviously there could be impacts further down the line or for further orders. In the short run, we are fine.
I think more broadly, as I said in the presentation, we are really pleased with the progress that we are making. I mean, the US restructuring program is on track. The disposal of the Fed IT business was a key milestone. As you heard, we have taken some significant cost out and headcount out to resize the business in line with the market that we see. Hence, my comment about we have now got a smaller business.
As Martin's just said, that smaller business is really well positioned because we've now focused on these four revenue streams where we have long-term positions, and we can see that growth potential, which reduces the exposure to that short cycle volatility that you are pointing at. As Martin says, the book to bill of 1.5 gives us the ability this year to drive through that performance, then really focus on these growth drivers for the long term. Hopefully, does that answer your question, George?
Great.
We have one over here first, [audio distortion] .
Hey, good morning. It's Joel Spungin from Investec. Steve, one for you, sort of a big picture question, and I've got a couple for Martin as well. I was wondering if you could talk maybe just sort of thinking out beyond FY2026. We look into fiscal 2027, 2028.
You go back in QinetiQ, used to grow roughly double nominal sort of defense budget growth for a long time in terms of organic growth. Is that still something you think is achievable even in a world where nominal defense budgets in the West are rising at an unprecedented rate? I.e., could this business get back to being a high single, even low double-digit organic growth business?
Yeah, I think this is a good question. I think there are a number of things to say. I think, first of all, we're very confident we've taken the right actions. We've taken the right actions to deal with the dynamics as we came into this year. That ultimately, hence your question, puts us on the right trajectory to return to higher rates of growth. We have an exceptionally strong backlog, an exceptionally strong pipeline.
You've seen that there with eight times FY2025 revenue cover. I think your question is a question of timing. Actually, how do we really make sure that we control the things that we can control? What we've shared with you today is that we are in control of everything that we can. There are some market dynamics that will determine partly the answer to your question about how quickly we will return to that from a timing perspective. We're absolutely doing all the things that we can. If you go further into that question and say, what are the drivers, though? What are the drivers that become the bridge from this year into that multi-year phase of returning to that higher level of growth?
It is worth just mentioning them because I think that it will help everybody understand how the company returns to those higher growth rates. The first one absolutely is in our core strength of test and evaluation. The long-term partnering agreement on a multi-year basis is absolutely going to be a contributor to our growth. The modernization work of bringing in hypersonics, directed energy, autonomous systems, the increasing and tasking that we expect to see through our test and evaluation innovation gateway, the DroneWorks initiative that I mentioned. I did not mention it in the presentation, but we have just won a contract to expand quite considerably the capacity of the ETPS training school, which is going to be considerable increasing capacity both for our domestic and international customers. That is a really important growth driver.
The second is actually, and we've talked about this as our strategy for several years, how do we leverage our test capability into training? Note the strategic win of the MCAS contract. It is GBP 25 million. You might say, that is not big, but it is a strategic win as we move into training. That training is absolutely complementing our test capabilities. There are quite a considerable number of incremental opportunities above MCAS in a short-term period that will add to growth. The third is U.S. I have mentioned this a few times, actually, in answers. I think we are really well positioned around space and missile defense. Our capabilities with the SDA, we have SATCOM capabilities, and we also have broader sensors capabilities. Space is a very large growing opportunity in the U.S., and we are well positioned in that.
Alignment with programs that you all know, such as Golden Dome, we are positioning to win a role on that. Separate to that, I think it is in our unfunded order bridge. We did actually win an option, a ceiling option with the U.S. Space Development Agency worth up to $95 million to provide additional support to them in this coming year. That is the third growth driver. The fourth one is around advanced weapons. You go back a year, we talked about, in fact, it was May, was it not? We talked about the two-year renewal on the weapons sector research framework. That is really starting over this next multi-year period to bring benefit, particularly in the directed energy area, both radar frequency as well as lasers. Martin mentioned the importance of Dragonfire, and I have just mentioned we have had another win in next-generation laser technology.
Finally, the focus on Europe and two particular areas I would highlight. The framework contract that we signed now two years ago with NATO to allow access to our T&E ranges continues to bring and be attractive to nations like Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands. The second area I mentioned in response to Rich's question is our greater focus on export. We're in a really mature partnering position with HMG and looking at exports together. I mentioned two examples around our EW mission data capability with Belgium and with the Türkiye opportunity on Typhoon. Those will contribute. Those five areas, I think, answer your question as the bridge from this year to those higher rates of growth. Clearly, not everything there is under our control, so it's a matter of timing.
Certainly, over that few-year period that you have mentioned, I would expect us to really get back into much higher growth rates. Hopefully, that answers your question.
Sorry, just a couple of quick ones, Martin, for a bit more detail. Sorry, I lost you a bit on the guidance, the GBP 22 million. Is that the digital investment that you expect for the full year, or is that the restructure?
Yes, so the total cost for digital investment, I expect to be around GBP 22 million.
Right. And you are not at the moment expecting any more restructuring charges?
Correct. Right.
Okay. Sorry, very final one. Fed IT, I was just wondering if you could say how much did Fed IT contribute to revenue and profit in the half?
Yeah, so in revenue in the half, it was about, you should have modeled around GBP 10 million-GBP 11 million.
Around GBP 13 million-GBP 14 million. It does have a second half waiting, which is why when you're adjusting your models, you'd expect more like GBP 20 million+ in the second half, which is why we want, obviously, the adjustment in the full-year guide. It is fairly low margin.
I think, Sash, we've—oh. We will get to you, Sir. Go on, Sash. You were twice, so you'll—
Thank you. Sash Tusa from Agency Partners. Just a very quick one first. I think that you slightly implied that there had been some delays to targets orders in the first half. If I understood that right, is that something that has subsequently occurred or that you sort of expect to occur in the second half?
Sorry, do that one first. Yeah, you are right. There has been a slight slowdown. Nothing particular in the market other than a general slowdown.
As Martin showed in our bridge, targets are part of a pickup that we expect in the second half. It is worth saying that we did achieve some initial target sales in the U.S., relatively small in the half, but we did. We expect to be focused on additional task orders through the ATS3 contract that we signed 12 months ago in that second half bridge.
Thank you. Just a sort of broader question about US space and Golden Dome and so forth. Clearly, you've seen an awful lot of hopes for procurement reform over your careers. It is possible to be quite jaundiced about sort of claims that politicians make for that. Secretary Hegseth does seem to want to go faster and break a lot of things.
He does not seem to be particularly in favor of what he calls legacy contractors, which might be a category that you fall into. How do you make yourself relevant to new defense technology companies whose business model seems to be extravagant claims on PowerPoint, build stuff, it blows up, moves on, as opposed to a rather more measured approach in terms of test and evaluation?
How long have you got? Most of them all. You make a number of points. I mean, first of all, you touched on space and SDA. We have an excellent relationship with the SDA. We are the largest contractor working in with them. Therefore, we partner very closely with them, and we help them deliver their programs at pace. By being relevant, by deeply partnering and helping them achieve, to your point, their programs faster, that is how you position well.
I think SDA contract was an example of significant on-contract growth in the half. That comes down to good performance and good partnering. Please note what I mentioned about the option that we've had added to that contract for the next few years, which could build even greater on-contract growth. I think the core in that is being close to your customers, understanding the drivers. More generally, I think all of our markets are looking for reform. I do not think that's specific in the U.S. I think that is a nature of what is being driven by the threat. Therefore, all of our governments, whilst they want to spend more money, that money is going to take time to come. Therefore, they want to get more from their money quickly. That means doing things differently.
I come back to how well positioned we are. If you look at our four capabilities, creating new technologies that create disruptive military capabilities to overmatch the threat quickly, lasers, the case in point, is really good. Focused on engineering services, I mentioned, I think, twice the importance of proactively investing in how do we augment our high-value skills with artificial intelligence. That is not about replacing our people. That is about doing what we do faster and at greater scale to help them drive efficiencies and scale their capabilities. I think these are the dynamics, Sash, and I could go on further, that by being really relevant and partnering, but coming up with different ways of working to support them on their reform, that is how you grow in difficult markets and position yourself well for the long term. I think that is the fundamental ethos.
We have two more questions behind you.
Hi, Ben [audio distortion], RBC.
Hi, Ben.
Maybe kicking off with the second half growth. I think you've addressed it in the slides there, but just maybe on EMEA services, looking at the second half, I think you need to grow around or high single digit. Is the message from the slide there that those prospective orders coming in are pretty much de-risked so you're not concerned there of meeting those numbers? Is that the general takeaway?
I'll do that one. Maybe I could start generally. I mean, we've sort of talked about the market being difficult, and clearly we've had delays, Ben. But we've got really good focus on execution, and what the bridge that Martin showed is the visibility. If you're referring to the 7%, there are really three main drivers for that. The first is around EDP-related task orders.
Secondly is around laser-related programs. That is not just Dragonfire. It also includes the win that I have just mentioned on next-generation lasers because that was post AP7. In fact, it was last night. Thirdly, targets. They are the three biggest drivers in there. What really we are showing is that in that 7%, they are really specific and identified, and therefore they are high confidence. We also have a pipeline of further awards that go beyond that, and hence the way that Martin presented it.
Maybe just two more. In terms of maybe asking Joel's question slightly differently, over the next couple of years, you have spoken you can get back to that sort of high single digit, low double digit. Is there anything to be mindful of that is working against you or prevents you from getting there over the next couple of years to keep in mind?
I guess the most straightforward is the things that are not in our control. The market dynamics are partly the timing that I mentioned in the answer to Joel's question. Are we doing all the proactive thinking of investing, changing what we are offering, engaging with our customers? We are absolutely all over that. We are doing everything in terms of the actions on short-term performance and positioning us to shape and win these proposals. I think it is the things that are not in our control, which is actually just the flow of orders, really. No, I think we are very well positioned, hence the answer to Joel's question.
Last one on the sort of upcoming U.K. defense investment plan. Thoughts or expectations, what could come out there?
Yeah. I mean, we have been through a lot in the U.K. market this year.
We had a strategic defense review in June, defense industrial strategy in September, defense reform initiative, July, was it? Then we have got the defense investment plan, let's say before Christmas, wherever it is going to be. We have been through a lot. I think that getting through, in some ways, the last big block of this reset and renewal of defense in the U.K. will be good. I think it will bring clarity. It will bring confidence. I think what we expect from it is with that clarity, there will be a lot of focus on innovation and R&D and building different capabilities. Clearly, we are well positioned for that. More fundamentally, I think it will be calling even more so for initiatives of innovative capabilities to do more for less.
Hence some of the proactive changes that we've been making around the future of EDP and the AI-related investment. I think clarity and confidence is going to be good. We'll welcome that. We really expect innovation and bringing proactive proposals to be part of the implementation and then sort of build that position as support to our government going forward.
Thanks. Hi, David Farrell from Jefferies. Two questions for me. Just going back to the exceptionals and the digital platform, could you just remind us what capabilities that will give you as an organization? What exactly are you doing? What efficiencies does it drive?
If we go back a couple of years, maybe to when this whole project was launched, I think we talked very openly that the company infrastructure had been built really on the back of a legacy IT infrastructure from the U.K. government. It went back 20 years. Hence why this was a fundamental discrete investment project to fundamentally rebuild a digital platform and set of applications for the company globally. Really, that project has been in three phases. The first phase was to put a fundamentally different secure network in place across the company using state-of-the-art digital technologies. That is done and complete. Secondly, the next phase was then effectively migrating our people onto the new devices. As both Martin and I have said in our presentations, that is largely complete.
We are now on the sort of the final phase, which is really now all about migration of apps and then new tools, whether that's engineering tools or a project that's very close to Martin's heart, which is around the business system finance and tools. This was that multi-year discrete project to really bring the company digital infrastructure into state-of-the-art capability. I think it's going very well. I think both of us use slightly different language. This will change the way that we work. It will allow us to share information, share technology, drive collaboration, and also build greater business efficiency into the way that we operate. Anything for you to add?
Yeah. I mean, I think, David, I think it, I mean, this actually enables us to bid into some contracts as well and be prime lead in some areas.
Steve mentioned Australia and other areas by having these advanced and better systems that will enable us to actually bid and hopefully win more work going forward as well. I would also make the point that we meant there, and you might be about to touch on margin anyway, but I mean, I think anyone who's been through these digital rollout programs, it is quite disruptive to organizations. You will remember at the start of the year, we were a little bit cautious, more cautious on margin just around that operational impact. There has been some impact and there will continue to be for the rest of the year whilst we're going through that. As Steve says, we're getting on with it, and it will have long-term efficiency benefits as well.
Thanks. Actually, my second question was about growth.
Excellent.
We have not really touched on the Polish TARS opportunity, but can you just kind of detail how that works? Who selects the winner? Is it the U.S. government? Is it the Polish government? Has the U.S. government shutdown in any way delayed the award of that project?
Yes. I mean, the first thing is a reminder to ground us all. Poland is not in our base plan, and it is not in our forecast. Just to be really clear on that. In terms of the process, it is an FMS sale from the U.S. government to Poland. Therefore, the decision-making is with the U.S. government, but clearly they will have dialogue and exchange with the Polish government. To your point, partly related to shutdown, there is no public announcement. That remains, as I would think about it, more as an upside opportunity.
I think more important to that, you mentioned the phrase TARS, is really thinking about our TARS capability, which, if everybody's not familiar, this is where we are running a really significant national program along the southern U.S. border, providing persistent surveillance between the U.S. and Mexico. That is another contract. There are two, in fact, one called TARS, one called TAZ. Both of those also have delivered good on-contract growth over recent years. From our perspective, we're really positioning to grow that capability as one of our four priority streams. We're positioning to grow that both domestically in the U.S. We expect further on-contract growth to come this year. We also expect to grow it internationally. We're actively shaping a number of opportunities in different countries around the world, both in Eastern Europe and Middle East.
Hi, it's Afonso from Barclays.
Just coming back to the digital investment you have been doing, you mentioned the fact that you can increase your win rates because of that investment down the line. It is obviously good for growth. Just in terms of margin, is this investment going to generate any margin benefits down the line? Or is it just a function of making your business better positioned to win new contracts and fund growth? Secondly, going back to the U.S. business with those four key areas you outlined before, can you discuss the medium-term growth profile for the business there, compare that with the rest of the group? How should we think about the margin in the U.S. in the medium to long term? That would be very helpful. Thank you.
They seem more you, Martin.
The second one is definitely you on U.S. growth.
I'll start with the digital. I mean, just to be clear, I mean, as Steve says, this is around also building good long-term business resilience. You'll all be very aware of, obviously, heightened cyber threats and other things. This is predominantly around, obviously, having the right systems to be effective for our employees and other things. It does give us the opportunity in some parts of the world where we do not have the current capabilities to be able to bid into things. This is predominantly an efficiency thing. We do need to clearly continue to invest in the business. I would not want you to think this is going to make a huge step up in margin going forward as we work through this program. It should definitely help efficiency drive as we go there.
Perhaps in the U.S., just on margins, and then I'll hand over to Steve around growth. I mean, clearly, all the actions we're taking are about designed to drive margin up in the long term. I referenced a couple of areas where we actually also actively took ourselves out of some contracts in the first half because they were lower margin and were non-core to us and things. I think you should think about this business in the long run as more the sort of high single-digit margin business in line with sort of peers. Sort of in the 7%-9% would be the margin. That would then therefore push global solutions more up into around the 10% level, as I think we've outlined in the past. That's the kind of benchmark that we're pushing that business to through these actions.
Yeah.
On the U.S., I mean, rather than giving growth rates and comparisons, because as we know, we'll be giving an update on our growth in May, maybe what we can talk about is the growth drivers. I've sort of talked about a few of them. Just go back over. Space and missile defense is an absolute growth driver where we have positioned. I use the phrase multiple space programs. It's worth just touching on. Clearly, we have the SDA program. We also have a SATCOM-related engineering services program. I've just briefly touched on Golden Dome where we can see some of our engineering services and our sensors capability relevant for that. We have a series of capabilities, and we're well positioned in our customer relationships to see good growth coming from that program. Second one, maritime systems.
We know if we look back in time, the company has been very well positioned in its relationship with General Atomics and the U.S. Navy as part of the electromagnetic launch and recovery system on the Ford-class carriers. The Ford-class carrier is a long-term franchise program for us. We see good opportunity, particularly coming in the next year, bringing further growth on the carrier program. Many of you will remember about three years ago, we said we would take those capabilities and position into the submarine program. We initially won some business onto the Virginia-class carriers. That has expanded onto two or three subsystems. In the last 12 months, we're very pleased that our track record of performance in maritime systems has led to us winning business on the Columbia-class submarine. We've had strong performance with the carriers moving on to Virginia.
We've now moved on to Columbia. We see that we see steady but good long-term growth coming on a multi-year basis and then moving into surface fleet programs as well. That's the second driver. The third one is around advanced sensors. This is from our prior MTEC capability where we have some really good advanced R&D in next-generation sensors. What might be a small win in the half was winning a phase zero contract on a program called Falcons. This is the next generation of really long-range IR sensor for the U.S. Army. It's potentially a very large program of record in the U.S. We've got a very novel and clever design. We're delivering that phase zero program and looking at key strategic partnerships of how we will position ourselves to win. That's a multi-year opportunity.
The last really is the broader franchise opportunity that I discussed around persistent surveillance, which is TARS, TAZ, and the domestic growth that we expect on that, and then our focus on the wider international expansion. Those really are a bit more color in the growth of those four areas.
Very helpful. Thank you very much.
Any more questions? Any questions online from anyone?
There are no questions coming through from our conference call. I would like to take conference back to Steve Wadey for any additional or closing remarks. Please go ahead.
There is one more opportunity in the room.
Thank you very much for your time. We will both be hanging around if anybody in the room would like to follow up with any additional questions. Thank you.