Hello, and welcome to Rentokil conference call. Please note that everyone is joined on mute to avoid any background noise. You will have the opportunity to submit any questions to our speakers later on during the Q&A session. If you'd like to ask a question by that time, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. I'd now like to turn the call over to Andy Ransom, CEO. Andy, you may now begin.
Thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. As you will have seen this morning, we've issued a trading update following lower than anticipated revenue and profit performance in our North America business. We now expect group adjusted PBTA to be around GBP 700 million for the full year, with a group adjusted operating margin for the year of around 15.5%. There were three main reasons for this. Firstly, whilst we saw some positive momentum in North America sales activity at the end of the second quarter, the trading performance in July and August was lower than expected, and we now expect North American organic revenue growth in the second half to be in the region of 1%.
Secondly, our North America business invested to deliver our planned growth through the peak summer months, with increased labor available in sales and service, increased overtime, and higher materials and consumable expenses. And thirdly, since the interim sterling has strengthened against the dollar, and if the rates remain at current levels to the year end, this will result in a full year incremental headwind of around GBP 10 million. Our immediate focus is on the Right Way 2 plan to improve revenue growth through increased lead flow, sales conversion, and customer retention. We're taking decisive action to mitigate the cost overruns as we exit the peak season, managing inventory more effectively, managing technician workload and overtime, and we'll rightsize the sales resource for the volume opportunity. The rest of the group continues to perform well.
Now, I know you're gonna have lots of questions for me and for Stuart, who is in the U.S. at the moment. So let's get into that. I'll hand it over to the operator for questions, please.
Thank you. We are now opening the floor for question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. That's star one on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from Simona Sarli from Bank of America. Your line is now open.
Yes, good morning, and, thanks for taking my questions. So, a couple of them. You are talking about weaker than expected July and August. But then if I look at your H1 results, we were pretty much already at the end of July, so I would have thought that there was already a little bit of visibility on how July was planning in specifically in pest control in North America. So what has been happening since then? What has changed in terms of inbound digital flow and overall performance for the business? What has been surprising on the downside, specifically? And also in light of the new expectations in terms of organic growth and also margin for the year, what should we keep in mind in terms of cash conversion and expected leverage? Thank you.
Thanks, Simona. I will take the first one, Stuart can pick up leverage. I mean, the situation is this, as we reported with the interims, the back end of the second quarter, we could see positive momentum building. We launched the Right Way to Plan. We showed you the various elements of where growth comes from. And we were seeing good evidence and positive signs and green shoots that that was coming through. That was based on action that had been taken and a belief that that action would continue to see that momentum build. And as we said at the interims, the outlook for organic growth in North America for the full year, we said would be at the lower end of that 2% to 4% range.
To deliver the lower end of the 2% to 4% range, that would have implied 3%+ , give or take, organic growth in the second half. While July was okay, the situation has weakened and the outlook, I would say, is the key thing that is weakened, so we can't see how we get to that lower end of the range now, based on what we're seeing. It's not anything that's cataclysmic. It's not anything that's gone off a cliff. It is simply that the seasonal momentum, and as the season unwinds, and we are pretty much at the back end of the season, we haven't seen that momentum continue. We don't think it's reasonable to see that momentum continue into the off-season period.
We might be wrong, Simona, and that, you know, things may well improve. They could improve because we are taking all of these actions. But in the absence of evidence to prove that the actions are coming through at the rate that we need them to come through, we've had to call the number down. So that's the position, the first one. Stuart, do you wanna touch on leverage, please?
Yeah, sure. Good morning, Simona. On leverage and cash conversion, I don't think it makes any difference to the cash conversion rate. These are largely a cash drop in profit, so like for like, really. In terms of leverage, we guided to a modest deleverage in 2024. I think probably leverage is gonna be about flat.
So I think we were about %2.8, and I would expect it to be in the same sort of ballpark. Plenty of headroom in both our facilities and plenty of headroom, too, in terms of our current BBB flat credit rating. So that gives us no real issues on leverage or debt. Thanks.
Thank you. And if I may just squeeze a quick one in, it's regarding the progress that you're making with the combining branches, because this is something else that you have flagged today in the press release. So a little bit of disruption. So, is there any update how so now have you proceeded with combining branches, just in the first in the first state in North America, or where do we stand? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, Simona. Yeah, I mean, there's no real update on the integration. The integration is going well. As I reported at the interims, we were really pleased with the systems integration, which is the main cut over to move Terminix branches onto the new single IT stack. That continues to go well. We've continued to put more of the network onto the new systems, but when you change systems, inevitably there is some disruption, and that's why we said it would have been neat for me to say none of the organic weakness is coming from the integration. It's more accurate to say a small element of it is, so that's why we include it in the statement.
It's not to call anything specific out, it's certainly not to call out any major concerns. And what we've seen so far, we're pretty pleased with in terms of the integration. Specifically, we've started some rebranding. So your question, have we actually started to merge the branches? We've actually started just a few days ago, some rebranding in branches to move to single branded branches. That's a, that's a start. But the move to the combined routes, et cetera, is still something that will come starting later in the year.
Thanks.
Our next question comes from Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. Your line is-
Oh, hello. Hi, morning, Andy and Stuart. Hope you can hear me okay. I'm at the airport, so apologies for the noise. So just two questions, please. Firstly, you know, given, you know, you've announced additional investment and marketing spend, etc , and clearly it's not yet bearing fruit, and your right way to plan. Do you still have confidence in the plan and in its ability to turn around the organic growth? Or actually, are there things that you've put into place over the summer that haven't worked, and you're having to rethink it? That's the first one. Then secondly, you know, these are some fairly chunky numbers that we're talking about around, you know, the additional costs for overtime and consumables, etc .
So I suppose my question is: Why wasn't this budgeted better? I appreciate there are things that have been out of your control, but you know, I think, yeah, why was that not factored into the full year guidance as a possibility, you know, at the interim? Thank you.
Thanks, Annelies. I'll take the first one, Stuart, second one. Look, I'm very confident. It's difficult to say that in the context of this morning, but I am very confident that the Right Way plan will bear fruit, will work. I've been running pest control businesses for a decade and a half, and the model to generate profitable growth in a network business has not fundamentally changed in that period. So the Right Way plan will deliver fruit, but it needs to be executed better than we've executed at this point. It is an execution question, not a strategic or model question. So I've absolutely got confidence in the plan.
The unlock to growth, and to get the plan working and firing on all cylinders and certainly firing better than it has been, has got to come from improvements in customer retention. We made announcements at the interims of putting more resource into that. I mean, that's barely started. To your point, the interims were not that long ago. So, we believe that the investments that we're making in customer service and in customer sales will bear fruit. And that, for me, is the unlock. As customer retention should improve, the portfolio value improves, and then the ability to put additional revenue on the portfolio through the marketing initiatives, through better sales conversion, will come through. So I'm confident in the plan. I'm disappointed in the execution.
And clearly, we'll be looking at that. What do we need to do better? What do we need to do more effectively, differently? We have to give the investments going into customer retention time to bear fruit. I'm sure they will. And so I would say it's more pivoting on the execution than starting with a different plan. Now, the plan will deliver the fruit in the fullness of time.... Stuart?
Yeah, thanks, yeah. Thanks, Annelies. Yeah, I mean, just to be clear, it's really not a budgeting issue from our perspective. If I sort of tab through the root causes of the variances we've seen, start at the top of the P&L, you know, the overtime overspend is really about that revenue issue. So as the guys have sought to get to the last dollar of revenue on the weekend with clearly underperforming against our objectives, and that's been done on a reasonably inefficient basis. That's driven overtime, and as you know, we haven't delivered on the top line, and so we've taken a double hit really. We've missed on the top line, and we've taken higher service costs as a consequence, quite inefficiently, actually, in stretching to deliver those.
Materials and consumables, bit of a mix, so we stock up at the beginning of the summer. We expect to use those materials and consumables as we go through. We haven't. We've got the way we account is very prudent. We expense those materials and consumables as they're issued into branches and technician vans. So it may be, as we get into the season next year, we see some unwind of that cost, but it would be imprudent of me to make a call on that today. And then, the sales resource, again, budgeted for, reasonably well forecast, but, you know, any organization has sales targets ahead of that, those external guidance that they publish. We had sales targets ahead of that, and we resourced up to deliver that.
And so we've really had a double hit on revenue in that we've got the flow through of the revenue, the GBP 20 million that we mentioned in the note, but also then the overrun on sales resource that was intended to deliver a much higher revenue number. So it really is that double impact. Clearly, as we exit the season, we're working really hard to deliver reductions, get on top of overtime, make sure that that's appropriate and proportionate to the volume of work we've got, and make sure that our sales force is right-sized relative to the volume of leads as we exit the season. So we're working really hard, and that's a big focus for the business right now.
But as I say, in the round, for the most part, that's a revenue shortfall issue rather than a cost budgeting issue.
Understood. Thank you, guys.
Question comes from Sylvia Barker from JP Morgan. Your line is-
Thank you. Hi, morning, everyone. A few for me as well, please. First, just coming back to the last point, obviously, the issue is one of the volume of leads rather than the cost. So how do you think about then, you know, the rest of H2 and into full year 2025? Would you keep a lot of this cost on and just, work on improving the volume of leads? And how will you get, you know, get about doing that? What's the impact been of that second $25 million spend on marketing and growth? Will you put any more behind that? So first question, just around driving that volume of leads up, kind of, what's the plan?
Second question, the full year 2025 PBT impact, maybe, Stuart, can you comment on how much of that, 'cause obviously it's nearly 20% cut to the second half PBT versus consensus. So how much of that should we be carrying forward into next year? Obviously, you've identified some items that might reverse, et cetera. And then finally, on the integration of branches, you were meant to start this rerouting from October. What's happening to the timing around that? Thank you.
Thanks, Sylvia. I should say, Stuart can take the one in the middle, and I'll take the first and the third. In terms of the plan in the marketing spend, it's a little bit early to say. If you recall, the additional 25, 15 was due to fall in this year, with 10 into next year. We've not changed that at the moment. What is fair to say is that we're working doubly hard on driving up organic lead flow. We're over-reliant, as we sit here today, on paid search with the search engines.
Because we haven't had the level of organic search coming from our websites, we've had to put more effort into the digital piece, and as you do that, into the paid search, that pushes the price of leads up as well, so you pay more money for fewer leads. So, very, very much in focus in the second half is to drive up organic lead flow. That means revising websites. It means fixing back links. It means making sure that the websites are localized to the branch locations more effectively.
So, too early to make any calls as to the effectiveness of the spend and the implications or not, but fair to say that we need to drive up the organic side and indeed technician lead flow to offset the need to keep putting money into the paid search. And that will be the shape of the plan, and that's what we're working on, and we've put additional expertise and resource to make that happen. Stu, do you want to cover the question from Sylvia on full year 2025?
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Sylvia. I think the answer is it's too early to say, you know, the MAR obligations mean we've had to come out very quickly on this, as you I'm sure you appreciate. So we're still working through that. Clearly, as you say, our position is that a large proportion of these costs are related to a mismatch between resource and revenue, and we would expect resource and revenue to be right-sized in 2025 , as we would in any other year. But quite what that looks like and what we would guide to in 2025 for margin, I think it really is a little bit early to say, and we'll be giving you know further updates both at Q3 and at the prelim.
So work in progress, Sylvia.
Yeah, question on integration. As I said earlier, the integration activity is on track. If I wasn't unfortunately doing this today and tomorrow, I would have been in America with the team, working through the next stage of the integration. As I say, it's on track. We're planning to go live when we were planning to go live. Most of the feedback from what we've done so far has been really good, really positive. I mentioned at the half year that we're looking at are there any ways in which we can change the cadence, the pace at which we get integrations done? That's something we're continuing to look at, but at the moment, there's no new news on that.
So we're on track to do, as we said, we were into Q4, where we'll start. I don't recall the precision of October, but certainly Q4, where we'll start the branch integration as planned. So no, no new news, nothing to share on that.
Super. Thank you very much for that. Just a quick follow-up, just on the volume of leads. Can you actually, just comment on that, trend? Because you commented a little bit around, some of these softer metrics around, you know, leads and technician leads, et cetera. Can you just update us as to how they're trending now?
Not, not really, Sylvia. That's getting into real, very, very, you know, deep, deep in the weeds. I mean, sufficient to say that we've not driven the volume of the leads, and, and we've not driven the quality of the leads and the value of the leads. And I would say as much of the issue that we've, we're unpicking here is, as I think I shared at half year and before, when you get leads in, you need to sell them. They need to be good quality leads, and there's difference between jobbing leads and contract leads, and termite leads, and residential pest leads. And if you're pushing harder and harder to get the leads, then the sales guys will tell you, "Well, they're not all as easy to sell." They're not, not all leads are created equally.
So I think the challenge we've had is as much on converting the leads that we've generated as it is on lead flow. So what we need is more leads, yes, but we also need better quality leads, yes, and we also need better conversion of those leads by our sales force. And we've talked about. We made an investment in the sales team and we geared up for incremental lead flow. Sales teams take quite a bit of time to get productive. You have to bring them in, you have to train them, and then you have to put them to work. And in their early period, you know, like most people in a new job, you're not very good, you're not very effective at your new job. It takes you months to get effective and productive.
So, I think the challenge we've got is, yes, lead flow. As I said, we got to get more organic lead, not just paid lead, but we've got to get the sales conversion rate up, and that will come from a function of two things: better quality leads of the right sort, but also a more experienced sales force. And which is why I've, you know, spoken at length about the importance of driving up colleague retention, and we've continued to see good improvements in colleague retention. So, I can't give you the detail blow by blow, which leads, which sectors, which months, but as I say, it's lead volume, lead quality, and sales conversion that need to improve.
Thank you both.
Okay.
Our next question comes from Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. My first question is on this incremental weakness that you saw. Was that mainly from resi termite, or was that broad-based, including commercial? The second, and relating to that, customer retention is something that you mentioned on the call. Has that gotten worse compared to the end of last year? And was there a specific resi element that got worse? And if true, do you need to add more resi expertise in senior roles in North America? The second question is on the medium-term targets. Given you've seen three, four quarters, actually more than that, of weak organic trends, is this something that needs to be revisited as well on the medium-term margin targets? Thank you.
Thanks, Suhasini. I'll attempt the first one, and Stuart can talk to targets. I think it's fair to say that within residential, commercial, termite and more broad-based, the weaker of the three has been termite for us. I don't think there's a particular story there, but since you've asked the question, I think we need to improve our termite performance. Customer retention, you recall, we've talked about this many times. Customer retention is a dollar value concept as measured, and customer retention has been stable. So no real big story on customer retention, but in terms of changes and nothing to call out here this morning in terms of changes in customer retention.
But as I mentioned in answer to one of the earlier questions, on a customer basis, we have to get customer retention up. So while it's not a significant contributor to this morning's discussion, and it's been broadly stable at similar rates to prior periods, it is a key unlock to driving the future growth. So that's why it's absolutely critical that we make that investment in customer retention resource. You made a question about, do we need more resource? Do we need more expertise? We have got 22,000 people in our North American business, and the vast majority of whom have been in pest control for a number of years. We have vast experience of residential pest control.
We're clearly not doing the job as well as we need to, so we'll obviously look at whether we need additional expertise and resource, but I don't think that is the challenge that we're facing, Suhasini. I don't think it's a competency challenge. It's an execution of the plan challenge. Stuart, medium-term targets?
Yeah, thanks, Suhasini. I think our overall position is, nothing that we've seen, nothing that we're experiencing today, while disappointing, changes our view of the medium-term margin opportunity. We would expect to have market-leading margins, once we get through the integration, once we've got the sales engine turned around. But it's clearly taking longer than we anticipated. And, you know, in the end, if we're getting circa 1% growth, that means we are seeing net volume decline, and we have to stabilize and start reversing that volume decline in order to deliver on our margin objectives, because in the end, we're a business that relies on density of customer routes, technician routes. So we've got to get that going.
So in the medium term, I've got no reason to doubt the targets we've put out there, but it's taking a little bit longer. And as I said, I think it was to Silvia, what does this mean for 2025, and what does it mean for 2026? That's a work in progress.
Thank you very much.
We'll come back to you in due course on how we see those.
Understood. Thank you.
Question comes from James Rose, from Barclays. Your line is now open.
Hi, there. Good morning. I've got three, please, if I may. Firstly, going back to branch disruption that you've called out. Within the second half assumptions you've got, can you sort of detail what impact from disruption, from integration disruption you have in there? And have you had to revise your own assumptions down within the budget to get there? What precisely are you seeing there? Secondly, sorry, in the first half, we talked about the contract base, the sort of subscription base, building ahead of revenue recognition from leads. Is that still the case over the last few months? And then lastly, again, looking to FY 2025, a question on how you think about prioritizing growth versus margin into next year.
Obviously, this is a, you know, this is a trade-off between volume ambitions and, and resourcing. You've been caught out in Q3 last year and peak season this year. So for FY 2025, does the business become more margin-oriented rather than sort of volume growth-oriented? Thank you.
Thanks, James. In terms of branch disruption, I guess all I can say is that we've not moderated. The reason for the call down this morning is not because we've added additional risk into the model from integration disruption. I called it out simply because it would be incorrect to say we've seen nothing. It's been modest, it's been broadly what we would have anticipated. So we're not calling the number down because of worse than expected integration activities. That's probably all I can say on that one. In terms of the question on the contract basis, as Stuart said, you know, this is a new experience for me, but these things move very, very quickly when you have to update the market on new news.
I honestly don't have the answer to your question in terms of the contract base and whether that's continued to grow in the way that you referred to there. Simply haven't had the moment to check on that, but clearly, we will do. In terms of 2025, as Stuart said, James, it's too early to call where this all shapes down. But I think as a directional point, growth has to be the primary driver. I mean, margin is important, but you know, you don't, you never slim yourself to glory in business. You've got to grow here. And so, we have got the right plan. We are clear that the plan will deliver. It's got to be executed well to a better degree and more effectively.
So clearly, we'll pivot. Clearly, we'll look at where we've made missteps and where we need to improve. But I think the primary focus needs to be getting growth up from where it is and on that onward trajectory. Now, at the same time, we're gonna look very hard at the cost, because with a mismatch between a revenue model and a labor model, we have to bring those back into line. But it's, you know, fair comment that we haven't got this right, and we need to get it right. But I don't think you'll see a fundamental change in direction for 2025 , prioritizing margin over growth. We have to get growth moving back up and to the right.
Thanks, Andy.
The next question comes from Andy Grobler from BNP Paribas. Your line is now open.
Hi, good morning. Just two from me as well, if I may. Firstly, just to clarify, the weakness in growth relative to expectations in the second half is a Rentokil issue, not a market issue. Is that the case? And secondly, just going back to the visibility, how quickly does kind of this news flow feed through to you guys? Because I guess a lot of those costs were set at the beginning of the period in terms of your sales headcount. You would have known what you were going to do, and as Stuart mentioned, the consumables were already acquired. So at what point did you see that you know, the plan just wasn't quite coming together and the growth wasn't coming through?
You know, what is that feedback, feedback loop, and could it be improved now that the you know, across an enlarged business? Thanks very much.
Thanks. Thanks, Andy. I'll take the first, Stuart. You can deal with the second. Look, I don't think, you know, we're still in the moment here, Andy, but I don't think it would be reasonable for us to point any of this at the market. I've certainly not seen evidence, nor heard anecdotally, evidence of market-specific weakness. It's for sure spotty, and there's plenty of, you know, people talking the economy down, but we're not seeing that, so I can't point to that. This is a manifestation of execution challenges. We need to improve our execution. It's not a market phenomenon as we can see at the moment.
If you know, further information comes to light, we're gonna reserve the right to change that answer, but I don't think it's market. I think this is on us, Andy.
Okay.
Stuart?
Yeah, so thanks, Andy. I mean, we've got reasonably good visibility, but all these real cost items, except for over time, I think, you know, that you've set your stall out, you've recruited the people, you've acquired the stock, and therefore, you know, you either get the revenue to deal with that or you don't, and if you don't, then clearly you've got the sort of issue that we've got, so that's not really a visibility issue. I think what we have got is still, because we've got two separate businesses, which are largely at an operational front end, not integrated yet, you have got a little bit of friction in the system as we take two data flows and bolt them together and then feed them back and understand what's going on.
As we emerge and get through the branch integration, we're gonna get better and better at having earlier visibility of exactly what's going on in the business, and therefore being able to respond to it earlier. I keep coming back to it, really, this is a fact that the revenue just hasn't turned up for us to support a level of investment that we committed to. You know, okay, that's on us, but it's that, the core of this is not a visibility issue.
But we do have a lot of work to do to get these systems integrated as we go through the next two years, which will enable us to have a much more holistic view of the performance of the business, rather than having to sort of bolt it together at a corporate level, and getting better feedback into the operational leads in the business. So, it's some and some, Andy, I think is the fair summary.
And so just following up on that, 'cause there seems to be a slight disconnect, I guess, between having reasonably good visibility and then having quite a big profit warning again in Q3. How can you give a bit more detail about that in terms of the timing of that visibility? At what point did you say, "Right, we needed to grow at 3% or so to get to the targets for the year," and said, "Well, we're not... It's not gonna happen"? Was that just something that happened very recently, or was that becoming apparent through July and August?
Yeah, well, look, as I think Andy said, you know, through July and August, we haven't had the run rate that we needed to get, and it's a level of confidence about looking forward on the trajectory. So the statement we're making today is as much about our view of what the future looks like as well as it, as much as it is about July and August performance in isolation and the trends that we've seen coming through the P&L in that period. So, yeah, like I say, we've still got sort of three and a half months of the year to go, and so this is our call as much for that three and a half months as it is for the two and a half months that we've experienced.
So yeah, look, there's a difference between visibility and commitment to the investment, and-
... you have to resource up. At the start of the season, you've got to train your salespeople, you've got to train your technicians, you've got to commit to the number of people you've got on the ground. You've got to plan your routes based on some assumptions about the volume you're gonna be pushing through those. And at a point in time, you come to a conclusion with whatever visibility you have, which may be perfect or imperfect, that you're not gonna meet the targets that you set out and the consequences of that for the P&L. So it's not a sort of a light bulb moment. It's an evolution of a view that we've taken over the last few weeks. So that's, I think, how I
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay, thanks very much.
Our next question comes from Ollie Davies, from Redburn. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Morning, guys. Just a couple from me. Firstly, on customer retention, you aren't really seeing much improvement here despite employee retention continuing to rise. So I guess, is there a reason for this, or is the lag between the two just a lot longer than you expected? And then secondly, given your comments about the sales force productivity, and I guess the issues that you've had here in terms of lead conversion, is right-sizing the sales force not gonna prevent any possible improvements in growth into FY 2025 ? Thanks.
Thanks, Ollie. Yeah, look, it's not a binary science between colleague retention and customer retention. It's born out of years of experience in the business. And all I can tell you is, provided colleague retention continues to improve, customer retention very typically follows. It's not easy to say, you know, there's a six-month or a nine-month lag between the two. But it is. It's pretty, you know, basic, if you think about it, because if you've got a consistent experience with your technician, and you're getting consistently good service, most customers are quite happy to continue with their service. If you're getting an inconsistent service, if you're getting constant change in technician, if the company's letting you down, you have a very different view.
I'm very clear and confident that the colleague retention improvement is the most fundamental corner piece in the jigsaw puzzle here, and it's moving in the right direction and continues to improve. So that will feed into customer retention. But at the same time, the investment we talked about the half year is really to get into a much more fundamental understanding of the customer life cycle journey. From the first moment we target customers, which customers are we trying to win, to the very last moment in the life cycle when a customer terminates us, there are dozens of opportunities to improve the service, the moments of truth, and to...
When you get to the back end of the life cycle, there are plenty of opportunities to save customers, even when they get to the point that they want to leave you. So this is a multifaceted program. It's not as simple as get colleague retention up, customer retention magically improves, but it does improve. But there's a much more holistic program that we're working on and needs to work on. So I think that's the key there. Apologies, Ollie, in the moment, I can't remember your second question.
It was just about the sales force productivity, and I guess the-
Yeah
... you know, issues you've had on lead conversion and sort of right-sizing that,
Yeah
the sales force now, and I guess the balance.
Yeah, it's a very fair question. I mean, the way it works in most organizations, your best salespeople are brilliant, and the more and more you give them, the more and more they sell. And it's just, you know, if you Pareto it, you're always gonna have some very high-performing salespeople, and they always have capacity to sell more. You're also gonna have some underperforming salespeople. And I guess what we're saying here on the right-sizing of the sales force, we're gonna look very carefully at, well, who is not currently making the grade and not likely to make the grade, and we'll make decisions about replacing people as they leave as well.
So I think we don't have to be brutal in the way in which we go about right-sizing the sales force, but it is certainly we cannot afford to carry passengers who are not productive. And so we will address that end of the curve. We'll try and get our best salespeople to be even more productive. And as we come off the season, we clearly will not be replacing salespeople at the rate that we might otherwise have done. So it's a balance like all of these things.
Now, if in the meantime, we see improvements coming through in the balance of the year, and we see improvements in lead flow, and we see improvements in the quality of the leads, and improvement in organic leads in addition to paid, then it may be that we can get more productivity out of that sales force, but the reason for the cool down is without that confidence, looking forward to the balance of the year, we're over-resourced in sales, so we do need to make that. We clearly, as the earlier question suggests, got to try and make sure we don't get the seesaw on this wrong the other way and end up with inadequate number of salespeople, but we think we can address this over the next few months.
Okay. Thanks, Andy.
Thanks, Ollie.
... Our next question comes from Allen Wells from Jefferies. Your line is now open.
Hi, good morning, Alan. Good morning, Stuart. A couple from me, please. You obviously talked a lot about kind of the converting of leads as being part of the issue here, but is there anything that we need to know about servicing the leads? Anything on the technician side? I guess this kind of comes a little bit from the disruption from the branches, but maybe you can just comment on the ability to service the leads that you do have, and if that's having an effect at all. And secondly, just on the commercial versus whether you flagged termite as being particularly disappointing. But I guess as part of this whole process, you're slightly disappointed growth. I've always slightly struggled with exactly what's gone on in your commercial business.
You know, I know it wasn't outperforming the market pre the Terminix deal, but it was always growing reasonably strongly. So I just wondered if you could maybe talk a little bit about what's going on in the commercial side of the business. To what extent are your customers being impacted there? Why would leads and lead flow be changing on the commercial side to drive such a weak performance in that business as well, if it is indeed as weak as the rest of the group? Thank you.
Thanks, Allen. Yeah, there's not really any part of the story in our ability to service leads, so work order completion rate is one of the key KPIs in the business. So as you correctly call out, having got the lead, having sold the lead, you then need to install the lead, and you do need to install it quickly, particularly in a residential business, otherwise the customer will go somewhere else, and that's not an issue. The install rate is good. We are getting the work done that we're booking and we're selling. There is an element, though, that we've pushed the organization very hard to drive revenue, and I think we're probably driving some marginal revenue calls.
We're probably, and we know for a fact, for example, we've pushed hard through the season to get work done at the weekend. Now, weekend work in North America pest control has always been a phenomenon, but we've pushed extra, extra hard this year because we're trying to get that revenue in. And I think, some of that, where you're paying overtime for Saturdays and even Sunday work to get the work installed, is not efficient. You know, you're paying a lot of overtime to get work done. It's not on a dense route. It tends to be, sort of, more one-time available work. So I think the inefficiency on the service side, Alan, is not the ability to service leads, it's not the ability to schedule work and get it done.
What we have seen is some inefficiencies of chasing revenue hard, which probably has not done a great job on density, but has also meant we've been doing extra work on weekends, and that's coming at a cost, and you're seeing some of that cost coming through this discussion we're having this morning. In terms of commercial business, yeah, it is frustrating. It's frustrating to me. I think the, it's quite a broad brush to talk about commercial.
If you split it into national account commercial, big customers, and then you split it into SME commercial, I think broadly, national account business continues to perform fine, well, subject to one caveat, and that is, Terminix had national account customers as well, and the quality of the Terminix national account business is never as high as the Rentokil bit. So there's a bit of a transition going on in the commercial bit as we try, and we have moved the national account customers from Terminix national account into Rentokil national account, where they should belong. We've certainly lost some Terminix national account customers. But at its core, the Rentokil market-leading commercial, big-ticket national account business is in good form.
So we should expect to see that improve as we get through this sort of transition period of migrating the Terminix national account business over to Rentokil. The second part of commercial is really SME. So it's the restaurants, it's the coffee shops, it's the pubs, it's just, you know, it's the high street, effectively. And the high street finds its pest control provider in exactly the same way as a residential consumer would. So if you're running a pub and you need a pest controller, you go onto the internet, that's where you will go. So in a sense, in that way, lead flow for SME commercial and the need to generate leads from the internet and the need to generate from paid search and from organic search is pretty much identical.
So where we've seen weakness in residential and termite on the lead side, from the digital side of the business, clearly that flows into the SME as well. So fix the lead flow, fix the websites, do an improved performance on paid for residential and for termite, you'll get the improvements in SME as well. So I know it's frustrating, it's hell of frustrating to me, but it is logical why you'd see that same challenge on the SME side, and the SME side of the commercial business, it is a big part of the commercial business. The national account part is performing well in Rentokil.
Cheers. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now bring the call to an end. Thank you so much for attending today's call. You may now disconnect. Have a wonderful-