Today to hear from Speedy Hire, who announced their results yesterday morning. If you have been following the story, you will have also seen that this morning they announced a contract win with Amey, which goes to reinforce the message within the results of the market share gains that are being achieved. We are going to start off with a video, and then we're going to hear from the management team, who will take us through the presentation. Then there will be time at the end for Q&A. Please feel free to submit questions as we go along. Without further ado, here we go with the video. Thank you. Well, that was the video. Now I'm going to hand over to the management team and take us through the presentation. Over to you, Dan Evans.
Thank you, Hannah. Good morning, everybody. Nice to be speaking to you today on the back of our results yesterday. Yes, to Hannah's point, the additional announcement that we made this morning that Paul and I will come on to through the presentation. We are going to try and trot through at a decent pace to allow as much time for questions and interactions as we possibly can. That's myself and Paul. If you haven't met us before, myself, Dan Evans, as the Chief Executive, and Paul Rayner, our Chief Financial Officer. So just to trot you through the highlights of where we're at. So in July last calendar year, we launched our five-year growth strategy called Velocity at our Capital Markets Day at our National Innovation Centre in Milton Keynes.
What we explained is over the 5 years, within years 1- 3, there is our enabling phase where there are some things that we need to do throughout the business in order to get the benefit of that in later years. Some of that is using technology, systems, and data in order to get that benefit in the margin. Some of it around people, properties, assets, logistics. But there were two very distinct phases. We are in year 1 of our enabling phase. We continue to invest in our strategy despite the challenging market backdrop. That is a choice. And we choose to continue to drive that investment in our strategy so that we are setting Speedy up despite the challenging macro to make the most of opportunities now and in years to come.
We share our resilient performance across UK Hire with performance positive from our national customers with some tougher conditions and challenges in our regional customer base that we'll come on to. We've re-engineered our trade and retail proposition that you may have heard referred to as consumer strategy or B&Q if you've followed Speedy in the past. We've done what we said we would do at our interims, and we'll cover that. There are a number of significant contract wins and renewals underpinned by what we've announced this morning, as Hannah commented on. Some positive investment in our specialist business growth engine articulated at our CMD, the acquisition of our battery storage business called Green Power Hire, and the world's first hydrogen electric powered access machine that we went into sole supply partnership with Nifty that is performing really well.
More lately, we formed a JV with a company called AFC Energy to form a business called Speedy Hydrogen Solutions. It's very early stages. It was not material until last year and will not be material to our performance this year, but an opportunity for time to come. In terms of the financial overview, Paul will take you through the numbers that you can see on the bottom there around some of the areas where we've had some challenge, what we've done to mitigate that, and then where we see that end in terms of free cash flow, net debt, and ultimately the dividend that was supported by the board.
Okay. Good morning, everybody. I'm Paul Rayner. I'm the Chief Financial Officer. We've been with Speedy just over 18 months working with Dan. The results are on the slide there. Our revenue was down year-on-year. A lot of that was linked to challenging market conditions. I'll talk a bit about our different types of customers. But for those of us who don't know us, our hire revenue is the business that is our most profitable segment. And therefore, it declined 1.7%. And therefore, that impacted the bottom line dramatically by operational gearing. Overall, however, we managed to maintain our margin, our gross margin, and our EBITDA margins across the business. Dan will talk in a minute about how we're looking at pricing and customers. Within our service business, our revenue was down about 1.6%. And that's linked to the market in essence.
We do sell fuel to our customers, and we buy fuel on the wholesale market. So each revenue is dictated by the cost of fuel. So last year, say, fuel was GBP 2 a liter. It's now GBP 1.50 a liter. So your costs are lower, and therefore, your revenue is lower. And we make a very small turn on that margin. We do call it out here so you can see the impact on revenue. The gross margin is slightly ahead of last year, and that's linked to the way we manage our business. We have a very strict control of overheads. Now, obviously, we all know about the inflationary pressures. And in the first of April 2023, the start of our new financial year, which we just finished, we gave our colleagues a 7% pay rise, roughly 1% or GBP 1 million. So GBP 7 million, that was in response to inflation.
But we managed to control the overheads everywhere else such that they are flat. On the first of April 2024, we've given our colleagues a 2% pay rise, plus implementing the government's Living Wage minimum. So overall, we control overheads well. We maintain our EBITDA margins. And in the appendices, you'll see we have a joint venture in Kazakhstan with a Scottish company that's in oil and gas. We own 45%, and they own 55%. Its profits last year were a record. This year, at 2.9%, that's more normalized profitability. They pay quarterly dividends to us in the UK. The cash isn't trapped in Kazakhstan. Our share of each balance sheet is about GBP 9 million. So it's a very nice returning business. We did increase our interest rates year-on-year because of interest rates going up.
We bought a business in October for cash because we have the facilities to do it, which results in higher interest. One thing you'll see to the PBT there down year-on-year links to the decline in the revenue and the operational gearing impact. However, I focus very heavily within the business on managing our balance sheet and cash flow. It's really pleasing to see we've more than doubled our free cash flow. Our free cash flow definition is all our cash before returns to shareholders and M&A because we, as a board, do not want to borrow to pay dividends. Part of the decision why we held our dividend was because it's two times covered by free cash flow. Provided we could keep generating cash flow, it supports payouts to shareholders.
In the appendices, there is a capital allocation policy, which over the medium term says we look to pay out up to 50% of our after-tax profits. We've temporarily deviated from that given the cash flow we've been generating. Also, it's linked to the outlook where we've said, "Well, our trading for the first couple of months of the year is in line with our expectations." We are winning contracts. I'll let Dan talk about the contracts we announced yesterday. We talked about yesterday along with the one we announced, this one this morning. Our debt at the end of the year is about GBP 100 million. It's 1.5 times levered. We have a very good and strong bank relationship. We have facilities of GBP 180 million, which expire in July 2026. No covenant testing. We are comfortable where our debt sits.
Before I move on to the next page, I'm going to talk a bit about our customers and how they work. We differentiate our major customers either national or regional. A national customer, we have about 200 of those. Those would be the likes of Balfour, BT, customers who've got a range all over the U.K. Regionals tend to be regional smaller businesses. 53% of our business is national customers, 46% regional. National customers grew a little bit in the year. Clearly, with the contracts we're just about to talk about, that should grow into fiscal 2025. There is or has been recession in the markets, and it's well documented. I think we're coming out of it technically.
We have seen over the last six months or so a significant increase in insolvencies in regional customers, which hasn't impacted us dramatically because we keep a very close eye on what we do. It seems in the last few weeks to have quieted down a bit. Our regional customers are down 6% year-over-year by volume and across the piece. That is almost the same number as it was in September, which was our half year. It's not gotten any worse. Since the year-end, it's probably edged a little bit better. In the national and regional, our rate that we're getting with those customers actually has increased. As we look at the business, we don't want to chase volume, and that's not what we've set out to do. That's how we can maintain our margins.
Our last segment is our trade and retail segment. It's the smallest piece, as you can see there. We've spent a lot of time this year restructuring how we do it. We had concessions within B&Q stores, which at the end of March, we've closed completely and have now gone to a purely digital model. Once again, Dan can talk through what we're doing with Peak, who are our AI partner. We can move on. Thank you. This is just a profit bridge from last year to this year. Gross margins linked to the revenue. Last year, in fiscal 2023, we made about a GBP 1.5 million profit on disposal of assets because we take assets to auction, which are near the end of their life, and we feel that we're better off just churning them.
This year, as the recession came and it motored through the last calendar year and into this year, when we've been to auctions, everybody else is doing exactly the same thing. So the prices you get are reduced. And this year, we lost about GBP 1.5 million. So that's a P&L bridge from one year to the other. Clearly, as we were talking about EBITDA, that doesn't impact that, but it's a financial P&L hit. For those of you who have followed us, last year, when Dan and I first started working together, we announced a rather large stock hold in our balance sheet and wrote off GBP 20 million in January, February of 2023 calendar. One of the things that I've done is to increase the rate we depreciate these non-itemized assets from 15 years- 7 years. So that's where you get an additional charge in year.
I'm pleased to say, having spent last year looking at how we count stock, controls on stock, we have counted stock since January 2023 to the end of March 2025, group-wise, 5 times, a wall-to-wall stock count. The end of March 2024, it was fine. And that's why we've not referenced it in here. We do perpetual counts every week of our itemized and our non-itemized. We have a steering group that sits every two weeks going through it. So we have really tightened up on controls. And if you looked at last year, you would have seen lots of conversations about it, but it's not in here. There's the base pay increase, GBP 7 million. But we've controlled our overheads across everywhere. And that's my job. And that's what Dan and the team focus on.
We lower joint venture profits after last year's record, and higher interest gives you the final number you have there. I could move on. Thanks, Han. On the balance sheet, I'm particularly pleased with the way we've got our balance sheet now; it's in a good place. For those of you who read sets of accounts, when you see our full posted set of accounts, you'll see our 31st of March balance sheet is unqualified. Last year was qualified because of the issue we had on stock. That's a good place to be. Our hire fleet is made up of our itemized assets. Itemized assets are anything that's got a unique individual number on it. Non-itemized would be scaffold poles, fencing, and matting. GBP 180 million of it relates to itemized. We bought a business in October called Green Power Hire, which is a battery storage unit business.
At the end of March 2024, we have about GBP 16 million worth of assets in that category in the itemized hire fleet. Non-itemized, 12% down last year at GBP 28 million. Most of that is because of increased depreciation, but also enhanced operational controls. I make no bones about cash and working capital. We've got strong collections. We have the lowest overdues in the business that I've gone back three or four years looking through. And it's about focus. We will not, however, take our eye off the ball because you can get bad debt out of nowhere. We have about a 1% of revenue bad debt provision, and that is comfortable. We've bought the debt, and we've got the banking facilities there. So thank you. If I move on to cash, which is one of my favorite topics, our operating cash flow is the conversion of EBITDA into cash.
It's 98% converted from EBITDA. Last year was 85%. We set a target of 90%. So I'm pleased it's well way above that. I don't think it could do much more because we have short-run business hires. We don't have long-term contracts. But that's good. The beauty of that is when you get that level of cash, you can afford CapEx, etc., etc. We guided the market yesterday that fiscal 2025, we would have about GBP 55 million of CapEx. That will be about GBP 10 million more than depreciation. So we're growing the business. And with flexibility to support further growth, now, the contract we announced this morning, it may well be that that GBP 55 million is slightly higher as we get towards the end of our fiscal year. But we can support it because of our facilities and our cash flow.
Cash flow of GBP 24 million more than double last year funds our dividend. And that's one of the reasons why we held the dividend that we announced yesterday. Okay? Thank you. We set out, and Dan will talk about the strategy in a minute, that our Capital Markets Day July of last year. But we wanted a suite of metrics to monitor the business, whether it's profitable growth, cash flow, utilization, ROCE, and then shareholder returns. And that's really just to show that we will continue to show this as a suite of metrics rather than one figure. Okay? Move on, please. And finally, my last slide. We set out some targets last July, and this reiterates them.
We think by the end of FY 2028, four years' time, we want to grow this business from the GBP 420 million now to GBP 650 million by just doing the right thing for the business. Taking market share is one of them. We want to grow our EBITDA margins from the current 23/24 to 28%. I think we can do that while maintaining sensible leverage. Now, if we continue the cash conversion, we can afford the growth within our leverage targets. This will, however, cost us money. It's a five-year strategy, which we've just finished year one. In the enabled phase of the strategy, we've spent about we predicted over three years to spend between GBP 13 million and GBP 15 million. In year one, we spent GBP 3 million. So I suspect we'll be nearer the lower end of the 13 rather than the higher end of the 15.
But that just shows, and we'll continue to monitor that and show you that every time we announce. I think then that finishes my little section. Over to Dan.
Okay. Thanks, Paul. So just generally, in terms of the market, there's lots of different pieces of data out there to underline and demonstrate how we would think the general market is performing. We seem to be inextricably linked to construction, but we do not only service the construction market. So while it's positive to see that the PMI data has improved and is the highest in and around two years, to provide that with a little bit of balance, construction output is estimated to have decreased over a similar period.
We tend to monitor things like contract awards, which is great, people being awarded a contract, customers being awarded a contract, and then contract starts, i.e., that contract's awarded, when is that work going to commence? We serve a diverse range of customers across a diverse range of sectors with a diverse range of products. So whichever type of output you look at, I think we know that we are in a relatively subdued market. We have an election coming up. But we are happy that the diversity that we have across the business offers us opportunities to make the most of where those improvements come from the market. And then generally, we referenced in our trading update towards the end of the last financial year the impact of seasonality. It was a relatively mild winter. We had had a significant wet season.
Post-Speedy communication, that seemed to be picked up in a number of other companies and more generally across publications like Construction News, Construction Inquirer. It was tough and did have an impact on our third and fourth quarter trading. We were pleased to say that we took market share. In a market that shrunk, our national customers grew. We have an encouraging pipeline that we'll come on to that we're executing, as well as what Hannah mentioned earlier around the RNS that we've put out this morning. Across the sectors that we serve, it's undoubtedly the residential and non-residential or commercial construction areas that have been challenging and continue to be challenging. I think that's a theme that you would have expected to see as frustrating as it is.
But there will obviously be opportunities to come as we go forward with, hopefully, some further commitment around what's going to happen around house building and opportunities across the general construction sector. Infrastructure remains positive for us. We've always done very well over the annals of time across the infrastructure sector. The rail sector has just moved from Control Period 6 into Control Period 7. Significant phase of investment across the rail, where I'm pleased to report that we're performing well. And there is further opportunity there that we're looking to work with our customers to make the most of. Similarly, with AMP8 in the water, where not only in our hire business, but in our test inspection certification business, Lloyds British, there are opportunities for growth in there that we're excited about.
And then across the nuclear sector, not just the obvious Hinkley Point, Sellafield, and hopefully the opportunities to come with Sizewell as we progress, but things around small modular reactors and the decommissioning that we can continue to work with our key customers and their supply chain partners on there that are exciting growth opportunities for the business. In terms of the contract wins, why are these important? We said that we'd won in excess of GBP 40 million of new business. This is not the GBP 40 million. It's a bit of a cross-section that we are able to talk to you about today. It has been challenging mobilising generally, whether that's there's nothing specific that we can draw your attention to there as a reason, but we just haven't managed to mobilise them as fast as we would like to.
But Aggregate Industries, we're delighted to have won in more of the quarrying and material sector, Vistry as a significant house builder. We're delighted to be working with Cadent, more from a utilities and national infrastructure perspective that we had talked about last year and has mobilized and progressed during the year. And then Algeco, that are more in the space and modular equipment side of things that we are delighted to have won as the year progressed. All of those contracts are at different stages of mobilization. There are others that we're not able to go through today, but we're excited by the pipeline of contract wins that hopefully continue to demonstrate the diversity of sector that we're looking to work across.
And we're delighted to be working with those businesses and others, complemented by the announcement that we've been able to put out today, post-year end, that we have secured a new long-term agreement with Amey as a new contract that we will mobilise towards the latter part of our financial year, that we look forward to the opportunity to work with them going forward and the growth that that can offer the business. Contract renewals and the customers that we enjoy working with today are equally as important to us. There's some key contract renewals that we've drawn out there specifically around Morgan Sindall, Babcock, and Balfour Beatty that are large customers of ours that we've renewed for extended periods of time. We look to enhance value to our customers every time we seek to renew those contracts. We do not take them for granted.
We're very proud to have secured those for those extended periods, focused on innovation, ESG, sustainability, and how we can collaborate and share in success going forward, all of which by enhancing value to the customer and value to Speedy, ultimately. In terms of people, I don't wish to sound cliché, but people are the most important asset to Speedy. We have a fantastic Chief People Officer in our business, Ellie Armour, that has worked really hard in this space as part of our strategy. We've invested just over GBP 7 million in base pay at the beginning of last year, as Paul commented on.
That's important, and that is a well-placed investment because we work so hard to train and develop and infuse our people as part of the strategy, as well as ensuring that we are continuing to roll out and trial flexible working, which I'm pleased to say we have now got around a third of our colleagues enjoying.
But that investment in base pay, that flexibility that we're providing to our colleagues, along with some other things that we're doing, has seen attrition reduce on a voluntary perspective from just over 20% to slightly over 16%, which is a record low level of attrition for the business and a credit to what we're doing as part of the people part of our strategy, complemented by the work that we do around people in earn and learn roles, graduates, apprentices that are supported by how we work with the 5% Club and our Investors in People rating. We continue to try and be a place where we can ensure that more females can be successful across our business. It's improved.
It's not as developed as I would like it to be yet, but it is a core part of our strategy across our people agenda, as is what we're doing around race and ethnicity, so that we can ensure that we're a place where everybody can thrive and be successful. From a health and safety perspective, ultimately, we are an operational business, and this is very important to us. I was delighted to attend the RoSPA Awards recently with our health and safety director, Andy, where we were awarded the President's Award for 10 consecutive years of the Gold RoSPA Award. Fantastic credit to our business.
We implemented our STOP campaign, which stands for Stop, Think, Organize, Proceed, where we encourage culturally everybody across the business to stop any activity that they think is not right, whether that be health, safety, well-being, whatever that may be, to foster that culture that everybody can challenge that. Starting with the leadership team, where we have continued to roll out cultural awareness training as the year progressed. As part of one of our technology developments, every company device throughout the business has the ability to engage with our leading indicators technology. It's a QR code in every location where any colleague, visitor can log on any device, a hazard, an EMS, a positive observation, or an asset integrity inspection. It's great to see those record high leading indicators.
That's a good stat to demonstrate that hopefully we are preventing incidents or encouraging positive behavior before anything negative may have happened that is leading to our lost time. Injury rate trending down. It's never good enough if somebody has gone home hurt. So we are always looking for continuing improvement in that space. In terms of ESG, I'm not going to read through all of these, but it is a core pillar of our strategy. We continue to invest in eco or more sustainable assets as we go forward. We are the first in hire to have our net zero targets validated, and we continue to focus really strongly on our scope one and two emissions, as well as helping our customers with their scope one, two, and three emissions. We're a CDP A- business, which is great progression from where we were last year.
We continue to invest environmentally in our service centers, which I'll talk to when we get to our strategy. That's underpinned by being an EcoVadis Gold business, places us in the top 5% of businesses for sustainability. We've been recognized for the last two financial years by the Financial Times as a European climate leader. If we just move on from the business into the strategy. When we launched our CMD last year, which is all available on our website, we said that the strategy was over five years. In years one to three, whilst we expect to continue to grow, there were some enabling side of things that we needed to do to get into the business and move it forwards. We have continued to invest in our velocity transformation strategy. That's a choice.
That is a choice that we're delighted that the board has continued to support some. And it's really important that we can't just sit back and say, "Well, okay, we'll just control our costs a bit more and we'll move forward." We won't. We need a strategy that is clearly communicated internally to our people, clearly to our customers, and clearly to our investors. We've brought in a new customer voice platform where we can measure how we're performing at every point where we touch a customer, from delivery and collection right through to invoicing and payment across the channels that we serve. We've got a test and inspection business, as you've heard Paul and I mention Lloyds British, that we've had restructured. And we've got a new system into that business so that we're not treating it as a hire company.
We've worked on it for a period of time, and we're delighted to have that system now in place to hopefully start to get a bit more benefit of scalability, where it's not quite so much overhead first, and we can use that system for the benefit of margin growth and customer experience as we go forward. And similarly, you've heard a lot around what we've done around technology and AI. A guy that we had in the business for a long time, our CIO, has done some fantastic work here that we're very proud to continue. And that goes through to our D365 customer solutions model, where in the business where we rehire, you may have heard us call it partnered services in the past.
That module allows us to systemize the partners that we work with and how we select how our equipment is allocated to our customers, making that an easier experience. Even though we don't own the asset, it's a significant part of our business that because we don't own the asset, is complementary to growing our return on capital and growth. Paul mentioned how we've changed, excuse me, our trade and retail business. We have been a concession-led business in partnership with B&Q, part of the Kingfisher Group for quite some time. We have exited all of those concessions.
We are now a digital business in that space where we are digitally in store for hire in circa 300 B&Q and TradePoint stores, as well as being available in both B&Q's website, diy.com, and tradepoint.co.uk for hire that we can then deliver to a customer to their home or their job site within four hours. It's not a B&Q and TradePoint strategy. We're very, very proud of that relationship, but it is a trade and retail strategy where we want to continue to grow with them and wire that into that space as Speedy Hire for the opportunities that that offers us, but digitally, and we have now in a more cost-light opportunity heavy going forwards. I mentioned, excuse me, I wouldn't just stay on that slide a second, around the work that we've done with Peak over a period of time. I mentioned our CIO earlier.
We've worked really passionately in that space. We've strengthened that relationship, and we are looking to continue to use AI across multiple areas. Paul mentioned pricing earlier, things like regional dynamic pricing, pricing within our trade and retail area, right the way through to right equipment in the right place at the right time, which I will touch on. And then in our service centers, we've got eight service centers now where we have closed some depots to amalgamate and open new ones, our National Innovation Centre at Milton Keynes, right the way through to our new one at London Gateway. What we can tell you now is they are more environmentally efficient. They are better for our customer experience, and they are engendering greater levels of colleague retention and satisfaction. But we are using in excess of 60% less energy at those sites.
From a pound notes perspective, that means that we're saving circa GBP 40,000 per site fully loaded when you look at it in terms of the cost of that energy. So it's a great decision from an ESG perspective, but also financially, that is starting to perform for us too, which Paul and I are really pleased with. When you look at year two of the strategy, i.e., next year, okay, to move on, thank you. In terms of the year that we're going into now, to give you an idea of some of the things we look at, we need to continue to enhance our digital channels. That's our website, that's our app, and that is our things like our customer solutions, technology, Microsoft CRM, Speedy Hire CRM that we showed you on the previous slide.
That's not to say that they're poor now, but we want to enhance them and improve them for all customers going forward from national right the way through to trade and retail. We are going to launch a new CRM. I think Speedy has grown and improved over the years, but we have not had an effective CRM in place that we've been happy with that we can link into effective marketing data and a customer experience platform that we spoke to on the previous slide. It offers us a massive opportunity to systemize our interactions with our customers and the benefit that comes from that. We expect to be very positive for the business. We are going to integrate an order management system.
So rather than it being people-led, where assets come from and what assets we allocate to what order in its simplest form, we are going to systemize that. We have a fully embedded ERP system across the business that gives us an opportunity through the technology that we've already invested in to bolt things onto that and use that as an enabling platform for our future success. And that work that's been done in the background will allow us over the next two, three years as part of our enabling phase to change the way that we look after customers' orders. And then we flow that through onto the right-hand side. I've said all along, the slide is in the appendices here. We cannot drive utilization by just sweating assets. We must link our asset data to our logistics data and performance and our service center network.
Those are the three areas supported by data and technology and powered by our people that will drive our performance there. We are working on a predictive CapEx model that will need to be linked to our CRM and to the work that we're doing with Peak to improve that going forward. We are always working on price optimization to enhance the value for Speedy, as I've spoken about, as well as continuing to offer value. That doesn't mean cheap. It means of value to our customers to ensure that we're always looking at those right things supported by our AI and data. We'll continue to explore partnership opportunities. I'm delighted with the partnership that we've got with Peak.
I'm delighted with the partnership that we've got with Nifty, with the world's first hydrogen electric powered access machines and how that's performing, and with the JV that we more recently formed with AFC and the opportunities, while it's immaterial this year for us, that it should offer for us in the future. We are looking to continue to diversify, and I think we've demonstrated that in specialist businesses, products, and services, whether that be things around hydrogen and energy sources, tech solutions, rail. We are looking organically at the opportunities that are available for us to grow. So just finally, from Paul and I, in terms of outlook, it is a challenging and nervous market out there, but we are happy that that is manageable.
We are serving a diverse range of customers and sectors with a diverse asset base, and we believe we're well positioned to capitalize on infrastructure, opportunities, and other opportunities that open up as the market improves going forward. We're demonstrating foolishly that we are winning business. That's really important to us to be a customer-focused business as we go forward, both now and in the future, executing well on our Velocity strategy and demonstrating putting those investments to work. We're pleased with the dividend that we've managed to maintain, supported by free cash flow, as Paul's articulated. We've started the beginning of the current trading year in line with the board's expectations.
Excuse me, but we do expect there to be some second half weighting, as you would have seen before with the relative seasonality of the business, as we build the mobilizations of the contract wins that we've talked about. So thank you. That's the overview from us. I'll now hand back to Hannah for questions.
Thank you, gentlemen. And we have a number, so let's make a start. ROCE is 9.9%, as you've just reported. If Velocity is a success, where should ROCE be in year five? And would this be higher than current industry peers?
Well, I would anticipate by the end of FY 2028, we should be in mid-teens ROCE, which was always a target of my predecessors.
It is lower this year because it's after half profits, but we didn't suddenly decide to sell GBP 30 million or GBP 40 million worth of assets just to maintain the ROCE target. But I would think mid-teens ROCE is perfectly achievable. Okay. And how is it compared to industry peers? So I think we're happy to focus on what we're doing. And as Paul said, we could have improved ROCE this year by selling half the fleet, and we managed to improve ROCE last year by there being a stock write-off that Paul and I had to deal with. So as part of a balanced suite of metrics, I think continuing to enhance return on capital employed against Speedy Hire strategy is what's most important to us. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you.
If, or perhaps that should be, when we get a Labour government, are there any aspects of policy in their manifesto which give you either more optimism or pessimism about the future than the current situation?
We have no political allegiances, but we would love to see whoever is in government follow through with the commitment to full expensing for leased assets. I think that would be very important to us. I think it is unfair how it is positioned at present. So we would love to see with whatever color government that that is follow through. I think in terms of whatever government comes in next, we're all looking for confidence to be returned, whether that be in infrastructure, housing, construction, the labor market having enough people and enough support for developing skill to do what needs to be done.
I don't think there would be anything in any current manifesto that is generally putting us off. I would say another thing, which is apolitical really, a reduction over the next 6, 9, 12 months of interest rates will clearly help the economy generally. And I know there's an MPC at 12:00 P.M. today, but let's see. But if you win interest rates start to reduce, I think you'll get that linked with change of government, which way, whatever it is, will help reduce uncertainty.
Thank you. Helpful. Trade and retail, and particularly B&Q, what are the early indications of the impact on sales levels following the implementation of B&Q's digital strategy?
Yeah, it's a great question. Look, we've lost money in previous years in the setup that we've had because of the cost of the concessions.
I'm pleased to say, as we've made the decision that that's no longer the case. The upturn in digital is pretty significant because it is now the channel. We don't have physical concessions, so you can order digitally in store, whether that is at a till or a trade counter or via diy.com, tradepoint.co.uk, or Speedy Hire's website. So the increase in digital is significant. It is encouraging. We'd like it to be faster, and we're working in partnership with them to do that. But we have shifted it from a proposition that didn't make money to a proposition that is now profitable. First two months of the year, it's profitable. First two months of last year, lost money. So the FD is happier now than he was a year ago. Thank you.
We like that, Paul. Thank you.
Have you been pulling the price lever to win recent contracts, or are you differentiating on other factors? And if it's the latter, what are the most important factors?
By the price lever, I'm going to assume I'm being asked if we are cheap. No, I think it's really important that whether it is in retaining valuable customers or offering value to new customers, that it is about value. Now, that value is determined in a lot of ways. We always have to be competitive. The market is competitive. But ESG and commercial sustainability has been very important. What do I mean by commercial sustainability? We could replace just about every asset in the company with a more sustainable product or service, but if our customers aren't prepared to pay for it or it doesn't offer the right returns to shareholders, why would we do that?
So we work really hard in collaborating with our customers to ensure that we offer value to them and their wider supply chain. ESG and health and safety are very, very important for that. We also enjoy collaborating from a people perspective. Can we share ideas around skill, apprenticeships, graduates in order to ensure that we're keeping talent in the industry? But it has been pleasing as well that some of the things that we've done align to the strategy, the work with Niftylift, with the battery storage units, and more laterally, the joint venture with AFC Energy and Speedy Hydrogen Solutions have, I think, encouraged people that we have got our finger on the pulse around innovation and some of the challenges our customers face.
That's not to say that any bid isn't competitive, but no, we are not out there eroding value for Speedy or our shareholders. The new contract we just won will be in line with our current group margins. It's not a diluted contract just for winning a contract.
Helpful detail. Thank you. Well, nice segue into the hydrogen solutions. Can you tell us a little bit more about them, including the levels of demand and the growth in demand for the Nifty Lift and generator? Are they starting to take off?
I'll split it in two if that's okay because they are distinctly different. The Nifty Lift machine, which is the world's first hydrogen electric machine, is essentially the same machine as its predecessor, just not with the same power source.
It's got a hydrogen fuel cylinder in it, a gas bottle, if you like, that to the uninitiated would look not a great deal different to the bottle that you'd put in your barbecue. But the training to use the machine is the same as its predecessor. The way it works is essentially the same. It's the energy source that's different. Since bringing that machine into the business, with the collaboration that we've got with Niftylift, the machine's won awards. We're very, very pleased with it. And the demand is in line with our business plan and our projections. It's performing well. We've got more machines coming in, and those machines are meeting the demand that we've got from our customers.
In terms of the joint venture with AFC Energy, which we've called Speedy Hydrogen Solutions, it was not material at all in the financial year that we are referring to. In the year to go, we are still saying it is immaterial to our overall performance because it will be relatively small as the pipeline of machines builds. What I can say is we've got strong interest from some of our larger customers. We are not aiming it at all of our customers because it is a new niche technology. But the interest that we've got from some of our larger customers and their clients is very positive. It's interesting for us, and AFC is our JV partner for the future.
But part of the reason why we entered into JV is we want to work with somebody that can be an expert on the product and help us help our customer too. But that is nowhere near as progressed as where we are at with the Niftylift machine at present. Just to clarify, the company's established. We've contributed our share of share capital, which is GBP 625,000, and our partner's done the same. And we've bought 2 units at the moment. Okay. And I'm going to say it's not material in fiscal 2025.
Indeed. So there's a little follow-up question here. Do you anticipate that some of the new venture today announced with Amey will make use of the AFC generator?
I don't want to commit Amey to that, but in the RNS, it does refer to the use of hydrogen-powered generators.
So without committing them to a PO, that is in the RNS. Yes.
Thank you. A couple of questions here on a sort of wider macro market share background. Who are your largest competitors, and how are they reacting to your success?
It's a very diverse marketplace. We've got some listed peers: Ashtead, Sunbelt, HSS, Vp, right through to some of the merchants that now have a hire business or opportunity. I can't name them all. We are also hugely respectful of some really successful privately owned hire businesses, some of which are very large, some of which, which is where I came from in this world, are smaller and family-owned. The most dominant part of this sector is smaller hire businesses. So it is very, very diverse.
I wouldn't want to be as arrogant as to call us a raging success at the moment when we've not delivered the results that we would have expected. But I think we are performing resiliently and trying to refocus the company on being customer and strategy-focused going forward. And I hope that bears fruit for Speedy. What our competitors think of me at the moment, I don't know. I'd hope they'd wish me every success just as much as I wish them eve ry success.
Thank you. How wide-ranging were the price increases across your hire fleet, and how did your customers react?
We did some general list price reviews. That impacted our web pricing also, i.e., the price that you or I would see, Hannah, if we went on to the Speedy website. That is more of a general pricing review for the business.
On a case-by-case basis, we would then be reviewing price increases or price reviews with individual customers dependent on size, scale, product range, a number of variable factors. Yeah. And to put a number on one of them, the number we talked about last year, first of April 2023, we put a 9% across the board rise in our rates. And as you see, we've not had a diminution in the rate in our customers. Some of our customers are on fixed-term contracts, three years, and when they renew, then you get the new rate. But in reality, we've seen a pretty good stick of the price rises. And that was obviously related to inflation. We've increased our salaries by 7%, so we had to react as have a vast majority of lots of companies all over the UK and the globe.
Okay. Thank you. A follow-up on Amey contract.
When does it start to mobilize and reach full run rate, and is it margin dilutive in the initial phase?
So is it margin dilutive? I think Paul answered. It is a margin in line with the targets that we've set ourselves and will improve going forward. We've said in the RNS, it starts to mobilize during the second half of our financial year. As to when it will build to full steam, that's not an element I could go into today because we've got some further work to do with Amey. But on day one of releasing the contract, we don't have all of that detail at the moment. So we would hope to mobilize it as sensibly as possible, and more detail we will get as we go forward. But it will not start to mobilize fully until the second half of the year, frankly. Yeah.
Just in terms of the market forecast for our two house brokers, they have not changed their forecasts from yesterday as a result of this morning's contract for either fiscal 2025 or fiscal 2026.
Thank you for that clarity. Well, this looks like our final question. Perhaps give you an opportunity just to round off and expand more broadly. What are the key elements that you see that have allowed Speedy to win new business?
Well, I'd like to, first of all, say that I think the strategy that we set out last year clearly defines where we're going, what we're doing, how we're going to measure it.
Some of the things that we've done in the strategy, the transformation of trade and retail, the partnership with Nifty, the acquisition of Green Power Hire, the partnership with PKI, etc., are all paying dividends for us in demonstrating that we've got a plan and how that plan adds value for all customers, not one or two, every customer throughout Speedy's range. There's a lot of hard work gone in from our people over a long period of time. By no means taking the credit for it, and neither is Paul. Over a prolonged period of time, a number of people from technology and infrastructure through to operations, sales, and all of our colleagues have worked really hard to get Speedy to be well-run.
I think what we have done now is position the customer at the center of our strategy, the center of everything that we do, with a strategy that can help us drive that forward in the future. We clearly hope that that, with an improving market, will see us be successful as we go forward.
Well, thank you for that helpful presentation today. We wish you well with your new contract and look forward to an update in six months' time.
Thank you, Hannah, and thank you everybody for joining us.