We're good to go, I believe. Welcome this morning to the full year 2025 results presentation of SIG. My name is Pim Vervaat. I joined the company first of October last year as CEO and Chairman Designate. With me is Ian Ashton, who you know, our CFO. We also invited this time around Julien Monteiro. He is our MD for France. He's been with the company since 2018. Going forward, he and I will be joined in these occasions with a number of MDs from the various businesses so that you see a bit more insight in the business itself. Who's got the slide presenter? Let's go to the overview in the first instance, which is here. Go to the next slide, please. Been here for five months.
Key observations that I have had is very strong management across our various businesses. I've really been impressed with the resilience of our people, the knowledge of our people in difficult times. There are a number of very good market positions in what is structurally a growth market. When we look at the full year 2025, it's been a challenging market, as you will be aware of, particularly towards the end. We were able to achieve a marginal uptick in volumes. We believe we outperformed local markets vis-à-vis competition. Our operating profit up 28% to GBP 32 million. We reduced operating costs by GBP 39 million before inflation, which is a huge achievement by everybody within the business, and we had a robust cash and working capital performance.
In terms of looking forward, we developed a strategy called Vision 2030 strategy, which basically consists of two legs. The first one is the evolution of the strategy already in place, the GEM strategy, but we also identified more self-help that is available, procurement, working capital, and indeed more on the operating expenses. We're also looking to optimize our business portfolio. We identified a little bit over 20 different product market combinations, and we're going through strategically assessing each and every one of them. As you are aware, we are well positioned for a market recovery when that comes, not if, and ultimately, we aim to achieve a best-in-class distribution platform in building materials. With that introduction, I now hand you over to Ian.
Thank you, Pim. Good morning, everybody. Hope you're all well. If we can move to the next slide. The key financials. In 2025, we made good progress both operationally and financially, despite the continuing impact of very subdued markets, as Pim mentions. Group sales were flat over the prior year on a like-for-like basis. A resilient result given the market backdrop. Markets didn't pick up over H2, and some indeed saw some slight further weakness in Q4, notably the U.K. and Germany. More positively, our teams are continuing to perform well against their local markets, and we're very confident we continue to take share in the vast majority. Gross margin was down 30 basis points on 2024, primarily from pricing pressures in the current market, as one would expect, but our teams are managing these difficult dynamics well.
The lowest sales and gross margin were partially mitigated by extensive operating cost-saving initiatives, and this led to an underlying operating profit of GBP 32 million, an increase of 28% on the prior year and in line with expectations. After finance costs, which comprise lease and bond interest, this resulted in an underlying loss before tax of GBP 20 million. I'll look in more detail at the key elements within all these numbers, in a moment. Below underlying profit, other items were GBP 42 million for the year, GBP 30 million of which relates to non-cash impairment charges related to certain assets in our U.K. businesses, and most of which was as reported at the half year.
The charges and the slight increase since H1 reflect the prolonged market weakness we're seeing at the moment and the resulting impact on the relatively near-term focused modeling we use for our impairment testing. Most of the balance of the other items was GBP 9 million related to restructuring, and I'll come onto that in a few minutes. Whoops, previous slide. Free cash outflow of GBP 12 million was a marked improvement on 2024 and was despite the ongoing subdued operating margin. It was driven by continued discipline and improvement in working capital. Liquidity remains robust at GBP 171 million, and this includes the undrawn RCF of GBP 90 million. The cash outflow and some modest net FX meant that the net debt finished at GBP 518 million.
As a reminder, leases are the majority of that number, more precisely GBP 323 million at the year-end. Leverage was flat year-over-year at 4.7x . The next slide. Here's a simple bridge of the revenue number for the year. Small percentage movements on volume and price virtually offset each other to result in the flat like-for-like number I mentioned. Branch changes, mostly closures along with a small number of openings, are not reflected in the like-for-like numbers and resulted in a 1% impact on reported revenue. The closures were of underperforming branches or where we've merged branches with better locations. This is part of the restructuring program and will help the bottom line. Finally, working days and FX in aggregate were a very slight tailwind to that reported revenue of GBP 2.59 billion.
The next slide. This shows revenue and like-for-like growth rate by opco in the left two columns, then the operating margin in the third, and on the right, the bars show the absolute operating profit by business. Pim will talk through the businesses in a few minutes, and Julien will, of course, talk about France. I'll just make a few quick comments. Firstly, just a reminder that in January, i.e., just a few weeks ago, we reported a restructuring of our U.K. businesses and specifically the elimination of the former UK Specialist Markets division and the small management structure that supported it. The businesses that were in that division are now reported and in most cases managed under either Interiors or Roofing.
That doesn't affect the key takeaways from this slide, which are namely, the two roofing businesses, as you can see in the U.K. and France, generate the majority of our profit and indeed cash today, as we've reported before. UK Interiors made great progress in the year. It's our biggest business in revenue terms, as you know and as you can see on here. Consists mainly around GBP 550 million of that number of the insulation and dry lining business that previously used to be called UK Interiors, and which Howard Luft joined as MD in Q4 of 2024. That profit on the side of GBP 7.7 million and 3% sales growth, which now include the UK Specialist Markets components, reflects a significant turnaround in less than 18 months in a challenging market.
Pim will talk more on that. The other material turnaround in last year was in the Benelux. Still loss-making, as you can see, but in a very different position to where it was 12 to 18 months ago. Next slide. This bridge shows the year-over-year drivers of operating profit. The first two small green and red bars show the gross profit impact of the volume and pricing changes in sales that I mentioned before. The GBP 15 million GM impact is from both the lower gross margin percentages that I mentioned up front and also GP on closed branches. We do remain satisfied with how the businesses are handling the pricing environment and the trade-offs involved with volumes, and we're making sure that we emerge from this low point in the cycle well-placed to grow the margin.
Moving across, inflation within our operating cost was GBP 14 million. Employee costs are about 50% of total OpEx and saw inflation of around 2%-3%, including the U.K. NI increase from April 2025, an impact of GBP 2 million-GBP 3 million. Most significantly, the GBP 39 million green bar there shows a significant underlying reductions we've made on OpEx versus the prior year, building on a similarly material saving made in 2024. I'll touch on that further on the next slide. We delivered GBP 32 million full-year profit. That was GBP 15 million in H1 and GBP 17 million in H2. We've managed through a negative or flat top line for three years now, and in that time, we've significantly improved the operational effectiveness of the business and removed around GBP 80 million in underlying operating cost.
There is more to come on both of those in the future, which Pim will touch on. We are optimizing the future operational leverage such that when markets do start to recover, we'll benefit disproportionately. Next slide. On efficiency, productivity, a bit more detail on these OpEx actions. Firstly, on the left-hand side, the reported OpEx reduction in the P&L was GBP 20 million in the year. This was after that inflation of GBP 14 million and also GBP 5 million of adverse FX. Therefore, an underlying GBP 39 million saving, as shown here. That consisted of GBP 18 million of what we would describe as restructuring savings, i.e., requiring one-off cost to be delivered, and GBP 21 million of other savings or initiatives. The key elements of the GBP 18 million are listed on the lower left.
The savings from changes made in late 2024 were the biggest factor in the 2025 P&L, notably in UK Interiors and Benelux. The elimination of the small separate structure supporting Specialist Markets, along with the closure of the Mayplas business in December, delivered some small benefits in the year, which will annualize in 2026. We also continued to drive efficiencies in some of the centralized functions, notably those supporting all three of our U.K. businesses. The other savings of GBP 21 million were driven primarily by continued proactive management of the natural headcount churn, i.e., not backfilling roles as people leave; fleet efficiencies, especially in the U.K. and Germany; and some one-off property profits of around GBP 3 million, as we've referenced previously.
In aggregate, through restructuring and the ongoing management I mentioned, our group headcount was 230 or 3% lower at the end of the year than at the start, and over two years, that's about 660 roles or 9%. Looking forward on the right-hand side of the slide, we're confident the annualization of actions taken to date, plus others we have in the pipeline, including in Germany, for example, will allow us to offset the impact of expected OpEx inflation of approximately GBP 15 million in 2026. On procurement, we've made good early progress.
It's too early to give guidance on what this may deliver in 2026. From the work done to date, we expect that our target of at least 1% of our total spend of GBP 2.3 billion from 2027 onwards is very achievable. That GBP 2.3 billion, just to be clear, is on our goods for resale and on the goods and services we have within OpEx. Ultimately, we want a more commercially agile but efficient business, and that's what this overall program is aimed at achieving and we believe is doing. Next slide. In the appendix, we've included the usual more detailed breakdown of cash flow and net debt. This slide here focuses on the key drivers of free cash flow.
The GBP 70 million of lease payments in our fleet and estate was about GBP 3 million higher than the prior year. It will grow slightly over time with the business, as I've said before, not least with inflation, but it does remain a relatively stable number. We're a CapEx-like business, as you know. The GBP 16 million spent in 2025 was in line with the normal trends of recent years, and reflects continued targeted investment in the business. Working capital management is, of course, a key focus for all the businesses, and we were pleased to deliver that GBP 29 million year-over-year reduction you see here. We talked about this at the half year when we showed good progress, and this continued in H2. The main drivers, amongst others, were negotiations over timing of rebate payments allied with robust collections of receivables.
Moving further across, the cash exceptionals in the year related mostly to the restructuring actions I just talked about and some relatively modest costs related to ERP upgrades. Operating cash flow in that blue bar was GBP 43 million or 133% of operating profit. After operating cash, we have interest and tax. Of the GBP 51 million of interest, roughly half related to the imputed interest within our leases, and the balance of GBP 26 million was interest payable on our bonds. Cash tax in all of it in the EU countries was about half the prior year number. That was the 2025 cash flow. Given the depressed operating margin at present, a very solid result in our view, driven by working capital clearly, and improving cash generation clearly remains a key priority for all of us.
Onto the next slide and the balance sheet and financing. Liquidity remains robust, as you can see, and as I mentioned, being GBP 171 million at the year-end despite that modest cash outflow. The GBP 90 million RCF we have was undrawn throughout the year and remains undrawn. Net debt rose in line with a cash outflow and a bit of FX to GBP 518 million. As I said, GBP 323 million of this relates to net leases on our fleet and estate. That number has actually been pretty stable across the year. Leverage, as I said, finished the year unchanged at 4.7x . Of course, we're targeting a reduction in the leverage. We do expect a continued recovery in profitability to drive that down over time.
On the right-hand side, as a reminder, is the summary of our core facilities, which run to 2029, apart from the stub on our old bond of EUR 13 million, which will be repaid in November of this year. The leverage covenant is currently set at 5.5x on, this is on the RCF, moving to 5 x from March 2027. As a reminder, this is only tested if we are 40% drawn at a quarter end. Obviously, we have headroom on that leverage number, and more to the point, our liquidity is such that we have substantial headroom before we would ever be close to drawing GBP 36 million at any point, let alone as a quarter end.
As we referenced in the release this morning, we've recently put additional receivables financing facilities in place in our French roofing business and in Poland, which further increase that liquidity and provide even more headroom. We're utilizing these facilities today to the tune of around GBP 15 million-GBP 20 million in terms of month-end impact, and it's a little higher intra-month. The net costs on this after interest we can earn on the additional cash in hand are not material and are captured within the guidance on interest I'll provide in a moment. In summary, we have ample liquidity and are very confident that will remain the case throughout 2026. Finally, on the next slide, just a few additional points to assist with modeling.
In aggregate, we're seeing modest increases in our input costs from suppliers, so overall slightly positive, as shown here. Our ability to pass this on in full depends on local and specific project dynamics, but we of course expect continued pricing pressure in market. I think overall, it's fair to say we expect sales pricing in aggregate to be flattish over the course of the year. OpEx inflation will remain broadly at the levels we saw in 2024, i.e., 2%-3% increase. CapEx, very similar to the run rate of recent years in the range of GBP 15 million-GBP 20 million. Interest, with a slight increase in interest on leases, we currently expect a full year charge in the range of GBP 54 million-GBP 56 million.
On tax, as reported previously, we have tax assets in the U.K. and Benelux, so we don't expect to pay corporation tax there for some time. We do have tax liabilities in our other operating companies where we generate taxable profit. Given this mix and the fact we don't yet recognize the tax assets from an accounting perspective, our underlying effective tax rate is not meaningful, as I've said before. It's more helpful, I think, to guide to a P&L number, which this year I expect to be in low single digit millions of pounds. On cash tax, very similar, low single digit millions. That concludes my update. In summary, tough markets remained a major factor throughout the year, the businesses are managing through these headwinds well.
We're continuing to take the actions that will help both the short and longer term, notably in sustainably reducing both the cost base and working capital. This will improve the operating leverage we benefit and performance overall as markets and volumes recover. With that, I'll hand it back to Pim.
Thanks, Ian, for that very comprehensive overview. Perhaps we can move to slide 15. The overview, you know the group. What's important here, it is a Pan-European operation. 43% of the turnover is in the U.K. There are some strong market positions and good brand names. In the slides hereafter, I'll briefly go through the various parts of the group to give a little bit more color on what has been said already. We go to the next slide. You can see that the two businesses which were really executing a significant restructuring program and made great progress, the UK Insulation and Drylining business moved from three and a half million loss to a GBP 5.6 million profit, so a very significant improvement during 2025.
It's a combination of significant cost measures being taken and also retaking market share. 8% in the first half, 3% in the second half. Not yet job done. We want to further improve our market share. We want to further improve margins. Great progress made by the team at UK Insulation and Drylining. On the right-hand side, you can see the Benelux improved significantly, but still a loss, -4.5 to -1.5. Perhaps it's also encouraging to note that the Dutch part of those operations are already at the breakeven level, and clearly the job is not yet done. We're aiming to have that business certainly in the second half of this year at a run rate which is turning a little bit of a profit.
If we go to the next slide, Roofing and Germany. In UK Roofing, we now also include Building Solutions, which was part of UK Specialist Markets. That business improved year-on-year in profitability, and we also can already see some synergies, market-related, by having them as one business, going forward. Roofing is a market leader. Difficult market circumstances, but you can see they've achieved a 2% year-on-year like-for-like growth, so we've taken market share. It is one of the leaders w as also recognized, we won an award, the National Merchant of the Year in 2025, even if, even though we did not sponsor the award. It must be a genuine award, winning event. Germany, those markets were particularly tough.
We believe that even though going 3% backwards on a like-for-like basis, we have gained market share. If you look going forward, what are we doing? We continue with some what we call strategic sales initiatives, i.e, here and there poaching some good teams from the competition in Germany, which as you may know in this industry, will bring with it the sales as well. Also we initiated a cost reduction program, quite a significant one. A combination of the two, just as with the group, really improves our operating leverage also in one of our bigger markets, which is called Germany. Markets going forward, you all know about the stimulus package that the German government is aiming to launch. That still has to take effect. That will underpin a better market outlook over the medium term.
We go to 2 of our smaller businesses, Poland and Ireland. Poland, really good performance, 5% like-for-like growth. The market, probably around 1%-2% growth, taking market share. We are the market leader there. We've had a resilient financial performance. Ireland, I mean, we're proud to say we've taken market share in almost all instances. We have to be honest here that in the second half of last year, the distribution business in Ireland was very price-disciplined. Therefore, we lost some market share. We definitely aim to take that back in 2026 at good, responsible margins. We also have three contracting businesses in Ireland. They really delivered a very resilient performance as well in 2025.
With that, you can hear it now from people who are at the tough end, at the sharp end. Julien, our MD of France, been living these tough markets day to day. Julien.
Thank you. Thank you to give me the opportunity to talk about French market a bit more into detail. If we go to this slide, SIG France is a leading specialist distributor on the construction sector in France. We're focusing on exterior, roofing and cladding with LARIVIERE. We hold the number one position on the French market with GBP 388 million revenue in 2025. LiTT is our interior specialist. Interior means plasterboard, drylining, insulation, partitioning, flooring and ceiling. We hold the second position on the French market on this specialism, and we have generated GBP 190 million revenue in 2025.
This positioning gives SIG France a strong operational depth, a nationwide coverage, and a clear leadership in technical distribution in France. On the 25 performance, which would be the next slide, what I can say is that 2025 is a year that remained very challenging across the French construction market. We evaluated around -6%. A lot of element for that, political and regulatory uncertainty further weighed on these investment decisions. Despite this difficult environment, the both LARIVIERE and LiTT delivered a robust operational performance. Importantly, we continued to gain market share in these declining markets. Both company, LiTT and LARIVIERE, outperforming the market by approximately 1 and 2 percentage points on their core market segment, which is very important for us.
While like-for-like, the sales declined by 5%, we successfully protected and improved our profitability. The underlying profit reached GBP 14.5 million, and this is a year-on-year increase of GBP 0.3 million. This performance was driven by decisive action, such as GBP 9 million of cost reduction, a disciplined network optimization, including branch closure and property disposals, and the continued operational efficiency measures. The cash generation remained a key focus for us during 2025. We delivered GBP 18 million in free cash flow. This was primarily supported by a strong working capital management. As you can see on the slide, top employer 2025. In parallel, we maintain a strong focus on people and productivity and made meaningful progress in the adoption of AI-driven operational tools, which help us to support efficiency gains across the organization.
To conclude on 2025, I'm pleased to say that in a declining market, SIG France demonstrated resilience, discipline, and the ability to continually improve the operational effectiveness. If we look ahead now in the market, the market condition are expecting to stabilize and gradually improve as the year progresses. Industry forecast suggest approximately 2% overall market growth for 2026. This will be driven primarily by new construction, like I guess everywhere else in Europe, while renovation and maintenance activity is expecting to remain broadly stable. This might be eventually encouraged by government specific incentive, such as MaPrimeRénov', which just have been reactivated a couple of weeks ago in France. This incentive, this government incentive, is financially supporting renovation work on housing for energy savings, so insulation, windows, et cetera.
Again, this market condition, our strategy in France is very clear. We remain committed to cost control and to structural efficiency with further reduction initiative, which already on the way. The most important for us is that we aim to continue gaining market share by intensifying commercial activity, so increasing customers visit, strengthening prospective, focusing on core product category, and improving conversion rate. All that through discipline sales process. For all this objective, technology will continue to play a central role. We are expanding the use of AI tools to enhance our sales productivity. Not only for that, we also use it to improve working capital management, optimize pricing and margin, and also to support some of development of new value-added services we'll offer to our customers in 2026. Our objective again in 2060 is straightforward.
We will combine a market recovery, even if it's shy, we will combine it with a structural efficiency and enabling a sustained profitability and strong cash generation for the French market. To conclude, for France, SIG France demonstrated in 2025 that we can deliver a resilient performance, generate cash, and gain market share in adverse conditions. With market condition expected to stabilize or to slightly improve with our strong operational platform and our clear strategic priority, which are all on the way, we are ready. We are well-positioned to continue creating value going forward. Thank you, and I will now hand it back to Pim.
Thanks, Julien. We can move to slide 24. I already referred to this in my introduction. This is the first leg of our Vision 2030 strategy, which is the evolution of the GEM strategy. I already pointed out that procurement is more in focus perhaps than in the previous strategy, and we aim to achieve at least 1% savings on the total procurement spend of GBP 2.3 billion. Working capital, great performance of the group last year. There are still elements, areas where we can see tangible improvement going forward, so that will be a focus. As Ian already alluded to, we have found also in operating expenses more cost savings, and that will offset inflation in 2026. This will lead to further robust liquidity, an optimized cost base ahead of any market recovery.
Indeed, as Julien already said, we aim to continue to improve our positions in our respective markets. The second leg, which is on the next slide, is optimizing the business portfolio, simplifying it. As already alluded to, we have 20+ product market combinations. What we are in progress of doing is assessing each and every one of those businesses in terms of where it can be in the next three to five years, both taking into account the organic development as well as the industry structure. Where the value case is compelling, there may be moves in terms of what we're going to do with our business going forward. Ultimately, aligning the business to structural growth market is key for us in the end of the day.
Clearly creating a group with an enhanced returns profile is the key. That brings us to the next slide 26. We make a distinction here between short, medium term and longer term. Clearly, given where we are and given where the markets are, short term, it's all about focusing yet again on the cost base, on procurement, on cash generation. That's the first cap of the ranks, clearly. We also want to have a focused business portfolio, and the alignment, what we've already said for the UK Specialist Markets to UK Interiors and to SIG Roofing, is also unlocking some internal synergies as well. Continue to grow ahead of market, we said that before. By 2030, it's not a coincidence that we have Julien here, or we had an AI conference within the group, the ones who are furthest progressed is France.
This is clearly on the radar going forward to develop an AI roadmap for the group, because I believe together with being a fast follower in AI with the physical structure and the market position that we have, we can continue outperforming the markets, both in terms of volume as well as in margin. Talking about margin, we said we want to deliver 3%-5% operating margins throughout the cycle. There's some work to be done throughout 2026 and 2027. We also want to make sure that we are, even in bad times, generating cash which the group hitherto has not been able to do. In terms of the outlook, final slide. Already said, we have a continued market softness in the first half of 2026.
Weather conditions were particularly difficult, we do expect an improvement over the balance of the year with the self-help that we've already spoken about. We expect to maintain healthy levels of liquidity, we are progressing the optimization of the business portfolio. In 2026, we will improve or continue to improve our earnings capability and our capability to generate cash, that will clearly be demonstrated when the markets recover. With that, I think that concludes the presentation, and we're over to questions, if I'm not mistaken.
Thank you very much. Aynsley Lammin from Investec. Just got three quick ones. First question on UK Interiors, obviously a big turnaround in profits. Just interested the momentum for this year. Is that still good to take market share, or does it kind of slow off a bit, the improvement?
Well, I mean, the weather clearly impacted the first two months. We actually had an inbound yesterday from Howard, who's leading that. One or two green shoots in terms of that, but we want to do both. I mean, if you look at the UK Insulation and Drylining, the margins in that marketplace are pretty, how shall I say, challenging alongside challenging market conditions. I think it's going to be a balance of taking market share but also enhancing margins because we reached the stage where you would say we need to, as an industry, improve margins.
Okay. Second question, just on the procurement. Could you just remind us how the kind of buying of the group works in terms of do you use the group buying power? If you were to sell one of your businesses, would that impact how much you'd be able to extract in terms of buying gains going forward?
Yeah. I mean, Julien actually has been with us since 2018. He was witnessing the first attempt to utilize the group's buying power, which I don't think ended successfully. Julien and other European MDs actually said yes, but they launched the process last year already saying we need to leverage where we can, whether it's on group basis or it's on a regional basis, our buying power. To that effect, and I alluded to that in January, I'm very happy we could convince a gentleman called Darin Evans to join us as the Chief Procurement Officer. He's more like a player manager on the pitch sometimes and coaching the individual procurement departments across the group and increasing data visibility.
This is not a, "Hey, here we are," big power across the group. This is actually further optimizing the procurement in our decentralized structure. I mean, one example perhaps to quote here, we had we acquired a business in the U.K. in 2022. We had the same supplier, and those terms and conditions were not yet aligned, and they were differential. We've been able, the local procurement department did a great job, helped by Darren to finally align it and have a saving of half a million GBP to 1 million GBP. It's you have to look at those kind of examples as to how we're going about it, and 1% on a 2.3 billion GBP total is achievable. We're optimizing, professionalizing local procurement, more data visibility.
Where it makes sense, we sometimes on group, but probably more Germany and France or Germany and Poland, you have to look at it more in a granular way. There is not going to become a big central procurement department telling everybody what to do. It's more encouraging the local procurement community together with some central steering, and the MDs are fully bought into that as to what can we achieve.
Great. Just finally, I guess, given Julien's here, interested a bit more color on the French market. I think residential permits have begun to improve a bit. You know, what's your kind of view on that and the RMI? That 2% you put up for market, is that the wider market or your markets?
It is a wider market. It's principally driven by new housing, which after two years of very poor performance starting to go back up. On that, on this, we are strongly positioned with LARIVIERE on RMI, on the, and with LiTT on new businesses. We will capture a bit of this market. Our core business, being RMI for roofing, will grow and will be stable compared to last year, probably between 1% and 2%, as I mentioned. We hope that the MaPrimeRénov', which is the incentive which had been released last couple of weeks ago in France, will kick up properly and help like it happened in 2019 to develop insulation program into housing as well.
Good morning. Thank you for the presentation this morning. Couple of questions from my side. First, on page 13, you're talking about further margin pressure. Can you give us a sense to the rough magnitude that you expect on higher costs with flat prices?
I think, Ian, this is one of your ball.
Yeah, I think, I mean, you know, we've clearly seen that for a couple of years, and when demand is subdued, there's inevitably pricing on, you know, pressure on pricing. You know, we manage that. I mean, 30 basis points in the scheme of things is not much of a reduction, frankly. I think the teams have managed that very well, as we said. And, you know, we won't sort of guide on a precise gross margin number for the year. But I think, you know, we would hope to do better than that, you know, this in 2026. You know, kind of flattish gross margin overall. But it's, you know, they're making the right trade-offs in the markets.
Okay. Understood. Thank you. We have seen some data on the detailed planning applications and housing starts in the U.K., and particularly in Q4, those have been falling quite hard continuing into January. Given that detailed planning applications are quite a leading indicator for construction activity, where do you take your confidence for recovery in the second half of the year from?
I think there's, I mean, you're right, the U.K., I mean all our bigger markets, you know, they've all been pretty subdued on historical levels, really quite subdued. The U.K., as we mentioned, if anything in the latter part of 2025, sort of, you know, sort of dropped off slightly further. I think there's two aspects really. Firstly, the sort of the gateway to, you know, some of the sort of regulatory approvals around high-rise buildings. I mean, there are still a lot of blockages in the system there. There's a lot of projects approved and ready to go and financed.
When those come through, whether that's in the back end of 2026 or early 2027, there is a real pipeline of projects there that will, you know, that will come through. In terms of house building, you know, clearly the government has some very clear targets that they're sort of missing at the moment, but there's clearly a strong imperative on all sides really to get that moving. At some point that will start to move off what today are extremely low levels.
What is your sense what has caused that increased weakness in in Q4 last year and in basically Q1 this year? Why are people submitting from already a low base, fewer planning applications, fewer housing starts?
Well, I think the general sentiment in the U.K. sort of towards the back end of the year and, you know, was not sort of positive. Interest rates probably not coming down as quickly as people might have expected some months previously. There's definitely some, you know, some positive signs, I think.
Okay, thank you. As the last question on your slide 18 on Poland. While revenue growth is quite strong, what causes the lower profitability in Poland?
Gross margin, you know, was down. I mean, again, that's a good example where, you know, there's. They've done a very good job. It's a tough market, as they all are, and the gross margin was down slightly. That was the main driver. They managed their OpEx pretty well. The Polish business is a, you know, as we I mean, the market is, you know, we think, I think one of the better markets just generally and probably today than all of the others, and we've got a very good team in Poland, as we've talked about—
Mm-hmm
— you know, frequently over the years. Very experienced, very forward-looking as well in terms of a sort of omnichannel approach. You know, I think we feel pretty good about where the Polish business is.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Clyde Lewis at Peel Hunt, three if I may. Be fascinating to hear a little bit more maybe from Julien about AI and exactly what you're trying to do there. Obviously, you talked about sort of pricing and stocking levels. It'd be fascinating to hear a little bit more about that. I suppose the second and third ones were really a little bit combined, but just thinking about your number of branches that you've got in the different regions, are you happy with that? At the same time, I suppose, what are the competitors doing with regards to their branch count and, I suppose, their competitive pressures? Are they increasing or decreasing? I mean, you do the AI one.
On AI, it's a digital mindset we started to implement in France a couple of years ago with a lot of acculturation, a lot of small tools we implemented, chatbot and to help internally. Now we are at the stage in 2025 where we're in a position to develop an in-house tool linked on increasing and gain performance in sales activity first. That was our first use case that we the first family of use case we wanted to develop. We develop one internally to compare, to see our capacity to learn from that. Both are already running. The internal one is running through our ERP. The second one is tested today with around 40 of our salespeople.
Mainly is how we're gonna do a quotation in 20- minutes instead of four hours when you do a full roofing quotation. That gain of efficiency we're gonna reach from that. The question we are having on our AI roadmap today and as well as the group level is: Where do we stand with that? How much we can invest in coming years and which going to be the use case where we develop first? Today in France, we are working on working capital management, which is, you know, 135 branches in France. There's two branch at 40 km will have a different kind of range of products because roof are not the same in two village, that the legacy of the French territory.
Managing working capital is a very complex for us of AI will bring great helps, and we hopefully will have something toward the end of the half year on that. Pricing is one of the element where for the same reason where we need to use AI, where we'll improve. Something also for our customers. Can't go too much into detail of that, but our customers could use AI to facilitate a diagnostic on their customers. Roofing images and stuff like that. Helping them on that. That's really the three area we're working on.
The big question and we need to find the right balance between what we'll be able to develop internally, which we already are, and what we will to go faster, have to externalize. That's discussion we're having right now at the group level, and we will conclude very soon.
We're in the early phase of adoption AI. What I want to signal with this, we are going to within the constraints that the group has, I think that is the future. You combine our reputation, our market positions, our people with AI-supported dynamic pricing, procurement visibility, and indeed logistics management. That is, I believe, the way forward for this industry. We cannot easily replicate our branch network, our reputation, personal contact with our suppliers. Behind the scenes, we can really power forward on AI. We had our first conference within the group. We know where we are. With the help of AI, you can generate what it could be. There's always an interesting challenge if you put it in what could AI mean for a distributor of building materials. Quite a lot.
Within our capabilities financially and people-wise, this is clearly going to be a focus going forward. It's going to be centrally supported, but businesses like France are recognizing that. I mean, we've got about 2,000 salespeople, 415 branch managers who on a daily basis make decisions not based with all the information there. I think that's the key to make sure that people taking those decisions on a daily basis have the right tools and the right support available. That's what we're doing. In terms of the branch network, you will have seen over time that we are reducing the branch network, but also still opening. I think you probably will see a similar trend going forward. Competition, we're actually starting to note one or two are also reducing the branch network.
Up until recent last year, people were still opening branches, but I think the mood there has changed somewhat. You had three questions. What was the third one?
I think it was sort of combined, wasn't it?
All right.
The two and three.
Thank you very much. Christen Hjorth from Deutsche Bank. Three questions from me. First one, just on the factoring. You said GBP 15 million-GBP 20 million, I think, Ian. I'm just wondering what sort of capacity would be there for factoring? The second one, just on energy and fuel, given everything that's going on in the world, just maybe the pound million cost and the extent to which inflation there is in that, the guidance around inflation for 2026. Finally as well, just anything on pricing at the start of the year. I don't know when you generally tend to increase prices, obviously just in the context of risk of further pressure on pricing as we move through 2026. Thank you.
Okay. Sounds like me, doesn't it?
Sounds like you, Ian.
Say on the factory, we already had a facility we've had for many years in our elite business, which we kind of reported, which, you know, give or take, is sort of GBP 30 million or so. The capacity, what we've done in Poland and LARIVIERE would be, you know, more than GBP 15 million-GBP 20 million. We're not sort of maximizing that at this stage, but it would be in excess of that if we chose to. Won't put a precise number on it. You know, it's in excess of what the number that I mentioned there. You know, as I said before, just it makes perfect sense to us. It's really pretty inexpensive, and we're pleased to have done that.
I think on energy, I mean, there's two different aspects to that. Obviously, from an input cost point of view, you know, we will see what happens there. Clearly, you know, if oil prices go up, product costs sort of generally go up. As you know, that can be, you know, we sort of pass that on, not necessarily a terrible thing for a distributor. Obviously, the flip side is any impact on demand. We'll see how those dynamics kind of play out. For us, more, more directly within our OpEx, you know, which is sort of light and heat and, you know, utilities costs and diesel costs of the fleet. You know, in the scheme of things, the total of those is kind of 3%-4% of our OpEx number.
It would take some pretty huge, you know, increases to have any kind of material impact. We do also, we do hedge forward for at least through the balance of this year, some of our utility costs as well, which gives us a bit of cover on that. And then on pricing, yeah, I mean, obviously January, February is when typically we see the, you know, the increases coming through, which we did as usual. It, you know, there is a significant, you know, range from, you know, 0% or 1% up to, you know, 5%, 10% in certain products. And as I said, in aggregate, you know, low single digits overall, is the aggregate.
You know, we see that in most normal years, that's normally what happens, and that's what we've seen this year. I think we have a question down here.
Yep.
Thanks. Morning. Ben Varrow from RBC. I've got three as well, please. Kick off with, yeah, looking across the group and the different businesses, which do you view as SIG's strongest in terms of market position and value creation for the group?
Well, you've seen the overall theme there. I think each and every one of those has a good market position and a good way to improve profitability going forward. I literally mean each and every one. Clearly the one which stand out is still the negative operating profit in the Benelux, but I've got every confidence in the local management. They have the unfortunate element in there that I live 20- minutes from where that business is. I speak the language as well, we had some pretty intensive contact over the last three, four, five months, I thoroughly believe that business can and actually is one of our star performers in the first couple of months this year. That's ongoing. That will also have a good return.
It was already mentioned, clearly IDL made a big jump forward. We need to sustain that, not just by volume, but also by margin. I haven't seen where we did see in the assessment where we said thus far that's not a viable business. I mean, we alluded to that in the presentation. We had to close a small insulation business called Mayplas last year because we did not believe that could be profitable. It's small, GBP 7, GBP 8 million turnover. We have been able, for some profitable parts, to be transferred into other remaining businesses. There is not too many of those within the portfolio.
Building from that on, in terms of portfolio optimization, the message before has been, you know, not to sell assets at this point in the cycle or below optimal margins. How has the thinking changed?
That hasn't changed. As I said, we are assessing each and every one. There's no secret also internally as to where can you be in the next three to five years, and please take into account industry consolidation in your specific part. Look at competition, look at what possible combination could yield for further benefits. I mean, this industry will consolidate over the next five to 10 years. There is a value to be had there, and we want to be in a position to tap into that value. Clearly, if that's in the press market circumstances impacting the fair value you could get in from such a combination, we are in no rush to do a sale. I mean, Ian already alluded to, we are confident in our liquidity, so we'll do it at the right time.
Clearly I can't be specific at this point in time what that means for which part of the group.
Last one. Building on that, just specifically on the distribution business in the U.K., do you think consolidation there could sort out the structural margin issue for the market? Is there room for that market to consolidate?
I think that's generic across Europe. You see there are several platforms in Europe, driven by CVC, Blackstone, so the BME stocks of this world. You've got a gentleman in the U.S. called Mr. Jacobs who wants to build from scratch a global $50 billion distribution of building materials business. So far he started in the U.S. and bought Beacon Roofing and now Kodak. He may go across the pond. That consolidation will happen. Why will it happen? It will enhance market positions, and it will have synergies. This is an industry which will consolidate not just in the U.K., but across Europe and indeed globally.
I think we've got time for one more question. Maybe if we go to the back, we'll take more later, if that's all right.
Hi. Thank you for the presentation. On the issues in the Middle East, I think it's very early and we don't know what's going to happen, but do you have any thoughts on, you know, what would be the scenario if this went on for a while? We had higher energy prices. Have you had any conversation with clients about potential price increases, passthroughs, et cetera?
No, no. I think, I think your first comment was right. It's obviously extremely early and, like everybody, we'll, you know, we'll sort of see what happens and how it plays out. We saw somewhat, not the same, but somewhat similar backdrop a few years ago and, you know, with supply constraints, et cetera. I mean, clearly, as I mentioned earlier, if oil prices go up and that affects manufacturers, maybe that affects pricing. Our model is that those get passed on. I think, you know, I think it's too early to say anything beyond that really at this stage.
Well, there was one more question. We'll have time. We make time.
Thank you. Toby Thorrington from Equity Development. I had two, but I'll keep it to one for your benefit. Thank you. It's in two parts though. Firstly part one for Ian, I think. Could you update us where the state of the ERP rollout is around the group, please? Kind of building on that, interested, flipping over to Pim to understand with a fresh pair of eyes what you think the quality of management information is around the group and the. Behind that question, I'm thinking the basis for moving into AI is founded on good quality data—
Yep.
—et cetera.
ERP, I mean, quickly, as you know, we don't have one platform across the group, which we think is, you know, is a good thing. We upgraded in Poland about a year ago. So it's a rolling program as and when required, and we clearly do not do ERP implementation unless until we sort of have to and there's a, you know, very clear business benefit. We did Poland. We're in the process of doing Ireland, which is obviously a much smaller business. That's more in the nature of an upgrade. And we also, the more material one we're doing at the moment is France in Julien's business, where we, you know, we have, you know, a good system, but one that, you know, did need replacing. There's a project underway in France as well.
Concluding this year?
No. No, not concluding this year. Sort of into back end of 2027.
Back end, please.
I mean, the follow-on question, remarkably good. I believe the IT infrastructure is within the group. That will provide a good basis for further AI development. People are on the ball across the group. There are variations, that will allow with more focus. As I said, we aim to be a fast follower on AI in distribution. I do not think at this point in time we're too far behind, if we are behind indeed, but it is the way forward, which again, I repeat, combine that with all the strength that this group has, that's the way forward for us.
Okay. Thank you.
I think that's it. Anyone else?
Yep. I think that were the questions in the, in the room. Thank you very much. Any questions from the net? No. I'm told to conclude the proceedings. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. Thank you.