Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the SSP Q4 Trading Update. My name is Sandra, and I will be the operator for your call this morning. I would like to remind you that all participants are in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing Star and 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press Star and 0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. I will now hand over to Patrick Coveney, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Sandra, and good morning, everyone. I'm Patrick Coveney, the Group CEO of SSP. Thank you for joining us this morning as we're going to run through the highlights from the fourth quarter trading statements that we've just released. And I'm joined on the call by Geert Verellen, our Group CFO, and together we're going to take questions after I share these highlights. There are three key messages for today. Number one, a resilient Q4 underpinning full-year earnings per share delivery in line with market expectations. The last quarter of the financial year has demonstrated our resilience and delivery in an unsettled macro environment with constant currency sales growth of 4% and 2% like-for-like.
Against this backdrop, we are on track to deliver earnings for the full- year at 11.5% at actual exchange rate, a year-on-year increase of 15%, which is in the middle of our previously announced planning range and in line with market expectations. Two, a £100 million buyback announced and launched today, with leverage now expected to be at the lower end of our one and a half to two times target range. And given clarity on our investment plans and confidence in our outlook for FY26, we are today announcing a share buyback of £100 million. This is where we have planned to be and represents a clear, compelling use of surplus capital, all the more so given our current share price. Three, a plan to deliver FY26 earnings per share within the range of market expectations.
While the FY24 results demonstrate some evidence of the work we have underway to drive enhanced performance, profitability, and returns on capital across the group, we recognize that there is more still to be done, particularly in France and Germany, where returns are still unacceptably low, but where we are accelerating our actions to drive performance improvements into the new financial year. So, notwithstanding the uncertainty in the demand outlook across the travel markets and the fact that, of course, we are only in week two of FY26, the impact of these planned actions, particularly on cost reduction, means we expect to deliver earnings per share for FY26 within the current range of market expectations. So, turning to the first point then, resilient trading in quarter four. Overall, group sales in quarter four rose by 4% year-on-year on a constant currency basis, with like-for-like sales growth of 2%.
Regionally, in North America, our sales grew by 4% in the quarter on a constant currency basis, reflecting significant net gains of 6% as we build out our presence there now to 56 airports. In line with our reported result for Q3, we saw a like-for-like sales decline of 2% in the quarter due to a continuation in recent months of lower passenger numbers, especially for the international and transborder passengers across our network of airports. In Continental Europe, our sales reduced by 3%. This decline was driven by the ongoing phased exit of our unprofitable motorway service units in Germany, with the complete exit from this channel to be substantially complete in half one of FY26. The consumer and rail channel environments in France and Germany continue to be difficult, contributing to a like-for-like sales growth of only 1% for the region as a whole.
I'll come to describe our specific actions in this region shortly. In the UK and Ireland, we had a strong fourth quarter with sales growth and sales up by 7%, sustained by strong like-for-like sales, particularly in rail, despite the week-long London Underground strike at the beginning of September, which impacted our like-for-like sales in the region by approximately half a percentage point. And finally, in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, we were pleased to deliver a strong performance with sales up 12%. This was underpinned by excellent like-for-like sales in Australia and Malaysia. Our delivery there offset the lower-than-expected growth levels that we had in India and the Middle East during Q4 due to the temporary reductions in air capacity and air demand following the well-documented safety and geopolitical incidents in those regions earlier in the summer. So that's trading for the quarter.
I'd like to now briefly update you on where this leaves us for the full- year. Given the moderation in growth of passenger numbers in the second half of FY24 that we've described, our like-for-like sales growth for the full- year will be at the lower end of our guidance range of 4%-5%. As a result, at constant FX rates, we expect to deliver full-year operating profit of approximately £230 million, up 11% year-on-year, but towards the lower end of the planned range that we set out last December, with a corresponding margin of approximately 6.2%. Throughout FY24, we've been working hard to pull all the levers that are within our control to drive stronger performance across the group.
While we've made progress overall, and we expect to see operating profit growth in each and all of our regions, we are not satisfied with where we are and continue to recognize the imperative to accelerate this with a particular focus on building profitability in France and Germany. We have tackled the challenges in those two markets head-on, but we do not now expect the in-year profitability for the European region in 2025 to be at the level that we'd originally planned. This is due to a combination of the scale and timing of the changes and interventions required in France and Germany being greater than we had anticipated this time last year, but also by a deterioration in market and channel conditions in those two markets.
In all, we now expect our in-year operating profit in the Continental European region to be approximately 2% this year, up from 1.5% last year. But for the group as a whole, we expect this will be offset by strength across other regions. Now, clearly, there are still some moving parts before we close out the books and report our final numbers. But for now, we can say that reflecting a lower-than-expected interest charge and a lower effective tax rate, we expect to deliver earnings per share for the full- year of approximately 11.5p at actual exchange rates, a 15% year-on-year increase in the middle of the planned range and in line with current market expectations.
Furthermore, we anticipate that our full-year group return on capital, by which I mean the measure we defined last year to capture the returns that accrue to SSP shareholders, will strengthen further from last year's result of 17.7%. Turning now to the second message, our announced £100 million buyback. As you'll have seen in the statement this morning, given our strong cash generation in the second half, driven by working capital initiatives and disciplined capital investment in the year, we expect net debt to be below GBP 600 million, leaving leverage at approximately 1.6 times net debt to EBITDA, which is towards the lower end of our 1.5% to 2 times target range.
As a result, and given clarity in our investment plans and our confidence in profit growth and cash generation into FY26, today we are pleased to announce and launch a £100 million share buyback in line with the capital allocation priorities and the expectations that we set when we spoke to you last December. This is an important milestone for us as a group and highlights our focus on generating better returns for our investors. There's more detail, of course, on the buyback in the separate release that we have published this morning. So that brings me to message three, our performance expectations as we head into the 2026 financial year.
While there remains a level of uncertainty in the demand outlook across some of our travel markets, the actions we have taken to enhance operation delivery and tighten our cost base mean we currently expect to deliver earnings for FY26 within the current range of market expectations on a constant currency basis of being between 12.9% and 13.9%. This progress is being underpinned by the full-year effect of a substantial group-wide overhead cost reduction program that we alluded to in our half-year results and that we actioned in the second half of FY24. Furthermore, as a result of the level and timing of the actions taken in France and Germany in FY24, and with further initiatives now underway, we are planning for an operating profit margin in the Continental European region to exceed 3%.
Working with our new leadership team there, we have a granular plan to build towards the 5% operating margin for the medium- term that we set out last year. In keeping with a tight performance and execution focus, we expect to drive cash conversion into FY26, which Geert is personally championing, and as part of that, we expect capital of GBP 200 million. Importantly, this level of capital investment can still sustain a net gains level of approximately 2%. We are a business that continues to deliver our strategy, strengthen our customer, client, and brand partner relationships across the world, and build out our talented teams. In that context, I'd like to thank our teams and partners for their continued work, support, and skill in delivering this performance in the year, a year that has thrown up plenty of challenges.
However, for shareholders, we recognize that while we have made progress, there's still more that we can and must do to deliver the profitability, returns, cash flows, and broader potential of SSP. We are in full execution mode to deliver this, and that remains our absolute priority into FY26. Of course, we'll say more about all of this at our preliminary results on December 4th. So to recap then, we've had a resilient Q4 underpinning FY24 earnings per share delivery in line with market expectations. We've announced £100 million share buyback and launched it today. And we've set out a plan to deliver our FY26 earnings per share level within the range of market expectations. So for now, before I hand over for questions and answers, just a quick reminder to ask you, please, to keep your questions to one or two so that everyone gets a chance to contribute.
Thank you for listening to these highlights, and I'll hand back to the operator who's going to moderate the questions.
Thank you, sir. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Star and One on the telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press Star and Two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode while asking a question. Anyone with a question may press Star and One at this time. Our first question comes from Richard Taylor from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning, all. Just one question for me, please. You alluded to lower interest and tax in statement.
Can you just talk through how you expect those gains to sustain into future years if we should assume that, or any other things to note on those points? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, Richard. Geert, do you want to jump in on that?
Yes, good morning, Richard. Thanks for the question. I think there's a couple of things. The lower tax rate that we are able to bank this year will likely continue for a while. I think we'll give you more details in the prelims. The reason for the lower tax rate is because we are gradually adapting our accounting for the deferred tax assets in the U.S. As we get more granular and more optimistic about the continued future profit growth in the U.S., we are able to recognize those assets. That is one of the structural reasons, I would say, why that tax rate is lower.
The second, on the interest charge, we are actively working on. I mean, number one, the overall interest rates are lower. That's number one. Number two is we have a bit of a positive impact of geographic mix within the interest charge. And the third point would be that we are looking at different ways of funding our operations through other vehicles and the revolving credit facility that come at a lower cost as well. So there's some structural initiatives that are underpinning that lower-than-planned initially tax and interest charge.
And here, just into how people should think about that as they look forward. Yes, good point. On the working capital side, you'll see that Patrick mentioned a couple of times that we're all over cash generation. One of those elements is to trade off or to look at different sources of funding.
And obviously, as we get more granular and more effective at generating more cash, we'll obviously have to lean in less on our revolving credit facility. And as a result, that will reduce the overall volume of interest charging curve, I would say.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Jamie Rollo from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. Two questions, please. First, could you please elaborate a bit more on Europe, specifically France and Germany? So why is it taking longer? You talk about the channel environment there. What exactly is going on? Could you even exit some of these countries like Italy? And what gives you confidence you can get the margins up to 3% in 2026? And the other question is, obviously, a good performance share price-wise by your Indian subsidiary, which makes the rest of SSP look extremely cheap.
The buyback's obviously part of closing that gap. But I mean, I'm wondering sort of how focused you are on that sort of valuation discrepancy. What other action the company might be taking to close the value gap? Is the sort of publicized interest from activism part of that? Thank you.
Yeah. Hey, Jamie, thank you. Let me take them in sequence. So, I mean, I think I'd say two things about France and Germany, maybe three, actually. Firstly, we are just very much on it in terms of fixing sustainably and permanently the drivers to improve performance in France and Germany, right? That's the first point. I'll describe what that means in a second.
Secondly, I think it would be fair to say we have found the scale of the change that we needed to make in personnel, in process, in client engagements on rent, in performance opportunity to be greater than we anticipated we were going to before we started this change program with Satya and the team in France and Germany a year ago. So it has been greater. And I think the third thing to acknowledge, right, is in a business of many, many countries, the business environment in France and Germany, particularly in French and German rail, has been tougher through the year and has not got better through the year as we've been trading. And that has been a contributing factor as well. So, listen, we were disappointed not to get to the margin target for that region that we set out this time last year.
We feel the interventions that we're making are improving the business. It's reflected modestly in the improvement in the year. And I think you will see that margin build as the interventions on team, the interventions on cost base, the interventions we've made with particular clients, particularly around rents and tackling loss-making stations or loss-making units structurally, and a series of operational metrics on labor planning, waste, loss, etc., take effect. So that's why we've confirmed that we expect the European region to deliver above 3% in 2026 and that the medium- term guidance for operating performance of getting it to 5% is still intact.
What I would say, though, is I used this expression back in May that there are no sacred cows, right? You mentioned Italy. We actually were close to exiting Italy.
It's a small market, but it was a distraction to us, and we weren't getting good returns there. There's a series of stations where we're adopting a similar approach, and we will do everything that we need to do to build the returns of our business in Europe. There's a base operating plan that we have, and we're going to deliver against that, but we will also look at other things that can improve the margin structurally as we look forward in those two countries. Your second question was around India. Listen, we were delighted to get the IPO of TFS away in the middle of July. It's less than three months trading. I mean, the most important thing for it is that it's been a real success so far. Strong demand for the shares. The investment case really appreciated. The stock building very well since the initial launch.
Yeah, if you do that right now as a component of some of the past valuation for SSP, it looks unbalanced. And so what we've got to do is to demonstrate the value of all of SSP to continue to trade India well. And over time, let's see the degree to which that valuation anomaly, to use my words for what you've said, unwinds. And we'll kind of track all of our options in that respect.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Manjari Dhar from RBC. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I just had two as well, if I may. The first question is on some of the acquisitions you've made in recent years. I suppose a few of those getting close to that 3-4 year point after acquisition where you'd expect them to pay back.
I wonder if you could just color on sort of how paybacks, how returns are developing on those versus what you've achieved historically. And then secondly, I just guess it's just a sort of follow-up question on James' question on Europe. I suppose how much flex is there in that 3% margin that you think you can achieve in fiscal 2026 if the market environment in France and Germany were to weaken further? I guess, do you have levers that you can pull if that did happen? Thank you.
Yeah. Manjari, I think we did touch on the acquisition topic back when we did our prelims in May, or sorry, interims in May. So just let me be very specific. The acquisitions we've done have all traded at or above the investment case that we had for them. And we are really pleased with their performance in every respect, right?
By that, I mean there's five of them, right? There's the three acquisitions in America, so in Atlanta, plus Midfield Concession Enterprises, plus ECG in Canada. There's the acquisition in Australia, which was the market-leading business, ARE there, and the final one was the acquisition in Indonesia. They are all trading well to plan, which was for, if you remember, which was for an IRR of above 15%. Actually, taken in aggregate, the current tracking of those investments is above 20% IRR, so they have delivered in line with the strategy and the financial case that we had for them. I'd prefer, frankly, to comment on the acquisitions that I'm accountable for and can speak to specifically versus what may or may not have been the performance of businesses that were acquired before COVID by SSP.
Except to note, obviously, as we said in the TFS announcements in the summer, that the return to SSP shareholders on the original investment in travel food services, given the IPO success of the business, has obviously been spectacular. On Europe, we've done a lot of what we have done, both at the group level and within Europe, that forms part of the earnings per share guidance for FY26, has been on cost. We've taken a pretty cautious view internally on the demand environment for FY26, and so it's critical for us to underpin our earnings delivery everywhere through cost, through productivity, through operational delivery in all places, and so we're not anticipating an improvement in the macro environment in France and Germany, for instance. We're trading it as we're currently finding it.
Now, we're also conscious that if we're going to give for the second year a specific target in terms of margin for Continental Europe, namely 3%, then having not hit it in 2025, we need to make sure that we have plans that give us sufficient contingency to make sure we hit it in FY26. And that's sort of our mindset in terms of what we're doing, but also how we're guiding for what's going to happen in Europe this year.
That's great. Thank you for the call.
The next question comes from Tim Barrett from Deutsche Numis. Please go ahead.
Hi, morning, both of you. I had a question on each year, please. So on this year, it's just gone. If you take a step back, you report lots of KPIs, but the only one that's changed like-for-like wise from Q4 versus Q3 is APAC.
And obviously, we heard about the Air India groundings. So can you quantify really what impact Air India had, sorry, India, TFS had in the quarter? Which kind of leads me to next year. Is that sufficient, if that's out of the numbers, to get you to the 3%, which is the like-for-like in your growth algorithm? And then lastly, you've obviously announced about a 7% retirement of equity today through the buyback. Should we put that into your number for next year, or would that be overcooking it? Thank you.
Yeah. Here's your KPI to India, and you want to pick up the earnings per share piece. Yeah. So, Tim, I mean, I think the material difference versus Q3 in, by the way, an overall pretty strong region in terms of sales performance, which is our Asia-Pacific and Middle Eastern business. It's continued to trade well.
We found that the like-for-like performance of India specifically was very soft post the really tragic Air India crash, which led to a very significant uptick in operational safety checks and airplane maintenance initiatives through the summer, so we had a business that had long-term structural, very strong like-for-like growth. We've gone through a quarter or so of that coming right off because of a change in airplane capacity through the period. Unfortunately, we're seeing those planes come back into flight now, and we're seeing a reversion towards the sort of historic growth levels we would have seen in that market, and that would have been part of the investment case for TFS and what Varun, Vickas and the team would talk to investors locally about as well, so I think that's the change.
There was a bit of a positive offset for us because, as you saw in the statement in Australia and Malaysia, the like-for-like performance had been very, very strong through Q4, but India softened in the quarter in sales terms. Unfortunately, it's coming back as we come into 2026, and here's a. I'll let you pick up the earnings piece.
Yeah, Tim, if I'm not mistaken, your question on EPS is how should you model or what would be the impact of the share buyback on EPS? The statement we made this morning is without taking into account that accretion. I mean, obviously, we believe that there's going to be some moderate accretion coming from that share buyback, but we didn't use that or model that in to make our statement this morning around where we would end versus the market consensus. Is that the question?
That was exactly my question.
Very clear. Thank you.
Okay. Very good. Thank you.
The next question comes from Harry Gowers from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning, everyone. First question is just on the U.S. I mean, I think everyone can probably see that the TSA data overall has inflected the past few months for U.S. air volumes. So, I mean, why do you think your network or maybe your mix of airports is not kind of seeing an inflection in terms of positive or more positive like-for-likes in that market? And then just going back on to Europe, I mean, it's maybe just not totally clear to me from the outside why the margins are lower than expected because the like-for-likes are subdued, but they obviously haven't materially weakened. So, I mean, Patrick, is the exact issue like cost productivity or maybe loss-making units just remaining loss-making longer than expected?
Maybe you could just, sorry to go back on it, but elaborate that point.
Yeah. No problem. Thanks a lot. Yeah. So U.S. first. So, I mean, let me first say, I mean, I think here tonight we're both feel and the specific plans that we're working with George and Boy and our U.S. team on is that we can actually drive like-for-like harder in America, right? And so as we look at the specific trading plans that we've put in place for the 2026 budget around Sunday trading, around meal deal configuration, around specific staffing in individual airports, some of the activation initiatives and different initiatives, I think there are some things within our control that we are working on to strengthen like-for-like performance regardless of the macro environment in the U.S.
And that's what you'd expect us to be doing that given the capital that we've got there, the team that we have there, the footprint that we have in airports, and so forth. However, when we adjust for the mix of airports that we have in terms of what's within those, the role that a combination of international passengers generally and trans-border passengers specifically from Canada play, we think we're trading in line with the market weighted for the airports and passenger mix that we've got. We're looking to improve it, as I say, through things that we're doing, but we don't believe we're out of line with what's been experienced by the direct competitors that we have in those airports or the way in which passengers are actually behaving in them. So that's how I describe it.
I mean, on Europe, I mean, to cut into it, if I just say maybe two things beyond what I've said already. So the first is European performance is a function of basically four markets, not just France and Germany, right? And so we haven't referenced Spain or the Nordics specifically in the statement, but actually, we're pretty pleased with the performance in those two regions in terms of how they traded through the summer. Spain is a very high-margin market for us, and the Nordics is a recovering market for us given the huge level of renewal activity that we've spoken about before in 2023 and 2024. And we're on a good path there. I think the point that you'd say about like-for-like not deteriorating in the quarter, we had anticipated they would have improved in our planning, right?
If you remember, last year, we had quite a lot of disruption when we didn't trade the Olympics well. We had expected that we would have come into a period of softer comps and that you would have seen better like-for-like performance feeding through to better operational conversion and a somewhat better profitability in Q4 than we actually delivered. That didn't happen. I've made the point earlier on this call that the scale of the change that we're putting through these businesses to fix them properly is very high.
And that will feed through to the cost base, the operational performance, frankly, the configuration, culture, performance ethic of the team, and a whole series of discrete profit improvement initiatives around rent negotiations, unit-level performance, tackling specific loss-making units and stations, GP initiatives, menu, labor planning, any, many things that SACER is going after in a granular and sequenced way with an increasingly fresh and capable team. And here tonight, supporting and driving that in all the engagements we have with them, self-evidently, based on what we've said, it's taking us longer than we thought it was going to this time last year, and that's unfortunate. But what we are doing is fixing it properly with all levers, and hence the reaffirmation of both the in-year guidance level for 2026 and the medium-term target of 5%. Actually,
Maybe I could just follow up super quickly.
I mean, do you think the level of investment or kind of the cost of investment required to turn around the business is going to be higher than expected into 2026 on OpEx or even CapEx, or it's all in the plans?
Yeah. I mean, it's in the plan. I mean, we're not, I mean, we've taken the cash costs of the changes through 2025. And actually, if anything, the real focus that here tonight I have on this is actually scaling back the capital investment into this region because it's just a lower-returning region than the others. And so within the capital envelope that we both reported on in 2025, the GBP 220 million, and that we're planning for 2026, the GBP 200 million, you're seeing progressively lower levels of capital going into that region relative to the other regions because we just get a better return elsewhere.
And until we get Europe to a stronger place, we're going to continue to think about incremental investment in that way.
Super clear. Thanks a lot.
The next question comes from Fintan Ryan from Goodbody. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Patrick. Geert, Fintan Ryan here from Goodbody. Two questions from me, please. Firstly, I guess just following on from a lot of the sort of specific market questions you've been facing in the last few minutes, but bigger picture, back in May, you'd set out your midterm guidance for 5%-7% constant currency sales growth. Clearly, like-for-likes in Q4 just plus two and sort of more subdued sort of net new figure.
But should we expect at this point in time, would you be still aiming to deliver that 5%-7% growth envelope constant currency for FY26, or just sort of—or could you give us a sense of where you think that that could track in the short term?
Yeah. I mean, I think, Fintan, we haven't changed the guidance. We're very early in 26, right? And we've given an integrated set of guidance around earnings per share without jumping in a sort of post-close trading statement to each of the constituent parts. We're going to do much more on that when we do our full- year results in December. If you wanted my judgment, I think we're going to be more at the lower than the higher end of that range when we think about the combination of net gains and like-for-like growth.
But that's because we're choosing, we've got a mindset going into the year of being cautious on the kind of macro environment in which we're operating and making sure that we get the kind of operating cost and execution focus of what we think will be a somewhat tighter demand environment going forward than might previously have been the case.
Right. And then I guess sort of follow on from that. And I guess you alluded to some of the incremental cost actions you're taking, not just in Continental Europe, but would you hope to deliver margins above the 20-30 basis points incremental improvement in 2026?
I mean, I think I'd have to go back to my first answer, Fintan, which is let us be a bit more specific in December about the components that sit behind the earnings per share guidance that we've given today.
I mean, what we have said today, just to put it in my words, right, is there's a lot of moving parts, and there are a lot of uncertainties, but we have a plan that will find a way to deliver earnings per share in 2026 in line with current market expectations. The exact constituent parts of that will evolve a little depending on external conditions in different ways, and we'll take everyone through that in a little more detail in December.
Thanks for that.
The next question comes from Anna Barnfather from Panmure Liberum. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. I've just got two questions. Firstly, just on the U.S. passenger volumes that obviously have been a little bit subdued, has that changed the pace of tendering new business in the market as people have reacted to that?
And are you still sort of targeting moving up from the sort of 56 airports up towards 90? So that's the first question. And then the second question, obviously, the £100 million buyback is quite a statement on your confidence of future cash generation. I just wondered if there were specific metrics that guided you to settle on that amount. Is it holding that 1.6 net debt? Yeah, just a bit of background on that. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Anna. Let me do the U.S. question and here pick up the buyback one. I mean, the truth is neither us nor I think the kind of industry's posture towards America has changed very much in terms of investment profile or investment attractiveness based on the sort of relatively recent, I mean, six, eight months slowdown in like-for-likes. And why is that?
Firstly, we haven't got into region-by-region performance, but our profit performance in America is going to be very good when you see it. And our margin performance in America is going to be very good when you see it. So the returns that we're getting there are still really good. Second point, when you get into the detail of this, you do have to look at the overall organic growth that we're getting, which is the combination of the net gains and like-for-like in part because some of the net gains are actually in airports that we're already in, and there is some netting effect that goes between the two of them. So I actually would start with the growth in North America in total and then recognize that there's some judgment in how you parse that out between net gains and like-for-like.
First thing I would say is that the space does continue to be available at very attractive rents, and we have a model that's been pretty successful in scaling our business over, in particular, over the last three and a half years, which is the period when I've been here, which you've heard me say before, is going from a little over 30 airports to 56 now, so we've really stepped the business on a lot, and we've done that, importantly, while improving the margin that the business earns over what the business was earning in the pre-COVID period in North America, and that's by which I mean a double-digit EBIT margin, right, and obviously much higher than that on an EBITDA basis.
But the last thing in terms of emphasis that's probably worth me saying is that I don't think we're in a rush to jump up the number of airports per se towards the 90 that you've referenced. I think if you were to ask here tonight on the kind of big focus we have with our teams, we've got a lot of very interesting starting point positions in airports. So I think of some of the big airports that we've entered in the last 18 months: Denver, Atlanta, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, which we weren't in before. I think there's a big opportunity as we look over the next three to five years to get a return on those initial investments in terms of scaling our business in those rather than just thinking about adding airport after airport after airport from here.
And I think that's where you'll see some of the kind of net gains or incremental capital to be spent as we roll forward.
Maybe the second part.
Oh, sorry. You're going to jump in as well.
So, Anna, good morning. There's a couple of things I wanted to say on that £100 million. Number one, I think the range that you've consistently heard us talk about that we're comfortable in on leverage is the 1.5-2 range, give or take a little bit of seasonal flux that you have within the year. Based on our plans, we're comfortably close to that range. That's number one. Number two, when I think about sources of funding for that £100 million buyback, there's a number of things that I see. On the horizon, I think what we're definitely looking at is an increase in EBITDA for next year. That's number one.
Number two, we have lower capital spend for next year. So that in itself will free up some cash, and then the last part, and not in the least, is the opportunity that we have to improve our working capital management, and that can be a substantial source of funding going forward as well, and then obviously, as a fourth lever, especially given that leverage range, we still have our revolving credit facility that we can have available to fund part of this as well.
So all of those together, and then also given the fact that we've done some sensitivity analysis on what I would call the two most important sources of over or underspend on cash, which is EBITDA generation and capital Capex, all of that work gives us the confidence that we can launch this £100 million without being worried that we're going to blow the leverage out of the water here. So that's all in all where the confidence comes from. Is that an answer to your question?
Yes, that's great. Thank you very much.
Okay, good.
The last question for today's call comes from Greg Johnson from Shore Capital. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Geert. Just a couple of questions. Could maybe touch on the U.K. performance, which looked pretty healthy in the quarter, especially with regard to the reference to M&S and the impact of the cyber incident.
And secondly, just in terms of the sort of new openings over the last 12 months, two years, can you sort of talk about the performance of those units, especially against their sort of targets, and how the market for all the tender market for new contracts is shaping up globally? Thank you.
Thanks, Greg. Yeah. Great. Thanks. I mean, on the U.K., and I should have joined your second question with your first there, which is, yeah, undoubtedly, and you should hear me say this, I think the longer I'm here, the clearer I am on the opportunity for us to frankly continue to drive performance improvements everywhere across our business.
And the last two weeks alone in relation to the UK, I spent a day with our operating team in Newcastle, a day with our operating team in the Birmingham New Street and Birmingham International Airport to kind of really build next year's plans. But what I would say is the momentum we've got in the UK is very good. You see that in the 7% sales growth and the 6% like-for-like in Q4. As you will know very, very well, Greg, with your team, we obviously had a sales slowdown in Q3 and through part of Q4 with our M&S business as they were working their way through the impacts of the cyber attack that they had earlier in the year.
And our team have worked absolutely hand in glove with them because we had to reconcile all sorts of things with them, including both of us having essentially the same kind of half-year, full-year reporting days and needing to kind of cleanly cut one to the other. So it's a very important part of our business in the U.K., the scale and relationship we have with M&S. I think we've worked our way through that, and you're seeing those stores come back towards the type of performance that they were having pre-cyber, but clearly it took a while through the period. And for our team to have had 7% growth in the U.K. while all that's going on has been pretty good.
And I think more broadly on the impact of renewals, as all of you on this call will know, we had a heavy period of investment in 2023 and 2024 as we had all of the many of the renewals that were deferred by COVID being sort of retendered, renegotiated, reset coming out, and then those units being built and invested in 2023 and 2024. So a huge focus for us has been getting those units towards business case in terms of performance. We track this very fully in all of the mechanisms that previously Jonathan and I and now here tonight have with the business, and also in a formal post-investment review process. And so we are making good progress on that.
There are some pockets that across the world of further work on and mitigants we need, in particular from clients around rent where there are some things that we need to do. But the general picture is good across the world, and you see that in the improving margin performance overall for our business. I think you will see that our business is going to normalize now at a lower level of new capital required, both in terms of the kind of renewal or net gain capital, but also because a lot of the post-COVID investment work that was needed in different parts of our business has already happened. And so that's going to put us to an inflection point in terms of the cash generation of the business.
And that really is a huge part of what Harry was talking about in the kind of confidence that we've had to initiate the share buyback because we think the uses of capital that we will have are going to enable us to return more money directly to shareholders while still sustaining a healthy level of like-for-like and net gains in the business, but off a lower relative capital investment level than we would have had in 2023 and 2024. Sorry, Greg, did that answer your question?
I'm going to assume that it did.
Sandra, can you hear us there still? Yes, we can hear you. I would say that this concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to you for any closing remarks.
Yeah. Listen, thank you for joining us.
I mean, just to recap the sort of three themes from our message today as we see it. One was the resilient Q4 underpinning the FY24 earnings per share delivery in line with expectations. Second was the announcement and launch of our £100 million buyback. And then the third was the kind of forward-looking guidance for 2026 to have earnings per share in line with current expectations. So they're the three messages. I'm here tonight. We'll be back talking to you on the 4th of December with our preliminary results. But thank you for joining us this morning. And if you have any follow-up questions, please come back to us or Sarah in particular, who's with us here today as well. So thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.