Welcome to the Vp Final Results for FY 2024. I'm Anna Bielby, and this is my first full year results presentation as CEO. I'm joined today by Keith Winstanley, who took on the CFO role in January. I will start with a brief introduction. Keith will then cover the financial review, and I will update on strategy and our operational review. I want to start with our investment case and why I think Vp is a great business and why I was excited to take on the CEO role in September. Our main differentiator is the specialist element of our rental model, which sits at the heart of what we do, whether that's the specialist nature of our assets, our specialist end markets, or the specialist way we deliver projects and solutions.
The second important factor is the diversity of our revenue streams due to the different end markets in which we operate. We've seen this clearly in the current year, where the overall group has managed to perform well despite challenges in, for example, the general construction market. Looking forward, I'm excited by our growth prospects. We are aligned to markets with growth potential, particularly in infrastructure and energy, and we are well placed to invest both organically and through acquisitions. I also see growth potential through our specialist divisions working more closely together to support our major customers and complex projects. Underpinning those things that make us different and unique is a strong financial profile. We have consistently demonstrated strong returns with a target return on capital of 15%, supported by 30 years of uninterrupted dividends. We also have a strong balance sheet and disciplined capital allocation.
Our strategy, which I will cover later, is focused on growth and operational excellence and is supported by three key areas: people, digital, and ESG. I'll move on to FY 2024 and the key highlights. Overall, we recorded a solid performance with revenue in line with last year and profit slightly down, reflecting the strength of our business and the diverse end market exposure. From a market perspective, infrastructure was strong, with demand from the rail, transmission, and water sectors. Construction was more challenging, which particularly impacted our Brandon Hire Station division and led to a non-cash impairment charge of GBP 28 million. We continue to invest in our asset base. Fleet CapEx in the year was GBP 63 million, with a continued transition towards cleaner, greener solutions. Our ROACE remains strong, slightly above prior year at 14.5%, demonstrating earnings quality.
We have a robust balance sheet. Our refinance was completed during the year, and our net debt has reduced. The Board's confidence in the future means that we increased our proposed final dividend by 4% to GBP 0.275 per share, resulting in a full year dividend of GBP 0.39 per share. Before we go into the main part of the presentation, I just want to acknowledge some of the changes that Vp has gone through in FY 2024. When I became CEO in September, one of my first jobs was to ensure that I had the right team around me. We've brought some fresh talent into the business, and we now have a good blend of new ideas alongside existing knowledge and experience. We have established an executive committee below the Board, and we have simplified the management structure.
We've also changed the management team in Brandon Hire Station, which we will talk about in more detail later on. Over the last few months, we have spent time refreshing the group's strategy. Our strategy builds on our successful history and heritage, with a focus on encouraging our specialist divisions to work more closely together, driving simplicity and consistency through an increased focus on digital, and pursuing growth through a refreshed corporate development plan. These changes provide a level of confidence, and we believe we are well positioned for the future. I'm now going to hand over to Keith to talk through the financial review.
Thanks, Anna, and good morning, everyone. This is my first results presentation after joining the group in January. I've joined the business at a great time. As Anna has just pointed out, last year we saw some big changes at Vp, and we've got some exciting future plans that we'll cover later. But in the meantime, I'm going to guide you through our FY 2024 financial results. So here are our financial highlights. The main message I want you to take from this slide is that our key metrics, be that revenue, EBITDA, adjusted PBTAE, or return on capital, are all broadly in line with the prior year. We think this is a good result. We wouldn't have been able to deliver this result had we not operated in diverse end markets. However, as Anna has mentioned, we have seen some softness in the general construction market.
The general construction market has particularly impacted the performance of our Brandon Hire Station business. After taking into account the performance, we have impaired the intangible assets initially recognized on the Brandon acquisition back in 2017 by around GBP 28 million. This is a non-cash impairment that doesn't impact any of our current year key financial metrics. Anna will touch on our plans for Brandon Hire Station, including those already implemented, a little later on. We've also incurred GBP 5.8 million of exceptional restructuring costs. These relate to Board and senior leadership changes, as well as branch closure costs, the majority of which have been in Brandon Hire Station. Onto the balance sheet. Despite the impairments, our balance sheet remains strong and robust, which positions us well for future opportunities and investment. In fact, we increased the investment in our rental fleet to GBP 63 million in the year.
In what remains a challenging environment, we maintained our focus on working capital, which saw an overall improvement in the year, and there was a slight reduction in DSO as well. Pleasingly, net debt reduced by GBP 9 million, which I'll cover in a bit more detail on the next two slides. This slide shows the movement in net debt over the year. Really, it shows two main points. First, we are a cash generative business with strong operating cash flows. Second, we are disciplined in how we allocate our capital. We invest for growth by investing back into our fleet, we pay interest in our tax, and we continue to return funds to our shareholders via progressive dividend. Our year-end net debt sits comfortably within our facilities. As a reminder, back in November, we were pleased to announce the refinancing of our revolving credit facility.
The RCF sits alongside two fixed rate, low-cost private placements, the first of which matures in 2027. Including our overdraft, we have around GBP 190 million of facilities. We operate with significant headroom and well within our covenants. We have the funds available, which will be, will be spent with discipline. We are in a strong position. I wanted to provide you with a little bit more detail around our fleet investment. We increased our investment this year, both on a gross basis or considering investment net of disposals. As a reminder, we actively manage our fleet through the full life cycle, including disposal at the end of life. Fleet disposals generated profits of around GBP 7.5 million this year. We are selective in how we invest our fleet. We consider a range of factors, including opportunity size and expected returns.
Over recent years, we have worked more collaboratively with our customers and suppliers to move our fleet to greener and cleaner technology. Around 80% of this year's fleet investment was either zero emission at point of use, so it doesn't need any power to operate, or it was powered by a cleaner technology. Just to call out one example from our fleet, this is a solar-powered charging station, a new offering in Brandon Hire Station. It generally does what it says on the tin. As it doesn't require any power to be operated, this falls within our zero emissions at point of use category, but it also drives the adoption of cleaner technology, facilitating the move to battery-powered equipment. Moving on to our returns and our dividends, these are two areas that have been and will continue to be key underpins of our investment case.
The top graph shows our ability to deliver remarkably consistent, strong returns over several years. The bottom graph shows our history of delivering a progressive dividend. In fact, we have an uninterrupted dividend history stretching back over 30 years. Reflecting our confidence in the business, the Board has recommended a final dividend of GBP 0.275 per share, representing a 4% increase over last year. So to summarize, we've seen a year of resilient trading. We've seen that we operate well within our finance facilities, positioning us well for the future, and we've just seen the group's ability to generate strong returns and its history of progressive dividends. And with that, I'm going to hand you back over to Anna.
Thanks, Keith. I'm now going to move on to strategy. When we presented our interims back in November, I set out the refresh group strategy. The key areas remain the same, and over the last few months, we've been working through more of the detail. The overarching aim is to make Vp more straightforward and greater than the sum of its parts. The key elements of our strategy relate to delivering growth and driving operational excellence. From a growth perspective, we will continue to drive organic growth by investing in our fleet. We will prioritize investment where market opportunity exists and where we can generate strong returns. We will also explore opportunities for our specialist divisions to work better together, both in terms of sharing customers and also taking advantage of market opportunities on a group-wide basis.
We've also refreshed our corporate development strategy and will look to take advantage of acquisition opportunities. From an operational excellence perspective, Vp has always had a keen eye on costs, and this has enabled us to generate strong returns over the years, as Keith mentioned. That said, I do see opportunity to be more simple and consistent in the way we work. Our digital roadmap will be a key enabler for that, and I will touch on that later in the presentation. I also think there is an opportunity to take advantage of our scale. For example, by taking a more group-wide approach to areas such as procurement and property, where we see an opportunity to deliver bottom-line savings. These key areas of growth and operational excellence are underpinned by people, digital, and ESG.
I will talk about digital and ESG later in the presentation, but to briefly touch on people, we now have new HR leadership in the business and are refreshing our people strategy. We recognize that our people are our greatest assets, and we are focused on recruiting and retaining talented people to best serve our customers. I'm now going to talk about certain areas of the strategy in a little bit more detail. So on to corporate development. As I mentioned, we've spent some time shaping our corporate development plan to ensure that we have a focused approach. I've touched on organic growth already, so I won't go into that, other than to say that we will continue to invest in our fleet where we see market opportunity and strong returns. We will also be investing modestly in other areas to support the overall strategy, digital being a good example.
We see acquisitions as an important part of the overall growth strategy. Any activity in this area will be specialist with good growth potential. It will also offer us access to or extensions to geography, assets, or sectors. It's also important that these acquisitions meet our strict financial hurdles in relation to returns and also gearing, and be value accretive to the group, and any acquisition must be comfortably within the group's risk appetite. Any bolt-on acquisitions are likely to be smaller and be extensions to our existing divisions, and strategic acquisitions would likely be larger and result in new divisions. Overall, I've been encouraged by some of the opportunities that have come our way in recent months, and there are more details on the criteria, approach, and focus areas in the appendices of this presentation.
Disposals are not explicitly part of our plan, but each division is tested against our criteria, which includes level of return, growth potential, and fit with the overall Vp Group strategy. So moving on to digital. I mentioned this when we presented our interims in November. We've spent the last few months working with an external partner to review our divisions to identify those areas where the use of digital tools and techniques can help us to drive growth and improve our performance. Our approach is pragmatic, and it builds on what we currently have. While some investment is required, we expect this to be relatively modest, with strong payback and returns. Our initial roadmap is 18 months, which I think is appropriate given the fast-moving pace of technology. Priority areas for the first phase include harmonizing our systems and processes to drive simplicity and consistency.
We have good systems across our businesses, and by making things more straightforward, it will be easier for our specialist divisions to work better together. Our initial roadmap is 18 months, which we think is appropriate given the fast-moving pace of technology. Priority areas for this first phase include, firstly, harmonizing our systems and processes to drive simplicity and consistency. We have good systems across our businesses, and by making things more straightforward, it will be easier for our specialist divisions to work better together. Secondly, we think that a new Configure Price Quote tool that adds digital capability will improve our pricing controls and make it simpler for our customers to do business with us. The third area is improved data and analytics.
I'm not going to talk about AI, because we're not ready for that yet, but there is a need to focus on our data and to get best value from it, for example, through data and Analytics. After all, better information will help us drive better decisions. Finally, and underpinning this, we will be using modern cloud capability to ensure we can provide our people and customers with reliable, stable, and effective systems. So in summary, we have a plan. It builds on what we already have, and we think the investment will be relatively modest. Our investment will be closely linked to driving growth, making things straightforward, and improving the customer experience. So moving on to ESG. This is a really important part of our strategy, but our approach is pragmatic, and the financials must work and support our business model.
ESG is embedded in the way we work on a day-to-day basis through our people, our customers, and our supply chain. As Keith mentioned, we continue to work closely with our customers to respond to their needs, and this is a key part of our CapEx decision-making. During the year, we were pleased to have our science-based targets validated by the SBTi, and across our business, we are focusing on carbon reduction. We're also continuing to develop our social value strategy, and we have recently had a Responsible Business Health check with Business in the Community. We see ESG as an important part of how we do business, and we take our responsibilities seriously.
Thanks, Anna. So far, we've looked at our financial highlights as well as our new strategy, but now we're going to spend a few minutes walking through our operational review. One of our key differentiators is our diverse revenue streams, mitigating risk in any specific area. We operate nine specialist divisions across a range of geographies, which are aligned to four principal markets. The graph on the left splits each of our divisions' revenues by these end markets, while the graph on the right shows how our total revenue is made up. As you can see, our major end markets continue to be infrastructure and construction. As we've touched on already, last year, the infrastructure market was supportive, with a good level of project activity. The construction market was more challenging, particularly in non-residential. As you know, house building was subdued, but the energy market grew.
Anna's now going to tell you what that has meant for us.
Thank you. As Keith mentioned, the infrastructure market was very supportive for us, and we were pleased with the performance of our divisions in this area, with Groundforce being the standout performer. Our TPA and Torrent businesses also performed well, despite being impacted by rail strikes. The particular areas of activity for us were rail, both CP6 and HS2, water, AMP7, and transmission, both in the U.K. and Germany. As we move into FY 2025, we have started the year well and have strong visibility of projects which represent a good opportunity for us. Construction was a different story for us, particularly in non-residential, where our Brandon Hire Station business was most affected. As we've already mentioned, we took decisive actions, and we now have a new management in place and are refocusing the business.
We reviewed the physical footprint and closed a number of branches and simplified the branch structure. We performed a review of our customers to ensure we are focusing our efforts in the right place, and we kicked off a clear set of initiatives around pricing, cost reduction, and process and control. While the market remains challenging, we believe these actions are starting to have an impact, and we are cautiously optimistic about the future. Our other businesses in construction have had a better experience during the year. MEP performed well, benefiting from a number of redevelopment projects and the growth in the commercial office fit-out sector. It was, however, impacted by a more challenging credit environment. ESS had a challenging start to the year, but after actions were taken, it made progress and ended the year strongly.
As we move into FY 2025, construction remains subdued, but we remain cautiously optimistic that the actions we are taking, particularly in Brandon Hire Station, will improve our performance. In house building, the market has been challenging with reduced activity levels. UK Forks has been impacted but performed well as a result of right-sizing its fleet and generating profits on disposal, thanks to good residual values. In FY 2025, we have seen a subdued start to the year, which we expect to continue throughout the first half. The energy market has been supportive during the year, helped by high oil prices. Our Airpac business has had a strong year, benefiting from a number of pipeline and LNG projects, particularly in Asia. Airpac has started the new financial year well, and the supportive market conditions look set to continue.
In summary, we think that FY 2024 represents a solid performance, and we continue to perform strongly in our specialist markets despite some challenges. As I have touched on, we now have a new team in place, and we are focused on delivering the refreshed strategy, which will include exploiting opportunities to work better as a group, driving simplicity and consistency through a new digital roadmap, and pursuing a clear corporate development strategy. It's early days in FY 2025, but we have started the year well, and we have an excellent track record of navigating difficult markets, which provides confidence in the future.