Thank you for joining. Just while we are waiting for people to join the call, just to remind you that this webinar is being recorded and will be available in due course, both on VP's website and on Equity Development's website. You can also go to the Equity Development website to look at our analyst research and his forecasts. There will be questions at the end of this presentation, so if you do have any questions that you'd like to ask management, please pop them into the Q&A questions at the bottom of the screen, and I will endeavour to get through as many as I can. I'm now going to hand you over to VP for the formal presentation, so I will hand you over to Anna Bielby, who's Chief Executive, and Keith Winstanley, CFO. Thank you.
Thanks, Rachel, and good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining. I'm Anna Bielby, and I hope very shortly to be joined by my CFO, Keith Winstanley, who has a small tech problem at the moment. I'm going to kick off with our half and highlights, and I'll talk about our operational performance, then Keith will cover the financial review, and I'll come back and talk through our strategy, and we'll have plenty of time for any questions that you might have at the end. I'm going to start with a summary of our business. We're leaders in equipment rental with a focus on being specialist. We operate in four end markets with the majority of our activity in infrastructure and construction. We've got a strong track record of consistent financial performance and high returns.
We've got a number of specialist divisions, but we increasingly talk about our business in relation to the end markets that we serve and the locations in which we operate. Moving on to our investment case, put very simply, we buy assets, we rent them out, and we sell them at end of life. We believe that our key differentiator is our focus on being specialist, and that's something that's served us very well over the years. We believe that this specialism drives strong relationships and customer loyalty through deep understanding of markets and assets, provides high barriers to entry, and this enables us to deliver a more consistent financial performance. Despite some of the mixed market conditions that we've seen in the first half, we believe VP has exciting prospects in the end markets and locations where we operate.
Underpinning that, we have a strong financial profile, and as a business, we are well positioned for the future. Moving on to our highlights for the first half. Overall, in what has been a challenging market backdrop, our performance has been solid. Revenue and profit are lower than the comparative period, but we remain optimistic about our prospects. Our ROI remains industry leading but has dropped slightly due to some of the trading challenges that we have experienced, and we will talk to this later, but we expect our ROI to continue to increase in the second half of the year and into FY 2027 and beyond. We remain in a strong financial position with well-controlled net debt, which has allowed us to invest GBP 40 million in fleet capex in the first half. Across our business, we have seen varied conditions.
We've seen good progress in our international segment with growth in Ireland and Germany. The U.K. market has been tougher, particularly in general construction, but there are reasons to be cheerful, especially within infrastructure. We continue to make good progress on our strategy, which is focused on driving profitable growth. We've taken decisive actions on Brandon Hire Station, which will increase profitability, and we are continuing to improve the way we operate with a focus on people and our digital roadmap. Moving on to Brandon Hire Station, I'll start by talking through some of the decisive actions we're taking in that area. Six months ago, we reported that the general construction market remained challenging. We explained that work was ongoing and further actions will be taken and materially completed within FY2026.
We've now completed our review, which we undertook with third-party support, and we're announcing a number of changes to reposition Brandon Hire Station as a smaller, more focused and profitable business. These changes will reduce our exposure to the challenging general construction market whilst continuing to support VP's major customers, complex projects, and specialist divisions. The actions we're taking include exiting the consumer market, and that's retail, DIY, and walk-ins, so that Brandon Hire Station will only support VP's strategic and B2B customers. Refining our asset range to reflect the changing customer profile. This will reduce the net book value of the assets in this division by circa 40%, with a focus on higher returning assets. The footprint of the division will be reduced from circa 100 to 41 branches. This will retain a national coverage but will significantly reduce our cost base.
The associate headcount reduction is 400 people, which we're managing as sensitively as we can. From a financial perspective, we believe this will meaningfully increase the group's profitability. Including the exceptional costs that we've incurred so far this year, we expect an FY2026 P&L charge of GBP 22 million and a total cash cost of GBP 16 million, of which GBP 9 million will be incurred in the current year. The payback on this on a cash basis is four years, and it's expected to increase our return on average capital employed by two percentage points. We did explore other options, but this is deemed to be the lowest cost, most controllable plan, which supports our customers and the VP strategy. These changes were announced to the business yesterday and will be materially complete by the end of FY2026. Moving on to our operational review. We operate across four end markets.
In infrastructure, the U.K. government set out its GBP 725 billion ten-year infrastructure program in June, and significant multi-year spend programs exist in water, transmission, and rail. We've experienced some challenges in the period, but we remain optimistic about our progress. In construction, challenges remain, and construction PMI fell again in October. In Ireland, where our prior year acquisition of CPH is performing well, market conditions have been stronger, and good levels of overseas investment look set to continue. In house building, output is expected to grow slightly in 2025; however, we haven't seen the uptick that we would expect given the government's house building targets. In energy, where we mainly operate in oil and gas, challenging macroeconomic conditions have impacted our activity levels. Starting in infrastructure, as a reminder, the work we do here principally supports the transmission, water, and rail sectors.
Our customers are generally tier one and tier two contractors alongside Network Rail. The majority of our activity is the repair, maintenance, and renewal of infrastructure assets alongside supporting new projects. Infrastructure is around 40% of the group's revenue, and it's an area where we see most opportunity for growth because of those large multi-year spend programs. We're able to generate returns in this area, which are typically higher than the group's target ROI of 15%, and approximately half our Capex in the period has been spent in this area. In the first half of the year, our revenue in infrastructure is in line with the comparative period. Transmission has been our strongest performer, with growth in both the U.K. and in Germany. Water activity has been slower, as expected, due to the transition from AMP 7 to AMP 8.
Rail continues to be subdued, but we have seen activity levels start to pick up in recent months. Looking ahead, whilst the U.K. economy continues to be slow, we remain optimistic about our ability to drive growth in this market. We expect activity levels in water and rail to pick up in half two and as we move into FY 2027. I want to talk a bit more about the opportunity that AMP 8 represents across VP specialist divisions. AMP 8 is roughly double the size of AMP 7, and VP specialist businesses are well positioned to benefit from this by working with key contractors to support activities in different areas across the AMP cycle.
Some of the things we do in this area include supporting the construction of new pipelines, facility enhancements, and upgrades, providing specialist pipeline solutions, for example, pressure testing, providing site access through portable roadways, and the provision of important tools and equipment such as survey, safety, and test and measurement. We recently held an AMP 8 Innovation Day to showcase our capabilities to our key customers that was very well received. The graph on the right-hand side shows the usual profile of VP's revenue through the AMP cycle, with a typical slower first year as contractors are appointed and design and planning work is undertaken. We're encouraged by the activity levels and pipeline that we're currently seeing, and we expect our work to ramp up in the second half of FY2026 and into FY2027. Moving on to construction. In this area, we categorize our activities as specialist and general.
In specialist construction, our customers are typically tier one and tier two contractors, and our activities are focused on site redevelopments alongside access equipment in clean rooms such as data centers, Big Pharma, and food and beverage. In this area, our returns are typically slightly higher than the group's target ROI. During the year, we've continued to invest with a focus on the Republic of Ireland, where we've invested Capex in the CPH business we acquired last year, and we've also made a small acquisition in Ireland to allow our MEP business to take advantage of the strong market opportunities that exist. Our half one performance in specialist construction has been strong, and looking ahead, we're optimistic about the future prospects in both the U.K. and in Ireland. In general construction, conditions continue to be tough, largely caused by wider economic headwinds, which have impacted the group's profitability and returns.
From a divisional perspective, this mainly relates to our Brandon Hire Station division, and I've already spoken about the actions we're taking to reposition this business and drive a meaningful increase in group profitability. In house building, where we provide material handling solutions to major house builders, the market has been stable but subdued. In FY2025, we took actions to right-size our UK Forks business, which has benefited financial performance. We remain well positioned to take advantage of the expected increase in activity levels to meet the government's ambitious house building targets. In energy, most of what we do is within oil and gas, which has been impacted by global macroeconomic conditions, leading to lower activity levels and delays in a number of projects. Looking forward, we do see opportunity in this space, particularly around drilling and associated pipeline activities.
I'm now hopefully going to hand over to Keith, who will talk about how performance in our end markets is reflected in our half one numbers.
Hopefully, any gremlins have worked their way through. Jumping straight to our financial highlights. Again, to challenging market backdrop, our results have remained solid, although we have seen reduced performance across our key income statement metrics. Revenues reduced by around GBP 4 million, with U.K. revenues reducing by just over GBP 10 million, partially offset by an increase of GBP 6 million from our international segment. Our U.K. segment has experienced challenging trading conditions, which have been most keenly felt across general construction, which impacts Brandon Hire Station, and in energy, where we've seen oil and gas-related project activity either not repeat or be delayed.
Our international segment has seen good growth in Ireland and Germany, including the impact of last year's CPH acquisition, and I'll go into a bit more detail around these geographies in a few slides' time. Adjusted profit, which is our key profit metric, and its profit before tax, exceptional items, and most intangible amortization reduced GBP 3.7 million to GBP 17.3 million, with net margin decreasing from 10.9% to 9.2%. The lower margin includes the impact of increased U.K. employment costs driven by increases to national insurance and minimum wage from the 1st of April, alongside additional investment in technology as we continue to progress our digital roadmap. Exceptional items total GBP 4.7 million and cover two areas.
The first of these is transformation costs, which total around GBP 3 million, and these predominantly relate to H1 branch closure costs in Brandon Hire Station, and these are part of the measures that Anna has already discussed that were taken to reposition that division. The second is the accounting for future deferred and earn-out payments relating to last year's CPH acquisition, and these total GBP 1.7 million. These ongoing costs have been previously highlighted and will continue to be incurred until the end of the earn-out period in October 2027. Moving on to our balance sheet. Our balance sheet remains strong, and it positions us well for future growth. The value of Hire Fleet has increased in the period with an investment of just under GBP 40 million. Our debt has continued to be well controlled, with DSO and bad debt write-off levels consistent with year-end.
Our net debt has increased just over GBP 155 million, which I'll cover over the next few slides. This chart gives a breakdown of the circa GBP 17 million increase in net debt since the year-end. An increase in net debt in H1 is not unusual for VP, with net debt increasing by a very similar amount in H1 last year. Cash generation remained strong in the period, and we continue to be disciplined in how we allocate our capital, with expenditure focused on investment back into our Hire Fleet. Outside of this investment, we pay our interest and we pay our taxes, and we continue to return funds to our shareholders via our dividend, which is uninterrupted for over 30 years. A quick reminder of our finance facilities. Including our overdraft, we have around GBP 190 million of facilities, and these include two fixed-rate low-cost private placements.
We're currently working on the refinance of the GBP 65 million private placement, which we aim to complete ahead of our full year results announcement. We also have a GBP 90 million revolving credit facility, which we've recently extended for a further year. This now matures in November 2028. Our loans are subject to two financial covenants around interest cover and a net debt to EBITDA gearing ratio. We operate well within these covenants. Whilst our net debt to EBITDA gearing ratio remained comfortably within our stated target of two times, it did increase in the period to 1.8 times, and this is partially a consequence of the challenging market backdrop, but also a H1 weighting to our fleet investment. We currently expect this ratio to reduce across the remainder of the year, hitting around 1.6 times at the year-end.
We continue to operate with a disciplined approach to capital allocation, with a good level of headroom and well within our covenants. We're committed to maintaining a young and well-invested rental fleet, and gross fleet investment increased in the year to just in the period to just under GBP 40 million. Capex net of disposal was just slightly higher, slightly higher than H1 last year. The two charts under the table give a bit more insight into where we're targeting that investment. The chart on the left splits our investment by end market, with the majority of our investment targeted in the high-return and high-growth infrastructure market. The chart on the right splits our investment by geography, and whilst investment is weighted towards the U.K., there is a high proportion targeted towards our key growth geographies of Ireland and Germany.
I'll talk about Ireland and Germany further on the next slide, but to quickly touch on M&A. Sorry, Rachel, just go back, just go back one. Thank you. Just to touch on M&A before we come off this one. Earlier in the year, we were pleased to acquire a small Irish bolt-on business operating in specialist construction. For the remainder of the year, we expect our investment to be organic. We do continue to consider disposals for any area of the group that we deem to have inadequate returns, limited growth potential, or do not support the group's core strategy. Given our investment into Ireland and Germany, we were pleased that both the revenues and profit of our international segment increased in the period. The Irish market continues to be supportive with continued high levels of overseas investment.
We invested GBP 7.5 million in Ireland in H1, predominantly to support last year's CPH acquisition, which has outperformed our pre-acquisition expectations. In Germany, we invested just under GBP 10 million in H1, predominantly on portable roadways, as we look to take advantage of the opportunity provided by the multi-year upgrade of the German electricity transmission network. Profit in Germany has increased by around 25% over H1 last year. Together, Ireland and Germany have grown to around 25% of the group's operating profit. Moving on to our returns and our dividends. I have used these two charts in presentations previously, but I think they do a good job of summarizing the financial strength of VP. The top graph shows our ability to deliver consistent and strong returns over several years. Our returns continue to be sector-leading, although they have dropped slightly in H1.
We expect, however, that our actions to reposition Brandon Hire Station will drive an improvement of around two percentage points. The bottom graph shows our dividend story, with an uninterrupted dividend history stretching back over 30 years. Despite some challenges in the first half, we're declaring an interim dividend of GBP 11.50, consistent with last year. To quickly summarize this section before I hand you back to Anna, against the mixed market backdrop, we've delivered a solid set of solid results, but profits have reduced. In the U.K., we've seen challenges in energy and general construction, the latter impacting Brandon Hire Station. We have a strong balance sheet. We operate well within our finance facilities and expect gearing to reduce over H2. Finally, we've seen the increased level of our rental fleet investment targeted in the markets with the highest return and the geographies with the largest growth opportunities.
Thanks, Keith. To touch on our strategy, the key areas of our strategy are delivering growth and driving operational excellence, and I'll talk about our growth plans on the next slide. On operational excellence, the changes we've made to move certain functions, and that's areas like rehire, management of strategic customers, property and procurement to the center, are now embedded and improving how we operate. In our divisions, we're focusing on transport to improve efficiency and support our ESG goals. Growth and operational excellence are underpinned by our approach to people, to digital, and to ESG. On people, we continue to invest in our teams to ensure that VP is a great place to work. In the period, we've conducted our first group-wide people survey, and we were really pleased with the engagement levels and the feedback. Alongside that, we have recently launched new reward and competency frameworks.
On digital, we're progressing our digital roadmap to improve the efficiency of our business and to unlock opportunities for growth. In half one, we've made progress with our CPQ tool, which is pricing, our cloud adoption strategy, and managing our cyber risk. On ESG, our focus has been on transition planning, including how we invest, operational efficiency, and ensuring our own environmental sustainability. Moving on to growth, there are four areas which we believe are key to VP's growth, and these are the same areas we talked about six months ago. On divisional growth, despite some market challenges in the first half, our specialist divisions remain a key part of how we operate, and we will continue to invest in divisional growth plans. In Ireland and Germany, as Keith mentioned, we see significant potential as we operate in supportive markets, and we've been investing heavily.
We've seen good growth in the first half, and we expect our growth in both the short and medium term in these geographies to outperform our UK growth. On Brandon Hire Station, as I've previously mentioned, we've today announced decisive actions to reposition the division and to meaningfully increase our profitability. On Vp's group go-to-market strategy, we believe we can drive growth with both existing and new customers through central account management, end market specialisms in areas like Vp Rail, and our divisions working more closely together. In summary, we've reported a solid financial performance despite a challenging market backdrop. We're continuing to make progress with our strategy, including decisive actions to reposition Brandon Hire Station. The start of the second half remains difficult, but we are seeing increasing activity levels in key infrastructure areas such as water and rail, alongside continued progress in Ireland and Germany.
Despite the difficult market conditions and the need for successful execution of the required actions in Brandon Hire Station, we expect full year performance to be in line with market expectations. We remain confident in our ability to leverage our strong financial position to deliver consistent returns and long-term value for shareholders. This is my last results announcement before I leave VP at the end of March. The CEO recruitment process is ongoing and will share more information in due course. My priority is to ensure that that transition is as smooth as possible. That concludes the formal part of the presentation, and Keith and I will now be available to answer any questions, which I think Rachel will be posing to us.
Thanks, Anna, and thanks, Keith. Yes, we've got a number of questions, so you just bear with me.
I will work my way through those and endeavor to get through as many of them as possible. Okay, first up, are smaller competitors suffering more than VP in the challenging UK construction and hire markets, and are there any perceived changes in your market share?
I think it's fair to say that in construction, everybody's finding it hard at the moment. I think both the small players and the larger players, and I think it's tough out there. When we look at our own market share and how we're performing, we believe that this is not about changing market share for us. It's just about lower volumes. Actually, what we really want to see is some stimulus in the economy to drive activities and volume growth.
Okay, thank you. It's encouraging that work in rail is finally improving.
Is that solely down to CP7 or happening across the board? On a similar tack, does AMP 8 dominate your optimism regarding growth in water revenues?
I think the recent uptick that we've seen in probably our last three months is attributable to CP7. When I look at our growth opportunities within rail, they're both in CP7 and outside of CP7. We are working on projects such as the rail enablement phase of Sizewell C, which is outside of CP7. What I would say is across the board, things are moving in the right direction, but the recent uptick does relate to CP7, which is encouraging because it's been a long time, it's been a long time coming. I think on water, yes, it represents a big opportunity for us across AMP 8.
As a reminder, AMP 8 is double the size of AMP 7, and the nature of the activities within the AMP period play very nicely to the assets that we have within our specialist divisions.
Thank you. Are you happy with the pace of improvement in group IT systems that you've been investing in?
I mean, I'm impatient, so I'm never happy with the pace. On a serious note, yes, I am. There's a lot of foundational work going on at the moment, and that foundational work is being done to enable our strategy and to enable our businesses to work closely together and for us to go to market increasingly as VP group. There are also specific things that we're doing around our CPQ pricing tool, which will absolutely drive value in the way we price, and that should drive bottom-line improvement.
Yes, I am, but as ever, I would like things to happen more quickly.
Thank you. Keith, maybe this is a question for you. Can you remind us exactly what the limits on your leverage covenants are? Is 1.6 times seen as a position of comfort by the board, or would further deleveraging be preferred going forward?
'Sure. As I said, we have two financial covenants, one around interest cover and a net debt to EBITDA gearing ratio. Interest cover needs to be more than three times, and the gearing ratio not more than two and a half times. We are operating comfortably within both of those. In terms of the gearing ratio, is 1.6 times okay? Yep. I mean, we have in the past talked about 1.5 times being a kind of very, very comfortable place, and obviously, 1.6 is very close to that.
No kind of significant deleveraging needed.
Okay. Excuse me. Thank you. While I've got you, Keith, got a couple of more financial questions. Do you expect CapEx in H2 to run at similar levels to H1 and to be directed to similar areas?
In terms of the level that it's running at, no, no, I don't. H1 was particularly heavy, and this was a conscious choice, obviously. The sooner you spend your CapEx, the quicker it can get to work and start generating returns. No, I expect H2 to be lower. In terms of where it is targeted and where it is allocated, yeah, a very kind of similar story in terms of infrastructure for end markets because those returns are very nice. And geographies, Ireland and Germany, where we see those high growth potentials. Great.
Thank you.
I've got a question here about admin expenses. There was a 30+% increase in admin expenses September six months versus these six months. It's hard to work out what's behind that. Can you provide a bit more color on that, please?
Sure. You can kind of pick this up from the face of our income statement in our R&S. You've got admin expenses of about GBP 34 million, half one this year versus GBP 26 million, half one last year. Those exceptional items that I talked about earlier, totaling GBP 4.7 million, they are within this year's. You kind of strip those away and you get a kind of more like-for-like comparison. Even once you've stripped those away, there is still an increase, half one versus half one. These are the other areas that I talked about impacting margins.
There is an increase in staff costs of about GBP 2 million, which is predominantly driven from the national insurance and the minimum wage increases that we saw at the start of the year. Also, that increase in technology that I talked about, technology spend, as we continue to progress and improve our systems.
Great. Thanks for that, Keith. We've got a couple of questions around brand. I think I'll try and cover those off all together. Let's have a look. Cross-selling has been a key objective across the group. Will withdrawing from parts of Brandon Hire hinder your ability to be a one-stop shop for larger clients?
I think the changes we're making in Brandon Hire Station should improve our ability to be a one-stop shop for larger customers.
The work we're doing is deprioritizing the consumer market and exiting the consumer market so that we can absolutely focus on supporting the strategic customers and supporting the divisions and complex projects that we're involved in. We think that improved focus will help our ability to go to market as VP. I think why does VP need or why is Brandon Hire Station valuable to VP? It is the ability to offer that one-stop shop that complements the more specialist assets that sit alongside, that sit within our other divisions. We think it'll help rather than hinder.
Great. Thanks for that. Can you expand on how the restructuring costs will be incurred at BHS breakdown?
We've talked about exceptional P&L costs of GBP 22 million. There's kind of three chunks to that. The first two are the bigger chunks, and then the third leg is much smaller.
In terms of those areas, first area is people costs. These are redundancies, paying load notice, those kind of things. The second area is property costs. In kind of old money, this is owner's leases, dilapidations, that kind of thing. The last area, which is the smallest one, is we expect a bit of a write-down on some of the fleet that we will ultimately be disposing of.
Great. Thank you. What EBIT improvement would you expect once Brandon's restructuring is complete?
We purposely haven't quoted that in any of our materials, but we expect a meaningful increase to profits. We've also quoted that we expect the payback to take about four years and our improvement to our return on capital to be two percentage points.
Okay. Thank you. Probably back to you, Anna.
Can you summarise the grid investment programme in Germany that's supporting the growth of VP over there? How much visibility does that give you over demand in Germany over the next few years?
Yeah. Keith, do you want to pick that one up? Sorry.
I like German transmission networks. What is happening is there is a big German grid development plan where basically they are upgrading their version of the national grid to increase capacity and also move towards renewable energies and off kind of gas and oil. It is a very, very big programme of work. Estimates are kind of EUR 500 billion over kind of 20 years. What we do there is portable roadways mostly. If you can imagine electricity pylons in the middle of a field, you need some way to get all the machinery out to do the work on that pylon and the cables.
We are seeing a big demand for work there. Demand has kind of picked up over the last two years or so. We do not see that demand slowing at all. We continue to invest heavily into that area.
I think it is fair to say that is long term, not just medium term. The current programme over there goes through to 2045. This is not a sort of three, four, five-year opportunity. It represents a sort of 20-year opportunity for us.
Great. Thanks for that. Just sticking with Keith before I move back to you, Anna, just talking about leverage and deleveraging, when would you expect dividend cover to improve to 50%?
When would I expect dividend cover to improve to 50%? I mean, we have a stated target of two times cover. That remains the target. I do not think I can put a firm date on it.
As we kind of go into next year and beyond, we are very optimistic. Obviously, the stuff that we've talked about around Brandon, that will move profits forward and improvements in Ireland, improvements in growth in Ireland, growth in Germany. The AMP cycles, we're kind of very, very optimistic about next year and beyond.
Great. Thank you. Just a general question on this week's long-awaited budget. Any specific impact for VP that gives you cause for concern?
I don't think so. I mean, I think this time, 12 months ago, there was obviously a massive financial impact with the changes to national minimum wage and NICs. I think the sort of payroll-related costs in this BS budget are largely as expected. I think the key thing from our perspective is the government continuing to support that major infrastructure investment.
Is there any sort of rollback in any of those key areas? We know the government wants growth to move forward. We know that is underpinned by the spend programmes that we have talked about. No, I think it is largely as expected from our perspective.
Great. Thank you. I have got a couple of questions on CPH, which I will move on to next. An obvious question, I think, Anna, just in terms of your plans. Could you give a little bit more background on why you are leaving before VP's problems have been sorted out?
I am going to be at VP till the end of the current financial year. The biggest challenge that we have got going on at the moment is the decisive actions and the restructuring on Brandon Hire Station. That will be materially complete by the end of the financial year.
I'm here to see that through. I'm also here to see delivery of the FY26 numbers. I think that it's a good leave date, if ever a good leave date exists. As I've mentioned when I was going through the presentation, the key priority from my perspective is to ensure a clean and clear leadership transition as we move from FY26 into FY27. My commitment to the business is to ensure that the required changes in Brandon are completed by the end of the current financial year.
Great. Thank you. Just turning to CPH, the performance has been very good. Are they on track to trigger the additional earnout payments, which would forge you the end of year two and three post-acquisition, which were said to be linked to stretching EBITDA targets?
I'll take that one.
Yeah, when we bought CPH, we kind of paid an additional amount, and then there's future payments on the second and third anniversaries of the deal based upon EBITDA performance. The top range of those payments is subject to very challenging and stretching EBITDA performance. What you can see is when I talked about the exceptional items and I talked about GBP 1.7 million in the half, this is us building up what our estimates of those payments will be. Doing very well. We estimate that they will be on track for some, but not the very kind of top numbers.
Yeah. I think when it comes to CPH, Rachel, it's been a good acquisition for us from the perspective of financial performance.
It has also been a good acquisition for us from a strategic perspective, both in terms of helping us with our growth aspirations in Ireland, but also our strategy of divisions working closely together. The CPH business is very much plugged into the rest of the VP divisions and working collaboratively. It has been a good acquisition for us.
Great. Thank you. Are there plans for additional BOTOM deals, particularly internationally rather than in the U.K.?
Yeah. I mean, we have quite a lot that we need to do for the remainder of FY2026. Obviously, we want to keep a keen eye on our net debt and on our gearing. I expect in the remainder of the financial year, our investment to be organic rather than inorganic. I do think in the future, we will continue to grow through acquisition.
I think areas such as Ireland absolutely represent opportunities for us. We did, as we've mentioned, make a small CPH acquisition to MEP in the current financial year, and that's performing well. I think yes, but not within the second half.
Great. Thank you both very much. That concludes the question and answer session. Just for our viewers, a reminder that there will be a short survey sent out post this webinar for feedback. If you could respond to that, I know management would very much appreciate it. It just leaves me to say thank you both, Keith and Anna, for joining. Anna, thank you very much. This will be your last live investor presentation. Thank you for your time. Certainly, Keith, we look forward to seeing you at your full year results webinar in June. All the best, Anna.
Great.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, everyone.