Good morning to everyone, and welcome to the Kier Group call today following the release of results a week ago. My name is Robert Irwin, and I'll be hosting the call today. With me in the room from Kier are Andrew Davies, our CEO, Simon Kesterton, CFO, and Alpna Amar, Corporate Development Director. Before handing over to the team, some housekeeping points. There will be an overview first, and then there will be the opportunity for Q&A following that. We're taking typed in questions today, and you can either type a question into the Q&A box at any time during the presentation, and I'll repeat instructions before we get to the end. Andrew, if I could hand over to you now, the floor is yours, and my colleague Adam is driving the slides. Okay. Thank you, Robert. Good morning, everyone. Perhaps if I start with the FY 2024 highlights, which you have the packs there on, slide 4, if you could move to that, Adam. So I think, what the message is, is we've made significant operational and financial progress over the last three years, delivering our Medium-Term Value Creation Plan, and that's sort of evidenced this year by, some numbers where revenue is up 17% to GBP 4 billion. Our Adjusted Operating Profit is up 14% to GBP 150 million. Our order book is up 7% to GBP 10.8 billion, and that's giving us tremendous visibility, in particular, in FY 2025, where we have over 90% visibility of our revenues in our order book, and indeed, in construction, we have circa 97% as well, and of course, our order book is made up of contracted or probable income. We're in a two-stage negotiation on probable in a single source basis with a client, and then that overwhelmingly ends up in a contract as well, so all our framework positions, which by advertised value come to GBP 143 billion, are opportunities for us to pursue over and above that order book. And that operational performance and growth has allowed us to continue our strategy of deleveraging the business, so we ended up with year-end net cash. It grew 161% to stand at GBP 167 million, and our average month-end net debt therefore halved from GBP 132 million to GBP 116 million. And the confidence we have from that cash flows in the business and the order book and the order coverage and the visibility then has allowed us to declare a final dividend payment of GBP 0.0348, which means for the year, we'll be paying a GBP 0.0515 four times covered dividend. Now, that's the first one in my tenure as well. So very strong operational performance and is allowing us to really deliver against our medium-term plan. Some other highlights before I go to that medium-term plan and then address the sort of future strategy of the group. Now, we have acquired the rail assets out of the Buckingham Group, and very successfully integrated those into our transportation business, and perhaps we could touch on that a little later if you have questions on that. And we have refinanced the group. And again, you know, Simon is here and can talk to the state of our balance sheet, which is obviously, at the moment, very strong as well. So if you move to page five on the deck, you could, please. So on the left-hand side here, this sets out the Medium-Term Value Creation Plan, which we issued as part of our equity raise three years ago. We said it was a three to five-year plan, and effectively, we've delivered it within the three-year period. So as we say, revenue has achieved GBP 4 billion- GBP 4.5 billion, so it gets a tick. We have hit our margin. We hit 3.8% this year. That's been consistently above our target of circa 3.5%. So again, a tick. Cash flow conversion remains very strong, 145%, in excess of the 90% target because of the growth in the business. Then the last two, we said we want to achieve a sustainable average net cash position with capacity to invest, and we've obviously halved our average net debt to GBP 116 million, and we're very much on track to achieve that target in the near term. We are paying a dividend. So, again, Simon can talk to how we're going to meet our aspiration to drive down to a three times cover of earnings from the four times we're now currently paying. We're now pivoting, therefore, from recovery phase. We obviously grew 17% in revenues this year. That's GBP 560 million. That's not gonna be achievable in the long run. Quite clearly, that's the final piece of the recovery we put in as part of the medium-term plan. But we're pivoting to a long-term, sustainable growth plan now, and what we're talking about is revenues, which are realistically around our end clients, who are the regulated sector or government. You know, circa 90% are covered by those two sectors, and they effectively grow their revenue by GDP in the long run of the cycle. So what we're saying is in construction, we're aiming to grow sort of by GDP, sort of small plus, to have a managed growth, really focused on the quality of earnings in construction, based on the excellent visibility we've got, certainly into FY 2025. And then in infrastructure, because of areas like nuclear, and in particular because of the water recapitalizations going now as part of the AMP8 cycle, we anticipate it'll be GDP plus growth. Of course, a company of Kier's breadth and capability and performance now, you'd anticipate to outperform the market slightly. Therefore, you know, a GDP plus growth aspiration, we think is highly realistic as well. We're going to continue to achieve margins above 3.5%, so that's now become a floor in our assumptions going forward, which in of themselves are already industry-leading margins across the sector. Maintain our cash flow, driving cash flow again at 90%. As we've said, we want to get to a position of average net cash and then invest the surplus cash. We've got a slide on capital allocations, which maybe if you have questions around that, we can touch on that later. Finally, as I said, we want to drive down to a dividend policy of three times earnings over the cycle from the current four times earnings as well. A very progressive long-term sustainable plan we're setting out here which we think our markets can fully support, notwithstanding the change in government. All indications are that this present government, while it settles in, will be able to support and wants to be able to support the same level of spending on national infrastructure, social and major infrastructure across the piece. At that point, I think I'll just pause and open it up for any questions. Great. Thank you, Andrew. We'll now open for Q&A, and to read my early instructions on how to ask a question, please drop it into the Q&A box. The first question that we have is, could you please talk about your exposure to telecoms, please? Yeah, we did, as part of our former utilities business, have relationships with a number of telco providers. As they've renewed their frameworks, we've gone to them and sort of approached them on the basis on which we'd be fair to trade and to not trade. The reason we've been quite robust is because of the opportunities that sit in nuclear and water, and the allocation of resources to those opportunities provide us with better returns, we think, and more longevity in those returns. So we've de-emphasized telco. We're not exiting telco by any means. We still have a couple of good contracts with good clients. But going forward, we want to put more resources into what we think are higher growth areas of water and nuclear. Yeah, I mean, to put it in context, I think it's 1% through revenue. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Thank you very much. And the next question is around the growth aspirations. The question is, with the average year-on-year GDP growth being around 2% for the past 20 years, targeted long-term revenue growth being GDP plus, is there any way you can be more specific, or is there any way to go faster than that? And is there-- how do you plan to exceed GDP growth? Let's use water as an example. If you want to go to the page, we've put some some information on water on page 20 in the deck. I mean, this is an illustration. We just go to page 20. Okay, so this is an illustration of our focus in our organization on water. You'll see that the areas in black, which are United Utilities and Southern Water, are new clients to us. We've got major framework positions to augment our pre-existing positions on all of the teal-colored ones. I'm very happy to say that we've also got another new client, Wessex Water, next to the South West Water, up towards the left, covering Bristol, Hampshire, Dorset, et cetera. That was announced yesterday by Wessex Water. We've got on to three of their major contracting lots. So we have complete, virtual complete coverage of, of England, and certainly all the major conurbations, and that's been an area of focus for us. The AMP cycle, AMP8, is being draft determined at GBP 88 billion versus circa GBP 50 billion for AMP7. That's not settled yet. It's less than the water companies wanted. They're in negotiations, as I'm sure you know, with their regulator, but as in essence, they're going to double their capital spend, and they're talking to us about potentially having a cycle between AMP8 and AMP9. You know, so all of these contracts and frameworks we're signing up with them have options to extend into AMP9. So we're looking at a ten-year opportunity here, at double the revenue in capital expenditure. And that's why we've reorganized the focus on this area. We've put a major effort into bidding. We're now putting a major effort into mobilizing these contracts, along with the water companies, and we're very aligned with them. So they clearly have to expend this capital if they're to avoid regulatory penalties. Strong alliance across all the pieces, some very good quality customers here. Obviously, let's be clear, Thames Water have got their own issues at the moment. They are a client of ours. We're managing that very, very closely to ensure that we're not in any way overly exposed to them. But the other water companies are pretty robust and want to get on with it. So that perhaps explains a little bit why we've de-emphasized telco, and we've emphasized water. So water will provide a very strong growth area, you know, well above GDP in the sort of short to medium term. But we think in other areas, you look at, in the construction areas, you know, you look at areas like prisons, you look at areas like schools, hospitals. This government is committed to recapitalize that infrastructure as well. Now, they haven't fully determined how they're going to fund it throughout the cycle, and probably some form of private finance will be reintroduced into those projects, but we think there's good quality growth there. So we think a GDP aspiration, which we think is 3% over the cycle, with strong pluses in infrastructure and sort of more measured increases in construction, will deliver sort of 3%-5% growth across. And then we can resource it. And that's a key point I'd make. A lot of people are saying, "Well, you know, can you accelerate it and go faster?" Well, you have to be able to resource it, and it's not just a question of numbers. It's quality and quantity and maintaining the clear culture in the leadership of a lot of these projects. It's very, very important to us. So we don't want to overtrade, and what we want to do is improve the quality of our business as well as the quantity of it. So we think this is a very measured and stretching plan. Great. Thank you. The next question is around balance sheet, which is the balance sheet has seen a strong improvement again, and you're now targeting an average net cash position. What's the appropriate level of cash in the business, and how should we think about the use of any surplus cash with slide 14 as the... Yeah, it's a great question. So yes, slide 14 is probably is where we look at our average month-end net debt. Of course, spot points, we reported a net cash position. And as you can see over the last few years, your question was absolutely right. You know, we've shown strong deleveraging to the point where at GBP 116 million, that would have meant we were running less than GBP 100 million average net debt for the second half of FY 2024, with that deleveraging continuing into FY 2025. You can see it's a very small block indeed. From a technical point of view, we've got a GBP 250 million pound bond in place. It's been trading very well. We've got very happy bondholders, so it's an excellent market, that capital market, that's now open to us and very happy, so that's great, and we've got a GBP 150 million RCF. I mean, it's that's right -sizes to that GBP 150 million in January 2025. So a GBP 400 million facility. So I think really average month-end net debt, plus or minus zero, is fine, with plenty of liquidity, and that's why we say we're really best. At that point, I really don't think, you know, the balance sheet, where it is now is perfect. There's plenty of liquidity. Quality of the order book is very high. It's giving very consistent cash inflows and outflows, so you have really good visibility over 20 months. We're upping our investment in our property business as well, which means that will start to give consistent returns. It will also have enough capital in it so we can extract some capital, should we get a working capital outflow in any of our core businesses at any time, to satisfy that and still deliver consistent returns. So we think plus or minus zero is absolutely fine, and then you're looking at page sixteen for our capital allocation, where clearly CapEx is important, but it's a CapEx-light business. Our average sort of CapEx amount to the business is just GBP 10 million-GBP 15 million per annum. Then looking at deleveraging, what we've just seen on the previous chart, there's not much more mileage there for plus or minus zero. The dividend policy, we're at four times cover. In the reported year, we want to move to three times to generate cash. We can hopefully move there quite quickly, and then where are we going to allocate capital? I've mentioned property. We're at GBP 166 million of capital employed at the end of the year. We're looking to get that up to 225. So there's a reasonable amount of capital that's going to be allocated over the next 12-24 months, then finally, M&A. Yeah, we had a successful acquisition in the period, Buckingham. That's really well, so we've proven out that capability, and so we will consider where, of course, it's fit strategically, it's a good management team, and it's delivering returns better than the property, then you can consider sort of bolts on M&A going forward. Thank you, and we might need to go back to slide 14. We've got a follow-up question on debt, and debt facilities specifically. Mm-hmm. Could you please clarify how you plan to deal with the 150 million senior notes only maturing February 29? Are all the notes rolled over, or will the principal be repaid in cash? When we were, I think, the first issuer in two years into the Sterling high yield market. We're also the first, I think, for a UK construction, infrastructure services business. The point in time where we did it, interest rates were at their highest, probably. You know, 9% coupon is reasonably expensive, albeit when we priced that, it was a very good achievement. Since that, it's traded very well, so it's trading with a yield much lower than that now, if you want to go in and buy some of that debt. So we think that market's open to us, and I expect that market to be open to us, and I'd expect, as we trade through, probably our credit rating to improve a little bit. So why wouldn't you use that market if you can refinance probably at 6%-7% with a tax shield compared to equity at about 12%, cost of capital? I mean, it makes sense just to continue to use that market. So I suspect that's what we'd do at the moment, but albeit, we're always gonna keep that open and do the right thing for the business. Brilliant. Thank you. And then you touched on property and the investment there, and there's a couple of questions around property. The first one is, investment is being increased in the division. Could you talk about the rationale of that division within the group, please? Yeah, there's a good slide if we go to page 24 and 25 of the deck. Start at 24. Just to be clear, the property business, this is their cycle value creation model. Our property business doesn't hold property, it develops it out. So it acquires land or controls land, it obtains planning permission, and it lets build contracts. Occasionally, it lets those build contracts to our own construction business, but only on the basis that they are best in class. There's no sort of preferential treatment for them. But I'll come back to that point as some of the advantages of having a construction business as part of the property business. And we have seventy experts in our property business who do these, they acquire the land, obtain planning, let the build contracts. We then secure an owner-occupier, and then we fund it. Because we could fund it at different phases of this. We could obtain planning permission on the site and then decide it's optimal to sell that site with the planning permission rather than to develop it out. But our model is never really to hold it, it's to get some sort of velocity into our use of capital and to do it generally in JVs for risk management and also accessibility to land. So that's the model which we operate to. The areas in which we operate, those three areas, is industrial, last-mile logistics, which really does, you know, build off the COVID pandemic, you know, the real move from retail into sort of distribution. That's the first area. The second area is sort of high quality Cat A environmentally friendly offices in regional cities, and we've got plenty of examples in those. And third is really urban regeneration or residential, which we very much do in partnership very often with local authority clients or entities like Network Rail. So those. That's where we operate, and we have broadly the same amount of capital allocated to those three areas. To answer your question, where it fits in the group, if we move to slide 25. The next slide. What this really shows is the synergies. So the first synergy is really financial synergy. So our infrastructure businesses and our construction business operate to a negative working capital model. So as we've seen in the financial results, and Simon said, we do throw off a lot of cash when we grow these businesses. We allocate that cash in a very disciplined and judicious way into the property business, for which we then target to get a 15% return. But you'll only get a 15% return when you have the velocity and the maturity through that cycle of development. So it does take a little while to season capital, and we have stripped this business of capital historically, not for their reasons, but for market reasons, and then before that, for the reasons to assist the bearing of Kier's balance sheet in that sense. So we want to get to a critical mass of capital, where we can veer and haul with the capital in the business. So it's a very strong financial synergy with property with the rest of the group. The second synergy is the relationship. So if you look in the middle of this slide, you'll see people like Network Rail, Watford Borough Council, Birmingham City Council. These are all people for whom we operate. You know, we are on CP7 with Network Rail in the northwest lines. We build healthcare facilities for Watford Healthcare Trust, with whom we're in a JV in Watford. We look after the roads in Birmingham City Council. So when you're bidding to get into these JVs, which gives you access to long-term land banks, you know, the car parks in the southeast adjacent to south to Network Rail stations, you're bidding on the basis of certain criteria. Obviously, your property competencies, which you know, are 70 strong expertise in our property business, but also we bring our utilities expertise, our road expertise, our understanding of planning, and we also bring it to great confidence because they know we, you know, we work for them in maintaining their roads, or we build their schools or hospitals or whatever, and that really then manifests itself in the third synergy on the left-hand side of this, which is the operating synergies. And just to give you an example, if we're building out a facility, and it's got utility problems, we know all the utility people in other parts of our business. We bring that to bear, and this is a unique selling point when you're trying to bid to get into these long-term preferential JVs. Another example, in Watford, we were building out residential, a phase of residential. We were using Jarvis Homes. They went into administration. Normally, you'd have a severe delay. Costs would be borne by the JV, and if it were a financial partner, they'd just have to bear that and then relet the contract. Our construction business stepped in straight away to pick up that contract and have continuity, so saving the JV an awful lot of time and therefore money. And that's, you know, really one of the key differentiators, which gives us access to these JV, which are competitively tendered. And that access means that in that land, certainly with government entities, their aspirations is to build out houses, to regenerate town centers, to get more urban dwellings in, to get rental income, to convert assets, land assets, into cash flow, to pay for revenue-based services, such as childcare or whatever, social services. So invariably, they're not totally focused on optimizing or maximizing the land value. They'll put it in at a rate that actually allows the JV to achieve the margin upon which they bid. So the risks are much lower, therefore, in terms of holding or accessing land in these JVs, and to get into them is very preferential. And that's why, invariably, you know, you don't take those risks. You'll have a 15% versus a 25%, but you don't have any downside risks either, so much as you would in a commercial proposition. So the three real synergies, there's a financial synergy, there's a relationship synergy, which gives us good access to long-term land holdings with clients who understand and know us, and then there's the operational synergies to de-risk the programs once we get into the build phase. Thank you. And I think you've touched on some of the answers to this next question, but perhaps if you can, there's anything else you might want to add to it. Yeah. Which is, could you talk about how you get to the 15% return on capital within property, and how much risk are you putting into the business with this division? Do you want to take that, Simon? Yeah, it's a really good question. If you look at typical property development companies, I think they normally have hurdles that are much higher. Yeah. So that 15% is cautious. It's cautious because of the mechanics of how we do it, which basically a lot of our JV partners put in the land, but they don't receive any payment from the land until the returns go above a certain point. So it very much protects the downside, and we've seen that over the last two years, where our property business didn't lose any money. But a traditional property development model has probably seen losses up to about 15%. So that protects you on the downside, but it, what it also does, it limits you on the upside, because obviously, as soon as you cross that hurdle, you share any other returns across yourself, your partner, and the land. So that explains how we get to the 15%. It's a blended model considering that. Yeah. Great. Thank you. And then there's two other questions on property, which perhaps I'll put together, which the first one is, how much capacity does property have to absorb capital? And is property liquid enough to act as a store of surplus construction cash in question? Yeah, another good question. So at the moment, it's not liquid enough, and that's why we need to put more capital in. To put that into context, over the last five years, on average, we've disposed of eight projects and only acquired two each year. So that's 24 projects down on where it was five years ago. That's quite low liquidity, because what you want, if you look at the timeline that's on slide 20- Four. Four, I think. Yeah. Yeah. 24. Then you can see that, Tommy, you wanted enough projects that are on the various stages of that timeline to deliver a consistent return every year. So clearly, taking 24 projects away from where we had previously means we haven't got that liquidity. So part of the two - getting up to GBP 225 million is getting more projects in there, getting that liquidity back in, and also putting an extra amount in, so we can extract some capital and still deliver those consistent returns. So yeah, great question. Great, thank you. And then perhaps if we move to infrastructure, could you talk about the order book, competitive environment, and customer environment in the different parts? Yeah, I mean, order book is strong. You'd expect it to be. These are the very long-term projects. I mean, the infrastructure services business is made up of our nuclear networks, natural resources business. As I said earlier, I mean, the real focus has been in the last period on the water, as they spool up for their AMP8 and potentially AMP9 cycle. It is competitive, but I think, you know, we're coming out very strongly with our positions on new positions on UU, Southern, and now Wessex Water, building on our pre-existing relationships across the other companies. So I think we're very well positioned to have very strong growth there. And certainly, I think we'll be top three, see where we end up. I think when it comes to nuclear, defense nuclear is already very strong. We're in a JV with BAM to rebuild Devonport nuclear docks for the submarines, and we're well into the early works contracts there. We'll be shortly signing the main works contracts. We're bidding into Rolls-Royce for their facility to make the new nuclear rods to go in the next generation of submarines. And we're in an early works contract with AWE into their production facilities for, again, the next generation of deterrent. And on the civil side, we're building out at Sellafield, the medium-term storage facility to nuclear standards. And also, we've been on Hinkley for about seven or eight years, and we're now talking to Sizewell about transferring that capability once Hinkley finishes and Sizewell gets them through their investment phase and builds up there. Very strong pipeline in nuclear as well. When you look at the transportation business, two elements to that, really, or three elements. HS2, which we're building the longest section of HS2 in partnership with Ferrovial, BAM, and Eiffage. We lead on the project management of that. I chair the JV. Simon sits on the board as well with us. It's a very important part of our portfolio, and we think that will continue out under the current affordability phase, probably towards the end of the decade. It'll obviously come off from its peak, but we feel that they still will want us to complete as soon as possible, because we're on the critical path to get into the rail systems delivery and thereafter, the commissioning of the railway, which will be done on the piece, which we do the main civil works for as well. Then the other side of that is the highways business, where we're in local authority highways, and we're also a main one of the major contractors to National Highways Agency. Where we do both maintenance, we look after three regions for the National Highways, and we also do a number of capital projects under their RDP program. We've just completed Windy Harbour at Fleetwood. We're in the build phase of the A417 Missing Link down in Gloucestershire, and we're in the design phase for the A66 as well across the Pennines, and we think that RIS3, when it's issued, will have greater emphasis more on replacement and asset management type activities, like what we're doing on the Lune Gorge viaducts, where we're replacing seven viaducts. We're in a contract to design the replacement of seven viaducts and then replace them for National Highways on the M6 of the Lune Valley. We think that is more typical of where RIS3 will be going, and obviously it plays to our strengths as well, rather than some of the major capital programs, which I think the National Highways are reevaluating or have reevaluated, such as the A303 Stonehenge, which they've decided not to proceed with, and the A27 in Arundel as well, so we think we're well positioned on the RDP. We're, you know, a quality provider of major capital programs under the RDP auspices, but also we think if there's a shift to more maintenance-oriented CapEx spend, we'll be well positioned for that as well, and the final bit in infrastructure is rail. As you know, we bought Buckingham Group, their rail assets. We've integrated it very successfully, and we got reselected onto CP7 as well. We're pretty excited that we're building up our rail capability and taking some market share there as well. Great, thank you. And then if we look into construction, where you've seen very strong revenue growth, how sustainable is that, and where is the division seeing most success? If you go to page 40 in the appendix at the back. The first point I would make, the growth we've had over the last year is really recovery. We got a very strong order intake in terms of probable work into two stage negotiations about two, three years ago after we recapitalized. But then the inflationary pressures meant that government was delayed, and we signaled that to the market at the time, that there was a lot of pressure on revaluation, value engineering, getting extra budgets. It just put a delay into the process, but that's now come through as inflation settled down, budgets have increased, you know, specifications have decreased, whatever the solution to it was. Very little was canceled as a result of that, but we now have resolution, and that's why it's come through in strong revenue growth. We can't expect that to continue at 17% per annum. Which is why we say we're pivoting now to a more sustainable GDP plus. But if you look at the areas where we operate in construction on page 40, I mean, education, this government is equally as committed to that schools program, 500 DfE replacement project over 10 years, 100+ of which are RAAC, they have to be replaced. And we're seeing across our regions, very strong pipeline of feeding now into schools, and they're packaging together multi-schools, which is excellent. You get more efficiency, you get better, better, pricing as well. Healthcare, they're reevaluating the New Hospital Programme. The last one was unrealistic, delivering 40 hospitals in five years. It just wasn't going to happen, but they'll reevaluate that and focus on those hospitals they can deliver in the near term, or they have to deliver, i.e., those RAAC-afflicted hospitals. And again, we think we're very well positioned for that more realistic program, and this government, I think, is, is equally as committed to do that, and probably more pragmatic under Wes Streeting as well. Justice, you know, we are probably the preeminent. We have under contract or are delivering or have delivered up to 17 T60 blocks. These are the prefabricated, modern methods of construction blocks, which we're building, have built at Five Wells, are building at Millsike, which is this picture on the slide, and we're using for the accelerated prison program at, Bullingdon, Elmley and Channings Wood as well. We're very strong in prisons, and of course, we have over and above that, the opportunity with the Scottish Prison Service to build HMP Glasgow to replace Barlinnie as well. Then in defense, I mentioned in infrastructure, the nuclear dock program, but we're also on the Defence Estate Optimisation program, which should be a self-funding program to literally optimize the defense estate. We've been allocated one major project at Cranwell and a region in the southern region, where predominantly the British Army are based as well. We anticipate some work coming through that. Also we're on the alliance of the Single Living Accommodation. I think we got on that based on our principles and practices of how we built the prisons in a modular form with much modern methods, construction off-site, and they want the same principles applied to the Single Living Accommodation. So the point I'm making really is all of these, we think, are non-discretionary expenditure, and the government, whilst they're obviously evaluating, having just come into power, their options, nothing we're hearing from any of the departments indicates that they're going to stop these programs. They're going to make them probably more realistic and affordable, but they're still committed to deliver them. And they may reintroduce some form of private finance as well. They're certainly looking and evaluating their models around that as well. But again, the point I make is we have 97% coverage, this FY 2025 for construction. It's a very strong line of sight across all these sectors. Great. Thank you, and the next question is, could you please tell us about capital discipline and, I guess, bidding discipline, in the sector, and the capacity for margin expansion, bearing in mind competition? Well, there is always the ability to improve your business, and we will always do it. We've had our Performance Excellence program running ever since I joined this company. That has, I think, then led to the industry-leading margins of 3.8%, which we've got in our results this year. But look, I'm not going to sit here and say you can't continue to improve, but what we're really seeking to do is get consistency, get resilience into our business, get the order book and the visibility of the order book, of equal quality as we have now. That's the focus of the business, and grow in a very measured way in markets that we believe can sustain it. It's as simple as that. And in terms of the capital, we allocate more human capital invested in bids. Yeah. because, of course, as they, as those businesses grow, they create negative working capital, so that you don't have any- Yeah. Capital employed in the business. Super. Thank you. And the next question is, could you please update on the Buckingham acquisition? Yeah, it's gone very well. We were fortunate. They were unfortunate, but it was our good fortune that we were approached to buy the rail assets out of administration. They were very good assets. It was not the cause of the failure of Buckingham Group. That was in other parts of their business. We did acquire and novate 11 contracts. We TUPE'd across 180 expert practitioners with the requisite qualifications to operate on the railways, and we've integrated it very successfully into our rail business and our transportation business. And as I said earlier, on the back of that, we've secured a position, a rebid and secured the position on CP 7. So we're delighted with our acquisition and the people. We've worked very hard to make them very welcome. They're very important to us. Great. Thank you, and the next question is on M&A, which obviously is part of the capital allocation framework. Could you talk about how you think about that, and are you thinking more about bolt-ons, or are you considering something more transformational? We've got our antenna up. Having done Buckingham, it's proven that the corporate here can acquire and integrate and novate and TUPE very successfully. Companies of the scale of Buckingham, sort of 160 million revenue. So, you know, that is a proof point that we do this very successfully and in a value-added way. So yes, our antenna are up. People are now taking us very seriously in terms when they're looking to dispose of assets, and all of the interlocutors as well look to us as well. And we're looking at certain areas, but it's more of a bolt-on, I would say. And in the capital allocations, I'm sure Simon will say it, you know, you've got to look where it fits into the capital allocations chart on page... Sixteen. 16, in terms of the criteria which we've set, and that really is the same value as we'd expect to get return on capital in property. Great. Thank you very much. And the next question is, I guess, towards infrastructure, which is, Balfour have made a big play of work on grid. Is that a market that Kier is in or would like to be in? We focused on water, we focused on nuclear. We feel they're the right markets for us, and we have competitive differentiators, and I think we've been proven right. So, we're very happy to work for other clients as long as the fair balance of reward and risk is taken into account. If it's not, we won't bid, or we will bid, but we'll turn the work down if we don't think it's fair and equitable. So, no, we're delighted with the customers and the sectors we work in. Great, thank you. And we've got four questions left at the moment, so if anyone else does have a question, then please do, please do throw it into the Q&A function, which was up on the chat just as. So yes, please do. And the next question is, could you please talk about the strength of the supply chain, please? You've got to remember our construction business, where the smaller supply chain tends to sit, and therefore arguably the more vulnerable supply chain, although not necessarily, is a very much a regionally based business. We think nationally with national frameworks, but we execute locally with local teams in local communities with local supply chains, and these relationships are long-standing. If you have a good order book, if you have a good payment record, strong balance sheet, good welfare facilities, good attitudes to health and safety and site standards, you attract the best supply chain, and that's what's happening with Kier. And then we also, because we know the supply chain options in each of the regions, we have backups if we have to have it. So I'm not going to sit here and say we don't have any issues with it, but I think, you know, it's not a material impact on our business, and we manage it pretty effectively, and we've got a pretty good supply chain and good relationship. Great, thank you, and I'm not sure how much you'll be able to say about the next question, but the question is, will labor market reform to add costs to the business? They're bound to, but I think if you look at government policy, the Labour is setting out in the areas, you know. It is probably to drive wages up and certainly to get to, you know, the minimum wage. But just remember, we pay, as a matter of policy, the real living wage already, which is above where they're trying to drive it to, and these results are based on that. I think, you know, what you do is you just improve productivity. As the wage price wage goes up, that's an emphasis for industry to invest and improve productivity. Yeah, I would argue with that. Yes, look, it will increase, but I think, you know, we're ahead of that game. Great. And the next question, possibly one for Simon on pensions. Can you please explain how the pension scheme situation has improved, please? Yeah. So the pensions, there's a slide in the deck somewhere on slide 42. So, yeah, I don't think it's actually improved in the reporting period, but it has improved significantly over the last few years. So if you look at the last triennial valuation, we've got six schemes here. Some are in surplus, and some of the smaller ones are in deficit. So all of the deficit repayments now go to the smaller ones. That's the deficit. The main scheme is actually in a surplus. And you can see the bottom there, the old schedule versus the new schedule. So you see FY 2024, we had GBP 9 million worth of deficit repayment schedules, and then in this current financial year, it reduces to 7, 5, 4, and then it's 1. That deficit on those remaining pension schemes should be then fully funded. So massive improvement. The biggest improvement, of course, if you go back a few years ago, why did that triennial valuation improve? Obviously, the strength of the company improves the covenant that the company provides, which, of course, gives you longer to get investment returns, so actually reduces your liabilities. So that's a big part of what's improved it. We obviously paid into the scheme money, and of course, it had investment returns as well, which were slightly better. So, you know, this has been a very big improvement in the pension position of the business over the last five years. Great, thank you. A couple of other questions have gone in, which is... The next question is, will Kier only focus on the UK market for the foreseeable future? Yes. Short and sweet. The next question is, again, looking at property, and I think we've covered some of this before. I don't know if there's anything else you would add, which is, how will it achieve the ROCE level when it's struggled to do that for the last five years? I guess thinking about what's the build. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, two, two years ago, it achieved 14%. If you look over the last 10 years, it's achieved the 15%, so I think it definitely can achieve that. But as I said, what's put it in a difficult position is the fact that we were capital constrained. You know, since 2019, we couldn't allocate any capital to it. In fact, we were extracting capital from it to the point where a couple of years ago, the capital employed in that business was GBP 120 million, which was well off the bottom end of what we were signaling could deliver consistent returns. Now we've got to build it back up again. It's a shame. It's a great business, great team. They've supported the business during a very difficult time. And now we've just got to build. We've got to be a little bit patient. We've got to allocate that capital. Of course, unfortunately, allocate the capital, you know, you won't get the returns from that capital for two, three years. So as you allocate the capital, you actually reduce your ROCE, in fact, so you're actually holding it back. So we've just got to trade through those couple of difficult years, and then once we've got up to the 225, we've got enough in there to deliver consistent returns and also be able to extract a small amount, should we need to, should we see that our other businesses are shrinking at any point during the next five, ten, fifteen years. Great, thank you. And then the last three questions are all about dividends. I'll try and put them to two questions. Which is, the dividend has been reintroduced. Could you please talk about where the cover is at the moment, what the targeted cover is, and. Within that, also talk about why it's potentially higher than the cover was, in the late noughties, early teens? Yes. Yes, so cover was four times last year. Our target is three times through the cycle. So I mean, obviously, we're gonna get to that, continue to generate cash as we have been quite quickly. So I wouldn't anticipate it taking us too long to get to the three times cover. And then why is that more than the-- Well, I mean, the noughties, I think, the company was renowned for paying dividends that it didn't earn from free cash flow, and probably increasing its debt and debt-like items to pay dividends, which of course, isn't sustainable. So we very much wanted, when we did the equity raise in 2021, every target to see realistic, achievable, arguably, possibly on the side of caution, you know, so we've overachieved on our margin target. We said it was a three to five-year plan. We've achieved it in three years, and we want very much to gear the business to continue to be like that. So yeah, I would envisage a three times dividend cover. It's great. We know we want to delever, we want to allocate more to property. There's potentially M&A, but of course, we're also signaling we're not gonna sit there with excess cash on the balance sheets as time goes through. Then maybe we can expand those capital allocation items, and of course, if there's no active projects available for us, there's the opportunity of returning more to shareholders, of course. Great. Well, there are no further questions, so that concludes the Q&A section. I don't know if there are any concluding remarks you'd like to make, Andrew, before we close out? No, I think I'll just get back to the highlights page right at the beginning again, page four, where we know we have made significant operational financial progress, and as Simon's just said, we have met the targets we set ourselves at the equity raise in the Medium-Term Value Creation Plan. We're really now pivoting off the back of an excellent order book position, great visibility, good client sort of markets. We're pivoting to a long-term sustainable growth plan based on those markets. So that's my message, and we're rewarding shareholders with a dividend as a result. Brilliant. Well, thank you to the team. Thank you to everyone for attending and for your questions. There is a short survey as you log off, so please do complete that if you can. The team appreciates feedback. And the last thing to say is a date for your diary, which is the AGM and the trading update, which is scheduled for the fourteenth of November. And that concludes our call today. Thank you very much. Thank you.