Right, I think everyone has now come through from the waiting room, so we'll get underway. Good morning and welcome to the Kier Group call today following the half-year results released on Tuesday last week. My name is Robert Irvin, and I'll be hosting the call. With me from Kier are Andrew Davies, CEO; Simon Kesterton, CFO; and Rory Elliott, Director of Corporate Development. Stuart Togwell, who's the CEO designate, is on his way and is having a technical moment, but he'll be joining us shortly. Before handing over to the team, some housekeeping points. There'll be a brief overview first, then we'll be taking questions after that. Please do feel free to type a question into the Q&A box at any time during the presentation. You should all have the link to the presentation on the reminders. If you don't, please shout and we'll send it across, but it is on screen as well. I'd like to hand over to Andrew. The floor is yours. Okay, Robert, thank you. Good morning, everyone. Adam, if I could perhaps just start, we'll start with slide 11 if you have the deck. We'll put it on the screen just to give you an overview of where we are with the government's sort of policy on infrastructure and where we see the market and our access to that market. This slide has a couple of data points which we may find useful. Firstly, the government has committed to a GBP 725 billion infrastructure reinvestment program in the U.K. and it's issued a pipeline against that. That pipeline won't be definitive; it'll always change. It may get delayed. It's unlikely to be canceled in any material extent, but there will be changes to it. Indeed, you may have seen yesterday on the Northern Powerhouse, there's been a slight delay in publication of that by way of an example. That's to be expected. Across the broad range of activities in government, we think this is a very positive activity because it's given real visibility so we can start to allocate resources as appropriate to that pipeline. More tellingly, they've also issued a three-year spending commitment that underpins it. The first three years is funded within that pipeline, but again, is subject to those sort of potential delays, as I said, or recrafting of it. That's good news in the spending review that the Chancellor did allocate that pipeline. It'll all be delivered under the auspices of a minister as well, which has now been brought in as part of Treasury. It was originally part of Darren Jones's role as Chief Secretary. He's obviously moved on, but it remains a Treasury function. That oversees and acts as the sort of gatekeeper for infrastructure investing in Treasury. The access to that funding is via frameworks. As you see at the middle of this slide, there's a GBP 156 billion addressable market which we have access to. That's the advertised framework positions we've won positions on. They cover a whole range of activities. You can see from health, education, housing, water, roads. Not all of it, obviously, is government funded. The rail sectors, some of the nuclear sectors, and the civil sector are all privately funded money as well. You've got a good range and breadth of framework accessibility to that pipeline, that GBP 725 billion pipeline. The important point is, as I said, you do get ebbs and flows and delays in certain sectors, and that'll be compensated in other sectors. Hence, the position Kier has and the scale of Kier and the range of accessibility to markets via these frameworks gives us quite a buffer against any potential changes that may happen. That has proven to be the case, as perhaps we can touch on a little bit later, in terms of our ability to meet our targets on a consistent basis over the last four years. That pipeline then in the frameworks drives the order book. The order book is made up of contracted income, mostly off those frameworks, and also of probable income. We define, or Simon defines, probable income as that income where we potentially are going to win a contract because we're in a two-stage negotiation with a client on a funded program on an exclusive basis. Almost certainly it does go through and does become contracted income. It's quite a conservative figure, though, our order book. What we don't do is include factored framework positions. Some of our competitors do, we don't. By way of example, on water, we've won positions on 17 frameworks, which we can touch on later, I think worth GBP 15 billion. We will only include the first year, year and a half, depending on the visibility of those opportunities within that order book, notwithstanding that we believe in AMP8. The water companies are accelerating their expenditure, and that expenditure indeed will almost certainly go through to AMP9 as well. It's quite a conservative position. We don't extrapolate forward any of the framework positions which we have. We just include contracted, and as I said, probable income. Adam, go on a slide. What does that give us in terms of coverage? This is the important factor. We have 91% of coverage in FY 2026, and we have 70% in FY 2027. That's a very comfortable position, confident position, which we find ourselves in certainly for this financial year. That'll be very strong. You do expect normal growth out of the existing framework positions and other opportunities. As you see in the two graphs at the bottom, our order book obviously is secured out for two years, but underpinned for five years, really gives us a lot of confidence that we will have a good quality order book for five years, indeed a very strong visibility of the pipeline up to 10 years as well. That's what you'd expect to see in an infrastructure multi-year contracting company as well in a strong position which we're in. The market, I think, despite a lot of the sort of varying news you get out of government, etc., we think the market is very strong. I think the key point, as we say, is a point in our strategy. We do infrastructure that's vital to the U.K It's not discretionary or optional. Take defense. The U.K. has a posture of deterrence. That deterrence is provided by the nuclear submarine program. That program requires a seismic dock. We're building those docks or converting those docks in Devonport by way of example. It's non-negotiable. We believe housing, a lot of the housing, a lot of the schools, a lot of the social infrastructure around sort of prisons and hospitals is also non-negotiable. Indeed, much of that is already contracted. As a matter of strategy, we have focus very much in areas which we think are vital. The private sector, clearly the water industry, because of the environmental issues, public sentiment, as well as an aging infrastructure and the need to recapitalize and maintain it. We believe that's a very strong pipeline for us as well. If we go back to slide four, please, Adam, and therefore just take you through why we believe we can convert that very strong market position into good revenue, profit, and most importantly, cash. This is the FY 2025 highlights. We did, as I said, have the record order book at GBP 11 billion, giving great visibility in FY 2026 and beyond. Good revenue growth, 3% profit levels ahead of the initial expectations. Indeed, we're beginning the year trading slightly ahead of the board's expectations as well, which is positive. We've driven free cash flow out of our business last year of GBP 155 million. That's allowed us to continue our strategy of deleveraging the company, but also the balance sheet strength which we now have from that cash conversion really is allowing us to have a disciplined capital allocation policy. That means increased shareholder returns. We've increased our proposed final dividend to GBP 5.2, giving a total of GBP 7.2 for the year. That's a 38% increase, but more tellingly, what it is, is we now achieved our three-time cover target, which we said we were aiming to get to. We've done 10 out of the GBP 20 million share buyback we deployed beginning in January this year, and we've increased the investment in property, shade under GBP 200 million, which fundamentally recapitalizes that business and puts the liquidity into it, which allows us to really sort of take advantage of the synergies it has with the rest of our business and also providing a pool of capital should we need it at a point in time. We're on track to deliver our 15% royalty target by FY 2028, maybe the back end of FY 2027 on a run rate basis. We're pretty pleased with where property is at the moment. As Robert said, I will be stepping down on the 31st of October. I feel I've done my bit in Kier. I've had a fantastic time, and I have an outstanding team below me. Stuart will be taking over as CEO on the 1st of November, and obviously Simon will continue as well. I think at that point, Robert, perhaps I'll open it up for questions. Super, thank you, Andrew. I think we also now have Stuart on the line as well, so hopefully you can hear us. Can we hear you, Stuart? If you're on mute at your end. Stu, are you still having your technical problems? I am. Can you hear me though? Yes, we can. Oh, good. I mean, I can't see anything, but I can hear you. Okay, that's fine. Good morning, everyone. Just picking up from what Andrew said, I'm incredibly proud to be taking on the role and really looking forward to being the next steward of this brilliant company. In terms of saying about me, I've been in the industry now for over 39 years. The last six, I've really enjoyed myself. I've been working closely with Andrew and Simon, in particular, ensuring that we've brought in the risk management and discipline that has helped to transform the business. Rest assured that we're not going to stop continuing doing that stuff because it's really important that we have that control over the sectors that we work in and we sign up to the contracts and the right terms and conditions. The last two years, I've been the GMD of the construction business and also been sat on the board with Andrew and Simon. In terms of moving forward, I'm very excited about the opportunity that Andrew's laid out in front of you this morning, whether it's the GBP 725 billion opportunity in front of us, the fact that GBP 500 billion of that is now identified on the construction infrastructure pipeline, and the positions that we have, which are in all the right sectors and all the frameworks. I'm very positive and confident alongside Andrew and Simon about the future for Kier. I'm very happy to take and help take any questions from anyone now. Brilliant. Thanks, Stuart. As mentioned, we'll now open for Q&A and repeat my earlier instructions on how to ask a question. Please type it into the Q&A box. If you click the button at the bottom of your screen, it should take you through to that as a couple of people have already. Perhaps if we open with the first one, which is government is under pressure financially. What are the risks to the spending envelope that you're engaging with? It is under pressure, but I think, as I said earlier, the strategy we've had really for six years now has been very much about dealing with infrastructure that is vital to the UK in many ways. That's politically vital, socially vital, or operationally vital. The prison programs have been fully funded pretty much. We're well through that. Stuart perhaps can touch on that a little later. As I said, in defense, there has been an increased commitment to defense because of the transatlantic relationship position. What has traditionally happened in defense is the equipment program sometimes has been funded at the expense of the estates program. The equipment program now is going to benefit from that increased funding, which means the estates program will be protected. Indeed, much of the estates program is deemed in defense as sort of non-negotiable. I witnessed the issue on the deterrent and the need to build the docks at Devonport and all the facilities at Faslane to support the new boats coming into operation, as well as then the single living accommodation programs, which I think, again, defense is to meet its recruiting targets as deemed, again, essential to do, in which we've got major positions in the southern part of England and also at RAF Cranwell. I think then you move into the private sector. That is going to be ring-fenced by the water companies in AMP8 and probably through to AMP9. In civil defense, it's EDF clearly being regulated and invested in by the government, but that again is a settled position. Occasionally you will see deferrals, you'll see sort of elongations of programs which we're seeing probably in Northern Powerhouse. The prudent nature of which Simon has always sort of driven the forecasting is the group. We don't assume that we're going to get all of these contracts on the time which they initially advertise them. The portfolio effect of the group means that certain areas may be deferred or disinvested and other areas won't be. Overall, you know, whilst we do take contingencies at the center at a group level, it generally covers off any such delays. I think the combination of our strategy, our performance, our outstanding order book, the visibility and the frameworks, and then the prudent levels of assumptions we put into those orders and their translation into revenue means that we think we've got a very secure plan. The final point I'd just say on HS2 is obviously it's been topical. The spending review has funded the main work civils contractors through to completion. We've been allocated because we're in the key area in the center of the trace, which is on the critical path to getting rail systems in place and also therefore testing commissioning in place, which is politically important. We've been fully funded and we will take that through to the next sort of couple of years. Whilst that will come off in probably three years' time, the speed with which water is now mobilizing in particular, but also other transportation activities as a result of RIS3 and CP7 now being published, we're very confident in our growth trajectory of the group because of those portfolio factors. Super, thank you very much. There's another question here on the order book. Perhaps if I could ask you first, because you talked to frameworks, there's different levels of knowledge on the call. Could you expand on frameworks, please, what they are, how important they are, and also if they're funded as well? I'm just looking, I think we've lost Stuart again, unfortunately. I don't know if you're on, Stuart. No, I think we lost Stuart. Frameworks, they do differ. We're on, you know, I'd say we're on all material frameworks we need to be on with very few exceptions. You can have national frameworks. For the Department of Education, the Education Funding Agency, as was, they will issue national frameworks. The Ministry of Justice has issued national frameworks on an alliance basis for the large prisons, for the medium block and small blocks, etc. There are many different varieties of frameworks you can have, and generally there's sort of four, five, maybe six years, four, five, six, maybe even 10 contractors. It depends on the framework issuer. The essence of a framework is you pre-agree certain aspects of it before getting into mini competitions and contracts. Much of the framework activity translates into this two-stage negotiations I mentioned earlier. Once they down select you for that two-stage negotiation, as I said, you will get into contract. The point is, if you're not in the framework, you're not in it, you won't win it. It's as simple as that. To get into the frameworks, you have to usually book pre-authored sort of run rates, rate decks and pricing, and the assumed pre-limits. They're all negotiated through the two-stage negotiation. You also have an emphasis now in government on procurement notices relating to qualitative aspects. It's not a question of anyone just being able to rock up on the framework and saying, "Well, I'd like to be on your framework." They've got to demonstrate their payment profile to SMEs. They've got to demonstrate their carbon reduction credentials. They've got to demonstrate their capabilities in the area. They've got to demonstrate their community engagement and social engagement. They've got to be able to demonstrate how much training they do in the organization, etc. All the things which Kier for many, many years has been extremely strong at and which we've just continued or accelerated. Those are qualitative factors which are just as important as quantitative factors. Indeed, some frameworks, the entry point is not the lowest cost wins. It's actually a median point, and the highest and the lowest tend to get eliminated. They're very much designed to get the best quality contractor, which means the way we look at it, it's a good chinning bar. It's a high chinning bar, and we're very happy with that. If government wants to continue to increase these qualitative aspects, that's okay with us because we believe a contractor of Kier's quality is best able to support government in these types of activities. Frameworks are, yeah, and then they're funded. A framework is a methodology for delivering a funded program. That's what it is. Simple as that. Andrew, I'm back on. Oh, you are back on. I mean, during your explanation, if you go for the department frameworks, they're funded because they're back in terms of their one-year or three-year commitment. You have other frameworks which provide a route for public bodies to procure contractors through. They tend to be non-funded, but quite often, again, will restrict the competition, and they go through the same route in terms of pre-agreeing overhead and profit and allow a qualitative selection process. They tend to be regional type frameworks. Local authorities who may not have procurement expertise can use the outsource to these framework providers to provide work. We have a mix of those. Our success rate on getting frameworks, in particular the construction business, is around 98%. We do see them as a lifeblood in providing that access to the addressable market that Andrew spoke about earlier. Great, thank you very much. There are a couple of other questions in this area, which is firstly, the GBP 11 billion order book is about 7% of the GBP 156 billion addressable market. How high could that wallet share go? What are the constraints, whether internal or customer (government), and what's your desire to diversify partners? Can you repeat that one again? Yeah, it's a nice sidestep. 7% in terms of the market is a good position to be had. That's my first point, I would say, is an enviable position. Others might be around about 3% of the addressable market. It varies because you often find you get ebbs and flows in the particular sectors. There will be some sectors that will be running at the moment where we'll be over 10% of the addressable market. MOJ was one of them. As you come to the end of the spend of the capital program, particularly in the MOJ in terms of the new prisons sales they've been producing, you then look to where's the other sector that we need to go into. That's one of the strengths that Kier has. We refer to pivoting our human capital from markets that we can see that are coming to the end of their capital spend into areas that we see that are picking up. We've got two great examples recently. We foresaw that the highways were going to be a little bit sticky for a period of time as government just came back in and looked at the RIS3 in terms of making sure they were satisfied in terms of the new RIS3 coming out, which it now has. During that period, we moved our human capital over to the water sector because we were encouraged to go into the regulated body. They wanted tier one contractors to bring a capability of running large capital programs rather than more usual sort of maintenance programs. We moved over into that with a high level of success, as I'm sure we'll touch on later. The other one in terms of the MOJ, we saw that the approach to framework alliance working and rolling out things at scale across the country was a really good fit in terms of where the defense sector in terms of DIO were going. We pivoted very quickly into that sector to get ourselves into their frameworks in terms of DOP and DITE and the single living accommodation. We see that as an ability to replace the MOJ work. 7% is a good area of coverage that we've got. We then look to make sure that we harvest the sectors that we're in as hard as possible to have individual growth within those sectors, whilst others may be turned off during the period of government. Great, thank you very much. The next question is around revenue growth, which is considering the size of the addressable market. Are you disappointed with the level of year-on-year growth? The question goes on to talk about is 3%- 4% what we should expect in the future, but perhaps if you can talk about the medium-term plan as well, that would be helpful. Yeah, I mean, we also talk about the fact that don't overtrade. It is quite easy to win work in this market. You just go in incredibly cheap. History tells you in terms of those sort of contractors and competitors that have done that, ISG was probably the more recent one, that there are some real challenges if you look for growth too quickly, because you can't just back it up with the skills and capability and the span of controls that you need. We are careful that we look to go into the sectors and then maximize our revenue through those chosen sectors that we have. Yes, we can see if the government meets its pledges in terms of spend coming through, we can see opportunity for us. We certainly have got a mindset that we will be growing, not retracting in terms of where it is. We're careful about areas where we don't believe the works that come through meet our approach to risk taking. At the moment, we're very careful around data centers because they're quite risky work, although there's a lot of spend that's coming through it. We're also very careful around high-end residential. In terms of the issues at the moment around planning delays and also the Building Safety Act, Gateway 2, which is really stagnating that marketplace. We've held back from that until that's all been resolved because we need revenue from our people, which means we need projects to go rather than people sitting in their offices doing pre-contraction work. I think I'd just draw your attention to slide five in terms of what Stuart has said and how Simon has sort of prudently managed everything here. If you just go to slide five, it's a track record. It's an important slide. It's a track record of consistent delivery. You'll see actually over the last five years, we've had 5% compound annual growth rate. Now, some of that has been recovery, but it's been recovery in markets as Stuart said, where we will make money as opposed to previously when we were on the four sort of Kier was GBP 4 billion. It was in probably a billion quid of market that lost considerable amounts of money. We've exited all those as part of the turnaround of the group. More tellingly, if you look at all the other sort of statistics as to how we've managed this company, we have avoided the temptation to run after contracts. We've gone after quality on frameworks in our chosen markets with our chosen clients via frameworks with a high chinning bar. You see adjusting operating profits increasing 12%, earnings per share 20%, free cash flow 14% on average, and that's produced the monthly average month end net debt from GBP 582 million back in 2021 down to frankly nothing, given where we're trading at the moment. We've invested obviously in shareholder returns quite rightly and in our property business as well. We've got this business through cautious growth in sectors where we know we can make money and bring relevant skills and translated that into profit and most importantly cash, which then returning benefits to the shareholders. We're not going to chase market share. That's a fool's paradise. That just will not happen. There are sectors where we have relevant skills, but where we don't foresee at the moment an opportunity to get into the top three position in those markets. We're not going to play in those unless we feel we can get to those sort of positions because you're a follower otherwise. Great, thank you very much. Probably the last question in this area, which is, do you have a feel for in the order book what percentage is non-government funded and how much is directly government related? Is it 70%? Is it, Simon, government? What's the... Yeah, I mean, usually we're roughly about 70% government, 15% regulated. That's 85%, and then the rest is private. Yeah, yeah. That private though will include, don't forget, things like Sizewell and Hinckley in the civil nuclear side. Our private exposure to the development market is really just through our London construction business and certain elements of the other construction business, but that's tightly controlled by Stuart. We have a very clear strategy that will only pursue blue chip operators with long-term pipeline aspiration and through two-stage negotiations. Great, thank you. The next question's on HS2. Perhaps I rambled out a little bit and you touched on it earlier. Can you just remind us of where you sit on HS2, the runway on that project, and also where you're exposed on the southern end towards Euston? We're not, is the answer towards Houston. We have no exposure down there. That's SCS, which is a consortium of Skanska, Costain, and Strabag. We have no exposure down there at all. We build north of or south of Southam, which is a strange way of saying it, and north of, help me here guys, what's the tunnel called? Say again, Stu? Oakwood? Is it Oakwood? No, where's the tunnel come out on the north portal? Where's Mark Pengelli? He's on the call, he'll tell you. Look, we've got 32 kilometers roughly of this. It is, as I said, you know, it transcends East West Line at Calvert. That's where they'll start to build out the rail systems. That's where they'll start to do the test regime once rail systems and people have sort of delivered that. The funding, as I said, has been cleared through for the main work civils contracts now. We anticipate, and indeed we're enjoying the run rate, which will support the program through the next two, probably three years' time before we complete that. We don't see that changing. I think there will be a renegotiation with government. They've talked about reset. We've willingly offered to sit down and talk to them about how we can get a degree of more certainty in their program, take some cost out, do things cheaper and better. That's absolutely normal. That's what we do. We've offered that to the previous government. We've offered that to the existing government. I suspect we will get into a discussion over the next sort of 12 months or so as to how we can do that. That's nothing to be afraid of because they've been very clear with us that if there is a degree of more certainty and fixation of costs in the program, there'll be an increase in incentives to deliver that. That's in everyone's interest. At HS2, we're feeling okay. It's Old Oak Common, Andrew. We don't start there though, Stu. We start well north. It's the north portal. I just can't remember the name. Right, thank you. Moving on to nuclear, can you talk about your involvement in the nuclear space overall, and then also any involvement inside LC? Two sides to nuclear. One is defense, one is civil. Starting with the defense stuff I said, our infrastructure and natural resources business is down in Devonport in JV with BAM. We're building out the nuclear dock for the next generation of submarines. That program's going well. Down there, it's probably got another three or four years to go, and there'll be further work surrounding that as well. We also are an ECI contract with AWE, building their new facility for the next generation of weapon system to go on that submarine. On the Quasiline nuclear side, we've been very successful in Sellafield, building out a medium-term storage facility. All of those are strong nuclear credentials. They're all involving nuclear-capable build techniques and strategies. It really is there. If you want to participate in those programs, you've got to have suitably qualified, experienced people on those types of programs. On the civil nuclear program, which is Hinckley and Sizewell, Hinckley, we've been in partnership with BAM. Sizewell, they want us to join in our own capacity. We're bidding on Sizewell, and we've delivered probably over GBP 1 billion worth of work on Hinckley. We're not involved in the nuclear island. That's led by the French EDF Design and then Bouygues Build. That's entirely to be expected. That's the same consortium that builds these facilities in France, but we're heavily involved in all the ancillary infrastructure, which runs into many, many tens of billions of pounds. We're starting out in Sizewell, and we're well through on Hinckley. I think the other bit to add, Andrew, on nuclear is it's slow. What we are seeing is anything that's linked in terms of defense nuclear will go ahead of it. That's what we're seeing in terms of Devonport, in terms of Clyde, AWE. Yeah, the deterrent program is protected. Super, thank you very much. Perhaps if we move on to water, can you talk about the outlook in water, where your exposures are across different AMP cycles? Yeah, if you just go to, there's a slide, let's have a quick look, slide number 21. That's the one. Just to, someone's very kindly said it's Great Missenden to Southam. There you go. That's our HS2 track. Thank you, Andrew Bowens. If you look at slide 21, this is our water exposures. We've obviously bid as part of the AMP8 rebid like everyone else did. We had pre-existing relationships with Anglian in particular and South West Water. We did a lot of integrated maintenance with them. To a degree, we're indivisible from their teams in an alliance structure and their longstanding relationships. The AMP8 is really about, excuse me, recapitalizing the infrastructure as well. We've been heavily engaged by the water companies in their frameworks for new CapEx. The new clients we've got and won positions with are United Utilities, Wessex Water, and Southern Water. Now we've won positions of sort of circa GBP 15 billion in total on 17 frameworks in varying capacities. We've also re-energized frameworks with Severn Trent in particular, where a couple of years ago we were doing sort of single-digit millions of pounds' worth of work. Now we're probably moving to in excess of GBP 100 million, including the recently announced One Lip recapitalization in Leicestershire, GBP 140 million project. It gives you an indication of what the water companies are now committed to. Thames obviously have their own particular issues, but again, our relationship with Thames is quite intense. It goes all the way up to CEO level. I regularly talk to Chris Weston. Stu will take on that relationship. Simon's getting engaged with their financial people to make sure that we have appropriate terms given their circumstances at the moment. They have probably the biggest program of all of these water companies. What they've been doing is they've been moving towards tier one contractors, and Kier has positioned itself very carefully to be at the front of that queue and very successfully as well. We anticipate, given that the AMP8 revenues are double AMP7, that there's no reason our revenues in water won't double commensurate with that. We also anticipate that AMP8 will go into AMP9. These are long-term programs. They're talking about multi-year programs. We think it'll be maintained to production. This is a 10-year recapitalization program. We're in a very strong position in water, and we're mobilizing well. Super, thank you. You touched on Thames Water there, but there is a very specific question around, does exposure to Thames Water create a risk for the group, and how are you managing that? I mean, it's not that you can add to this, but you have a risk when you talk to everybody, and we always carry some WIP. You know, in any contract you will, you can't get paid on an hourly basis in that sort of sense. You'll have to agree, but the management of it is very tightly controlled. I don't know if you want to add anything, Simon, to that. Yeah, I think, Andrew, you're right, the whip, and we're typically, depending on what part of the month you're in, it's GBP 3 million to GBP 5 million. It really is in a box. We've been clear, I think, to Thames that, you know, we're happy to grow alongside them, but we're not happy to grow their exposure until they've sorted out their balance sheet issues. I understand that. We do. The other point is that in terms of any decisions about new work, it comes to the three of us to sign off. We have tight control over the business as well. That's very clear. Thank you. Perhaps this is a good place to put the question on labor here. Obviously, you've got a lot of growth coming through water. Operationally, how much of a challenge is it to find appropriately experienced labor? I think, you know, Kier's always been a very strong culture of training people. That predates my own tenure here, and I hope it postdates it as well. We've got circa 600 people in apprenticeships at any point in time. I personally sponsor the Senior Leader courses as well in the group where we train up our next generation of senior leaders and potentially even ExCo members as well. We've got over 10% people in sort of earn as you learn schemes, which is just fantastic. We've generally regarded the benchmark as 5%, so we're platinum standard in these things. We really are. Self-help on resourcing begins at home. That's our attitude to it. We take full benefit then of the apprentice levies, CITB levies, etc. We make sure we maximize our returns and those levies we're required to pay. I think, you know, pretty exemplary. I'm not going to particularly claim credit for this, but I will claim credit for continuing it. I think Kier's always had that reputation as a good employer of people. We also look after our people well, and the culture surveys which we do, given 80% positive engagement in our engagement indexes, that's fantastic performance right away across the group. We look after our supply chain very well. They obviously, you know, rock up 25,000 people circa a day, and they come to us for a variety of reasons, one of which is our attitude to their welfare, their safety, their health, and their welfare conditions on sites, etc. All these things add up to enabling us to mobilize contracts pretty effectively. Also, our geographic disposition means that we're not focused in one single area where there may be shortages. The fact that we have national coverage, in particular in construction, means that whilst we may have national frameworks, we operate locally. We think nationally, but we operate locally. That means that if you've got a strong pipeline, you advertise that strong pipeline, and you do all the things I said you do. You pay supply chain, you train your people, you look after you. It means you get good access to the premier labor markets in any particular area. We're not immune from any resource constraints, but I'd say I would argue that we manage it as well as anybody. Indeed, it's always there as a risk, but I would not, you know, sometimes you listen to other industry parties and we don't experience it. We just don't. No, I'll just add two other points. One, the ability for us to pivot our human capital across the sectors. Finally, we don't overtrade. We are very confident we have the skills and capability and the relationships, as Andrew set out, to deliver the GBP 11 billion order book. That's another reason why we don't just win any work at any cost, because we're very confident in terms of we need to make sure that we've got the backup skills and the capability to do it. The other bit that we have that we haven't really touched on yet is our in-house design capability. We've got 700 designers. Andrew, I don't know if you picked up the point that we're now sort of the 23rd largest consultant in the country in terms of design house. That allows us to de-risk these projects so that we can be very efficient with the use of the resources on the job, which definitely helps us. Great, thank you very much. We've got a few questions here on property, but perhaps if we start with a wider one. Can you talk about the approach to property, please? How does it fit in the group? What are the aspirations and how long will it take to get there? Simon, do you want to take that one? Yeah, absolutely. Property are very synergistic with the group. I'll just explain the business model a little bit. There's some really good documentation from our capital markets study that we did a few months ago. If people want to go through that, that's got some real-life examples in it. Property, we focused on three sectors. We look at mixed-use urban regeneration that we do in partnerships with our existing customers and their existing clients and our other businesses. We look at last mile logistics and we look at environmental offices. Three sectors that we focus on so we don't bundle up. It's not a traditional property development model. We typically only deploy small amounts of capital per project in order to keep the portfolio very liquid. You shouldn't think of it as large lumpy investments. You should think of it on average between GBP 4 million and GBP 6 million investments in between 30 and 50 projects that are running at any one moment in time. The model is a three-year model, really. We don't hold assets. We will get control of the land, and I'll explain a little bit more about that in a minute. We will then change of use, get planning permission, build out, find tenants, and then sell the property. That's typically where we take the revenue and the profit of the project. In terms of gaining access to land, this is where the synergistic model comes in. Commercially, we're working in joint venture predominantly with the customers in our businesses. Local authorities that want to redevelop a town center, as an example, the Department for Transport, Network Rail, where they want to free up space and/or renew, regenerate a train station would be a good example. They want to fund that, and they can fund that by using the land. We build a car park. We put some residential properties on it. They get a benefit like that. They will put the land in, and we don't pay for the land until the project makes a certain return. It's a very capital-light model. Of course, they love that. Great commercial synergies. Operational synergies are clear there. If you're redeveloping a town center, redeveloping a train station, obviously, a road might be part of that project. A building might be part of that project. Working on the rail. We can bring our design, our operational capabilities to either self-deliver or keep a delivery partner honest. Finally, there's a financial synergy. Our contracting businesses typically will get paid in 15 days by the customer and will pay our supply chain in just over 30 days. We get, as we grow, a working capital inflow. Clearly, on a project-by-project basis, that working capital inflow is going to flow out again at the end of the project. Cash and profit equal the same number. If you're continually growing, you obviously continue to get this working capital inflow, which you'll have seen from our cash flow statement. We can take that capital, which is effectively free capital, and deploy it into our property business, so invest it in that. It hampers returns. If you should shrink at any one moment in time, you can extract some of that capital and use it to satisfy any working capital outflow. In terms of numbers, which I think was also part of the question, we've just come through a period where we're capital constrained. That took the capital employed in the business down to GBP 122 million. That meant for five years, we'd effectively sold eight projects and acquired just two on average per year. The portfolio was too small, so it wasn't liquid enough to generate 15% return every single year on a consistent basis. We said we've got to recapitalize this business. We need GBP 170 million to have enough projects to consistently deliver 15% return on capital employed. We want to allocate another GBP 55 million, so going up to GBP 225 million, so we can extract some capital should we ever shrink in any one period going forward. We're currently at GBP 198 million capital employed. Most of the work from getting from that low point of GBP 122 million- GBP 198 million is behind us. You saw last year we made GBP 12 million operating profit. Clearly, that's not a 15% return on capital of GBP 200 million. Over the next couple of years, this is going to be a great driver to profit growth. We anticipate exiting FY 2027 at that 15% return on capital employed. We'll see that coming through in 2028. The other point for the future, Simon, is that we have previous experience of PFI funding and contractual experience that sits in that property division. At some point, I can see that the government's going to have to come up with a solution in terms of how it's going to fund its aspirations. We're particularly well set that we have that capability in-house. We do have access to either our own funding or external funding we can bring in. We then have the ability to build and maintain anything that could come through that opportunity. It gives us another potential revenue stream in the future. Great, thank you. There are three questions around different sites, perhaps, or different aspects of the business. The first one is, could you talk about the development JV to intensify the uses around railway stations, please? Yeah. You want to? I can give you a chance. We can all do that one. Yeah, I mean, here goes, Simon. Okay, yeah, I mean, yeah, fantastic JV with Network Rail. It's called Solum. Yeah, a good example would be Twickenham Railway Station, where effectively we've built a multi-story car park. You don't need so much parking. We've then done residential, and those residential apartments have effectively paid for a brand new station. That's a typical model. I think Network Rail and, of course, the Department for Transport would want to follow. They've got lots and lots of land that's there. Of course, there's targets in terms of house building as well. Stuart, did you want to add something? I'd say in terms of Solum's delivered over 1,200 units to date, and Network Rail is setting up an in-house development company called Platform 4, which has an aspiration to build out 40,000 new homes over the next 10 years. As Simon said, quite often these are complicated sites with adjacencies, and that's where our civil engineering capability really helps them to unlock the value of these areas around either stations or just adjacent to tracks. Great, thank you. The next question is, can you talk about the Watford scheme a little bit, please? Yeah, Watford's a great scheme. This is in our capital markets that actually give, it was nice to be able to detail that project. This is a huge area redeveloping part of Watford Town Centre. It's got an old people's home, a car park, a road as part of it, potentially some work on the hospital, and a lot of residential units as well. That sat, and it was in total over GBP 500 million gross development value. You would think there's a huge amount of capital that you have to put into that, but if you actually look at how we do it and we build it out in stages, the maximum capital we ever deployed into that was GBP 12.5 million. On average, it was GBP 6 million, and the IRR we've made so far across that project is 25%. Just the other bit on that, Simon, is that because we're not just a house builder, when we have schemes like the JV we have with Watford, we can help them also if they need care home, hospitals, commercial units, industrial units. We can give them the full spectrum of assets they're looking for, which is why quite often they prefer working with us rather than a traditional house builder. The other thing, I mean, it's a great example, Stuart, as well there. Jarvis Homes actually went bankrupt, didn't they, in the middle of us building out the residential properties. Our construction business stepped in and continued that build. Any other property developer would have been completely stuck. Great, thank you. The last slight specific one, which is, do you still own Tempsford, and are you involved in plans for the new town there? We do, and I doubt we will be. Excellent, thank you. The last one I have at the moment on property is in the property business, how are you finding the market to sell completed assets into at the moment? Yeah, great question. It's been a bit of a sticky market for a long time, to be honest. I guess we're kind of used to it. Having said that, because of our model, I think we've got pretty good visibility. If you noticed, last financial year, there was quite a material step up to the number of transactions in the prior year. While it's not the best market, that's not giving us any concerns about hitting our objective about getting to 15% return on capital employed by FY 2028. I'd say that sticky market, we've been buying, so we've been buyers during that market, recapitalizing it. We've probably rode the cycle very well. Simon, just to give them some foresight of the work we've got, how much has got planning approval at the moment? Yeah, we've got GBP 3 billion gross development value, unbelievably, with access to that. Of that, 60% has got planning permission already. I think in 18 months, we'll have about 80% planning permission. We are in really good shape to deploy that capital at the best moment in time on the right project. Great, thank you very much. There's a number of financial questions coming up, but perhaps the last one that would be useful just now is, to what extent are you adopting AI? Will AI application provide material contribution to margins above 4%? Yeah, another great question. We're using it a reasonable amount already. We're using the back office. We've got robots that do automated processing. I don't think we're using it that extensively on the sort of front of house at the moment, which is where perhaps the biggest opportunities are. You would expect a reasonable amount of costs to come out of that. Obviously, it can be used in design. It could be applied to how you actually build out the project, where you're building it. The computer's building it for you and managing your logistics, all the material flow, looking at health and safety and bottlenecks. Eventually, you'll probably have Tesla robots helping you build it. There's a massive opportunity going forward with sort of AI and data developments. However, in terms of increasing your margin, I'd expect others will be able to adopt that. We haven't got any intellectual property, no doubt, in that IP, in that sort of AI IP. We're not Microsoft. We're not ChatGPT, unfortunately. It's going to be probably quite difficult, but that'll meaningfully increase your margins compared to competition, as of course they'll adopt it as well. Having said that, if you could stay one step ahead, maybe it does create a small tailwind to the margin as we go forward. Great, thank you very much. The next question is, tremendous progress on the balance sheet. Looking forward, what feels like the optimal level of cash to carry? Yeah, if you look, I mean, Andrew looked at slides, you know, flashed up slide 12, didn't they? That's trying to give a big strong message, really. You know, we've got 90% of this year's revenue covered and approximately 15% of revenue doesn't touch the order book. We've effectively got full visibility on this year and 70% on the next year. The frameworks show us the size of our addressable market. You can see whether that market's increasing or decreasing over the next five years. That means a working capital outflow is very unlikely over the next five years. We've obviously, we're getting to that GBP 225 million and that GBP 225 million in property means you can extract a reasonable amount of money and still deliver 15% return on capital employed. Really, we think plus minus zero is absolutely perfect. You've got capital that you've deployed into property that you could extract and you've also got, we've got a quarter of a billion pounds, so GBP 250 million bond and the bond market is very happy with us, so probably a little bit too happy, which gives us potentially another opportunity. We've got a very supportive bank that's given us a GBP 150 million revolving credit facility. We've got lots of liquidity. We've got assets on the balance sheet where we can extract capital if needed. We're not going to have to need to put hundreds of millions of pounds of cash on the balance sheet as some of our peers do. If you look at the peers, most of them are different. One of them needs, it's got about GBP 600 million of sort of like cash, which they can't pull, so they need to fund that. Another big competitor would have a fit-out business where you've only got five months visibility, and that's probably half of their business. Other competitors would be too small to really access the debt capital markets in a meaningful way. A GBP 250 million sterling bond is probably the minimum you need to access that market efficiently. Great, thank you very much. There are a couple of questions effectively around capital allocation. I don't know if perhaps you can talk about your capital allocation framework, and in particular around shareholder returns and how you think about the balance of dividends versus buybacks in the first instance. Yeah, so our capital allocation is on slide 17. If people have got access to the deck, our CapEx is always number one in the list, but it's a very capital-light business model. Our business model, most of the CapEx goes on what we were talking about, just like AI, data, digital solutions that we can help provide solutions to the client in a more efficient and effective way. You've then got our dividend. Andrew touched on it earlier. We've increased that this year, so we're at our targeted cover of three times through the cycle. That's great to have ticked that box. Three times is still very cautious. I expect as we look at our capital allocation policy going forward, we continue to generate cash. It continues to evolve. There will no doubt be downward pressure on that cover number. The higher your share price is rated, the more that I think that pressure will come through. You've got property. We've talked about that. It's a core part of the business model, and it's really related to your contracted businesses. If your contracted businesses grow, then you're probably going to allocate a little bit more capital to your property business because there's more of a risk that you could shrink and have a working capital outflow. You've got M&A. It's not a core part of the strategy. We don't need to do M&A to deliver our strategy, but we'll be opportunistic. We're bolt-ons, as we were with Buckingham, which was a great success, recent success. Very well integrated and proved out that our teams can negotiate diligence and integrate what, albeit a small acquisition value, GBP 9 million, was actually quite a reasonable sized business, GBP 150 million turnover. Finally, we started share buybacks in January. We've got GBP 20 million away there. We're about halfway through that share buyback. GBP 10 million left to complete. We're aiming to complete that by the end of December. Clearly, as we're continuing to generate cash, if there's no sort of bolt-on opportunities, we've done most of the investment in property. I think there is the opportunity there for a further buyback. Clearly, if we've re-rated and the ratings increase, then you're looking at, well, okay, is it further buybacks or is there more pressure on the dividend and increasing the dividend by reducing that cover, which is very cautious. Great, thank you very much. Another question on buybacks, which is, why are the shares purchased through the buyback program being held in treasury as opposed to being cancelled? It's, we obviously, if you're going to grow and you need to issue shares, it'd be pointless cancelling them and issuing them. It's just a very efficient way of storing them. Also, we do issue shares, we do need shares for share sale and share buybacks, and it doesn't necessarily match evenly. It's very difficult to balance your buying on the exact same day because of moments as the time you need those shares. It just gives you that flexibility to move the share count up and down a little bit, that's all. In terms of your earnings per share, shares in treasury do come off your weighted average share carry. That's important to realize. It doesn't impact your NPS. Exactly. Great, thank you. There are a couple of questions here which I'll push together, which is, can you talk about the benefits the board attaches to being a public company? If the company were private, how do you think the government would view that as opposed to being a public company? It gives you access to capital markets, which has been fairly crucial in delivering our strategy, point one. Point two, the government sees it as entirely negative. Great, thank you. The last question I think we're going to have time for before we wrap up is the year started slightly ahead. Where have you seen the positive surprises, sir? Yeah, I think the positive surprises, Robert, if you look at property, for one, I don't think the market had listened to us or believed us necessarily. You could see in our results that we presented that confidence coming through in the actual result. You know, we can see that this year should build further on that. Firstly, property, and then how the water growth is coming through. That water of Severn Trent's a perfect example. If you go back 18 months, we were running at less, you know, single-digit millions turnover per annum with that client. We're now running at a run rate of about GBP 100 million per annum. To deliver that kind of growth and mobilize that and do it so well, you know, that's giving us quite a lot of confidence too. Super. That concludes the Q&A. I don't know if I can come back to any for any concluding remarks before we wrap up. Thank you, Robert. No, and thank you everyone for coming on and being so supportive over these last few years of our strategy. It's hugely appreciated, and it's good to see now the value really is beginning to come through in the shares. What we've delivered over the last four or five years is that consistent performance. When you put that performance and operational performance together with what we see as the strong market positions that Kier Group plc has with its government and regulated and private sector, we see that opportunity to continue in the future as well. The management team is strong in this company. We spend a lot of time and energy making sure that we do have a good pipeline of management. I'm delighted that we're handing over the company in good shape to Stuart to be CEO, and Simon doing in his role as CFO as well. Those are really the concluding headlines. Once again, thank you all for your support over the years. Super, thank you very much. There was one technical question we didn't answer. We have a note to that, and we'll come back to you directly on that. Otherwise, thank you to the team. Thank you to everyone who attended, and for your questions. There is a short questionnaire as you exit the call, and we'd really appreciate it if you were able to take the time to fill that in. The last thing to say is a date for your diary, which is there is a provisional date for a trading update on the 13th of November, along with the AGM. That concludes the call today. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you all.