Good morning, everybody. This is the Porvair plc preliminary results presentation for the year ending the 30th of November, 2022. I am Ben Stocks, Chief Executive. James Mills, Finance Director is also on the call. We're gonna just turn the pages of the presentation that you were all able to see and is on our website. We will go through the financial presentation. Also on the website is the 2022 ESG report, which we published simultaneously with the results, and we'll touch on some of the main aspects of that in the presentation. I'm just gonna turn the pages now, starting on page two with a summary. No change to our strategy. I will talk a bit about that in a moment. We are a specialist filtration Laboratory, environmental technology business. In the year ending 30th of November, 2022, you see in that middle box a set of results. Decent set of results with revenues up 18%, net cash at the year-end of just over GBP 18 million. We also always put on this slide our five, 10, and 15 year record. This is a set of results that's a little ahead of trend, and we will talk a little bit about that and where we think the future will be towards the end. A relatively consistent five, 10, and 15 year record for the group. Couple of slides on what we make and to whom we sell. On slide three, really once you understand this, you understand the whole group. We make regularly replaced engineered products. We clean processes, we contain emissions, we prepare samples, we analyze impurities. These sorts of lines of work have very attractive business characteristics, which you see at the bottom there. We tend to be a niche manufacturer of products with long life cycles. I'll come to the demand drivers in just a minute. The sorts of products we make have relatively straightforward and clear barriers to entry, either engineering design or quality accreditation. About a third of what we make is patented, but actually it's quality accreditation that is probably the best barrier to entry. We try and position the group to take advantage of really well understood global growth trends. We list most of those out in the top right-hand box of this slide. They are important. They're particularly important in volatile trading conditions, and we've seen a few of those in 2022 and into 2023. We talk about them in some detail in the ESG report, because looking further ahead and getting the group positioned right to take advantage of some of those growth trends is really the key to the management task. That slide is really fundamental to how we think about the business and how we try and position it going forward. On slide four, in a little bit more detail, the market position. We have three divisions, and you see them color-coded here. You also see the share of the revenues, the sort of regulation, which is very helpful in terms of barriers to entry and the growth drivers that we alluded to on the previous slide. Market growth rates ebb and flow a bit, but you see some relatively up-to-date numbers there. These are on the whole GDP plus growth markets, which is helpful and perhaps goes some way to explain our long-term growth. Perhaps half of our long-term growth comes from the markets that we're in, which means that we have to produce the other through either organic or acquired growth. We'll come to that in just a moment. What all the businesses have in common is at the bottom of that slide. This is the sort of line of work where if you have an install base or you are the incumbent, it tends to be more difficult to get knocked off. This is not the sort of line of work where market share gains ebb and flow very much. It is the sort of line of work where you have to engineer your way to a better product and win work that way. Loosely in aerospace, we have about 15,000 aerospace products. We're capable of filtering from 5,000 microns to 0.1 micron. There are typically 200 Porvair parts on most Airbuses, certainly the A320 family and the 737 family, which of course is where commercial aerospace, you know, the volume is. We might be supplying those 200 parts through 10 or 12 tier one customers. In Laboratory splits two ways into Laboratory consumables and SEAL Analytical, which is water analysis. We have about 35% or 40% share of the market that measures inorganic contamination in water. In Metal Melt Quality, we have at least 50% of the world's can stock filtration, which is beverage cans, and higher than that of the filtration of the world's turbine blades. Perhaps as much as 80%. We've got some good niche positions in the markets in which we operate, and that's how they split. Slide five. Slide five and six really are a pair of slides, strategy and education. Strategy slide hasn't changed since 2004. The same strategic purpose, same principle measures of success. Then what that means is, on the right-hand side, trying to find regulated markets with long-term growth prospects. We've just gone through those. Customer-led product development, we'll talk a little bit about that in a moment. Then we allocate the cash primarily to organic growth, acquisitions when sensible, properly priced and available, and a progressive dividend. We've announced a dividend increase this morning. The strategy doesn't change, but the execution on slide 6 definitely does. That, perhaps where we should spend a bit more time, because execution changes with conditions. The conditions or the key themes of 2022 in green there, really three main things to deal with. First of all, inflation and supply chain disruption. We've been talking about that, six, 12 and 18 months ago. I'll come onto that in just a minute. As a result of supply chain disruption, generally speaking, strong order books through most of 2022. Although towards the end and currently we do see diminishing lead times. Six months ago we were saying, don't be fooled by very high order books, because if you've got double your order book and double your lead time, you are in effect in the same position. We can see lead time starting to diminish in a number of areas now, and that requires a flexible and more responsive approach. Then those two things have been volatile in the last 12 months, then the thing that you have to continue with in a sort of more steadfast manner is consistent investment in productivity, NPD and people, and I'll come on to that. If we take the first two, inflation, supply chain and the order book on the bottom left-hand side. Inflation first of all. 12 months ago, clearly primary inflation, that's to say goods inflation, running at about 10% at that time. As the year has progressed, that has fed through to secondary wage inflation. That has required price increases, costs passed through, and to some extent because wage inflation tends to come, in our case anyway, on January 1st of the new year, anticipatory price and margin management to make sure that a much larger than normal wage bill is covered ahead of time. When James comes to talk to you about margins in the various divisions and upgrading the year-end numbers towards the end of the year, that is largely because we have been more successful than perhaps we anticipated in getting anticipatory price increases through ahead of a wage bill that will go up by around GBP two and a quarter million on from January 1st in 2023. Inflation is the first thing to deal with. Supply dislocation, very, very difficult at the start of 2022. It is getting better in most cases. It has required pretty agile inventory management and a fair amount of luck, if we're honest. Lots of our suppliers and customers have been unlucky. A particular component that they haven't been able to source has shut down products or lines or in some cases factories. We've been fortunate to avoid that. As supply dislocation diminishes, so do safety stocks, so does safety inventory. Looking ahead to 2023, which we'll come to, how that plays out will be an interesting and challenging thing to manage in the next few months. That feeds into the third point here of order books. High overall, still very high orders I must say, but with lead times reverting. That means that we need to be more flexible on plant scheduling. In all of that, Porvair's devolved management structure is very helpful. Just to remind you, head office is James and I, we have three divisional managers and then 16 general managers. It is those 16 general managers who make most of the day-to-day decisions and certainly most of the margin management decisions and inventory decisions. Because they are so much closer to their markets than we are, that has, I think, been one of the reasons that we've sort of navigated these difficult times relatively successfully. Slight change in execution there in the year. In terms of consistent investment, well, that hasn't changed. GBP 5.9 million of CapEx, just over GBP 17 million over three years. It really ended in three areas, particularly productivity in Aerospace & Industrial. We've put in a lot of equipment for capacity and productivity reasons. In Laboratory it's been more about investing in new product development and to some extent process efficiency. Metal Melt Quality, about training and people. We continue to invest in all of those areas. I'm gonna talk a little bit about MGD and people in the ESG slide. Moving on from that, from slide six to slide seven, this is a slight change in our deck. I thought you might be interested to see just some of the things that we've been doing this year. These are simply some of the more eye-catching. They don't necessarily have a big effect on the numbers. I thought you'd be interested to know that we do a fair amount of rocket filters on the Merlin 1D, fuel filters on SpaceX, and the fuel injection system on the Vulcan Centaur launch rocket for Blue Origin. Relatively small in terms of volume, but fascinating in terms of engineering. Also in Industrial, we are doing the vacuum vessel heat transfer filters for ITER, which is the multi-country fusion project in the south of France. Very interesting stuff. Very high temperature, tokamak fusion system requiring very clever heat transfer, and we're involved in that. That's a reasonably large project and engineering, very interesting. Above that, cell image, cell imagery plates, some of our genetic work, new plates that enable cells to be photographed as they grow, looks to be a promising line of work. I've just mentioned about 90 billion beverage cans go through Porvair filters every year. It's actually, we think, perhaps a little higher than that, but we wanted to be conservative. Just something around half of all the beverage cans in the world, we filter. Finally, a new product for SEAL, which has gone particularly well, which is a high throughput, low detection limit, automated water analysis instrument and the consumables that go with it. It's been an interesting year. 12 months ago we said, you know, these the recession has been a good time to bring new products forward, and these are some of the things that we've been working on. I'm gonna pause at that point and let James take over with some numbers. Thank you, Ben, and good morning to you all. Turning the slide then to the financial summary on slide eight, which summarizes the performance for this year. You can see here top left, our revenue is up 18% on the prior year. If you look across the top of the slide here, we've had relatively evenly spread strong revenue growth across all of our divisions. As usual, I'll come back to regional performance in a minute just to add a bit more color. Bottom left, adjusted PBT is up 31% to GBP 19.4 million. The adjusted EPS up 32%. Margin ahead of the PBT growth to 33.2 pence. Top of here, we've got finished the year with GBP rating million of cash and a pretty strong balance sheet going into 2023. Turning our cost to slide nine. Once again, the numbers we are presenting this morning are the adjusted results only. Details of the adjusting items can be found in note one to the announcement this morning. Revenue growth of 18% has delivered GBP 172.6 million, versus GBP 146.3 million the prior year, with the growth coming from increased volumes, increased prices, and also this year, foreign exchange tailwinds and the revenue on a constant currency basis is up 13%. On the 18% revenue growth, operating profit has grown 29% to GBP 20.5 million, with a margin of 11.9% up on the 10.9% we reported this time last year. With all of our businesses working hard this year to manage the effects of inflation, margin performance has been flattered to an extent by the price increases going in often ahead of the anticipated cost increases they're handling. Ben Stocks has talked a bit about that, and that was particularly the case in Q4 of this year. The US businesses around group represent over half of the group's revenue as well. We've experienced foreign exchange tailwinds on the retranslation of our US dollar performance, which gathered pace to certainly the second half of the year. We estimate that the FOREX upside in operating profit is around GBP 1.4 million. At our constant currency conversion, operating profit would have been around GBP 19 million rather than the reported GBP 20.5 million. The effective rate of tax decreased a little from the 26% that we had in the prior year to 21%. At the bottom of the slide, you see the adjusted EPS of GBP 0.332, being an increase of 36% up on the GBP 0.252 for the prior year. Moving across then to slide 10 and simplifying cash flow and just picking up on some of the headlines for the year. Cash generated from operations was at GBP 22.8 million, increased broadly in line with operating profit. We had a working capital outflow within that of GBP 2.7 million you can see here. Despite the strong revenue growth, our receivables increased by just GBP 2 million, and the working capital disciplines in the businesses supported the investment in the inventory where necessary and where appropriate to shore up the security supply and sometimes as well to get a little ahead of the cost increase curve that we were seeing. We paid a further GBP 1 million in contingent consideration on the K-Bio acquisition, which as you will recall, completed in February 2021. As a reminder, we have a further and final GBP 1 million contingent consideration on K-Bio meeting the profit target for the year ending 31st of March 2023, and that amount remains accrued on our balance sheet at the end of the year. We've had a busy year on CapEx projects and invested GBP 4.9 million across the group in automation, productivity, and expanding capacity. GBP 4 million-GBP 5 million a year on CapEx projects is typically what the group is capable of delivering. Borrowings were reduced by GBP 5 million, and as a result, we finished the year with no borrowings on the balance sheet. We paid GBP 2.5 million in dividends. In line with the group's progressive dividend policy, the board is recommending a final dividend of 3.8 pence, which will take the full year dividend to 5.7 pence, ending with growth of 7.5% on the prior year. Right at the bottom here, you can see closing cash was at GBP 23, up GBP 8.1 on this time last year. These liabilities which form part of our reported net debt. Just before I leave this slide, by way of an update, we completed the triannual actuarial valuation of the year for our UK defined benefit pension plan. As a result of that process, we have agreed to increase deficit recovery payments into the scheme from the GBP 1.6 million number that we were paying to GBP 2.1 million, which started in December of 2022. All right, moving across to slide 11, which summarizes the divisional performance and moving from left to right. Aerospace & Industrial revenue of GBP 64.7 million, up 16% prior year, up 13% on a constant currency basis, but with profit up 64% year on year, GBP 7.2 million. We've got growth across aero, nuclear, and microelectronics, with aero up 19% on last year. It's still not back to where we were sort of pre-pandemic. The Petrochem business was down year on year, not unexpected, as it was in this business can be fairly lumpy. We expect a PMN final quarter, and the entry point into next year is brighter certainly than it was coming into this. As Ben has talked a bit about this division's had a pretty busy year on CapEx projects, particularly in the U.K., and all of this coming together supported the margin moving back into double digits at 11.1%, which is towards the pre-pandemic levels and the target level actually up to 15%. Moving across to Laboratory, revenue of GBP 62.7 million, up 18% from prior year and 14% on a constant currency basis. CE-EM has had another record year of sales, which included the new product sale of the AG700, which was the picture that Ben just referred to on the earlier slide. It's exceeded expectations and continues to be well received in the market. In-situ buyers performed well. Again, demand settling back a little, and consumable sales across the division were strong. It's K-Bio in the lab consumables, which typically benefit from the US routes to market offered by our Finneran business in environment. [inaudible] also benefited from CapEx investment this time into capacity, tooling, and productivity. The operating profit margin of 16.4% has settled back a little from the 18% last year and more towards the target range of 15% plus, with COVID-related demand softening as expected and more normal product mix to the town. Finally moving across to Metal Melt Quality, revenue of GBP 45.2 million, up 21% on the prior year or 11% on a constant currency basis. Performance was supported by the aluminum markets, which remained consistently strong last year, increasing demand for the aero-related filters from metal melts. Despite what was a tricky year given local circumstances, the China business remained profitable, which was helpful. We've mentioned before that the adjusted operating profit margin in Metal Melt has been flattered in recent times by lower selling and other costs than was the case pre-pandemic, and these are now rightly starting to return into the business. With all of that, the resulting margin of 12.6% is down a little from the 13.6% last year. A little above the target range for the division, which we think is around 10%-12%. Now back to you, Ben. All right. Couple of final slides. Slide 12. ESG, very important. Lots to say on it, although we're gonna skip over it for this call. I think we publish full reports separately and contemporaneously with the financial results to illustrate how seriously we take it. You can see the results of the metrics that we publish there. There's two or three things we've done differently this year. First of all the management team have ESG metrics in their bonus. Secondly, we've introduced a quit rate, which we think is an interesting proxy, only a proxy, but a proxy for employee engagement and employee satisfaction. Our quit rate is 12.2%, median across the plant is 7.1%. I think we can. You know, there's improvements to be made there. That's not bad, we can do better. I think the main thing about this report is that we have updated, there's a central paper in it, which is as the world moves through energy transition and other sort of mega trends, how are our businesses affected and what do we do about that? I won't go through that now. It's in our view, it's worth a read. It is absolutely the heart of our strategic thinking, what businesses we wanna be in, what we wanna do with the businesses that are gonna be more challenged, et cetera, et cetera. I think a useful strategic exercise. The final slide, which is slide 13, is the outlook or summary of the outlook. Summary is a better set of results than we expected. Above growth trend rates, flattered to some extent by currency and benefiting from anticipatory price increases and very close margin management, and helped by underlying growth drivers which really haven't changed and continue to support the underlying growth of the business. A strong balance sheet. We almost got an acquisition. We say in the notes we almost got an acquisition where eventually we pulled out of it for various reasons to do with culture and values. A stronger balance sheet than we expected and, you know, plenty of firepower if if we can find the right sort of acquisition or indeed internal investments. To the outlook, which of course I understand that is mostly what you're interested in. There are a number of things to say, and we're trying to strike a sort of balance. Healthy. They came into the year high, and they remain high, and they will be supported by a number of things. Aerospace's order book is good for the full year. Petrochemical is looking very good for the full year. We've mentioned some of the new products that are gonna certainly help in 2023 and so on. There are some headwinds, and at the 13th of January, it seems sensible to strike a note of caution. They are lead times diminishing, and the risk of destocking events segment by segment. They are inflation carrying away some of the margins that we've painstakingly built up for that very reason. There's just wider economic uncertainty related to higher interest rates across the industrial world. There are also some currency headwinds, of course, or likely. The outlook statement is trying to say, we don't know. We're not that bothered, but we don't know what 2023 is gonna be like. It's almost certainly not gonna be as good in terms of growth as 2022, but at this stage it's a bit too early to call it. What do we know? Well, we know we're gonna continue with consistent investments across the business. We're actually very optimistic for the future. Our 5, 10, and 15 year record speaks for itself. We're not really too bothered about the near term, but we do see this period of volatility, which has been really going on probably since the end of 2021, continuing certainly through the first half of 2023. We'll be fine, we think a balanced outlook is probably the right one at this stage with, yeah, further announcements in April, June, and September to come. That's us for the time being. If there are any questions, we would be very happy to answer them. Thank you, Ben. Just as a reminder, to all those listening in the audio cast, if you do have a question, please do submit it via the question button on your audio cast screen. Just a first question. Are there any particular challenges that you could see over the next five years? On a 5-year view, yeah, We talk about these actually in the ESG report. Where are we, you know, where do we think we're, we are, we are challenged and we think work associated with internal combustion engines, around 5% of group revenues, you know, we wouldn't see them necessarily growing. Work associated with certain plastics and chemicals, certain fossil-based olefins, aromatics, and polymers, again about 5% of group revenues. The outlook for aviation, we think is mixed on a longer term view. We think air travel is expected to grow, due to tourism and all the industry things, tourism, family ties and so on. The industry's carbon footprint will remain a problem. That probably will, in the near term, require a move to synthetic air fuel, which we think, it will, you know, it's still a liquid fuel, so we think we'll be all right. There will be some challenges in changing technology to that. There are some challenges. They are more than offset, I must say, by the opportunities that energy transitions brings us. Those are the particular areas that we are thinking about. Okay. Thank you very much, Ben. We have a question from Andrew Shepherd-Barron down at Peel Hunt. He asks, "On M&A, your cash pile is building, KBIO looks to be maxing out as the first consideration. How much do you feel you can comfortably spend? Have multiples changed? Has what you were looking for changed in any way? In what area was the deal that you did not complete? Okay. In reverse order. The deal that didn't complete was in industrial filtration, petrochemical filtration. The right thing for us. This is a business where in the end we felt we probably would fall out with the vendor, so, you know, that was that. In terms of how much we've got to spend, well, there's about GBP 18 million on the balance sheet, give or take. We've said before, we're very comfortable to at least one times EBITDA in terms of borrowing. That's perhaps another GBP 18 million or GBP 20 million, something of that nature. Somewhere around GBP 30 million-GBP 35 million we could spend without too much difficulty. That should be more than enough for the sorts of deals that, you know, we are likely to contemplate. In terms of valuations and have they come down, we haven't got any deals, you know, really cooking, so it's quite difficult to judge that. What clearly is happening is that higher interest rates are making private equity buyers more gun-shy than they ordinarily are, and that is to the benefit of trade buyers like us. There is more activity than would ordinarily be the case, but that doesn't mean that these are necessarily good businesses at a reasonable price. There's more going on for sure. You know, I would be disappointed if we didn't acquire something in 2023. I've got to tell you, I said exactly that in 2022, you know, we're trying. First one, would you be able to give us some understanding of the split of Aerospace & Industrial by revenue, and operating profit in full year 2022? Yes, James might need a couple of minutes just to get his slides all out. What was the second question? Kind of the follow on was, and what do you believe, a normalized split may be? Between Aero and Industrial? Yeah. James, we have to think on our feet. Good question, mate. Yes. I mean, let me just cover the Aero part. Maybe if I understand in terms of Aero is the total proportion of the group. you know, in years gone by, it's been sort of mid, maybe 15% or so. We're, we're probably low double digits in the current year. It's dropped back a bit, still haven't sort of recovered to where we were pre-pandemic. It's a, it's a lower proportion of the group than perhaps it was in 2019. The other one was on Industrial. A bit more difficult to say. I think, across the group. Just one other thing. Should we come back to this then? Yeah. I feel like I add up three different columns, yeah. Yeah. All right. All right, George, what else you got? The second question was, which may have already been covered. The balance sheet is solid, and the environment should be more conducive to M&A. Can you highlight any segments or geographies you may be targeting? Yes. We are in Aerospace & Industrial, mainly industrial, 'cause aerospace is so consolidated. Industrial, we are underweight in Europe, specifically Northern Europe, and we are working quite hard there. Then, you know, Laboratory is the fastest growing part of the group. It's a relatively fragmented market, and we think both in Europe and in the U.S., there are opportunities to be found in Laboratory. At Metal Melt, there are some opportunities, but they're, you know, they're sort of very clear who they are and where they live, and it's very unlikely that they will come up for sale. We don't need to spend so much time looking there. If anything happened, then we might think about acting 'cause the margins now are pretty good, but that's the least likely of the three. Thank you. Okay. I'll sort of just drop back. That's probably around 10% of group revenues. Perfect. Okay, some final last from Investec has three questions here. Firstly, in terms of pricing power, the A&I division benefited from the volume and pricing effect. Did any other divisions benefit from pricing effects, or even come under pricing pressure? Everybody came under pricing pressure. Or sorry. Let's go back. Everyone came under cost pressure from very early on in the year, all three divisions. They dealt with it in different ways. I think the least number of price increases that we've put through anywhere were four in 12 months. And the most, I think it was one of the units was done seven price increases. Now, you know, these are. This is not. Not everybody gets the same pricing piece at the same time. People might be on a contract or what have you. It's been very, very active right the way across the business and which you can probably see it more easily in Aerospace & Industrial, it has definitely been there everywhere. Okay, thank you. The second question is on margins. Do you think the group can achieve margins in the region of 13%-14% over the next two to three years with the current investments in automation and productivity? Specifically, in the Metal Melt division, can those 12.5% margins be sustained? I'll let James answer the margins for the full group. In terms of Metal Melt, yeah, we think so. I mean, I, it, Metal Melt, life's been so volatile for so long, it's, you know, one sort of forgets. Metal Melt, it can ebb and flow. The aluminum cycle, you know, aluminum consumption grows steadily, but it, but it, but it can be volatile because of, you know, various things to do with, you know, LME stocks and so on. Metal Melt, we, you know, we'll have good years and not so good years. Over the cycle, yes, we think 12.5% is sustainable for sure. It's got more and more efficient, that business. The proportion of it that is to do with turbine blades, which is higher margin, is growing so that you get a mix effect. What really drives it is the move of aluminum into beverage cans and transportation, specifically electric vehicles, but also to some extent aviation. Those tend to be higher grade aluminum alloys, and they require better filtration. There are sort of fundamental drivers which will support margin growth over time in Metal Melt. In terms of the group, James, what would you say? It depends, isn't it? I think if Aero returns and if Metal Melt continues Margin, if we have volume across the group, then perhaps. It requires everything to be, you know, firing on all cylinders to deliver those sorts of margins over that sort of time. It's certainly not something we're relying on. We think the margins this year are flattered by, as we talked about, the price increases coming in ahead of the cost Q4. We expect those to settle. You know, the group margins to settle back a bit for next year. It really requires everything to be humming for all across the group to get anywhere near those sorts of margins. Okay. Thank you, James. The final one is, [inaudible] is on acquisitions. In relation to the Laboratory division, would you look to add in the water standard space or laboratory consumables? Would you be able to add any color around this? Basically to have strong environmental tailwinds outlined in your ESG report. Yeah, that's easy. The Laboratory consumables is a much more fragmented market than water analysis, which is pretty well consolidated. We are more likely to find acquisitions in consumables than in SEAL Analytical. That's not to say there aren't opportunities in SEAL, but they are. There are fewer in number. Okay, perfect. Thank you. We have another question here, from Gavin Lesnor at [inaudible]. Can you quantify this year's order book, and can you give us some more detail on how it's split between your homes? We don't give a total order book number, Gavin, I'm afraid. We never have, and there are quite good reasons for that, because we think you'll, you know, it's too easy to misconstrue. Between the divisions, I can tell you that in ordinary times, Metal Melt has the smallest order book 'cause it has the smallest lead time, normally five to six weeks, currently a bit longer than that. You can work that out. Aerospace has the longest order book, although those tend to be schedules rather than orders. In other words, they're in the book, but when we actually get a shipment can move a bit. That tends to be about nine months for Aero. Industry is, it's a mixture. The petrochemical or, you know, larger order size, then it could be at 12 months. For a lot of industrial filters, you know, it's a week, could be a month. That is also true of lab consumables. There's a split between probably three months at the outset and one month in the middle. Then SEAL Analytical, it's more like three months. There is a blend there across the group, depending on the nature of the business. Because that is complicated, we don't give you an aggregate number because it's so reliant on mix. Thanks for that. that, yeah, that is all the Q&A, from the audio cast. I will hand back to you then, for any closing remarks. Very good. Well, thank you everybody. We much appreciate your time. You pretty much all know where we are, and how to get a hold of us if there are any follow-up questions. We've a very busy week actually, but we'll be around all week if there is anything. Do come through, and in the meantime, have a very good week. Thanks very much. Thanks everyone.