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Industrials - Industrial - Distribution - NYSE - GB
$ 199.94
-1.61 %
$ 40.1 B
Market Cap
23.41
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EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT
EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT 2016 - Q4
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Executives

John Martin - Chief Executive Officer Gareth Davis - Chairman Dave Keltner - Chief Financial Officer.

Analysts

Rajesh Kumar - HSBC Gregor Kuglitsch - UBS Paul Checketts - Barclays Aynsley Lammin - Canaccord Ami Galla - Citi Arnaud Lehmann - Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Howard Seymour - Numis Clyde Lewis - Peel Hunt John Messenger - Redburn Charlie Campbell - Liberum Tom Sykes - Deutsche Bank.

John Martin

So, we have got everybody in? Good morning, everybody and welcome. Firstly, introductions, very pleased to have Gareth Davis, our Chairman here down in the front row and not further away, Dave Keltner. Now some of you know Dave from his full-time role as the CFO of Ferguson.

I am really delighted Dave has been able to stand in as the Group CFO whilst we complete our search. He is already doing a much better job than his predecessor. I will kick off today just by sharing a few highlights. Dave will take you through the financials today in a bit more detail and we will talk about some of the priorities for the year ahead.

Firstly, on the financials, we made some progress in the year, not as much as we planned at the start of the year. Like-for-like revenue growth was 2.4%. Volumetric growth in sales in Ferguson’s commercial and residential markets continues to be very impressive, but demand in industrial markets was weaker.

We experienced some pretty unprecedented deflation. We also got no growth out of the international businesses. Gross margin development was good again, up 30 basis points and we feel good about that. And overall, our teams responded very professionally as costs were brought into line with the lower growth environment. Cash flow was excellent.

Dave will take you through the details shortly. We have been reviewing our UK operations and you will see this morning we are now executing a strategy that we have announced today. Nordic markets have been challenging. Our performance reflects that. It’s time to review how we do business there and we are starting that review now as we speak.

We made excellent progress on e-commerce, in technology investment and infrastructure investment. We are really pleased as well with our progress on acquisitions. Those are some of the highlights. Now, I will hand you over to Dave for the financial review..

Dave Keltner

like-for-like growth of 2.4%, actually volumetric growth of 3.9% less deflation of 1.5% to get to the 2.4% like-for-like, acquisitions which contributed 1.8% and new branches which added 0.3%. There was one fewer trading day, which knocked 0.3% off the top line, so the total growth at constant currency was 4.2%.

The impact of translating overseas revenue into sterling added 4.3% to the reported growth rate. We generated £45 million of organic trading profit growth, plus a further £40 million from gross margin expansion. Acquisitions added £6 million and foreign exchange £46 million. We continued to invest in our business, adding £36 million.

One fewer trading day took £6 million off trading profit and we will have one more day next year. Commodity deflation took £35 million off our trading profit in the year and I will talk more about that on the next slide.

We have seen really an unprecedented period of commodity price deflation over the year, with the impact increasing throughout the year. This has principally impacted the U.S. smaller levels in the UK and Switzerland.

The principal driver has been sharp falls in our commodity copper, steel and plastic commodities, prices with some FX impact in Switzerland. Commodity price deflation cost us £193 million reported revenue, equivalent to 1.5% of growth at the group level.

The last margin of £35 million flowed straight through, reducing trading profit by the same amount. As you can see, the impact of commodity deflation has been strong in all four quarters on the chart. And if commodity prices stay at current levels, we expect the impact of deflation to last for another three months to six months.

The other significant headwind we have been facing in 2016 has been industrial. The last year has seen an industrial recession in both the U.S. and Canada and industrial represents 12% and 10% respectively in each country. Despite this, we have generated good profits from these businesses and continued to generate strong returns.

Industrial was also the hardest hit on commodity deflation with a full year impact of minus 7%. As you can see, industrial end markets knocked over 1% off the U.S. revenue growth in the year. We are starting to see an improvement in industrial, partially due to lapping easier comps and partially due to the markets stabilizing somewhat.

And we would expect to see a better performance this next year still somewhat weak. The recent foreign exchange movements have had a significant impact on our results in the year.

And if they continue at current levels will do so again next year, the impact of retranslating overseas results to sterling added £552 million or 4.3% to revenue and £46 million to trading profit. There is also an impact on our balance sheet.

The impact of retranslating overseas denominated debt to the sterling increased net debt by £149 million at year end. Due to our hedging policy, where we essentially place debt in countries in proportion to revenues and profits earned, there has been minimal impact on our net debt to EBITDA ratio.

Ferguson had a very good year, especially when considering the deflation and headwinds in some of its markets. Like-for-like growth was 4.1% and gross margins were very strong, up 40 basis points due to better purchasing, improvements with our pricing and growth in our higher margin businesses such as the showroom channel.

The strengthening of the dollar added £47 million to trading profit and the impact of commodity deflation knocked 2.2% off revenue growth and £36 million off trading profit. Net of deflation, like-for-like revenue growth would have been 6.3% and trading profit grown 12% at constant currency.

Despite the lower revenue growth, investments in operating expenses and the impact of deflation, flow through at constant currency was a respectable 8.3%. Trading margin was consistent with last year’s at 8.2%. We acquired 26 branches in the year and invested in a net 21 branches.

Ferguson – the growth in Ferguson was broadly based across all the businesses except industrial as you can see on the chart growing in the like-for-like revenue basis. Blended branch, our largest U.S.

business grew well across the West, the East and the South-Central, but declined in the North-Central as it has a higher concentration of industrial customers in that region. Waterworks had another very good year despite strong comps from last year. And HVAC and our B2C business both performed strongly.

The weak industrial market led to a decline of 7.8% in our standalone industrial business. From an end market perspective, we saw good growth across the board with the exception of industrial.

Blended branches serve some industrial end markets and including this with the standalone industrial business units, we saw a 10% decline overall in that market. Residential, which is 45% of our business continued to grow very well through 2016, up 10% and commercial as well, 28% of our business, also grew at a 7% clip.

Municipal, which is our Waterworks business, also continued to grow well, up 6%. Switching to the UK, the UK had a tough year with like-for-like decline of 1.6%. Both Plumbing and Heating and Pipe and Climate declined with modest growth in our infrastructure business.

And after a disappointing first half, Pipe and Climate had a much better second half in a reasonable commercial market. We have worked really hard in very competitive markets to protect our gross margins. So, we are really pleased to see gross margins 10 basis points ahead due to improved mix of business.

Operating costs were higher as a result of acquisitions. And trading profit of £74 million was £16 million behind last year.

It’s worth mentioning that the results are before a $10 million – £10 million restructuring cost charged in 2016 that were classified as exceptional in Q4 and John will cover the results of that in the UK operational review later. In the Nordics, we had a disappointing result this year.

Like-for-like revenue growth finished up at 0.6 for the year after a strong first half. Sweden remained a good market during the year and we progressed well. Finland, however, remained challenging all year with limited signs of improvement.

The market in Denmark where we generate half of the Nordic revenue deteriorated in the second half, particularly in the consumer sector, which represents about 30% of the Nordic revenue. Overall, gross margins declined and we increased our investment in operating expenses by 3%. Trading profit was £60 million, £12 million behind last year.

We have appointed a new director, Simon Oakland, to lead the Canadian and the Central Europe Plumbing and Heating activities and have such therefore combined the business into a single region for reporting purposes. So, we will report it this way going forward. Canada and Central Europe revenue declined 1.1% in the year.

Plumbing and Heating markets were okay in Canada and we achieved growth, but this was offset by declines in industrial. Switzerland remains weak and the Netherlands decent. Overall, gross margins declined slightly. And after a £1 million adverse impact from foreign exchange, trading profit was £2 million behind last year.

For the year, we had £8 million of exceptional income in the year which relates to disposals and £10 million of UK restructuring costs were incurred in the year were classified as exceptional.

We also performed our annual review process regarding the carrying value of goodwill as required by the accounting rules and the UK performance has deteriorated this year. And as a result, we have impaired £94 million of goodwill.

As we previously told you, underlying finance charges this year were higher as a result of long-term financing that we put in at fixed rates last summer. The effective tax rate was 28.3% and will continue to be around 28.5% over the next couple of years as the proportion of U.S. profit continues to grow.

As John mentioned, we had an excellent year with regard to cash generation. We work very hard to control working capital this year and generated cash from operations of just over $1 billion. Disposals net of the £65 million and we invested £113 million in acquisitions and £218 million in capital investment.

We also returned £538 million to shareholders through dividends and the stock buybacks. The seasonal working capital flow was as expected. And we finished the year with net debt of £936 million, but the underlying figure being $120 million higher for the seasonal impact.

As a result of the hard work over the last few years, M&A spend in fiscal year ‘17 is already higher than last year. And after the completion of two deals in August this year, which is really good news. The net pension liability on an IAS 19 basis has increased really due to the decline in the bond yields to £147 million.

We are currently completing the tri-annual review of our defined benefit pension scheme and have agreed a funding plan of £25 million per year for the next 3 years and this is consistent with our last valuation. We have increased the dividend this year by just over 10% to 100 pence. Acquisitions, was again a good story for the year.

We invested £113 million on 16 small acquisitions, primarily in the U.S. market and together had annualized revenue on these of £197 million and annualized trading profit of £11 million.

Since year end, we have had more success and completed two acquisitions and have improved a number of others which if completed, will bring our H1 investment this year to £300 million. Lastly, on some technical guidance, next year we get back the day we lost in fiscal year ‘16 which will add £6 million to trading profit.

If current exchange rates prevail for the remainder of the year, they will add £93 million to our trading profit. And as we have seen, acquisitions completed so far in 2017 will add £19 million of trading profit this year. We expect to charge at least £100 million of restructuring costs. John will cover this again in more detail.

And our effective tax rate is expected to be 28.5%. We will continue to invest capital in the businesses. And this will be in the range of £220 million to £240 million and we expect working capital investment to roughly be 12% to 13% of incremental revenue. I will now hand you back to John..

John Martin

Dave thanks very much. Before we launch into the strategy and the priorities, I will just take a step back for a minute and reflect on the principles that the executive team and I again were adopt in managing the business now going forward. We have got a great set of businesses and a good growth record in our core U.S. market.

Organic growth, which is measured by our ability to win market share from our existing assets, is the most valuable way of creating shareholder value, perhaps it’s going to remain our primary focus going forward.

When we talk about adjacencies, think of the huge shareholder value that’s been generated over the years in the waterworks business in Ferguson, not a massive strategic gamble, just really I think the smart pursuit of synergies with our core business.

Today, the commercial MRO market, which is a market that we already service very effectively, is a really attractive opportunity which we are going to invest in. We will carry on working hard to identify bolt-on acquisitions and that’s where we can generate strong synergies.

We will also target niche businesses that can add capability to our business, but we are only going to do those. We have got the management bandwidth and also the trading momentum in our business. There is a great service effect that runs really wide and deep through our organization.

Great people deliver great service and that’s a start, that’s a really good starting point in our attempts to secure value from those services in our pricing. Throughout Ferguson, we have a really strong sales culture. Most senior managers have spent part of their careers on the road at some point.

Elsewhere, we got opportunities to improve, but if we deliver great service, we shouldn’t be apologetic in selling that service and recovering the value. The dispassionate allocation of resources, that’s been a real cornerstone of our progress in the last few years.

We are going to carry on adopting that discipline throughout the business just allocating resources where we can generate the strongest return. Now in our industry, business is very often done in a traditional way. But where we are successful, we have got some pretty – we have got a pretty progressive improvement culture in the business.

We need to leverage that widely. We need to create more effective and more efficient ways of serving our customers of optimizing channel mix and developing our operating processes. Where we are not performing, we need to figure out why and put it right promptly. I will not be tolerant of underperformance for very long.

Demand for our products is partly cyclical and we are going to continue to operate a conservative balance sheet. And that means that we will be able to invest and continue to pay dividends throughout the cycle. Now, what outcome should we expect from all that? We expect to take market share, to grow ahead of the market.

We expect to incrementally grow our margins and of course, all the time, we expect to convert that profitability strongly to cash. This simple chart is a really useful reminder, I think, of what Wolseley is today. We are Ferguson, a large, successful specialist U.S. distribution business, with some proportionately much smaller international operations.

That’s the lens through which we are going to manage the business and the group going forward. So, what are our priorities now? By far, the most important and value generating priority in the business today is to get the very best growth rate out of Ferguson, whilst maintaining and incrementally growing our margins. Ferguson is a great business.

We got a really strong culture of recruiting, developing and retaining great people who develop the expertise and the relationships to deliver the best service in our industry and to execute our strategies successfully. Our associates work hard. They hold themselves accountable for performance.

Their personal, their business, their financial discipline has built a really good margin business with very good returns on capital. We have got significant benefits of scale, that’s in know-how, in procurement, in technology, in supply chain. The U.S. is a huge market with strong growth characteristics.

We have leading market positions in many states and the markets remain highly fragmented, so there are bags of opportunity both for organic growth and also from the bolt-on M&A. And we service residential, commercial, municipal and industrial customers both in the RMI market and also in the new construction markets.

Today, we are just going to touch on some of the drivers and some of the opportunities for continued strong growth going forward. Underpinning our growth story is the best and most consistent service in our industry, without which we wouldn’t be able to consistently grow our market share or defend our margins. We don’t take this for granted.

We are constantly polling our customers. We do focus groups. We do surveys. We do interviews. We do secret shopper programs. And we use that feedback to address any local issues quickly, but also to systematically improve our operations to drive customer segmentation and also to drive our business plans.

But it’s not enough to simply have the best service. We also have to be prepared to go out there and sell it. Ferguson, we said, has a very strong sales culture. In addition to traditional sales channels by counter, outside inside sales, the omni-channel approach also includes sales centers.

We have expanded our national sales center in Virginia to 350 associates and that provides coast to coast support for our larger customers. It also supports the rapid rollout of new initiatives like the commercial MRO business.

The sales center also lets us or helps us to make sure that we can rollout quotations for our showroom business from coast to coast. The overall market share of our blended branch network is estimated at 17%. That’s considerably larger than the next specialist operator.

You can see from the map here, we have got significant opportunities to expand our presence through organic growth and that includes adding sales associates, adding branches. We plan to grow in all of our 19 districts. But to put the organic growth opportunity into context, we are underweight in some significant areas.

If you look at the chart here and you look at those red bubbles on the map, each of those is economically the size of a large European country. We are really proud of our approach to acquisitions in Ferguson. It is firmly rooted in one principle which is to generate shareholder value.

We have not been distracted and we have not been distracted by the lure of easy money. Acquisitions make sense only where we can retain the associates, we can retain the customers and also retain the vendor relationships, where we can integrate them and generate good synergies.

You can see from the chart, as Dave was talking about in the first two months of this year, we have invested more than the whole of last year. And as Dave talked about, we have approved and expect to close a few more.

In addition to the traditional plumbing and heating range, our blended branch network also serves our waterworks, HVAC, industrial and other product lines. And where there is potential, we have also opened standalone specialist branches for those products.

Those adjacent markets provide really significant opportunities for growth and they allow us to leverage our asset base across the country. We currently serve customers in the commercial MRO markets. And over the last couple of years, we got to $440 million of sales, but the addressable facilities maintenance market is estimated at $90 billion.

It’s highly fragmented. We are bringing additional resources, including additional $10 million this year in OpEx to focus more sharply on this market. We do expect over time for margins to be at least as attractive as in the rest of our business.

Our last year was an excellent year for the growth and development of Ferguson’s B2B and B2C e-commerce channels. We invested in the new platform for Ferguson online and developed a number of new apps and services to help customers do their business with us more conveniently. Those include for example, functionality to turn a quotation into an order.

E-commerce now accounts for 20% of sales. That’s continuing to grow faster than the other channels. This year, we are going to step up our brand building with the further $11 million investments.

And that’s really to make sure that our customers recognize our online presence at ferguson.com, build.com and our other online brand and can access them directly. Our business model is evolving. The great example has been the reorganization this year into 19 districts that we just completed.

The purpose of this really was to align our customer needs and to make sure that we can get the fastest execution of initiatives throughout the country. This was accompanied by the rollout of CRM and the com’s tools needed to provide the best service in the industry.

But our channel strategy is not about betting the ranch that our customers are going to select any one individual channel to do business. It’s about providing them with the opportunity to do business with us in way that they choose. And it’s about making sure that we service them as seamlessly as we possibly can across all of those channels.

Across residential, commercial, municipal and industrial sectors, we serve customers from the moment the shovel is on the ground through waterworks, through fire protection, plumbing, heating and HVAC installation.

After construction is complete, we also provide them with the products they need for the ongoing maintenance and operations of their properties. That is Ferguson, 81% of our trading profit. The most significant priority in the group today is to ensure that we can growth Ferguson profitably faster than the market.

Now the second priority in the group today is to turnaround the UK business. Standing back from it all, we have got a great team of people going the extra mile for our customers day after day.

Associate engagements is really good and our team has made really excellent progress in the last year driving service, really impressive improvements actually in the net promoter score in the year. We have also made really good progress in the adoption of e-commerce. We are doing some things really well.

So, why the strategy review? Well, bluntly, we are not happy. I am not happy with this performance, the financial performance of the business. We need to be confident that our resources are focused on a winning strategy and that the proposition to our customers is differentiated that our customers need our services and are prepared to pay for them.

We need to return the business to profitable growth. So throughout this year, we have done a bundle of customer research and data analysis to make sure that, that strategy doesn’t just follow our simple prejudice. The first data check here was encouraging. This is a large and pretty stable market.

The gross profit pool of our addressable market is about £3 billion and we are about one-sixth of that. There is plenty of opportunity for profitable growth in good margin categories like plumbing, like PVF and like drainage. We are going to allocate more resources to them. That doesn’t mean we are going to exit any of the other categories.

We have actually made really good progress this year refocusing our resources on our core independent specialist trade customers. That segment of our customers, which is about £350 million worth of sales, grew 8% last year and there is plenty more potential.

Some of the detailed analysis though has identified opportunities to better align our resources with customer needs. And our customer research identified two clear propositions to develop. Firstly, smaller, specialist trade customers, they need local branches to immediately fulfill their needs and also as a source of advice.

They want competitive pricing and they are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their use of digital tools. Larger customers may need a broader network of branches to fulfill their needs across the region or across the country. They need experienced account managers to ensure that our services to them are provided seamlessly.

And they are also, of course, want bespoke pricing to support them in their bidding process. Now for many years, we have run several different formats to cater for different specialist trades, plumb center, part center, drain center, pipe center, times change.

Today, 80% of drain center customers also shop at plumb center and 70% of drain center SKUs are also available in plumb center. So, those two formats now are being fully integrated. The branch network is absolutely fundamental to our customer service, but it is very expensive and we need to make sure that we use it wisely and we configure it properly.

Going forward, we will operate a single branch network. There will be two formats depending primarily really on population density. There will be about 440 local branches that are going to service the everyday needs of local customers, with about 4,000 stock units in each branch. And there will be about 80 large destination branches if you want.

They will have a broader stock range of about 9,000 SKUs and also much broader access to expertise in drain, in parts, in plumbing and heating. Those branches will also generally have a showroom attached and they will be open on Sundays, too.

Of course, all of our customers will have access to our central range of over 80,000 SKUs for next day delivery. A high proportion of our demand is preordered for delivery either the following day or later. Those orders don’t need to be picked at a specific branch. Logistics in future will be more centralized.

Picking, packing and final mall delivery is going to be done more from distribution centers and hubs and more picking will be done in nights. Hubs will deliver pre-packed orders at two branches for pickup by our customers 7:00 a.m. when we open in the mornings.

That’s going to enable us to have even higher fill rates and to provide economies of scale to drive down our costs. Those changes are going to allow us to simplify our branch network and let our associates focus more of the time on serving customers and selling.

We will accelerate our investment in technology and tools which help our customers to manage their business more effectively. Now, on pricing, look, we always aim to be fair and consistent with our pricing.

This year, we have introduced a defined range of products which we have applied the same nonnegotiable price across the whole network and that range will be expanded. We will also develop our category management expertise and our own label offering. As a result of all of this, we do expect to close about 80 branches and one distribution center.

Regrettably, we expect to lose up to 800 jobs. We will deal with those job losses sensitively and we will redeploy associates wherever we can and use natural attrition.

Exceptional charges will be about £100 million, of which £70 million will be cash, but the whole of the cash costs will be offset by lower working capital and property disposal proceeds.

Over the next 3 years, we will also invest in incremental £40 million over and above the normal reinvestment rate in the UK refurbishing the ongoing network and developing the required technology platforms. All the CapEx investment is within the range that Dave showed you before.

And these initiatives will reduce our cost base by between £25 million and £30 million a year net. So in summary, in respect to the UK, the financial performance has deteriorated and that’s not where we wanted to be, but there is a large gross profit pool and there are attractive growth opportunities.

We also have a significant market position to defend. The new strategy is well researched and it’s based on customer insight. And we are going to invest in our branch network going forward that will be simplified and aligned with our customer needs.

It won’t be done overnight and there will be bumps along the way, but it is executable and we are getting on with it. Now the third priority in the group is to return our Nordics business to sustainable profitable growth. Our management team there is focusing now on a few priorities that will make a difference in the short-term.

We lost some momentum in Sweden in the second half of the year after a very good period of growth. We are going to invest more now, we are investing more now in sales resources and focusing on returning that top line growth to where it should be. That is a good margin business.

In Denmark, our margins have been under pressure and we are bringing renewed discipline there to the pricing process. In Finland, the market has been challenging for 4 years. We are looking again now at our network to see whether there are opportunities to reconfigure that network at lower cost.

And finally, we are reducing our central cost that will make more funds available for investing in sales and marketing resources at the front end of the business. All good stuff, but the financial performance has gone backwards and we are not happy with that.

We need to make sure that the actions that we are taking are sufficient to deliver sustainable profitable growth, so we are starting the review of the operating strategy at Nordics to make sure that we understand customer needs, that we align our resources with those needs and that we can recover the value that we add to them.

We expect that review to be completed by the spring. We touched on the business priorities. How are we going to allocate our going capital going forward, the top priority is to invest in profitable organic growth, both in our current branches, new branches, new channels we talked about and adjacencies.

That is the most profitable and lowest risk investment we can make. Secondly, good businesses should pay a decent ordinary dividend and that should grow broadly in line with the underlying earnings. We aim to run our businesses and manage our balance sheet so that dividends can be sustained and grow in through the cycle.

Thirdly, we will carry on identifying and negotiating bolt-on acquisitions where we can generate synergies, but we are only going to do that where we have got the management bandwidth and momentum to develop them. We will work hard on the right opportunities and we will also work hard to avoid poor, risky or overpriced assets.

At the moment, the pipeline is pretty healthy. We expect to complete a number of transactions that we are working on now. The health of the pipeline is not a result really of a changing appetite.

It maybe partly due to the hard work that we put into this in the last 2 years or 3 years because some of those transactions take quite a long time to come to fruition. We will keep a conservative balance sheet. That means we will head for investment grade credit metrics and net debt in the range of 1x to 2x EBITDA.

If we have surplus cash, you know we will get that back to shareholders promptly. The fact that we have not announced further capital returns today is due to the scale of the acquisitions both that we have done in the last couple of months and also the health of the acquisition pipeline.

Regarding the outlook for the last 6 to 7 weeks, the like-for-like growth has been 1.5% across the group, 4.5% in Ferguson. And the market environment looks pretty consistent in the U.S. residential and commercial markets continued to grow despite the ongoing impact of commodity deflation that Dave touched on earlier.

Demand from our industrial customers remains weak. Elsewhere, market conditions are more mixed. We have planned for and we do expect profitable growth this year and we are confident that we will make progress on our three priorities. Thank you very much. Now, Dave and I will take any of your questions..

Q - Rajesh Kumar

Good morning. Rajesh Kumar from HSBC.

Could you give us some color on how the supplier negotiations move when commodity price deflation occurs? How do you treat your inventory write-downs? And basically, is all the effect reflected in the balance sheet on the inventory?.

Dave Keltner

Sure. We move – we don’t hold much inventory on the commodity, so they move through the system pretty quickly. Clearly, with any major short-term moves, we will adjust market, but normally, that’s flowing through our system pretty fair right and so our cost is reflective of the market cost..

Rajesh Kumar

And how do you negotiate with your suppliers, vendor rebates and things like that?.

Dave Keltner

I don’t think the negotiation side changes tremendously. Obviously, we are always trying to get the best transaction value that we can. But traditionally, as we are dealing with our vendors we normally agree pricing at the beginning of the year with commodities.

Obviously, they are more based on the market and whatever commitments we have had that needs the other in terms of how they will be priced throughout the year. So, a lot of it is set in agreements..

Rajesh Kumar

So are they set on the value of the sales or the volume of the sales?.

Dave Keltner

Well, if you are talking broader than just commodities, if you are talking in general, typically, we have pricing that’s set based on the volume that we purchase and some of those have tiers, so that they will have a step up when we hit certain levels, we will receive additional rebates on the pricing side..

Rajesh Kumar

And they tend to be settled at year end normally?.

Dave Keltner

A lot of them are settled – some of them are settled monthly, a lot of them were settled quarterly and there are some settled at year end..

Rajesh Kumar

Thank you..

John Martin

I am sorry, just to put that into context. We hold £100 something million of commodities at anytime and broadly, that’s going to be a 5-week sales or something. So, there is no write-down if you think about the margins that we recovered on them. That’s still sold it’s a profit and it’s just the margin is narrow..

Unidentified Analyst

Good morning. [indiscernible] from Exane. A few questions on the U.S. A number of your competitors have mentioned slower U.S. trends in July and August, but you are suggesting that your like-for-like is accelerating.

Is this more a function of market share gains or end-market exposure? And does this acceleration seem sustainable?.

Dave Keltner

Well, we did have – we had a pretty slow May, but June and July bounced back in line with our full year average. And as John mentioned, August and so far in September, we have been running about 4.5%. So, we definitely think we are taking market share.

I think last year, we believe we took 2% to 3% market share, which is pretty much in line with where we have been traditionally. And I think in that sense, we are not seeing any other signs of a slowdown from what we are seeing right now. And so we are pretty optimistic in terms of being able to maintain that level of like-for-like..

Unidentified Analyst

And in terms of the margin expansion again in the U.S., there was a slowdown sequentially in Q4 versus Q3, does this suggest that further profit improvements will become more challenging and if so, how should we think about the long-term margin for the U.S.

business?.

Dave Keltner

We remain very confident in our margin progression. I mean we have got a long history of increasing margins. We were up 40 basis points last year, which was a good move.

And we remain both committed and believing that we can continue to make margin improvements on a yearly basis, not necessarily 40 basis points, but clearly some improvement every year is what we shoot for and what we believe we can drive..

Unidentified Analyst

And maybe one last question, if I may.

Just in term of the New Year, you showed the like-for-like plus 4.5% in the U.S., plus 1.5% in the rest of the group, could you give a bit more granularity and their position on what you saw in the other markets, the UK for example and the Nordics, sorry?.

John Martin

Yes. I mean the growth rates remained poor. I mean if you look at those Q4 growth rates, we have certainly not seen any improvement on those Q4 growth rates in the UK and Nordics..

Unidentified Analyst

Okay, thank you..

Gregor Kuglitsch

Thank you. It’s Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. I have got a few questions.

Can I just go back on the slide on M&A, can I just be 100% clear, the £300 million, is that to compared with the £19 million or is there some additional profit that you have acquired, but on deals perhaps you haven’t actually closed and perhaps as a small follow-up to that, I think the acquired businesses suggests it’s nearly a 20% margin, I may have done that math slightly incorrectly, but if that’s true, what is that business, because obviously, pretty unusual for distribution.

Second question is on deflation, can you just give us a sense, you said you expect the effect to sort of dissipate over the next two quarters, can you give us within the U.S. perhaps the current run rate 4.5%, how much deflation is within there and perhaps how you see that trending.

Third question is on the UK I think you are shutting around a 10% of your branches, should we be effectively knocking off 10% of the revenue, are you trying to retain some of that elsewhere in the – within the system and within that, when you talk about the £25 million, £30 million cost savings, should we be then also, I suppose on the offsetting side, taking off the gross profit loss on the shut branches, in other words, do you believe coming out of this that you will have a smaller business that has as higher margin, do you actually think your profitability would be up in absolute terms because you are shrinking it? I will leave it there.

Thanks..

Dave Keltner

John, you cover the margin and deflation and I will do the UK..

John Martin

That’s fine. So first of all, I think your one question was how the £19 million related to the £300 million in acquisitions. So we have either closed or approved £300 million since the beginning of the year.

The £19 million are only for those that have closed so far and so there, you should expect some increase for the remainder of those deals if and when they do close. The business that we acquired at the beginning of August was a business called Signature Hardware.

They are a kitchen and bathroom high end private label B2C business, so their margins are accretive to us and it’s a very strong business with a good management team. We are very happy to have them join the team..

Gareth Davis

And okay, so deflation was the second one..

Dave Keltner

Yes. So deflation was – in the fourth quarter, it was about 2.4%. In the first couple of months, I think it’s slightly below that, but it’s still roughly in that 2% range..

John Martin

Okay. And then coming to the UK, the UK question, the closure of the branches, look we are going to fight for it to retain every single pound of sales that we possibly can from those branches that we shut.

If you think about why we are making the changes to the branch network, we are making the changes to the branch network because we think we can service our customers from a more compact branch network. So we absolutely will have plans in every single branch to make sure that we retain as much of that revenue as we possibly can.

Second point, the whole of the sort of the repositioning, the transformation of the UK business, this is not just a cost out operation. This is designed to give us the best service in the industry and to differentiate us from the other competitors. Now sure, that needs to be executed and sure that will take time, but that is it in design.

So whilst in the short-term, if we shut a branch and it’s just inconvenient for any one individual customer and I am sure there will be some of those, but the purpose of this process is to make sure that we get the UK back into an area where it can grow profitably, which is what we have really been short of in the last few years.

Hence, coming all of that to the cost savings, are we trying to sort of cut our way to a higher margin business? No, that’s not the purpose of this. We are trying to design a business that we will be able to grow. At the same time, we do expect those cost savings.

We haven’t given guidance on the revenue line, because frankly that is going to take some time. If you think about it, if we are designing a better platform to service our customers, we have got to implement that and then we have got to go out there and sell that strongly before the sales growth is going to come through.

So, hence, we have just given guidance on the cost side..

Gregor Kuglitsch

Can you just go back on the M&A point? Maybe you can give us the annualized revenues and profit of the £300 million, because I guess that’s what we will be plugging into our model?.

John Martin

Well, you have got the ones that we have completed, the ones that – sorry….

Gregor Kuglitsch

How much of that £300 million have you completed?.

John Martin

The numbers, £187 million, sorry, yes..

Gregor Kuglitsch

Thank you..

John Martin

More questions?.

Paul Checketts

Good morning. It’s Paul Checketts from Barclays. I think I have got three.

To go back to the UK, John, what do you think is a realistic timeline for the different stages of the turnaround and repositioning? And is then the £40 million of incremental investment, how does that split between CapEx and OpEx? And maybe you could just elaborate on exactly what that is going to be going on? And then with regards to the U.S., when I look at the regional growth, I can say this in the second half, the South-Central region actually accelerated, which includes Texas and Louisiana, which is slightly surprising given the macro there.

Could you perhaps explain why that is? And then the other thing that stood out to me is that you have had growth of 11.7% like-for-like in that division that you have booked it in HVAC, fire and fab, etcetera.

If you look to those individual parts, which are going well?.

John Martin

Sure. Look, the timeline in the UK that there is – there are eight detailed work streams. They have all got individual timelines. I don’t want to announce today the timeline, excuse me, on closures. That’s for the team to work through into. I know there is a consultation process that we need to go through for all of that.

I think the whole program is going to take 2 to 3 years. Clearly, we would like to compress that as much as we can, but it needs to be done. It needs to be done properly, diligently and quickly.

So, I wouldn’t want to delay the cost initiatives, because trading today is very weak, but at the same time, a lot of the technology enabled stuff and particularly, the logistics stuff that is going to take time because of the implementation of systems. The £40 million investment is all CapEx, so it’s the incremental CapEx.

We have a run-rate in the UK at the moment of £20 million, £25 million a year. This is on top of that. And it’s a combination of some refurbishment in those ongoing branches which need refurbishing and technology, about 50:50 on those. The U.S. South-Central, yes, I mean it has been – it’s actually been remarkably resilient given the industrial.

There isn’t as much industrial by a long way as there is in the North-Central, first point. And I know – so the oil and gas dependence is actually far lower than you would expect. So, we are pleased with the performance there. And then the breakout of the other HVAC has had another very good year, actually really good year.

The fire and fabrication which does commercial – the fittings for the fire suppression but it’s actually continued in for several years that’s how it has been on a real good role. That’s done very well. So, there are no weak spots in that. We haven’t talked any brackets in there either. So, there are no real weak spots in all of that..

Dave Keltner

Our B2C business as well has grown very strongly..

Paul Checketts

And if I could just have one more which is on the Nordics and if you look at the year-on-year progression that the profitability has fallen on a reported basis by £12 million and it may on a constant currency be slightly more.

Can you just help us understand what that delta is maybe in terms of the businesses?.

John Martin

Yes. I mean there have been two big deltas in Nordics this year. Finland ongoing, Finland accounts for I think £6 million of the drop in the region, which is very, very disappointing and very challenging. We probably have too much capacity there bluntly, so we will get at that. Denmark is the biggest, the start business in Denmark, good business.

The margins there have been under quite a lot of pressure this year. Now, we have a very good program. I spent a couple of weeks up there in the summer and the team are absolutely on top of it.

It’s quite a new team in that business and they are absolutely on top of making sure that we do a better job of selling our gross margins, down 90 bps odd over the year, which is quite significant in the business of that size..

Paul Checketts

Is that a competitive issue?.

John Martin

It’s certainly a competitive market, but there is plenty that we can do, Paul. We will just respond to your self help or whatever the phrase is. I mean it’s absolutely well. There are things that we can do..

Paul Checketts

Thanks..

Aynsley Lammin

Thanks. I am Aynsley Lammin from Canaccord. I just got three, please.

Firstly, just on acquisitions, again obviously, you stepped up, you have kind of £300 million, but are there bigger acquisitions in the pipeline we should be thinking about and maybe just give any guidance what you could expect at this stage the total acquisition spend for the full year to be.

And then secondly, just on net debt to EBITDA, you said you are happy with the range of 1x to 2x, I think recent years, you have kind of kept out around 1x, would you be happier to go to maybe 1.5x or should we still think about 1x being the kind of limit there.

And then thirdly, just on the UK, you said that the trends like-for-like growth hasn’t really changed very much from Q4, but just wondered if your comments on the kind of impact of Brexit and the pattern of trading you have seen through July, August, any kind of noticeable impact from the Brexit for you? Thanks..

John Martin

I mean in terms of acquisitions, the – there is nothing monstrous in the pipeline. You saw Dave has talked about the Signature acquisition, which is great, a little bit bigger than we have been used to. There are one or two prospects which could be a little bit larger, but nothing huge. Most of our acquisitions are going to be of the sort of scale.

And the hundred and something million that we approved at the Board last week, that’s four or five transactions, so just to give you a sense.

And that is the color of the pipeline really that we still see, so it’s possible that there would be sort of known of the transaction like Signature or whatever else if they come off, that’s great and if they don’t then it will be because of either due diligence or pricing.

Net debt actually, when we complete those acquisitions, we pay the dividend you know that the year end net debt, the July net debt is usually a seasonal low. And we usually end up at least as high as that in January, so I think net debt will be slightly higher any way by, but it will be higher by January. And Q4 look Brexit, it’s been weak in the UK.

There is nothing that we could say, we believe this is as a consequence of Brexit. The market was weak prior to Brexit and it’s been at least as weak post-Brexit, but I don’t think that would – you wouldn’t really say that was cause and affect with the data that we have got..

Ami Galla

Ami Galla from Citi. I just have two, please. You have talked about a turnaround plan for your UK and Nordics business I wondered if you could talk a bit more about Canada and Central Europe, potentially are there businesses in your group where you could consider exiting because you cannot see restructuring in a big way in those businesses.

And my second question, can I clarify the majority of the branches that you are closing in the UK, are they in areas where you do have an overlap between drain center and plumb center?.

John Martin

Yes. Just on Canada and Central Europe, sorry and the reason we haven’t sort of labored them too much today is because we wanted to share with you how we saw the priorities and the importance that we give to those priorities. It doesn’t mean that Canada and Central Europe aren’t important.

I saw Simon Oakland wondering in earlier, so Simon they are up, it’s certainly important to get the profits up, please. And look, these are good businesses. I mean actually, very good businesses, good market shares, good margins, decent managements, lots going on.

I think the exit question, in a sense, you know, we disposed the 33 businesses over the last 6 years. We don’t need to – we don’t need credentials in terms of trying to sort of figure out are we the best owner for these businesses. Actually, all these businesses are in our core heating and plumbing space, first point.

Second, they are – they have got good local management teams, good market positions. If there is a combination of our business with any other business that makes sense, if you recall, what we did in, for example, the south of France then we should look at that.

And we should look at that dispassionately absent sort of – absent sort of thinking about ownership, whether that’s a merger or a joint venture or an acquisition or a disposal, we should look at it is there an industrial logic if you want in a combination of businesses.

We do that and we do that absolutely as a matter of course, but no, today, that there is absolutely no – there is no intention to exit. There is no intention or need to exit any of those businesses today.

Just on to the UK, yes, some of these branches will be overlapping, because we are taking all of the formats that we currently use and saying what do we need to run one combined network of those 440 local branches and 80 destination branches? So, there will be some areas where the formats overlap.

Today, there will be some that are in more remote areas where the economics are more margin and there will be some where we believe we can improve the logistics in metropolitan areas. So, I was up with the UK team last week and went into the room. It’s a room twice the size of this lecture theater.

Every single local network, the local network is about only between sort of 6 and a dozen branches mapped out right, where is the hub going to be, what’s that going to look like, how is it going to be served, what are the distances, how strong is the – what’s our market position, how – looking at traffic flows, all of that stuff that you would expect, so very, very local decisions overlaid on that strategy which says we need 80 fewer branches.

Does that make sense?.

Ami Galla

Thank you..

Arnaud Lehmann

Good morning. Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch. Two questions I guess related to timing in the context of you, John, becoming CEO of the company.

Firstly, on acquisition in the U.S., is it just a question of opportunities and these acquisitions came in the last few months and you decided to go for it or should we interpret that as under your management whereas they will be more focused on M&A and maybe less focused on cash return? That’s the first question.

And the second question, also on timing on the UK restructuring, I mean, obviously, the business outlook in the UK including the Brexit in the recent months is a bit softer, with some uncertainties heading into next year. So, it makes sense to restructure the business.

On the other hand, you could argue this business has been a bit underperforming for a number of years, so why today rather than 2 years ago?.

John Martin

Yes, no thank you for those.

Look, the timing in the U.S., I would love to say this was because three weeks ago when I took the corner office, I didn’t actually, Dave has the corner office now, but I would love to say that this was – that these acquisitions were all a consequence of my swashbuckling management style and Gareth is sitting down here, so I will say that.

No, I am afraid these have been in the pipeline for some time. It’s just we have worked hard on them now some of these happened to have just been converted. Very pleased about that. There really isn’t any change in the degree of rigor, desire, appetite, discipline that we are applying to the due diligence and the price negotiations.

I am afraid it’s just – it’s a bit like buses with M&A, they all seemed to come along at the same time. Timing in the UK and Brexit and why now, I think you are right, I mean looking back over the last few years, we have probably overestimated where we thought the market demand would be. That’s the first thing. And I don’t think we were alone in that.

A lot of people overestimated UK growth. And second thing is we did probably overestimate our capability. And the important thing I think right now for me coming into the job new is to make sure that we look at that very independently and dispassionately and we do the right thing.

Now, you know we started this review six months, seven months ago, the team have been very focused on that. Clearly, I have also been pretty engaged in supporting the team to do that review and they have come up with a good strategy, so very pleased about that. The impact, the sort of timing of Brexit, I don’t know really.

I think the strategy would have been very similar absent Brexit. And Brexit looks to be too early to call. Is it going to fundamentally damage our core market in the UK, I would have thought not.

We are principally an RMI business and I don’t see those opportunities being substantially damaged long-term by exit from the European Union hard, sort or how uncertain is it may be..

Howard Seymour

Okay. Howard Seymour with Numis, it’s actually, sorry another couple of questions on UK and actually Brexit timing.

One is more structural just to sort of devil’s advocate on this, you are announcing this change – companies have changed their business, there is a lot of change going in the industry, is there another danger that everybody is trying to move into the same area at the same time and therefore, the overcapacity issue is just sort of shifting a little bit down the road.

And secondly, probably related to that on Brexit, obviously one thing it does do is importing material costs gone up and obviously you have said defending areas, what’s your strategy on sort of imported pricing, etcetera, are you looking to pass that on or is this going to be part of the defending position which potentially could hit gross margin?.

John Martin

Yes. Look, on the first one, it’s good question, we have sort of thought of that and we tried to think about capacity in the industry as well. Of course, we are taking capacity out here. We are taking 80 branches in a distribution center out and that’s certainly at least the other two quoted competitors have both done something sort of vaguely similar.

I think the objective of making sure that we have the very best service and making sure that’s aligned with our customer needs, that needs to be done absolutely regardless and that should be done regardless of the extent of the demand.

This is a good business in terms of it makes good margins and it makes good returns on capital, so we absolutely, in a sense, we have to defend this position and we have to look after the customer service proposition because that is the basis on which the business was built, it isn’t not just an Internet startup where it’s selling stuff cheap as chips.

Our customers come in, they want to be serviced promptly, they want the local service, they want great advice, they want product knowledge. If you look those four or five things come up in every single customer survey, that’s what we are, that’s what we are giving.

Our ability to pass on price increases, there are already some discussions from some vendors along those. Actually, it might be nice to the bit of inflation back in the system. I always said 6 or 7 years ago, I have never said that inflation was a good thing, being a child of the ‘70s, well, alright, ‘60s.

But – so I don’t see that getting out of control. Of course, if our suppliers are putting their prices up, then we will have the usual negotiations which is please defer them for us. And there will be some selective inventory investment because there often is in those things and we try to work hard to defer price rises for as long as we can.

And then at the certain point, prices are going to go up. There is still a lot of domestically produced products there in our range, a lot. I mean it always amazes me just how much of this stuff is produced onshore..

Clyde Lewis

Clyde Lewis of Peel Hunt. Three if I may.

And jumping across Atlantic rather than sticking on the UK, but just looking at Ferguson, I am looking at some of the quoted competitors, obviously, there is a range of margin results, like the Fastenal, Grainger, etcetera and some of those are quite a bit higher than yours and obviously your business mix is different, but last year was probably the first time in a while that the operating margins haven’t really moved in Ferguson, where do you now think you can push Ferguson margins to as the sort of emphasis shifted in terms of that volume versus net margins rather than gross across that business.

And I suppose also in the U.S. is I suppose what are the thoughts about your industrial capacity and branches on that side of the marketplace? Do you need to adjust downwards in terms of your capacity there? And the third one I had was Canada.

I am a little bit surprised to be honest to see it rolled in with the Netherlands and Switzerland as an operating structure quite frankly and not remaining with the U.S.

So, if you could take me through the logic of that, because I still don’t understand why Ferguson isn’t just going to manage Westburne from a day-to-day basis, but maybe there were different medium-term thoughts behind that structure and might change there..

Dave Keltner

Well, I will talk to the first..

John Martin

I told you the margins were lower than faster, okay..

Dave Keltner

No. You have told me that every month, John. I think a lot of those competitors that you mentioned, we clearly look at them, but it is a different mix and a different customer base that we are selling to. Until typically, they maybe appropriate for a piece of our business, but not looking at the margin over all the business.

Having said that, we were flat last year at 8.2% on the trading margin. We did have some, clearly, the deflation in the industrial headwinds pushed us back on the top line and yet from a volumetric standpoint, on the deflation, we are still handling the same volume of products.

So, I think that had a bit to do with our trading margin not increasing last year, but we absolutely believe and every year go for both gross margin improvement and trading margin improvement. And it maybe a few basis points, it maybe 10, but we absolutely believe that we can do that and budget to do that..

John Martin

I think there is enough dynamic. There is definitely an impact of the rate of growth. It is just easier to get to double-digit flow-through if your growth is in the high single-digits, just it is.

And we had a lot of discussion last year with Dave when he sat on the other side of the table and the team about actually what flow through should we expect at lower growth levels and you know that Ferguson has had a very good record of growth over quite sometime.

That has absolutely fueled that in accommodation with really just tweaking the gross margin, a lot of hard work that goes into that. That’s what’s really allowed us to get to double-digit flow through. Industrial capacity, no, we have no – there is almost no such thing as a loss-making branch.

The industrial business, as David said, still makes very good returns, actually not far south of our overall Ferguson net margins. So, whilst there is always a bit of a reallocation of resources in terms of headcount resources, there is no reason to exit any of those and there aren’t actually that many standalone industrial branches anyway.

This isn’t a huge network. We have put in standalone branches pretty selectively. Canada, Westburne, gosh, that’s a name from the past. This has all been re-branded, Wolseley Canada now. So, it’s always more than just – it’s more than just the old Westburne business.

But what’s the logic behind this? The logic really is we need to retain our focus on those three key things. Now as I said, Canada and Central Europe are important, but the alternative to having Simon in this instance managing those businesses was for me to have another three reports, frankly.

And my time is better spent focused on those three priorities, in particular, the growth of Ferguson. So, that’s the reason really for putting them altogether. Simon always reminds me now that the sun never sets on his empire, I am not sure that’s quite true, but nevertheless, it’s not far off.

It is just – it clearly is – there are no synergies between those businesses except for know-how. It is just an effective way of managing the business..

John Messenger

John Messenger, Redburn. Four if I could, please, John. First one, just on obviously, this year, you had just over 7.5% underlying earnings growth. The one thing you mentioned up there was long-term dividends growing in line with earnings. Obviously, historically, that’s been quantified as kind of the 10% level from being taking over.

Is that 10% something that you would still sit comfortably with today given that obviously last year, there is a combination of the buyback impact helping that earnings number as well? So, that’s the first one.

The second was just on the UK, can I understand a bit in terms of the branch network? Obviously, you had 737, you are guiding to 520 under the new format. Just thinking around what else is there in that burden, so it clearly is one thing, but it looks like there is 137 units elsewhere.

What brands will remain outside once you finished the merging of the various bits and pieces here? And the other one was just on the UK, Slide 46 talks about nonnegotiable pricing across a range of SKUs.

Can I just understand, is almost what you are looking to do particularly with the 80 stores almost create a cell co for a plumber? And I am just trying to understand exactly and how big is that price fixing, obviously a big issue in the industry.

Is there going to be more price transparency? Is that 2,000 SKUs out of four or is it a much smaller number? Just to understand that there. And finally, Build.com, just to understand what the quantum of sales is? You have got a good mention in the weekend press, but you have overstated, I think, so if we just know what Build.com was? Thank you..

John Martin

You can do Build and I will do the others, Dave. The growth, look, I think the 10% earnings growth, yes, it would have been strange to have changed that this year in the sense that we have got no better data than to believe that’s a sensible long-term through the cycle growth expectation.

Look one day, it won’t be, because we will have a recession and it can be very difficult to get new growth and whatever else, but longer – and as you know, 2 or 3 years ago, we had much better growth than that. So, I think there will be some ebbs and flows in that.

What gets you there? If you get mid single-digit top line growth and you look after the gross margin and then you grow your expense base sort of 1.5%, 2% below that growth that gets you there.

It isn’t bullish and neither is it for the fainthearted in just because [indiscernible] neither is it for the fainthearted, because we are in a low inflation environment. So, in essence, those returns are more real than they once were. So – but no, I think today, the board are – we think that’s a good sense of a long-term view.

The UK branch network, yes, what you picked up on there is that the branch count in the bat, we have got some shared properties, so there are some – so we will need to – there are some properties where we have got more than one format. We will actually need to scrub that data for you going forward..

John Messenger

But this burden is -- basically, John, is....

John Martin

Yes, it does..

John Messenger

That’s the only single brand left, otherwise, it’s all Wolseley?.

John Martin

Yes, it’s the infrastructure brands, yes. In terms of nonnegotiable pricing, it’s not 2,000 SKUs. And I am not sure we have certainly never thought of ourselves as becoming the cell co for blunt [ph], I suppose. So, there will still be a lot of pricing which is customer specific.

Now, we are doing that in a more structured way to make sure that, yes, if you buy £10,000 a year of this type of product and somebody else buys £10,000 a year of this type of product, it should be – it should look fair and consistent.

And the nonnegotiable pricing will be on several hundred items, not several thousand items, okay? So, out of the 4,000 SKUs, probably 300 or 400 will be on that consistent pricing.

Dave, do you want to go to the Build?.

Dave Keltner

Sure. On Build, Build continues to grow nicely and we did a couple of acquisitions last year as well, but it did over £800 million in revenue in ‘16. And obviously now, with the Signature Hardware, we expect it to be over £1 billion and continue to grow at a pretty good clip..

John Messenger

Signature Hardware is it purely – does it involve – is it vertically integrated? Is it actually making its own high end or is it purely intermediary just to understand, because, obviously, high margin, but is it actually making some…..

Dave Keltner

It does significant amount of importing on the product that they do add value to the product in terms of some of the products, pretty minor, not expensive, but they sell, for example, clawfoot bathtubs and they will modify those slightly from where the consumer wants the drain or the faucet handles.

So, they will do slight modification and in both kitchen and bath..

John Martin

Got Tom up there, he is going to turn up as well, sorry..

Charlie Campbell

Yes, good morning. Charlie Campbell from Liberum. I mean, just one question really. On the US business, I am looking at the commercial side of the business you talked about industrial I guess residential is fairly easy to follow.

But on the commercial side, what’s your view of the sort of more medium outlook maybe as we look into 2017, could you just talk us through any lead indicators that you have there in terms of inquiries? Just to give us some more visibility on the outlook for that part of the business?.

Dave Keltner

Sure. Our commercial segment, which represents about 28% of our overall business, it grew at 7% last year, so good solid growth. And we think that, that commercial will remain strong.

We have got an order backlog, which includes not just commercial, but is highly commercial, is a high part of it of about £1.4 billion, which gives us a good year-over-year growth in terms of where we were last year. So, we still feel pretty comfortable on the commercial side. It’s growing well and we expect it to maintain pretty good growth..

Charlie Campbell

Does it share what that year-on-year growth in that order book is?.

John Martin

No, it’s healthy though..

Tom Sykes

Good morning. Tom Sykes from Deutsche Bank. Just couple of quick questions. A follow-up on Build.com, does all of that go into that residential category that you split out the U.S.

business in? And could you maybe be a little bit more granular about what very strong means, please? And then what residential is actually growing at excluding Build.com? And then just you give the sort of 4.5% run-rate now and you build out that tower of underground and HVAC and fire and fab, could you maybe just give a view as maybe what’s above, what’s below the 4.5% at the moment?.

Dave Keltner

On the build, the vast majority of that is residential consumer business. We have small amount of trade business that will trade on Build.com’s sites, but it’s largely residential. The residential growth, which is our biggest segment, was about 45% in the last year of our sales and it was growing at 10%, so good growth there..

John Martin

Yes. And that isn’t significantly I mean it would be 9 point something X build..

Dave Keltner

Okay, yes..

John Martin

Yes. So, I mean it hasn’t skewed that number, Tom, if that was the question….

Tom Sykes

Basically just, yes..

John Martin

And then the sort of color on what’s doing, I mean, if you look to the geography on Dave’s chart earlier, North-Central remains the area of weakness in blended, but blended is doing okay. B2C is kind of continuing very well. Industrial, you know about it, is still negative essentially post year end, waterworks, slightly slower.

HVAC has had a very good year. It’s been a good – we have had a good role in HVAC, so that was....

Tom Sykes

And run-rate on industrial is negative, but less negative than it was in Q3, Q4?.

John Martin

A little bit, yes..

Tom Sykes

Yes, okay. Thank you..

John Martin

We have got time for another one before we – there aren’t anymore. Excellent. Well, thank you all very much indeed for coming and have a good day..

Dave Keltner

Thank you very much..

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