Hercules (LSE:HERC) — 2025 In Review

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the HERCULES PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and could be submitted at any time via the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. And I'd now like to hand you over to Bruce Korkmaz, CEO. Good morning, sir. Good morning. Good morning, Lily. Hi, everyone. I'm joined here today by our CFO, Paul. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for your time today. As you might have already seen from our announcements in 2025, we had a fantastic year, which we will announce our end of year results in January 2026.

0:54 The announcement will be around week commencing January 19. In today's presentation, we'll talk about our performance over the year, and we will also share our future growth plans with you. Just before that, I just wanna remind you about our our give you a bit a bit of a brief introduction. HERCULES PLC is a technology enabled labor supply company operating in the infrastructure sector. The second slide is about our business overview. At the bottom of this slide, you can see some of our blue chip clients we work for in the infrastructure sector. As I mentioned before, we are mainly a labor supply company working for the blue chip infrastructure companies and complemented by our construction services division.

1:44 Our labor supply division is our core business and is a significant part of our company, which currently contributes to 86% of our turnover, and this percentage is still growing. We believe that within five years' time, that will be around 95% of our total business. We currently employ over 1,700 operatives weekly. We have been supplying labor into UK's highways, rail, nuclear energy, utilities, power and energy transmission and distribution sectors, as well as other infrastructure projects. Under the construction services division, we carry out civil projects in the water industry, and we operate our HERCULES CONSTRUCTION ACADEMY.

2:29 The biggest USP we have got is that we can supply all of these services by cross selling opportunities to our clients under the same same umbrella. Our cross selling has built strong client loyalty with some of the clients are are with us over eighteen years, and we continue to grow our client base every year. The next slide is about our achievements for 2025. I'll start from the top. As I mentioned before, we had a fantastic first six months for 2025, and we are trading in line with market expectations for the second half of the year also. Our revenue, EBITDA, profit before tax, and our EPS all increased materially.

3:17 We have achieved these result strong results through growth in our labor supply division. As you might have already aware, there are billions of pounds of investment earmarked into the power and energy sectors, over a £100,000,000,000 earmarked. So we require two businesses. They are called Advantage Energy and Lines Power Services to move into power and energy sectors. We've got a separate slide for for our acquisition. So Paul will go through with you later on. We are also delivering what we promised to the market regarding our m and a strategy. In this year, we have completed three acquisitions. First one is Advantage Energy. They are an overhead linesman supply company into the transmission lines.

4:03 Lines power services specialize in supplying commissioning engineers into the energy sector. And QTT is a training company, which is a great addition to our existing HERCULES training academy. As you might be aware, The UK is facing a significant, shortage of skilled workers with over 250,000 people needed by 2027. And, as you might also remember that nearly a couple of years ago, we launched our HERCULES Academy to help upscale and cross skill our workforce. Since establishing our HERCULES Academy, we have trained over 2,000 workers, and we believe that upscaling and cross skilling our workforce, we can meet the growing demand in The UK by supplying skilled workers for the key projects.

4:54 We had a good second half of twenty twenty five financial year also with strong trading and strong balance sheet, which Paul will talk about in in detail later on. Also, selling the suction excavator business reduced our debt. As you might remember, a few years ago, we have developed our HERCULES recruitment app in order to match local labor to local projects, and we now have over 20,000 potential operators registered in our system. Lastly, 2026 financial year started really well. We have a strong pipeline of projects, and we are confident that we will have another record year. As you are aware that there is £725,000,000,000 investment earmarked in the infrastructure sector, and we are set to grow organically and through acquisitions over the next few years, aligning ourselves with infrastructure investment plans.

5:55 The next slide is about our financial performance. Now I will take you through the figures that represent our financial performance for the first half of twenty twenty five comparison to first half of the twenty twenty four financial year. Our revenue is up 18%. And comparison to first half of twenty twenty four, revenue is £54,600,000. Our adjusted EBITA is also up 26% comparison to first half of the twenty twenty four, and EPS is up 19%, and adjusted PBT is also increased by 47% to £1,700,000.

6:42 The next slide is I think this slide is yours, Paul. Absolutely. Olas Bruskas just reminded everybody who hadn't seen them what our interim results were for the first half of the financial year. We did do a trading update, and we did this, in I think it was October, late October. So what we what we said was that we expect our revenue for the full year, financial year 2025, to be a 111,000,000 revenue minimum, which is a 16% increase on the financial year 2024, which was a 101,900,000. And we also said to the market that we expect adjusted EBITDA to be, in line with market expectations.

7:35 We're very pleased with that second half year. It's been very, very busy. We're always a busy business, but, again, very busy. Business highlights. So, as Bruce said earlier on, the majority, of our business currently around 86% is labor supply. And we've continued this, organic growth through delivery of strong strong project pipeline. We've gained a number of, new clients, such as Balfour BT Power and Transmission, and Distribution, and Costain and United Utilities. We always gain new clients. We don't really lose them, so that's good news. Again, talking about operatives across sites, Bruce mentioned this earlier on, that's increased from from 1,200 in, the first half of twenty twenty four to 1,700 currently, very big increase.

8:33 We we find local employees via our recruitment app, and and that's the 20,000 downloads that that we've had so far that Bruce mentioned earlier. At the same time, end of half one twenty twenty four was 13,000. That is incredibly popular, and it is great to be able to communicate with our with our with our workforce or or prospective workforce in in that way. One of the things that that is really, really important to us, is the academy. We opened it in January 2024, and we've trained since that opened 2,000 operatives. And we use this to upskill and cross skill our operatives as it's as their their trained their revised training dates come come in front of us because nobody is trained forever. Normally, between three to four years, you have to be retrained. So we always take that opportunity now via our own academy to upskill and cross skill.

9:33 The civil projects, part of the business, is, very much, in the water industry. For anybody who is aware of the, AMP cycle, AMP eight started in April of this year and runs for five years. The previous AMP seven, again, which was for five years, was for £51,000,000,000. AMP eight is for a £104,000,000,000. And everybody who follows the headlines will know that this is because of the amount of work that needs to be done to clean up our rivers, oceans, etcetera. There's a lot of work there, and the public demands to make those changes. Hence, that money is being allocated for that very purpose, and we hope to do, very well out of that over the next five years.

10:26 In fact, we've already got projects that are in contract that will affect financial year 2025. In fact, that was £12,000,000. I think the same figure for 2026 to date. And let's face it. We're only not quite two months into 2026 financial year, but that we've already got 8,000,000, in contract that will affect, financial year '26. We did also, gain a new client in in the civil projects here, Wessex Water. Okay. So m and a activity. Well, we've made no secret of the fact, ever since we, did the IPO and joined the, the stock market that, we intend to grow.

11:14 We intend to grow by organic growth, and you can see that in what Brusk and myself have already shown you in the previous slide, but also by acquisition. So one of the major acquisitions or or the major one we've done to date was Advantage and RG. And you'll if you look at that picture, you'll see that there's a group of some of those employees there, and you'll see a a big steel erection and overhead lines behind them. That's what they do. And currently, there's about a 170 guys engaged in that activity. Not only in The UK, they've also just on their first contract in The Republic Of Ireland. It's the leading provider of overhead linesmen and works across The UK's power transmission and distribution network.

12:04 So this really this acquisition signals a positive strides that we're making into what what is clearly a new and rapidly growing sector. We've got a new client in Balfour Beatty power transmission and distribution, which is a huge win for us. So we know this is gonna be one of the busiest infrastructure sectors in the next ten to fifteen years. And so we think we've we've bought this business just at the right time and expect great things from it in the future. On a slightly smaller scale, but in the same sector, excuse me, we also purchased more recently Lions Power Services. So this is a a company that effectively works on commissioning in electrical substations in the power and energy sector.

12:55 Again, right place, right time, we believe. Lots of growth coming along in that in that space. And we think there's lots of cross selling that can be done between Advantage NRG and Lions and other parts of the HERCULES group. QTT, we purchased earlier in the year. Again, relatively small, but what this does, it enables us to expand, the courses that we make available, to people in the academy. And it means that we've got some, in house trainers. We don't need to go to external trainers at all. We we effectively use the people that we've got on payroll, which will add to the long term profitability.

13:46 And we'll and we expect the the academy to to pretty much get to in fact, it's probably already got there now where it's now washing its face. We expected two years to break even. I think we've done that just within that time frame, which is which is quite a success for everybody involved. Finally, we the first acquisition we did, which we did in November 2023, was FutureBuild, which is a white collar recruitment business operating in the infrastructure sector. And that has had quite a good year in in 2025, an improvement on on 2024. And we expect on 2026 to show similar improvement.

14:36 So the businesses, as I said earlier on, was is very, very busy. But it's busy for a number of reasons. We want to grow. We want to build, and we want to develop, and we want to launch ourselves into different opportunities. So this has been a really big development year for HERCULES. In fact, the first thing one of the first things we did earlier in the year was that we rebranded. We rebranded to be called HERCULES PLC rather than HERCULES Site Services PLC. And this was to create a a stronger brand and allow for a structural change as the group grows and develops. We talk about being a technology enabled business.

15:24 Well well, we are, and the apps are something that definitely differentiate ourselves from our competitors. But as well as that, we've had to look at our, existing back office systems, which really is the the is how the business operates. And we've had the same one since 2016 when we were quite a small company. So we're undergoing two major changes in technology. We are launching a pay and bill system, which will give us a dish quite a bit of room for growth in the years to come. And that's halfway through implementation, and that should be completed in the early part of next year. And we're also implementing a new ERP system, which is, again, a very big part of what we need to do. And that will be a 2026 implementation completion.

16:16 We've also, of course, hired a business development director. This is really important because it is a very much a strategic hire to help with growth into new markets, new clients, ones that we've not dealt with before. And Jacques Creel is the guy, and he's got an individual with with very strong industry experience. We're lucky to have him. He's doing a great job. Moving on from there, we're also, launching, ourselves into Scotland. So, again, another strategic move, which will provide opportunities across the group, but in particular, power transmission and distribution, and in the water sector and the provision of labor. In fact, we just opened an office there in Scotland in Motherwell. So we're looking for for great things in Scotland in the years ahead because we know there's gonna be a lot of work there.

17:14 Finally, and this is relatively exciting, we think, we've been exploring, what clearly is an an abundance of opportunities, in the Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia, and in particular, training, which is a big thing over there. Everybody will probably be aware of the amount of work that's going on in Saudi Arabia to build what they're calling gigacities. So we've got involved in that, and we'll obviously keep people posted as things develop. But we're exploring those opportunities, and we we hope to bring some to fruition in 2026. Russ, back to you. Thank you, Paul. This slide is about our current trading industry outlook.

18:04 As I had mentioned before, we had a fantastic first six months. Also, momentum has continued across all divisions into the second half of the year. We are also on track to deliver our result. Infrastructure remains buoyant with £725,000,000,000 investments earmarked across our main markets, which are nuclear energy, power and energy distribution and transmission work, rail, highways, and water sectors. The next AMP, which is AMP eight in the water sector, has a committed investment of £104,000,000,000 over the next five years, more than double the $5,051,000,000,000 pounds investment in the current M7. When I say current M7, I mean, M7 finished in April last year, so M8 started.

18:54 We are the biggest labor supply supply company company into the into the water sector. We work in the Thames Water area, Anglin Water, Seven Trent Water, Southern Water, Westex Water, United Utilities. There was one more I forgot. Yorkshire Water as well as we are opening up our offices in Scotland to target Scottish Water also. So we are the biggest labor supply company on on our price project team also carry out work in the water industry. So that means we will be twice as busy over the next five years comparison to the m seven period. Network Rail CP seven investment plans representing a £44,000,000,000 investment into the rail network is from April 2024 over the next five years. In the rail sector, we are well positioned to maximize our revenue and profits. As you might remember, we have opened up our rail division a couple of years ago, and it's going really well. We are growing every year, and and and it will continue to grow this year also.

20:00 As you might have already seen in the recent news that the government committed to major infrastructure projects throughout 2025 and beyond, including initial investment of £14,200,000,000 in the nuclear energy such as Ties Well, C and Ipswich, along with numerous SMRs, smaller modular reactors, and carbon capture projects such as a net zero t side, as well as major power and energy transmission and distribution projects in the various part of The UK. As you can see from the list of these investments, we are well positioned in the market to further grow over the next ten plus years. The next slide is about our growth strategy. This is our final slide. As you can see from this slide, we have a multiple growth opportunities for our future with regards to m and a activity. As I mentioned previously, that we have acquired four companies so far, and they are doing really well contributing to our growth strategy.

21:01 We are also talking to identify acquisition targets in the labor supply sector. We have a we have good pipeline of acquisition targets. With regards to our organic growth, we have been growing across all divisions through strong pipeline of projects into financial twenty twenty six. I mean, when I started the business eighteen years ago from a family spare bedroom, we have been growing every year. So this this hasn't just only happened last year or the year before. Every year, we have been growing. Apart from the COVID year, we dropped down. But over the last eighteen years, we have got a really good track record of growth every year. There are billions of pounds being invested in the nuclear energy, as as I mentioned before, with initial investment of £14,200,000,000 committed to size of our sea nuclear energy project.

21:51 We have already started supplying labor to this project, and we believe that there are significant growth opportunities in the coming years. I think when it peaks up, they will be employing 11,000 blue collar people. So as you can see, we are we are well positioned into in the in the nuclear market as well. Regarding the power and energy distribution projects, the UK government has committed to ensuring energy security across the country. Major power energy transmission and distribution projects are starting in Scotland, England, Wales, and we are already a a a framework supplier for our blue chip clients in these regions. So this is the end of the slides. Thank you so much for listening to us today, and we are we really appreciate your feedback.

22:39 And please feel free to ask any questions. Thank you so much. That's great. Thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published q and a can be accessed via your investor dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. Please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and we'll pick up from you at the end. Thank you very much, Lily. So, first, we've got to question one. So this is a question about, the Advantage NRG acquisition that we made recently. So the question was, Advantage NRG cost up to £15,700,000, which is a big chunk of change.

23:32 Is it proving to be, in inverted commas, earnings enhancing and cash generative? And how many years will it take to wipe its face? Well, it's one of these acquisitions that is very, very strategic, and it's for the long term. And we know there's going to be lots of growth in that area. What we don't know is the rate of growth because that's the nature of infrastructure, a labor supply. You don't quite know when things are gonna kick off, but you know they're gonna kick off. So it's very much earnings enhancing and and very much cash generative, and that will become more evident as the years go by. In terms of how many years it will take to wipe its face, well, to be fair, that's a difficult one because we don't know exactly the rate at which the work will kick off.

24:25 But in I think the way we would look at it is it's it's a very, very good acquisition and will prove it's worth relatively soon. It's already growing. Right, Paul? The advantage energy team Already growing. Going going in right direction. Huge amount of work coming up in 2026. We believe we will be growing with advantage energy over the next few years, which is brilliant. That's that's the whole point we bought. We we acquire the the the the the company. We we're only interested in buying companies that we believe have got growth within them in the years ahead, and they very much, are one of those. Okay. Perhaps I'll let you do this one. Bruce, what are the unique selling points of the HERCULES service that give you an advantage over your competitors?

25:12 Yeah. Great question. I'll start with our apps. We are a technology enabled labor supply company. We have got our apps that we use for the recruitment app. We match local people to local projects. It helps us a lot. It helps people a lot. We can also target difficult areas where there is that are that are less operatives and and very difficult challenging areas. We can also find people as well by using our apps. We can also onboard them really quickly. We've got an onboarding app as well that we have developed in house, which is brilliant, and we are continuing to develop our our apps to make us more efficient, as well as, less costly. Another unique selling point that we have got is is our training academy. So we are finding local people for local projects. As you are as you remember, after Brexit, the amount of skilled workers in The UK dramatically reduced, and therefore having you know, we are finding local people for local projects, but we need to upscale and cross skill out the the workforce.

26:18 Also, we we need to bring new people into the industry as well. How we are doing is that through our academy, which is brilliant, our HERCULES training academy, we established two years ago. We trained 2,000 people, and is helping us to supply people for the key infrastructure projects. And the number three unique selling point is that we have got we have acquired few companies, and that means for our clients, we can offer services under the same umbrella different services under the same umbrella, which are mainly labor supply into different infrastructure projects, including power and energy as well and into water as well as rail as and white collar. So you can see that clients prefer to sort of go to one one company who who who they can who who can provide all of these services under the same umbrella. We are also cross selling between the companies as well, which is which is working really well.

27:17 Okay. So the next one, I think you have made excellent progress with the academy in a short space of time given that you are training staff for other organizations. Are you planning for it to be self funding? I I can do this one because I think I alluded to it within the presentation anyway. So, yeah, just to clarify. So we we opened the academy in January 2024, and we're really pleased with the progress. I think we've trained up to 2,000 people since we opened. We always knew it was going to take a couple of years before we got to breakeven point. And as I said, I I think we're just at that crossover point now. So two years would be January 2026.

28:02 So I think we've achieved our target, and we're very pleased with that. We never intended this to be a major profit center within the group, but we knew it we wanted it to be as as a minimum self funding, and then make a contribution to the group's results over time. But, also, really, work as a a bit of vertical integration into providing that services, that service not just for other companies within the group, but to competitors or to other organizations and then educational establishments across the country, which is a a key part of our strategic plan. But as Bruster has explained how important the, the skills gap is and how we've got to address it, and we're very much trying to do our bit. Okay. Next one.

28:48 This is I'll leave this one for you. So an easy one, Bruce. What proportion of the labor force is white collar? It's only a a smaller portion if you compare to the, the rest of the workforce. We have got our recruitment a white collar recruitment company that we required, feature build recruitment, as Paul mentioned before. They are excellent company, and they are supplying people into the to the infrastructure sector. And it is only a small portion, I would say, probably up to sort of five to 7% of our our our workforce, even probably less than less than seven. I I would probably say around 5% of our work workforce is is is white collar.

29:35 Okay. It's an interesting one, Bruce. Again, I'll let you do this one. Sure. What impact will creation of a new oversight body, including the closure of Ofwat, have on business? I mean, business is as usual for us. It doesn't affect us at all. The m seven investment has already been earmarked, and it's already start so m eight investment already earmarked a £104,000,000,000, as I mentioned before, and it has kicked off. The the as as you are aware, there are currently sewage is being spilled into the rivers, into the lakes, into the seas, and that is to stop that happening. That amount has to be spent to be able to make sure that we don't have any spillage into into the the rivers, etcetera.

30:22 So so it doesn't make any any impact. We already started seeing the amp amp paid sort of growing with within within our business, affecting our business. And and and it's gonna, I think, kick off properly from January to April onwards, which that means we are positioned really well in the in in the water sector. Okay. So this one is from Jed s. And Jed says, one of your clients, Kostain, recently gained a £75,000,000 contract with EDF for project control services at eight nuclear power stations. Will there be any financial benefit to HERCULES?

31:08 Bruce, do you wanna take that one? Yeah. I I would start it. So, yeah, with regards to costing, costing is our we we a strategic supplier to costing. They are we are in their framework. So wherever they require people, we would be supplying the costing anyway for that. And especially acquiring advantage energy and lines power services, Paul mentioned one of them is a is a a great great company for overhead linesman supply labor supply company. The other one is, yeah, supplies commissioning engineers into the into the, you know, substations, into the nuclear energy sort of plants.

31:55 So, obviously, we will be, you know, supplying cost in wherever they require in in in the EDF projects as well. Okay. Right. So this is a question from Nigel a. Why is there an h two waiting? And do you expect this to continue in financial year '26? Are operating margins expected to rise given organic and inorganic growth? Okay. I'll take this one. So there's always been anybody who watches the construction industry and and in particular, the infrastructure part of the construction industry will know that there is a downturn in the Christmas period and and the winter period, generally speaking.

32:44 And there is an upturn in the summer months, when, hopefully, the sun shines, and everybody wants everybody out on-site working. That's never changed. It's a combination of those two things. So half one goes down, half two goes up. It's which really is straightforward as that. Do we expect this to continue? Well, unless the seasons start changing because of climate change, I think it's gonna continue not only into 2026, but well beyond. Our operating margin is expected to rise. Well, our margins are a blend. They're a blend of the different elements of the business. And what we look to do as we make acquisitions is to look for niche margin type businesses that's that's going to add to our overall blend.

33:38 And that's very much what we expect to be the case with Advantage Energy and with Alliance Power Services. So with organic growth, organic growth, it depends where that organic growth occurs. Government funded projects tends to be more nailed down in terms of margin levels, whereas nongovernment funded ones, we have far more scope. So do we expect margins overall to increase, in terms of percentages? I think we do. Yes. Okay. So next one is from Nigel a. CP seven rail started slowly. Are you seeing activity in rail picking up? And if you are, given timings, is this an opportunity for 2026 outperformance assuming revenue in rail was below 2025 expectations?

34:35 Bruce, do you wanna take that one? Yeah. Sure. We only started our rail labor supply business a couple of years ago. We got a really good team set up with operations and compliance, And and we have been growing for the last two years, and and even to 2026 starts really well as well. Now we have established our name into the market, and and we will we believe that we'll be growing 2026 as well. So which which is really, really good news for for us to to to be able to do that. Okay. Next question is from Anthony d. Anthony asks, the forecast of a £129,000,000 revenue in 2026 does not seem to reflect the opportunities that you have outlined.

35:25 Okay. Well, this is a fairly simple one, to answer. We're in the, a business where we don't determine the start, and end dates of contracts. We know contracts are coming along, but we get intel from our clients that that give us indications of when we are going to be required on different sites, but they very often do not turn out to be the the real start dates. So you would expect us to be relatively cautious in terms of what we we forecast. We want to be able to put something into the market that we can deliver. Having said that, obviously, there is we would as Bruce said earlier, we'll be publishing our results for the financial year 2025 in January of next year, and we will, assess the market and the year ahead then, and revise our forecast as we normally do, then for for both 2026 and 2027.

36:33 But, unashamedly, we're always going to be relatively cautious because we don't have the we don't have the handle on the on the go button, so to speak, or the start button. So we we have to be careful. Oh, yes. A great great great point. And it's a great question as well. But, also, we we wanna be under promising and and and over delivering as well. So like Paul said, we are cautious. We call it cautiously optimistic. Right, Paul? So Absolutely. Yeah. So so, yeah, we we we believe we'll be growing again into in 2026 and 2027, and you're gonna see our forecast for 2026 in January in the in into the market. Okay.

37:19 Right. Let's move on. This is from Alex m. Regarding the m and a strategy, does management foresee the continuing, excuse me, issuance, of new shares to be part of the approach? Can I can I start with this, Paul, if that is alright? Absolutely. It's a moment our share price is undervalued. You know, with the with the current share price, we we are giving 5% dividend, four and a half percent. I think currently post something like that anyway. And we would like our share price to grow to the to to analysts sort of when analysts sort of report to the market, I think, say around 60 p. And we would we would wanna do it when the share price is sort of grown, not not not in the current conditions.

38:11 Just and just to finish to add to what Russ has said. So we don't have a predefined plan because each acquisition is different, and we don't know which one will come along when, and we would have to look at each one and make decisions there. But I think we would we would envisage that in most cases, there will be some element of issuance of new shares, for for acquisitions, but it very much depends on the size, and the timing and the nature of the of the acquisition. This is an easy one for you, Bruce. From Gary d, please can you explain what AMP stands for that you referred to on your civil slide?

38:58 So so AMP is asset management program. So this is given by OFAT, set by Ofat every five years. They are the control periods. So AMP seven just finished in 2024 sorry, twenty twenty five April, and AMP page started. AMP page is normally the beginning of the AMP are normally taken by design. And and then after the design is completed, it goes to the to the sites for the projects to to start, and we started seeing that now. Things start getting busy over the last two, three months, and we believe January onwards is going to get even even busier.

39:43 Thank you. Okay. So this looks like the last question, and it's from Cameron r. Cameron asks, why does a construction company use HERCULES trained personnel personnel rather than hire and train their own? It's a good one for you, Bruce. Yeah. Sure. So this is a really good question, Cameron. So employing people, finding people, and putting them to to to projects is is very different than delivery of the projects. Our clients are excellent at delivering the projects, but finding people, training them, and putting them to projects, and moving them from one project to another is another skill. They they have their only limited resources as you can imagine, and they are good at completing the project, starting the project, completing it successfully and safely and efficiently.

40:37 And we help them by finding the right people, training them up, and putting them to projects, and and and upskilling it again, and and moving to to them to another another project. So it's a different skill, different teams, and and that's why we are good good at what we are what we do. Thank you. Bruce, Paul, thank you for answering all those questions you care from investors. And, of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the investor meet company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which you know is particularly important to the company, Bruce, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments? Thank you, Lily. Yes. We are very well positioned in the market. As I mentioned before, last eighteen years, we have been growing, and we believe we we got a great company, huge investment happening in the infrastructure, seven hundred and twenty five billion pounds. So we believe that we are gonna be growing and keeping our promise to our shareholders and potential shareholders as well. So thank you so much for for your trust in us. Thank you.

41:42 That's great. Thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session? It should now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This may only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of HERCULES PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.