VP (LSE:VP.) — Investor Presentation

0:01 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the VP Group VP PLC Investor Presentation. Apologies for our short delay. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll, and I'm sure the company will be most grateful for your participation.

0:33 I'd now like to hand over to Neil Stothart, CEO. Good morning. Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us this morning. I have my colleague, Alison Bainbridge, me, CFO. Good morning. I'm CEO of the business. There are three elements of the presentation. The first short one, which is I should just take you through the highlights of the results to 09/30/2022. Alison will then take you through the financial highlights, and I'll finish with commentary on the markets. So first slide in terms of highlights. I think first of all, the six months to September 30 were a period of resilient performance for us.

1:21 We were very pleased with a number of elements of the results. The earnings themselves, the quality was maintained. We improved our ROAC through the six months, and we also maintained margins from the equivalent period last year. Recovery has continued, albeit relatively modest, held back by certain market challenges. And we've the revenue growth has been partially delivered through increases in higher rates agreed with our customer base. The supported markets for us have been infrastructure and house build, which has been against an inflationary backdrop, but nevertheless positive.

2:10 Geographically, I would highlight the fact that our international division, which is much smaller than The UK, made good progress as did our Mainland Europe operations, which report into The UK in TPA and in ground force. The capacity on our fleet has been maintained. We have a refreshed fleet this year as we had last. And as part of that fleet refreshment, moving on to the ESG comment, we've been able to continue to focus on our drive to improve sustainability in terms of the initiatives that we have and in particularly in terms of the type of product that we're being able to provide to our customer base.

3:01 To highlight the fact that the debt that we have is a period when interest rates are hiking is 62% is at long term fixed interest, which Alison will explain in more detail shortly. And the final headline for me would be the £0.11 per share interim dividend represents a 5% increase to for the year. So they are the highlights. I'm now going to hand over to Alison, who will talk you through the financials. Thank you, Neil.

3:42 Financial highlights. I think we're pleased that these are a solid set of results showing continued recovery in the strength of our business. The main points I would want to draw out here is the fact that revenue has increased by 6% as has profit before tax and amortization in the period. And also, we are pleased that net margins have been maintained at 11.5%, which we believe shows the strength of our returns. The return on average capital employed is a key measure for us, and we're pleased to report that in the first half, this was maintained at 14.4%. This is ahead of our weighted average cost of capital, which have increased to 9% to reflect recent increases in interest rates, and it was previously at 8%.

4:33 As a group, we target 15% return capital employed throughout the cycle. This target was set over twenty years ago, and we've maintained that target. By that time, weighted average cost of capital was at 11%. So we still feel that there's plenty of headroom within that target and against our working capital weighted average capital.

4:58 This isn't very responsive to my clicker. Dividends. Moving on to dividends, which is Slide eight. As Neil has already mentioned, we are going to pay an interim dividend of GBP $1.01 per share, which is a 5% increase on the previous year. I've already mentioned that we feel we've had a robust set of results and that we have strong returns, and this is reflected in this 5% increase in dividend. Our stated policy is to increase dividends in line with profitability as long as those profits we feel are sustainable and also that we pay out two times dividend cover. The group has a strong balance sheet.

5:45 And in the period, higher fleet, which is the equipment that we rent out to our customers, grew by GBP 10,000,000 and also by 5%. The CapEx in there was GBP 34,000,000, but Neil is going to talk about fleet CapEx on a later slide. So I'll leave that for now for him. You'll notice on the balance sheet that we have had a working capital swing, an adverse swing, and it has increased by GBP 18,700,000 in the period. We feel this is a we had a positive swing as a result of the pandemic, and this is a reversal of that, which we think now will flatten out. Behind that movement is mainly trade debtors. So there's an GBP 11,000,000 increase in trade debtors in the period. Half of that is a result of our increased trading, the 6% increase in revenue.

6:31 And the other half is due to a slight increase in debtor days, which we're monitoring and keeping abreast of. The other element is the fact that our creditors have reduced by GBP 6,000,000. Part of this is that we had a new system implemented for the purchase ledger, and this resulted in some delays for a while. But now we've rectified those, and we're now paying in time on the times that we previously were. As a consequence of the movement in net working capital, net debt has increased to 149,000,000, and I'll talk more to that in a later slide. So the next slide is around cash flow. We have strong EBITDA, and you can see that it's increased to GBP 47,800,000 in the period, which is a 7% uplift, which we find is pleasing.

7:22 On this cash flow slide, you can also see that we booked an exceptional item in the period of GBP 1,900,000. This was in respect of a strategic review. In April last year this year, 2022, we announced that we had we're going to do a formal sales process. Before we did that, we carried out strategic review, which involved financial due diligence and commercial due diligence, and the exceptional items are in respect of those costs. I've already spoken about the working capital movement and the fact that net debt has increased by an outflow of $18,300,000 Interest rates will increase in the second half, but I'm going to turn to my next slide, which shows that with our net debt and facilities, we are fairly well placed in the fact that we have 62% of our net debt is at fixed rates.

8:16 You'll notice that we have two private placements, which are long term debt, one matures in January 2027 and the other element matures in April 2028. So that leaves us in a good position in the current environment of increasing interest rates. We do have a revolving credit facility, which matures in June 2024, and this is subject to Sonia, the margin over Sonia, and Sonia is impacted when the Bank of England raises its rate. So as I've mentioned, there's been little impact in the first half numbers, but we do see an impact going forward, which we will try and mitigate as best we can. As I mentioned, a key point is the fact that we do have 62% fixed. And then my final slide

9:04 is on our covenants. Within the banking documents and the loan documents that we have, we have two covenants only. One is EBITDA interest cover, which has to be greater than three times. And at the period end, we were at 9.81 times, so lots of headroom there. And the second covenant is we have to have net debt to EBITDA at less than 2.5 times. And at the period end, it was 1.6 times. So again, we do have covenant headroom against our covenants. I'm now going to pass on to Neil. He's going to talk about the market. Good. Thanks, Alison. So in terms of the market experience that we've encountered, which have delivered the quality of results that Alison has just described, my first slide talks to the core sectors that VP businesses are exposed to, namely infrastructure, construction, house building and energy, together with a length of smaller markets, which we described under Other.

10:06 You'll see from the table that all of the markets, apart from energy, showed growth in the period. Dealing with energy and other first, the energy market looks to fallen quite significantly. That's primarily due to the fact that last year, in the first half, we had a very large shutdown contract at a petrochemical complex, which does not repeat every year. And so we didn't have the benefits of that activity in the current year that we had a year ago. In actual fact, if you strip that out, the energy market has improved slightly for us, particularly where we have exposure to the oil and gas segment through our AirPack business.

10:58 In terms of other, that's been a welcome increase in activity in that market. And that's primarily as a result of the catch up on COVID related industries such as outdoor events and the aviation sector. So we're very pleased to see that those two markets pick up and contribute to the other line. The three main areas for us and two largest of which are infrastructure and construction at circa 40% each. In infrastructure, we had a positive period of trading with on the contractors on the AMP program, AMP7, which is in its third year and has been very slow the previous year. So that was a good development for us. We've also been quite busy on the rail activity where CP6, the five year program in rail, has started to pick up.

12:05 And perhaps our rail would have been better still, for the industrial action, which has impacted some of the work programs over the last few months for our contractors and for Network Rail. Elsewhere, HS2 was a strong area of activity for us in the prior year on primarily on Phase one, the London to Birmingham leg. We didn't experience the pickup in Phase two work that we expected in the current year as many of the contracts have yet to be let. We hope that having received endorsement from the government most recently that they're going to continue with HS2 as envisaged that, that work will come through next year.

13:03 In construction, the positives are in RMI in terms of the repair and maintenance side. And also, we've seen a decent pickup in activity on groundwork in civil engineering, which is pleasing because that's a fresh development in the last six months. Elsewhere, however, the markets are flat, and I will talk to that a little bit in the next slide. In terms of housebuild, we had a very good first half in the Housebuilding segment with sustained levels of demand, married to which there was a shortage of supply of the type of products that we provide to that segment.

13:48 The supply shortage is due to the long lead times from manufacturers, which have continued. They are easing, but they have continued into the second half. So that's the micro VP view, if you like, in terms of the markets. To take a macro view, my next slide talks to the use or utilizes Experian's autumn construction forecast, which may even now be already out of date given the pace with which markets are moving. The point I want to make here is that in these four quadrants, you've got the lion's share of what we do in terms of supporting the overall construction and infrastructure sector.

14:43 The top left hand quadrant, the top right hand quadrant and the bottom right hand quadrant are all, in our view, positive for VP. The all those markets either fell a little or fell a lot at the start of the pandemic, but they recovered very quickly. And as you'll see, infrastructure is well ahead of pre pandemic levels. Housing is approaching pre pandemic levels and total repair and maintenance activity is also in excess of pre pandemic levels. So there's been a full recovery in those markets in our view to date.

15:29 Looking further out and utilizing the forecasts, these graphs have flattened off. I put the same graphs in the prelims six months ago using the spring forecast for 2022. There was a bit more optimism in the air at that stage. That flattened out. But we don't mind flat. Flat profile is something that we can manage against. And certainly, we believe the infrastructure and the repair and maintenance forecast. I think the housing forecast probably would if it was struck today, would be flatter, if not slightly declining. But nevertheless, we're positive about those three elements of our market exposure.

16:15 The fourth slide really just illustrates the gap in construction that new nonresidential, which is items like new schools, new hospitals, commercial buildings, office buildings, that really fell away post Brexit. It then fell away even further during the pandemic. There was little or no recovery as we came out of pandemic, and the forecasts are still relatively modest in their recovery going forward. So I think that's a latent opportunity for us if from an optimistic point of view, whenever that market changes.

17:02 But more currently, it's a subdued market. It's a flat market. It's a market that we can and will participate in going forward. But our focus is probably looking at other areas of the market at the moment where there is potential for at least some growth. But just quickly running through the business performance slides. At a group level, good revenue growth at 6%. Operating profits were also up 6%. So margins are maintained half year on half year. And that's against an inflationary backdrop in terms of our costs.

17:49 And it perhaps illustrates the way in which we manage the business. We manage it efficiently and also that we've been able to in terms of costs and also that we've been able to pass on some of the inflationary costs that we've incurred onto our customer base through increased higher rates.

18:11 There are two divisions in the group, The UK division and International. So The UK is much larger. You'll see here that our growth in The UK was slightly less than the average, so 4% of revenue line and 3% in PBITA. But nevertheless, quality of the profits in terms of margins have been maintained, and we have delivered profit growth, which we're very pleased with. I talked to the markets, and this is what influenced The UK, in particular, with AMP7 and transmission work are positive for our businesses, but a weaker performance in HS2 and a slightly more subdued performance than we might have expected on Rail.

18:57 In construction, RMI continues to be a positive, and we've most recently seen a nice pickup in terms of civil engineering activity. New build, as I my previous slide illustrates, is still relatively subdued. Housebuilding has been stable throughout the period. There are clearly some challenges to come, but we are generally more of the view that the decline potential decline in housebuilding is going to be gradual and over a period of time rather than a short, sharp shock that we experienced in the global downturn ten years ago. So overall, margins maintained in the group, but in a period of lower growth.

19:46 International, which is much smaller, we're very pleased to see an increase of 28% in their revenue levels, which translated into more than doubling of profits. The margins for international are still below the group average. So we're looking for further improvement to come there, and we're confident that will happen. So we've seen a good recovery in our international markets. In the case of our businesses in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, that's primarily due to a delayed lockdown compared with, say, UK and Europe, where activity has picked up a little bit later and particularly in the first half of our financial year.

20:34 And the other side is what I mentioned earlier about a positive energy market, including a pickup in oil and gas. So a pleasing half year for International. So in terms of investment, we spent broadly the same marginal increase in new CapEx this year. We spent $34,000,000 versus 32,000,000 last. And a lot of that investment has been in substitutional products, products which are replacing petrol and diesel driven equipment and being replaced by battery and solar powered solutions, and we've had a lot of success in delivering that to our customers.

21:24 We did order quite extensively at the start of this calendar year in anticipation of some growth and also anticipation that there were going to be lead time challenges all the way through 2022. Well, certainly, the lead time challenges have continued. However, our view, and I think the market's view of growth has been more dampened. And as a result, we haven't necessarily gone ahead with all the capital orders that we made. And those orders have effectively gone back into the market. And this has happened with, I think, pretty well across the board in terms of the sector.

22:12 That's given the manufacturers a bit of an ease in terms of supply chain lead times. Added to which we've seen some improvement with a long way to go in the fact that the manufacturers are now getting some of their components more quickly than they were six to nine months ago. So we've managed that well. I think we'll continue to manage CapEx tightly over the next six to nine months, dependent on how we see markets develop over that time. One of the responses to flattened rather than a rapidly growing market has been for us to look at the fleet that we already hold and to identify some areas where we can reduce

23:05 investment in underperforming assets. And so in the first half, you can see that we've got considerably more disposal proceeds in the period. But as you'll have seen from Alison's slides, they've been delivered to good margins and overall good contribution to the group. So in net CapEx terms, the fleet is actually book value if sorry, the fleet's investment that we've made in net terms is 8% down on the prior period. But that doesn't mean that we're our fleet is getting older. As Alison's slide show, the net book value of the group's fleet has actually increased in the period, and we still have a very young fit for purpose fleet across the whole of VP.

23:59 So the last slide is just in terms of outlook for the group going forward. We are undoubtedly, in our view, in a lower growth environment. And therefore, accordingly, we've gone back to basics in terms of running the business. We're managing costs efficiently. We're trying to mitigate the impact of supply chain inflation by passing on those where we can to our customers through increased hire rates. And we're also imposing higher rates a higher hurdle rate for investment to reflect the cost of money as we see it going forward. So it's they're our main responses to that environment.

24:48 In The UK, I think infrastructure strength will still be good for us as a group. We do see stabilitymodest decline in housebuilding, and I think we're happy that we can continue to flourish with that type of market backdrop. But we do see a flat construction sector, and we're managing the business accordingly to that expectation. International markets, we expect to improve further, and we look forward to that happening. We are driving our own sustainability strategy, and we are supporting customer aspirations as we work closely with our supply chain and our customers to come up with ever more innovative solutions to help with the sustainability challenge that we all have.

25:40 It's been another strong period of investment in technology, both in terms of enhancing the customer experience, but also in terms of our managing our business operationally more efficiently. We've continued to invest in our people, Our learning and development programs across the group are moving ahead nicely. We've taken on another 40 plus apprentices this autumn and our grad group graduate program has again got a full intake in the current year.

26:15 So trading continues to be in line with Board's expectations to date. We've got a resilient and proven business model operating in diversified markets. And I think with that, we're confident of continuing to deliver the outstanding long term return to shareholders that we've generally provided in the past. So that's the end of Alison and my presentation, and we look forward to, Steve, we can answer some of the questions that have That's come great. Neil, Alison, thank you very much indeed for updating investors this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. But just while Neil and Alison take a couple of moments to review your questions that you've submitted already, I'd just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the Q and A and the slides, will be available via

27:08 your Investor Meet company dashboard. Neil, Alison, you can see you've received a number of questions from investors throughout today's presentation. If I could just ask you to open up that Q and A tab. Thank you to all the investors for your questions this morning. And Neil, if I may just hand back to you to read out those questions and where appropriate to give a response, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Want me to read them? Yes. I'm sure you're capable of it. Well, let's read them and you can answer them. I think that's what we didn't know. That's the normal fifty-fifty we apply. Yes. Okay. Right. So ready? So given to robust results, why do you think the share price isn't better reflecting the opportunity here? Yes. I mean, it's a good question and it's a good observation. I think in truth, we are one of many stocks in the market at the moment that in there's a drag, in my view, down by just a general negative sentiment in markets at the moment, both in The UK and elsewhere.

28:11 If we look at our peers, I don't think that we've fared any worse or particularly any better than any of the others. Obviously, we're confident that we're continuing to produce excellent results. And we've certainly produced similar results when the share price has been a lot higher than it is today. But I think having been through around the city this week, there is still a certain significant level of caution about guessing how quickly things will improve. So much as we'd like to see the shares reflect the performance and strength of the group, sometimes we just have to be patient, but we're doing the best we can. Okay.

29:02 So the next question then is how are you looking to build out your international division? Would you consider acquisitions to expand outside The UK? Yes. We've always felt that having activity outside of The UK was part and parcel of the breadth of opportunity and risk mitigation for us as a strong player in The UK. We were very beholden to The UK market. We have invested we've got two international businesses, which is AirPak, which is based in The UK, but has operations in Perth and in Singapore.

29:49 And we have TR, which is based in Melbourne, in Australia, but with activities in New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore as well. So certainly, that is an area of the world where we would like to put more investment. And to a degree that's been held back over the last two to three years as we've battled particularly with the pandemic. So I hope that that will be an area where we will see some further investment in due course. The other element of international is that two of our UK based businesses, which is TPA and Groundforce, we set up a European activity there some years ago.

30:39 And that those businesses are now starting to mature relatively quickly in good markets, and we're very pleased with their development as well. Those certainly for now, those businesses report are reported in The UK division's results. But what I can tell you is that overall, if you take the international division plus the European activities, we've currently got about 17% of group revenues coming ex The UK. I think probably we'd prefer I'd prefer that to be nearer sort of 20% plus, but we're not looking to The UK will continue to be our core market.

31:28 Okay, thank you. So the next question at the beginning references My Retirement, which was announced at the same time as the interim results, and it makes a nice comment. So thank you very much for that. And then the question goes on to say, what's the planned investment moving forward into new equipment, etcetera? And where are you looking to invest? Yes. I think I tried to answer the current or to talk to the current scenario for capital on the question current scenario of capital investment. Next year, we're guiding analysts towards a similar level to this current year, which is a similar level to last year, which is enough to keep our fleet certainly refreshed.

32:19 And the dynamic is that we don't always reinvest in the same areas. So we're obviously continuing to optimize as we see it, where we should have the investment. So I think that we will be looking to invest as we always do in new equipment as the growth opportunities present themselves. Obviously, if the markets improve at a greater rate than we are all currently expecting, then the new I would expect new equipment investment to accelerate in the same way. In terms of where we're looking to invest, again, as ever, we will invest where the opportunity lies. So whether geographically, U. K, Europe or international or within the subsets of the divisions within those categories, we will go where the activity lies.

33:18 Okay. So next question. I'll try not to click too fast. So do you see the house building sector providing the business with good revenue opportunities? I think the house building sector, we general consensus that it's going to go through a more difficult phase in the certainly in the short term. But for us, as a business, we don't need it to be dramatically improving. We as I said in the presentation, we can cope with flat and we can even cope with an extended decline. The equipment that we provide to the housing sector, particularly our U. K. Forks business, it's a workhorse, if you like, for every house building site. And so to a degree, the customer needs the product, whether they're building 75% of the number of homes on the site or 50% of the number of homes on the site, they still need the product on there. So so I think that I I we're we're as a business, we're still confident that house building's a good place for us to be.

34:35 Okay. Thank you. The next question is, please, could you discuss the effects of inflationary pressures on rental fleet renewal? Yeah. It's a very good well, it's not necessarily a good topic, it's a very good observation. I think that the inflationary pressures on capital equipment have probably been higher than in any other area of our group activity. As I've said in a few of these meetings this week, one of the great things about rental is that obviously, we don't like our cost input costs to go up.

35:21 But we have because we're buying that product to rent out for the use its useful economic life to us, which might be five, six, seven, eight years, we have the ability to claw that inflationary increase back over that time period in a way that would be very difficult to do if we were just buying the product and then having to sell it straight on. So I think there's an inbuilt dampening effect of the sort of extensive inflation that we've seen this year. A lot of the products that we operate, I mean, in the environmental side, we say that over 60% of our fleet is zero emission at point of use.

36:09 So that means that's product that doesn't have an engine that's not producing CO2 emission. A lot of those products don't have many moving parts at all. That means that they last a long time, which means that, again, we can we're not having to rapidly replace a cheaper product with a much more expensive product. We can spread that cost of that over a much longer period. So inflation isn't stopping us investing. We can't we will continue to work with the products that our customers require and services they require. And obviously, we've got to pass on some of those costs if the customer still requires the product.

37:04 The next question is how do you see the competitive environment evolving in the current outlook? I think it's difficult to quite work out what will happen from a competition point of view because the supply chain extended lead times that I described earlier will, I think, subdue all our enthusiasm if we spot an area that we would like to disproportionately invest in or and maybe be tempted to do that at a price. I think that the competitive environment at the moment is relatively stable and probably reflects the market outlook for the time being.

38:01 I think when competition is likely to become more visible again is will probably coincide as and when some or all of the markets which we operate in start to pick up in terms of prospective activity. It's always competitive, the rental sector. We're very used to that. So I suppose my answer to the question is that I don't see any particular reasons for it to change from the current levels at this stage. Not consolidation or anything like that? And yeah. I mean, in terms of consolidation, yeah, I I who knows? I mean, the the the it's not something that I particularly like to speculate on.

38:48 I'm sure there will be people planning to do things, but that's fine. But no particular comments on that. All right. Okay. Sorry, it went too far then. Could you say a bit more about the reasons for announcing the formal sales process and then terminating it? Was it just a matter of price? Do want me to answer that? Do want me to do it? Well, you can chip in on things that so the reasons for announcing it, so we announced the formal sales process in April of this year. And the reason we did that was we were approached by a major shareholder who happens to be a trust with independent professional trustees.

39:34 They were looking at their portfolio, and they asked us if they if we would view to see whether there was an opportunity to sell those. As a board, we obviously had to consider this request and took some advice on that. And we were also advised that we couldn't just sell that particular 50% of the shares because it was a major shareholder without being detrimental to the others. So it had to be the 100% of shares that were put up for sale. Before we announced the process, we did, as I mentioned in the presentation, some due diligence on commercial and financial things, which came through well. We didn't have any red flag issues, but there were some things that we could look at in there. The next thing we had to decide was whether we would do a public or a private process.

40:23 If you follow the private process, according to the rules, you can only approach six likely bidders at one time. And because we have a major shareholder, it was felt that we wouldn't actually know who was really the interested parties, and we wouldn't necessarily get best value on that. So we decided to do a public process, which indeed opened up quite a broad range of interest once we got to that process. So as I mentioned, there was a lot of interest. There was interest from trade, from private equity, from The UK, from Europe, from overseas. So there was a lot of interest generated. When we made the decision to proceed, we things had started to down a little bit. Well, the main thing that had happened was Russia had invaded Ukraine.

41:17 And so we were aware of that when we made the decision. But a lot of the things that subsequently happened hadn't happened at that time. So the political instability, the rising inflation hadn't happened. So we made the decision to proceed with it. As I mentioned, we had lots of interest from bidders. But as time went on, the bidders did start to fall out because I think interest rates and things started to get a little bit more difficult. So we got through and we got to the second stages with with bidders, but we weren't able to they weren't giving an offer that we would feel that we could recommend to shareholders. So once we decided that, which was in August, we announced that the process was completed. We had insurances from the major shareholder from the trustee that it wasn't their intention to do pursue this path again in the foreseeable future.

42:13 And indeed, I should have mentioned that they weren't unhappy investors when they decided to ask us to make this review. It was just part of their due process of making sure that they had the right balance of investments in their portfolio. Throughout it, we maintained business as usual. We think we did we aim to do that, and we think we did a decent job of that. Neil and I did most of the work, so we were able to shield the business from most of the disruption. And I think the fact that we can point to robust results in the first six months of the year shows that we were largely successful in avoiding any distractions from the process as well. So there might be one or two other points. No. I think that I think you've said it too. I think that's fine. Yeah. Yeah.

43:00 Okay. Okay. Next. Go up. I think you need to go up next one. And then maybe that's it. Okay. Okay. Question then. If HS two was to be abandoned North of Birmingham, how big an impact would it have on your growth prospects? Okay. So the HS2 work that we have during the six months we just reported on was fairly minimal. So we've delivered these results without that opportunity. Yes, it would be an element of growth for certain of our businesses that would be disappointing not to participate in, but it wouldn't really be a big problem.

43:49 So I think that it's just something that we will cope within the normal way that happens. At the moment, as I say, we're hopeful that it will happen. If it doesn't happen, we'll just move elsewhere. That's great. Neil, Alison, thank you very much indeed. You've taken all the questions that have been submitted from investors. So thank you once again to everybody for their engagement this morning. Neil, Alison, I know investor feedback is always important to you guys, and I'll shortly redirect everybody on the call to give you their feedback. But I wonder before doing so, if I may, Neil, just hand back to you just for a few closing comments to wrap up with, after which, of course, I'll redirect investors on the call to give you their feedback. Okay. Thank you, Mark. Yes, I main I think my main comment is that these are a good resilient set of numbers that we've produced in quite challenging times against the backdrop of high inflation and the potential distraction, but hopefully Alison's answered that, of an FSP.

44:55 And despite 2023 creating some uncertainties for all of us, we still feel positive that we can enjoy that opportunity. One of the Q and As mentioned Alison's retirement from the business. I will take the opportunity again to thank Alison on behalf of both myself, our colleagues, shareholders alike for her tremendous support over the last twelve nearly twelve years. And whilst we look forward to Anna Bealbe, who's Alison's replacement, starting with us in the New Year, we are sorry to see Alison go. So I would just endorse the positive comment that one of the Q and A said.

45:47 And that's us. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. That's great. Neil, Alison, thank you very much indeed for updating investors this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, could I please ask you not to close this session as we'll now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the company can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of VP PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good morning to you all.