Operator : Hello. Today we're joined by Simon Hicks, the CEO, and Stephen Craigen, CFO of Hargreaves Services. Firstly, to you both, congratulations on delivering another fantastic set of results with growth in revenue and profit achieved across all three business units. Can you talk us through the year and provide viewers with the financial highlights?
Simon Hicks : Yes. Another fantastic year for Hargreaves, before I let Stephen talk about the numbers, I'd just like to put out there a real big thank you to all the efforts that have gone in from the teams. Numbers wise, from a safety perspective, we've delivered on all metrics an improvement on FY 2025. Lowest safety lagging indicator for five years, which is great news, well done to all the teams. Operationally, another great year. We've shifted a record amount of earth on HS2 and Sizewell. We're delivering for the waste energy sector, and we're delivering for the environmental sector. Great work by the teams. The team at Hargreaves has got a long tradition in delivering work, Stephen's going to explain where we are with the numbers.
Stephen Craigen : Thanks, Simon. It has been a great set of numbers this year, one we can all be rightly proud of. It's the best set of numbers we've delivered for the last 12 years as a group. Revenue's up 30% year-over-year. PBT is up over GBP 40 million. Our EPS has grown 75%. We've increased the final dividend to GBP 0.205, which, when you combine it with the interim, gives a full year dividend of GBP 0.40 and an increase of 8% year-over-year. What's really pleasing, I think, about the results actually, is that each of our three business units of land, services, and HRMS joint venture have all improved in terms of revenue and profitability. That revenue within the services business has been the real driver there, that's come from increasing our services that we're providing onto major infrastructure projects, the likes of HS2 and Sizewell C Nuclear. In addition to that, we've also now got presence on Lower Thames Crossing and some of the new reservoir projects. The profit for the year has been achieved with a couple of one-off projects. Specifically, we sold the first two tranches of our renewable energy land assets during the year, which contributed just under GBP 10 million of one-off profit, also, we settled the longstanding mineral services contract with Tungsten West, which created a GBP 7 million gain. From a cash perspective, we ended the year with GBP 21.6 million in the bank, which is a really good achievement from the group's cash generative position when we think about the fact that we also returned GBP 32.6 million back to shareholders over that period. If we look ahead, the group's got some real good momentum building up behind it. We've got no debt on the balance sheet, strong cash position, and we're in a real good position to take advantage of opportunities as they come towards us.
Operator : Simon, operationally, the group has performed extremely well with the services division delivering its fifth consecutive year of growth. Can you talk us through what has driven the growth and how you maintain a growing pipeline of frameworks with long-standing customers? And how does your average margin compare to the sector?
Simon Hicks : Again, great results. You heard the numbers from Stephen, but simply put, Hargreaves is really good at what it does. I would say that as the incoming CEO, but Hargreaves has got a strong track record of doing work well. We're a contracting services business, which means we win work by doing good work. Our job, my job, Stephen's job, is to get the folk, the people we employ, in a place where they want to do that excellent work. So inspiring our people and inspiring more people to join us is what does the excellent work. Having good standards in place, having good delivery commitments, and understanding our customers helps us deliver excellent work. We deliver excellent work, we win more work, we continue to grow. Helpful that we're in very strong markets, so critical infrastructure is the markets we're in. Our customers are delivering the things that are important to people and communities. Nuclear power stations, clean energy, infrastructure for connecting people, roads, rail, airports. Those large critical projects that we deliver mean that we've got a good market in which we operate and the long-term pipeline in that market gives us that long-term outlook of what we're doing. But we're not just in building critical infrastructure, we also operate it. Once it's built, we operate it. So you'll find us operating the Port of Tyne, you'll find us operating handling services on Phillips 66. You'll find us moving fertilizers for CF Fertilisers. You'll find us removing the waste from municipal waste flows. You'll find us removing the waste from water treatment companies. We operate in a critical market, which helps. That allows us to be careful, and being careful, what do I mean by that? Being careful of the customers we select and the contracts that we enter into. Because we're careful, we can make sure that our margin is, yes, reasonable for the sector and for the project, but also one that is at the higher end of our competitors. This year, just over 6%, again, which for our sector is just at the top of that market. We have great people, we know what we're doing, we understand our customers, we operate in critical industries, and we deliver reasonably good margins.
Operator : Stephen, during the period, you returned over GBP 32 million of cash to shareholders via progressive dividend and tender offer, all whilst maintaining a strong cash balance. Can you talk us through how this has been achieved?
Stephen Craigen : Yeah, of course. I think a key focus for the group over the last few years has been maintaining a real balance between strong shareholder returns and a really strong financial position on the balance sheet. It's something we've always taken into account when making our decisions. During the year, we sold the first two tranches of the renewable energy land assets, which I mentioned earlier, which brought in cash of over GBP 15 million upfront. What we've always said is that when we realized those assets, we would return that money back to shareholders. That's exactly what we've done. Completing the tender offer in early May for GBP 20 million. We're doing what we said we would do. Looking at the dividend perspective, the business has had a really strong period of cash generation, as it's grown over the last five years or so. EBITDA up over GBP 36 million in the period. The services business unit alone delivering free cash flows in excess of GBP 15 million, has led the board to increase the final dividend up to GBP 0.205, which when combined with the full-year dividend, is up 8% year-on-year. Those two things combined is really what's driven that cash return to shareholders. We've been able to do all of that whilst maintaining broadly the same level of cash within the business as well, which is really impressive, I think. Ending the year with GBP 21.6 million. What does that mean? It means we've got a strong, stable foundation to be able to invest in new opportunities as they come forward in the markets that Simon's already outlined.
Operator : Simon, Hargreaves successfully disposed of the first two tranches of the group's renewable energy land assets within the year. What has that meant for the land division, and what is next for land?
Simon Hicks : Yes, really pleased to have delivered the first two tranches of the land portfolio, the renewables portfolio from our land. A lot of years in the making, but really good to have realized that value. There are more schemes coming up, which we will divest in the next two-five years and honor our promise. Question is, what do we do with the land team when we've taken it down to a capital-light business? Huge amount of investment's gone into developing skills and knowledge in the planning and the development field. For me, how do we translate that into value for the group and value for others? The things we're starting to look at is how do we shift the land from a heavy capital to a light capital services for other landowners or institutions that own land, local authorities, et cetera. The first stage of that is developing our land promotions business, where we're promoting the more difficult greenfield sites into housing for others. The larger schemes, the development business, we're taking forward and looking at it from a wider group perspective. We do earth moving, we do aggregate supply, we do material handling. That takes us to a land remediation place. When we start to look at some of the larger schemes for others, we can start providing in not only the services of getting through the planning consents, developing for alternate uses, encouraging clean energy or data centers or housing to come to unused brownfield land, we can provide our other contracted services into that business model and create more value for the group. We're evolving our land from lessons we've learned. Blindwells the first big scheme we've done in G.B. since the 1960s, in Scotland. How do we translate that into doing that work for others and deploying more of the group services into that space, is what's the future for land.
Operator : Hargreaves has reported a 54% improvement in post-tax profits from Germany. How have you achieved this, and can you provide an update on the zinc processing plant in Germany?
Stephen Craigen : Yeah, of course. It's been a great year for Germany so far, especially if we compare it to previous years. If I focus on the trading performance first, the JV is split into two elements. First of all, mineral trading, secondly, the recycling facility. The growth in profitability has come almost entirely from the trading aspect of the business. Volumes that are traded are up 12% year-on-year. Commodity prices have been fairly stable, and that's meant we're able to maintain a margin of just a little under 6% in that area. It's the volume that's really driven that improvement. If I look at the recycling facility, it's had a fairly stable year, certainly compared to recent times. The slight improvement it's seen in performance this year is down to fuel cost. Input fuel has been slightly better this year than we've seen in prior years. Simon, do you want to give an update on the zinc project?
Simon Hicks : Yeah, certainly. Thanks, Stephen. Just as a reminder for folk, the zinc recycling project, Stephen talked about our recycling plant. This is a further iteration, the next generation of recycling. As Europe moves into EAFs, which are the new form of producing green steel, it's going to produce a slightly different dust to that one we're used to. Our zinc recycling project is going to take the dust from those electric arc furnaces and turn it into zinc concentrate. It's a leaching process. We are well into the engineering and procurement phase of the project. We'll have spades in the ground quarter four this year, and we're anticipating commissioning to be the back end of 2027. All going to plan. Couple of minor delays in planning consents, but not unexpected. It's the permitting of the plant. We've taken it forward. Gordon's now out there. He's stepping into his new role of being our German MD out there driving that project. A lot of good work going on. We're finalizing the input and output contracts which underpin the investment, that's been really steady and strong progress. A lot of demand for this in Europe, a lot of demand for this service we're going to provide, Stephen will just now finalize the answer with a touch on how we're funding that.
Stephen Craigen : Thanks, Simon. Just as a reminder how we're funding this project, there's three elements to the funding package. First of all, it's a government grant, which is secured at EUR 2 million, around about GBP 1.5 million. Secondly, is a state-backed loan, which has no recourse back to the group, which when we previously announced this, was GBP 3 million, GBP 3.5 million, EUR 4 million. I can now announce that that is actually EUR 12.4 million, which is approximately GBP 11 million. What does that really mean to the group? Well, it means that we need to input less equity than was previously the case, so restricting our exposure to the project to just GBP 6 million now, as opposed to the higher number which it previously was.
Operator : Simon, as you become CEO at the end of the month, can you talk us through your future vision for Hargreaves and what markets you'll be focused on?
Simon Hicks : Yes, certainly, for sure. Before I do that, I'd just like to recognize Gordon Banham's previous 25 years. I wouldn't be sitting here today taking on such a fantastic opportunity for me and the business if it wasn't for Gordon's determination, leadership, and real focus on getting the business to where it is. Gordon, well done. Thank you. I look forward and I'm honored to take this business forward beyond his tenure. Where are we taking it and what's the vision? As I talked about earlier, Hargreaves is a great business. Hargreaves is a fantastic business. How do we take that forward? How do you step up and move forward? We're going to be taking our land down to a capital light business. I talked about how we're going to be moving that to be more focused on an entire group proposition. That is about understanding our customers' needs. How do our customers want us to turn up and want us to deliver? What are the gaps in our service provision, and how do we develop those gaps and deliver more for our customers? As I said, we're in a great market. We've got good customers, good markets, and a great service. The vision for me is about how do we simplify that slightly, make it cleaner, and make it more understandable, particularly to the markets? How do we make Hargreaves the value of the whole, not just the sum of the parts? How do we think about that? How do we refresh the business, modernize it? There's work we need to do in data. There's work we need to do in digitization for the back office to make us more efficient so that we can keep delivering. The real vision is getting the people inspired to want to really work in an excellent way that delivers for our customers. In the sorts of places we turn up that critical infrastructure, there's a term we're starting to use. We're the force unseen. We're the force unseen that people don't see. We get work done in a way that enables the country to thrive. Thanks to the staff that have delivered all these results. Thanks to Gordon for getting us to this point, and I'm sure that this team's going to flourish going forward. Thank you.
Operator : Simon, Stephen, thank you for talking to us today.
Simon Hicks : Thank you. A great opportunity to speak to all of our stakeholders at once. Great work. Thanks.