Eric Lakin
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our full-year results presentation for 2025. I am Eric Lakin, CEO, and I'm joined today by our interim CFO, Richard Webb.
Very happy to be with you all again for my first full-year announcement at TT. 2025 has been a year of transition for TT Electronics.
It was a year where we faced clear operational challenges, but also one in which we took swift action to address them. Our focus has been on restoring operational control, strengthening our balance sheet, and creating a solid platform for future growth.
While there is a lot of work still to do, I'm pleased that we have delivered a stable performance, and we enter 2026 with a much stronger operational and financial foundation. Let's start with a look at the headlines for the year.
Despite the macro headwinds we faced, we delivered results in line with expectations, with momentum notably strengthened in the second half. We saw improved operating profit margins and cash flow, driven by better execution and strict cost discipline across the group.
Notably, our cash generation was very strong. We have significantly reduced our net debt and strengthened the balance sheet, which Richard will detail shortly.
We have successfully restored operational control following the conclusive actions we took earlier in the year, particularly at the Plano and Cleveland sites, and I will cover this in more detail later. Performance was mixed by region, but for clear reasons.
Europe performed strongly, driven by structural growth in aerospace and defense. Meanwhile, North America materially improved, and we have ceased production at Plano as we complete the closure of that site.
Asia was impacted by softer macro-driven demand in EMS, but we view the region as better positioned operationally as we enter 2026. The next slide breaks down the specific actions taken during the year to build this stronger platform.
First, Plano: production has ceased, and the site was closed according to plan. We saw a benefit in the second half from last-time buy activity, but importantly, the closure removes a significant drag on our earnings going forward.
Second, Cleveland optimization: we deployed specialist operational support to the site, and results are clear. We have improved yield, productivity, and customer service levels, including quality and on-time delivery.
The site is now stabilized and on track to return to profitability. More on this shortly.
Third, our components review: we conducted a strategic review which concluded that the components business could potentially be worth more under different ownership, we will be testing that. We have separated its management to ensure more focus and oversight, and the board is currently evaluating a value-led disposal process, but that is not a commitment to divest as it is subject to market conditions.
This is a solid business, and with the changes implemented, we are confident that it'll be a positive contributor to the group. Finally, balance sheet stability: working capital discipline has materially improved, and we delivered strong cash conversion in part due to successful inventory reduction initiatives in 2025.
This work culminated in a significantly reduced year-end net debt and leverage positions. Focusing specifically on our Cleveland site on the next slide.
In 2025, we launched a business improvement project targeting operational performance with a focus on rework hours and productivity, and I am pleased with the progress made. As the charts illustrate, we have seen sustained improvement, with overall productivity levels now consistently above our higher target levels and rework much better than expectations.
On-time delivery, yield, and cost of poor quality have also all improved. Crucially, the Cleveland site is stabilized, and its financial and operational performance has materially improved throughout the second half.
There is still opportunity to drive further improvements, and the current focus is on the sales growth from existing and new customers to utilize the capacity available and further absorb overheads. Turning now to our next phase.
As we look to the year ahead, our focus shifts from stabilizing the business in 2025 to a more proactive agenda for value creation. On this slide, we have outlined the four clear priorities that will define this next phase.
We have established a disciplined framework designed to drive sustainable growth and margin expansion built around four key pillars, which are: one, a realignment of the business to focus on divisions as opposed to regions; two, a targeted cost reduction program delivering material savings—as announced this morning, we expect to deliver approximately £3 million of net benefit in 2026 and annualized savings of double this figure to deliver significant benefit in future years; third, a sales transformation plan to upgrade our commercial capabilities; and fourth, portfolio optimization to improve synergies and margins across the group. I will take you through each of these in turn in more detail later, but for now, I will hand over to Richard, who will talk you through our financial results.
Richard Webb
Thank you, Eric, and good morning, everyone. I will now take you through our 2025 financial results.
Starting with our group performance. Against the backdrop of mixed market conditions, we have delivered a resilient financial performance that highlights the benefits of the operational actions Eric just outlined.
Revenue and profit figures are presented on an organic basis. This reflects performance at a constant currency and with the impact of the Q1 2024 Project Albert divestment removed from the prior-year comparative.
Revenue for 2025 was £481.4 million, down 2.7% organically, reflecting the strong growth in European aerospace and defense, which largely offset the softer demand we saw in the EMS markets for North America and Asia. Despite the lower revenue, adjusted operating profit increased by 2.2% to £37.2 million, demonstrating in large part the success of the turnaround actions undertaken in North America.
Consequently, our adjusted operating margin expanded by 30 basis points to 7.7%. This margin progression was driven by the turnaround in North America gaining traction, continued progress in Europe, and tighter cost controls across the group, more than offsetting the decline in Asia.
Adjusted profit before tax is up 5.5% to £28.7 million, benefiting from the lower interest costs associated with our reduced debt levels. Adjusted EPS is 6.9 pence, down 37.3% year on year, reflecting the impact of the higher effective tax rate of 57% as we cannot currently recognize a deferred tax asset for the US.
On a normalized basis, if we had been able to recognize a deferred tax asset, the adjusted effective tax rate would have been 25.4%, and the adjusted EPS would have been 12 pence. Finally, we significantly strengthened our balance sheet, reducing leverage to 1.1 times from the 1.8 times this time last year, driven by net debt being reduced by almost £30 million.
Turning to the revenue bridge and focusing on the organic performance in the year. Europe was the standout performer, delivering robust growth.
This was driven by sustained demand in aerospace and defense, where we're seeing structural shifts that are supportive to the business. This was offset by North America and Asia, where we faced volume reductions.
In North America, the decline mainly reflects the EMS and components end market softness. In Asia, the reduction was primarily due to ongoing geopolitical uncertainty impacting customer order timing, particularly for the automation and electrification sector.
Now turning to operating profit. The operating profit bridge tells a positive story of execution.
Despite revenue headwinds, adjusted operating profit increased to £37.2 million, up 2.2% year on year. Overall, we delivered £0.8 million of net organic profit growth.
This is the result of operational gearing in Europe, where higher volumes and favorable mix dropped through to profit, and the turnaround actions in North America, where the stabilization of Cleveland and the elimination of losses from Plano were critical. These actions allowed us to return the region to profitability in the second half.
Plano, which was significantly loss-making in the first half, generated around £3.5 million of profit from last-time buys in H2 and contributed approximately £1 million to group adjusted operating profit for the full year. Revenue at the site was £13 million in 2025.
Production ceased at the end of the year, and this contribution will not repeat in 2026. The progress in North America helped offset the impact of lower volumes and transition costs in Asia, where we have been investing to support the transfer of production from China to Malaysia.
Now I'd like to focus on the balance sheet, which is a highlight of these results. We've delivered a strong cash performance this year.
Free cash flow increased to £29.9 million, up 7.9%. This was driven by a significant step-up in cash conversion, achieving 150% 150% compared to 117% last year.
The primary driver here was our disciplined focus on working capital, specifically inventory reduction. We have successfully executed inventory initiatives across the group, resulting in a £14.8 million contribution to cash flow.
When combined with the £12.8 million inventory reduction in 2024, that reflects a very pleasing £27.6 million reduction over the last 2 years. This strong cash generation has directly strengthened our financial position, as we've reduced net debt by almost £30 million to £50.3 million and leverage down to 1.1 times.
Balance sheet discipline will continue to be a key focus. Earlier this month, we extended the expiry date of our revolving credit facility to June 2028 and reduced the size from £162 million to £105 million.
This facility is only drawn by £10 million currently, and in the next few months will be completely undrawn. Before I move into the regional performance, I will reiterate that from our next set of results, we will be moving to a divisional reporting structure, which better reflects how we manage the business.
This means a realignment away from regions into three clear divisions: Power, EMS, and Components. Eric will talk about this in more detail shortly, and you can also find pro forma revenue and adjusted operating profits under this new structure for 2024 and 2025 in the appendix.
Turning now to regional performance and starting with Europe. Europe performed well during the year, continuing to be a structural growth engine for the group.
Revenue grew 7.4% organically to £144.4 million, driven by our sustained demand in our aerospace and defense markets. Adjusted operating profit increased 13.9% to £22.1 million, with strong operational leverage expanding margins by 90 basis points to 15.3%.
We are seeing strong order intake across A&D, and the trends are set to continue into 2026. Turning to North America.
Revenue declined 3.7% organically to £173.1 million. This reflects the volume reduction both at Cleveland and in the components businesses.
However, operational performance improved during the year, and the region returned to profitability. Adjusted operating profit was £1.2 million compared to a loss of £2.7 million in the prior year.
Margins recovered to 0.7%, a 220 basis point improvement. The operational turnaround was driven by two main factors.
As Eric highlighted earlier, actions taken to stabilize Cleveland improved yield, productivity, and execution, materially reducing losses in the second half. In addition, production at the Plano site ceased at the end of 2025, removing a structurally loss-making site from the group, with last-time buy activity also supporting regional profitability during the year.
We enter 2026 with a reset operational base in North America, which positions the business in this region for further improvement. Finally, to Asia.
Revenue declined 9.2% organically to £163.9 million. This was due to ongoing reduced demand from EMS customers in the healthcare and A&E sectors, with continued geopolitical uncertainties delaying customer ordering.
Operating profit fell to £21.6 million, with margins compressing to 13.2%. This performance reflects lower volumes and some transition costs as we transferred a major customer from our facility in China to Malaysia, which is now complete.
Completing this transfer strengthens our resilience against geopolitical uncertainty, better positioning the region moving forward. On the next slide, we have broken down revenue by our end markets.
Aerospace and Defense was the standout, growing 12% to £152.8 million. This highlights our increasing exposure to structurally attractive markets where defense spending continues to rise.
Automation and Electrification softened by 13%, reflecting the macro and geopolitical uncertainty that caused customers to be cautious with order placement. Healthcare was down modestly by 4.3%, primarily reflecting reduced US research grants and funding, though our pipeline in medical and life sciences is healthy, and this remains an attractive market for TT.
Distribution declined 4.7%, which was expected as component demand continues to normalize post-COVID. Overall, the strong growth and positive structural trends we are seeing in Aerospace and Defense give us confidence.
Whilst other end markets have not performed as well as we would have liked, this largely relates to macro-driven softness of demand. We enter 2026 in a better, more stable position.
Thank you, everyone, and I'll now hand back to Eric.
Eric Lakin
Thank you, Richard. I think we can all see there is an improving picture and a stronger financial base for TT.
I will now return to the four priorities for our next phase before touching on our customer base and finally a look at the outlook for 2026. First, our divisional realignment.
As we have mentioned, from this year, we are shifting how we organize and present the business away from our current regional structure, managed as Europe, North America, and Asia, to a product-led divisional structure. The group will be aligned around three clear divisions: Power, EMS, and Components.
Why are we doing this? It aligns us better with our customers, capabilities, and markets.
It enables us to develop and deliver more coherent strategies aligned to divisions that have different technologies, characteristics, and routes to market. It also creates clearer accountability for product development, sales, and planning.
As part of this reorganization, we will devolve further responsibilities to the operating companies to enable a more agile business, with faster decision-making being made by those closest to the customer. This also facilitates a simplification of the organization structure, including an element of delayering and increasing the accountability of performance to the sites.
As mentioned, pro forma divisional breakdowns are available in the appendix. Second is our cost reduction program.
To support this leaner operating model, we have initiated a targeted cost reset to permanently reduce our structural overheads. We expect this program to deliver around £5 million of gross benefits in FY 2026, which will be a net benefit of approximately £3 million after implementation costs.
Looking further out, we anticipate annualized savings to be around double this year's level. This is a program that directly supports our margin progression goals, and we will share more information as the year progresses.
Third is sales transformation. We are upgrading our commercial capabilities and bench strength, particularly in North America and Asia, and investing in business development talent, tools, and processes aimed at delivering improved pipeline, order intake, and pricing discipline.
In particular, there is a renewed focus on new customers and new product introductions, with these activities already bearing fruit, as there's been a significant increase in new business wins in recent months, especially in North America. Finally, portfolio optimization.
As a management team, we continue to review the group's portfolio on an ongoing basis to ensure it remains aligned with our strategic priorities and areas of competitive advantage. Our strategic review of the components business is now complete.
The board is actively evaluating a range of options, including a value-led disposal process, but as mentioned earlier, we are not committed to a sale. Our current focus is on improving margin quality and returning the business to being a value-accretive part of the group.
Looking further out, we have restarted early-stage prospecting activity for targeted strategic bolt-on acquisitions that strengthen our core capabilities and reach, especially in the power electronics sector, in which we have developed a strong capability and market position. All in all, we see these four priorities as being key to the next stage of TT's growth and delivering value for all our stakeholders.
I would like to spend a bit of time looking at some of our customer relationships. During my first year at TT, I've been able to see our client relationships in action, and understanding the significance of these relationships gives me great confidence.
We serve some of the world's most respected and demanding companies across our core markets, and these companies choose us because we operate in the mission-critical space. Whatever the requirement, our customers rely on TT for precision, reliability, engineering capability, and production excellence.
These are not transactional relationships; they are deep, multi-year engineering partnerships as we seek to solve customer needs, typically in regulated markets for demanding specialist applications. This diverse, blue-chip customer base provides us with resilience against market cycles and is a foundation upon which we will build our future growth.
I want to highlight what one of our partnerships looks like in practice on the next slide. Edwards is a customer we have supported for more than 15 years.
They supply solutions to the semiconductor capital equipment market, and we provide a full-tier EMS solution spanning PCB assembly through to complex high-level assemblies and specialist testing for vacuum technology. They operate in a highly demanding sector where precision and reliability are non-negotiable.
By providing everything from comprehensive test development support to supply chain transparency, we give Edwards the confidence to meet their own commitments. It is this level of deep-rooted reliability that allows us to grow alongside our most specialist global clients.
I recently met with the team at Edwards, and they conveyed the importance of our ongoing relationship to their success and the future growth of the business. As this example illustrates, our partnerships with customers go well beyond the supply-vendor dynamic, and we are deeply integrated with their processes to help create value over the longer term.
Finally, turning to outlook. TT enters 2026 on a firmer operational and financial footing.
We have taken swift action to improve operational performance and are aligned on a clear strategy moving forward, underpinned by the growing strength of our balance sheet. We have high exposure to the A&D market, which supports growth and margins across Europe and North America in what will now become a significant portion of our Power division.
While we do expect some continued softness in EMS markets and remain mindful of the ongoing geopolitical uncertainty, our focus is firmly on what we can control. The operational and cost actions we have taken are expected to continue driving margin improvement and better execution across the group.
The North America turnaround is now becoming a tailwind, with losses in the first half turning to profits in the second half. The significant improvement in the region, together with the cessation of production at Plano, gives us a cleaner, more stable earnings base moving forward.
Cash generation also remains a key priority. We will continue to focus on working capital discipline and operational efficiency to support strong cash conversion.
With leverage now reduced to 1.1 times and our financing facilities extended, we have significantly strengthened the balance sheet and increased our financial flexibility. We expect 2026 revenue and adjusted operating profit to be in line with current market consensus, and this reflects a more stable, higher-quality, and more resilient business following the actions taken during the year.
2026 is about consolidating the operational progress we have made, maintaining margin discipline, and continuing strong cash generation as we build a stronger platform for a return to growth, better placed to capitalize on opportunities as they appear. While there is still more work to do and there remain external factors and market uncertainties, we enter the year with a more focused business, a stronger financial position, and the greater confidence in our ability to deliver further progress.
Thank you very much for your time this morning. I hope you'll agree that this is an exciting time for TT, and we are looking forward to sharing our progress moving forward.
Richard and I are now very happy to take any further questions you might have.
Mark Davies Jones
All right, thank you. Mark Davies Jones from Stifel.
A few things, please. On the change in divisional structure, does that effectively get us back to where we were before the move to the regionals, or is there a difference in what allocation you do between those divisions?
If you're devolving more responsibility to the operating units, are there implications for the divisional management teams? Are you retaining the current team, or new people coming in?
Then the other one is the step-up in sales investment. Does that consume some of the benefits of the cost savings plans?
What sort of investment financially does that involve?
Eric Lakin
Great, thanks, Mark. I'll take each of those three.
The new divisions are very similar to, but not identical to, the previous divisions. I think there's a couple of differences.
For example, Sheffield is Power, not Components as it was before, and Fairford is also Power, not part of EMS, which it was before, or GMS in the previous name. Broadly similar, but the divisional structure we've got now is really designed to put all the sites with similar characteristics together, and so it's a much more coherent.
The Components division is therefore what we've separately been running internally already, but without the Plano production.
Mark Davies Jones
The whole scope of that is within the review currently?
Eric Lakin
Correct. In terms of the impact of what was the regional teams, in effect, the cost reduction program is separate, but partly facilitated or enabled by the divisional reorganization.
For example, with the executive team, we've gone effectively from four regions, three plus Components, to three divisions, so that's four to three. The divisional teams will be significantly smaller than what was previously regional teams, there's an element of delayering.
As the point around putting more responsibility to the site teams and leaders. Much of the saving is around what was previously the group functional costs, particularly in the sort of non-primary functions, supporting what was the regions and the teams.
Those responsibilities are covered effectively by the sites, and so there's been a lot of reduction in that area. Then your What's
Mark Davies Jones
the cost of the investment in the sales?
Eric Lakin
The sales, yeah. I think there is some net increase in costs for BD.
Really important that, with all the short-term benefits of cost cutting, we don't forget really our mission is to grow the top line and drive profitable growth. Overall, the actual change in the business development function, including sales, commercial teams, won't be materially different from prior year, because we've also had some evolution of the sales team.
Part of the sales transformation is a high-performance culture, and so as you'd expect, in that culture of sales team, there'll be some people coming in, some people going out. There'll be a net increase in heads, though, and so there'll be a modest absorption of some of the net savings, but it's quite small compared to the headline savings.
It certainly should pay for itself on a yeah.
Mark Davies Jones
Yeah. Thank you.
Andrew Simms
Morning, it's Andrew Simms from Berenberg. Just a couple of questions around pricing initially.
You talked about sales transformation. It'd be good to get maybe a little bit of a feel for where you're seeing the benefits of pricing coming through, maybe some examples of how that's coming through there, that would be great.
Then following on from that, in terms of new business, in terms of new logos as well, how should we think about gross margins and that business coming through, how that supports medium-term operating margin ambitions? Thanks.
Eric Lakin
Great. Thanks.
First, thanks, Andy. On pricing, there's two parts to it.
It's existing contracts and new contracts. With the former, we've done a review of large customer and contract margins, in particular around Cleveland.
We did customer product profitability analysis covering close to 100 different contracts, and that was quite insightful. That revealed really a handful, you can Pareto these things, a handful of opportunities where the margins are not what we'd need or expect, and some were very low, in a couple of cases actually negative.
There's a legacy there, and part of it's getting the right standard costs and rigor around bids. With the visibility, we have in some of these cases a contractual ability to increase prices for existing contracts.
Particularly in the Aerospace and Defense, we've got the right to have a transparent cost review and apply appropriate margin. We've had two quite significant successful price negotiations and outcomes at the back of last year, which will have ongoing benefit this year.
That's been helpful. It actually shows these aren't easy discussions to have, but the customer shows they value and need our ongoing support.
Going forward, it's the point around sort of bid and pricing discipline. We've got a rigorous bid/no-bid structure in place, and so we make sure that we make the right decisions.
It's not just about pushing the highest prices. For Components, for example, we had a sort of a particular mandate not accepting margins below X percent, and actually we turned away some business that would have been contributing to our bottom line.
In some cases, by exception, we take a different view for certain contracts where it's making a positive contribution. You certainly want to cover at least all the variable costs, direct costs, and actually get some scale and cover the overheads.
It depends on the circumstance, but overall, we're tracking that, that's a big, important part of it. In terms of new logos and the impact on margin, it varies.
I think there's typically, particularly some EMS contracts, the margins will never be as high as, say, in other parts of the business, and you'll see that come through in the new divisional structure, and that is the nature of it. Look at our peer groups, typically in EMS margins, and they're typically mid to high single-digit percent.
As we get new logos, we're still pricing them to ensure we get profits from day one. We're not doing any sort of cost entries.
A couple of examples recently, we got our first new logo in North America in agricultural drones, another one in data centers, and we are quite well-aligned to meet their needs and make profits. There is business out there we could win that would lose money on, and we've been very disciplined, focus on profitable growth, not just top line.
Andrew Simms
Great. Thank you.
Alex O'Hanlon
Good morning. Alex O'Hanlon from Panmure Liberum.
Just a couple of questions for me. Firstly, just on the Cleveland productivity improvement, it's a good chart that you have in the deck, and you can see how that's progressed over the year.
It's interesting to see that the improvement has tracked the I guess better targets throughout the year. Are we at the target level that you want to see now, or is there further progress to go?
The second question is just on capital allocation. You mentioned the possibility for bolt-on acquisitions in the future.
Just wondering on the dividend, what do you still want to see in terms of progress before you reinstate it?
Eric Lakin
Okay. Thanks, Alex.
In terms of productivity improvement, right, it's very pleasing when you implement an initiative and you can see the evidence of that. Productivity, the way we define it is it's total hours spent on a product divided by total standard hours expected.
We set it at 75%, we're in excess of that, which is good. In practice, the way that is measured, you're always going to have some element of training time, vacation, what have you.
A similar measure is efficiency, and its equivalent to that is more like 90% or so. It's where we expect it to be.
Could we push it harder? We're always trying to do more and more, and by getting higher productivity, that manifests itself in improved profits by either having more capacity to do more or we can reduce headcount.
I think it's where I'd like it to be. I think where we're sustained at that level would be a good outcome, because there's many other factors as well, including quality and the ability to there could be a period where we have a slight impact as we bring in new product introductions, and that has an impact as we get standard costs delivered.
Then in terms of capital allocation, look, a priority last year was absolutely focus on balance sheet strength, resilience, getting the gearing down and the refinancing, and Richard and team and Kirsty's here with us as well, head of tax and treasury, done an excellent job resolving that. It's nice that we're getting these questions now, looking forward.
I think we're very mindful of the obviously a lot of uncertainty at the moment, very mindful of maintaining a strong balance sheet. The dividend position, the board will continue to review that going forward, and we'll have an update at the interims, and make sure we're making the right decisions in the medium to long term as well for shareholders.
There's other options available, of course, whether it's share buybacks or acquisitions. On the acquisition point, it's too early.
We need to be good stewards of the business, prove that, be more reliable and consistent in our delivery against promises, and prove we are good owner of businesses. It's also true cultivating targets can take a long time, we're right to start that now, and there's definitely a runway of opportunities out there that could be additive to our business.
It partly depends on opportunities that arise, and then we make the best decisions at the time.
Mark Davies Jones
Perfect. Thank you.
Sorry, can I come back for one more? Which is around the moving parts of this year and the guidance you're giving, because obviously there's a lot of underlying progress, but the guidance you sort of stood behind this morning, the top end of that is flat year on year in profit terms, and the bottom end of it is obviously a step down.
You've got a £1 million headwind in terms of the full-year contribution from Plano. You've got strong growth in Europe in the A&D business ongoing.
You've got presumably better underlying performance in the US, we should have year on year, and we've done the big transfer in Asia. Can you talk through the other headwinds?
Is it just volume in EMS?
Richard Webb
Richard,
Eric Lakin
you want to pick that up?
Richard Webb
One aspect is margins in Europe, now Power, there was some beneficial mix within 2025 that won't repeat in 2026. There will be some softening of power margins as we go into next year.
Yes, it is the ongoing softness in EMS continues to be an area where we're being cautious for the 2026 outlook. That is the kind of primary kind of driver of why you don't see 2026 Yeah.
Eric Lakin
Yeah.
Mark Davies Jones
Any commentary by end market within that, EMS?
Eric Lakin
I'll just add, big picture, there's obviously a lot of uncertainty, and too early to call what the impact will be with the current situation in the Middle East. There likely to be some level of inflationary impact.
We've not yet seen any constraints on raw material and supply chain, but they might occur and they could have an impact. Obviously, we've got energy price rises, which could ultimately impact some of our fabrication costs, particularly where we use furnaces and so on.
It's early days, we don't know, and it's unclear what the impact will be in terms of customer demand patterns as well. I think there's a broader caution around inflation and the impact of that on the business, which are obviously taking countermeasures to that with the cost reduction.
By division, the Components business, at 2 months in, it's early, we're showing signs of good resilience, which is encouraging, but the lead times there are quite short, we don't get the visibility of that division as we get for Power or EMS. In terms of end markets, we're seeing clearly ongoing strength in A&D.
I think we're good growth in '25, I think continued growth in '26, but a lot of the very large contracts we won last year are multi-year contracts, just temper enthusiasm. We're talking single-digit growth in '26, not necessarily double-digit.
In and look at the various markets across EMS, healthcare remains somewhat subdued, and we're expecting hopefully to pick up towards the second half of the year, particularly around healthcare spend, and that feeds into R&D and specific programs. Semiconductor CapEx is a very interesting one.
That was down last year, which might be surprising given the trend in that sector, but there's two elements to that. One specifically to us, there was some additional safety stock ahead of the transition from Suzhou to Kuantan, so that had an impact year on year for '24 to '25.
Actually our customers who provide equipment for fabrication facilities, is a little bit of a soft market, because it's really about upgrade and new facilities rather than the production itself rate of semi chips. We are seeing signs of improvement in that sector.
The conversations we're having now with a couple of our customers are encouraging, we should see a pick-up in that, and that obviously it starts with pipeline and then orders and then that feeds into revenue. Be interesting to see how that pans out through the course of this year.
Then other general industrials is a mixed bag, whether you're looking at specialist industrials, rail, and a number of the other sectors we serve in EMS. It's sort of a mixed bag.
At a key point around EMS, because I think we would overall, we're not expecting to see growth in EMS this year, but this pivot to regional supply chains and moving and investing in regional and domestic sales is looking like it will pay off, particularly China for China regional sales. We'll hopefully see progress of that through the year, but we're sort of cautious at this point in the year.
Mark Davies Jones
Thank you, that's very helpful.
Richard Webb
We've got a question from online, from Joel at Investec: "Can you quantify the cost associated with the customer transfer from China to Malaysia impacting the APAC division? Is that process now complete, and are there any signs that the rate of APAC revenue decline is stabilizing, or are you planning on it being lower in 2026?"
Eric Lakin
Okay. Do you want to cover the costs piece and I'll...
Richard Webb
The overall costs was around about £1 million to OpEx and then some limited CapEx investment as well, and that transfer is now complete.
Eric Lakin
Thanks for your questions, Joel. I think it's complete.
We've had success. It was a crucial project last year for a large customer, and all the first article inspections have gone through well.
We're now in the process of spinning up volume production. That will be key next stage of that process this year.
I think overall, we still expect for APAC region a reduction in the decline we saw in 2025. As I mentioned earlier, we're not expecting a return to growth this year, because APAC, it's really driven by the EMS markets, but we're seeing a level of stabilization, anticipating a reduced decline this year.
Crucially, the lead indicators we have is what does the order intake look like and pipeline to drive growth certainly beyond this year and potentially see that coming through in the second half. Overall, we're being conservative around our forecast assumptions for 2026.
Richard Webb
Thank you. There are no further questions from the webcast, over to you for any closing remarks.
Eric Lakin
Okay. Look, thank you all for coming.
It was good to see a full room. Thank you for your interest and time.
Appreciate it and look forward to seeing you all at the interims, if not before. Thanks very much.
Have a good day.
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