Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Thanks for joining us. I'm here, as usual, with our CFO, Wilson Ng.

I'll say a few words on quarter three, and then we'll move as usual to Q&A. It's been another great quarter for us.

15% organic growth, continuing the momentum from the first half of the year. The sector trends are broadly the same as they were in the first half: Controls very strong, broad-based growth.

IS Group, Clarendon, Peerless, Windy still growing double digit, taking good market share in fast-growing end markets. Life Sciences, conversely, markets are tougher.

We're going through a little bit of product life cycle refresh. I'm really, really pleased with what we're doing in Life Sciences, what the team are doing, but we will expect low single-digit growth for the year.

Seals, we've seen some acceleration in quarter three, and we're expecting a good quarter four too, not celebrating. International is a bit better, but patchy, and North American Seals still doing very well.

Look, overall, we're really happy with the quality, with the performance of the portfolio. Peerless continues to perform fantastically, taking share in really good market conditions.

Growth is moderating in the second half, as we expected against very big comps, and that will continue to moderate into next year until we return to the track record of high single-digit, 10-ish percent growth. We're managing margin down modestly, and we'll continue to see good profit growth going forward.

Very, very pleased with the rest of the portfolio. Organic growth now up at 10% for the year, excluding Peerless.

We spoke in May about CDM, an acquisition we've now completed: $170 million deal, $80-odd million of revenue. It's a great interconnect business for us, platform for them in the US, and attractive exposure to the US defense markets.

It's got a great team, and they're settling in well. We did five deals, actually, in quarter three, although they were all announced at the half year in May, and that makes 15 new businesses in the last 12 months, a record number, actually, for us.

Deals, of course, won't always be linear, but our pipeline is strong, diversified, and we've got plenty of balance sheet capacity. Just a few words on the full year outlook.

We're increasing guidance, as you can see, a further 7% upgrade. Organic growth guidance increased to 14%, no changes to acquisition guidance at 6%, margins up to 26.5%, and all together that represents 7% upgrade to profit growth for the year of a little over 40%.

Overall, we're in very good shape. Momentum is encouraging.

Loads of opportunity ahead. The mood is buzzing.

We're feeling good about continuing a successful long-term track record of sustainable quality compounding. With that, I'll hand back for questions.

Morning, Johnny. Morning, Wilson.

Thank you for the update. I have two questions, please.

Firstly, you've upgraded guidance yet again for full year '26, but could you comment a little bit on what this means for full year '27 as we start to approach the year-end? Then secondly, related, given where you're running at now in terms of growth and margins, could we possibly expect an update to your medium-term financial model when you report in November?

Thank you.

Great, Annelies. Thank you for that.

I'll try and take all of those in one go, if I can. I suppose you're asking about a change in financial model.

You made a comment about upgrades and looking forward into next year, I'll try and take them all together, if I can. On the financial model, look, as I've said before, if we can deliver our financial model forever, it'll drive incredible shareholder returns over the long term.

Of course, we've got the ambition to beat it, but I think it's healthy for us to stay grounded, to not get too greedy, and I see absolutely no reason, therefore, to upgrade our financial model. On the upgrades, I think we've had too many this year, if I'm honest.

Part of that is because it's been a much, much bigger year, way, way, way beyond what our track record. Secondly, a bit because the circumstances earlier in the year with a war kicking off in the Middle East, etc., we were just a bit cautious about the journey through our upgrading.

I would say that I wouldn't get used to, please, this level of upgrading as we go forward. The last point you asked about was guidance for next year.

We don't normally guide at this point. We'll obviously be a bit more specific when we get to November.

As I was saying, there's a few words on it, this is not a normal year for us. We're not going to be delivering 45% EPS growth, that kind of mid-20% return on capital every single year, are we, obviously.

We won't be doing 15% organic growth every year either, particularly, as I said, as Peerless just moderates a fraction over the months ahead. Having said all that, we've got many decades of great compounding.

We're feeling really good about our prospects. We're confident in our ability to keep compounding from this base.

Practically speaking, as usual, you should expect that we'll revert back towards our financial model for next year, which is broadly where market consensus is right now.

Perfect. Thank you, Johnny.

Too many upgrades, at least that's a quality problem in this market.

Thank you very much. Good morning.

Can I ask a question on Peerless, please? You described how the business is lapping tougher comps and you're managing the margin down modestly.

Can you give an update on the demand trends you're still seeing in that business today and is that sort of margin moderation deliberate price action on your part, and what volume trends you're seeing? Then as you look to sort of next year and beyond, how your broader growth initiatives are developing for that business?

Thank you.

Look, I don't want the fact that we're talking about moderation to get in the way of the fact that it continues to do fantastically well. It's been knockout over the last few years, as we know, and it continues to deliver well above the group averages and well above their own track record as well.

It continues to be fantastic. We're just trying to obviously be transparent about the fact that the tough comps will mean that the top line will moderate a little bit.

We're deliberately just easing off the margin, not aggressively, but just easing off the margin a little bit, taking a little bit of the heat out of some of the spot pricing and driving a little bit more volume as well. As I said a minute ago, you will still see very good profit growth going forward.

To answer specifically your question, market demand is unchanged. Market circumstances, in general, are unchanged.

We still see, of course, a healthy backlog of new builds. We still see a healthy refurbishment environment and spot market.

The characteristics of the supply chain constraints remain as they were, as we expected they would be. Nothing is really new, David, from the market perspective.

What is important, I think, to point out to your question is that we are driving, of course, our own initiatives. That involves a little bit of, as I said, moderating spot prices to drive a bit more spot volume.

We're putting more business development resource into both the US and Europe to drive the kind of base level of contract volume. We're broadening a little bit our product capability.

We're investing a little bit more in inventory to do these things. You'll see that, I think, play out when we get to the full year and beyond into next year as well.

Look, all of these are initiatives which are going to support sustaining great performance at their kind of track record level for the long term. Growth will moderate a little bit back towards that 10%-ish.

Margins will ease down a fraction. They're probably going to remain structurally above what we bought it at, but a bit below where we're at today.

Overall, as I say, you should expect good profit growth going forward. All in all, fantastic performance, and we're just managing now the kind of exit into a sustainable delivery.

Thank you very much.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my question.

I know everyone always talks about Peerless, but I think what you guys are doing in defense is equally as interesting. Can you talk a little bit more about first, could you tell us how much is defense right now as a percentage of group revenues, broadly speaking, and where do you see, given the current deals you've done this year, defense as an opportunity expanding?

Are you thinking about doing maybe a bit more in the US? Are you thinking about land versus air?

Is there anything about the conflict that has made you maybe identify some opportunities? Just how are you thinking about this medium term?

Look, we're quite good in defense, actually. If you include CDM, on I guess a pro forma basis, it's now about 6% or 7% of our revenues.

We've got quite a lot of activity going around to drive great growth from it. Certainly, when you look at the performances of IS Group, particularly, but also a bit of Clarendon and Peerless as well, there's a bit of that defense growth in there.

We're pretty pleased with that. Traditionally, we have been very European-based, and traditionally, we have been very air defense-based because it morphed out of our aerospace capability.

What we've been looking to do, of course, is to double down on those two areas, but also expand. By doubling down, we've put some new facility, resource, and inventory into Eastern Europe, for example, to address that kind of East of Europe into the Nordics defense market.

We bought a small business earlier this year called Spring Solutions, which is a UK-based defense business. Clarendon have been doing a lot on air defense in Europe as well.

We've been kind of doubling down on that European and air piece. Then what we've also been doing, of course, is expanding our capability, and firstly, going into the US, and hence the CDM acquisition, which we're very pleased about, and that's our first major piece of business for defense in the US.

Secondly, we're starting to move from air into land defense as well. A bit of that is coming through the work that we're doing out of Eastern Europe and with new product capability, and a bit of that is also coming out of CDM's expertise as well, cuz they're a bit more land than air.

Overall, we're pushing at getting a broader range both geographically and in terms of the market as well. There's loads for us to go for still, I think it's going to be a good market for us going forward.

Of course,

the last thing I would say on it is, we are putting a bit more investment behind these kind of things. We talked about it, I think, in November, and we talked about it again in May, not just defense, but end market exposures and the kind of end markets that we want to be in.

We are putting just a fraction more investment into these kind of things, particularly resource, but also a bit of inventory and, hopefully, also occasionally the odd acquisition as well. That'll be prevalent in our numbers as we go forward.

Thank you very much. Very helpful.

Good morning, guys. Just one question from me, please, on Windy City Wire.

Apologies if you've already spoken about this, I joined a bit late. Can you just give us an idea of how that went in the quarter?

Is growth accelerating there or is it about the same as it was in H1, please?

Windy's in great shape. Thanks for the question, Daniel.

Windy's in really, really good shape. They've had a great year.

They had a very strong quarter, mid-teens kind of growth rate, which is fantastic. Of course, they're doing very well in data centers, but they're also doing well in other areas as well, petroleum, digital antenna systems, expanding their product capability.

Again, we're investing in Windy City, particularly in sales resource for the future, too. Very, very happy with how they've been progressing.

Good to hear. Thank you.

Cheers.

Morning, guys. Just one for me, please.

Just, firstly, on the operating margin, obviously, a significant step-up in the year to 26.5% guidance. Just given your comments here on a little bit of easing in Peerless and the opportunities to invest in the business, is there any other factors we should think about when think about the margin going forward just cuz it's such a big step-up year on year and clearly well above your 20% target?

Thank you.

I'll take that. We're very, very pleased with where the margin is this year, 26.5%.

With our business and the strong top-line growth, obviously, we've seen a lot of operating leverage benefit. Peerless, as Johnny alluded to, has continued to perform very well.

It started H2 better than expected, and therefore, it has been very accretive to margin. As I've said before, the feeling is that the margin is sort of at the top end.

We do expect some moderation next year, mainly driven by the continued investments that we're making, particularly to continue sustaining the business in terms of end markets, the organizational development, and the assurance platform. Also, we are, as Johnny mentioned, carefully moderating the margin of Peerless to continue maintaining it as a sustainable business.

That will moderate margins a bit. Finally, with acquisitions and also the ones that we've already done, there will be some dilutive impacts.

Look, I'm not going to go into specifics today. It's not the right time to guide today, but the overall message is the margin will continue to be strong, but it will moderate a bit next year.

Brilliant. Thank you.

Hi. Good morning, all.

Thank you for taking my question. Just wanted to touch quickly on Windy City Wire again, just on the data center mention.

Just how material is the data center demand today? Is that growth still accelerating?

Just curious if you could share any percentage exposure that you have there and should we think of this as a structure AI data centers infrastructure tailwind or more as a broader commercial construction momentum? Thank you.

Okay. Data centers, pretty small proportion of the group.

It's about 15% of Windy, about 3% of the group, something like that. I suppose as we look forward, I hope I'm addressing your question here, but as we move forward, from what we can see, there's still very, very, very broad-based investment around infrastructure data center development.

There's still plenty of runway and plenty for us to go for on that. At the same time, we're kind of broadening our exposure and thinking mainly about the kind of MRO, more sustainable elements of data center and infrastructure support.

We're doing quite a lot more in, for example, seals and gaskets into the data center refurbishment market, both in the US and in the UK, and that's starting to develop for us. That, of course, will be sustainable beyond the new-build phase, if you like.

That's a very, very important part for me to make sure that we're creating something which is sustainable. In the meantime, the work that we're doing, particularly through Windy on the new business development, new data center development, is pretty modest, but I suspect will sustain for quite some years to go.

Perfect. Thank you.

Hi, guys. Sorry to dive in at the last minute.

I just wondered if you had any comments on leadership at the group, if you've made any changes. I think we saw Doxa leadership change over half one and you talked around the fact you were seeing progress off the back of that.

I think there was a change in Australia as well. Just any comments as a catch-all, really, on if you've made any kind of investment in head count or leadership that's going to help drive that growth profile more sustainably?

Thanks.

Yeah. If you're asking about leadership, you're not really asking about leadership at the top level if you're asking about Australia and Doxa, that's kind of leadership within the businesses.

Of course, we're always working all the time to develop our leaders across the business. We have from time to time, as we had in Australia and indeed in Spain in Doxa, some retirements.

Yes, we had two new general managers in there. What I would say more generally across the group is we're working very, very hard on leadership development as part of our sustainable capability and, therefore, execution.

We're working very hard, as I've said to you before, particularly on internal succession and driving towards a more build-your-own model, if you like, over the years ahead, so that's a big part of what we're focused on internally. We're working very hard on the leadership development specifically of our general managers to support them as their businesses grow up, and that's a constant for us.

Particularly, I would say, at the moment, as I've said, we do like to invest in businesses when maybe times are tougher, their end markets are a bit tougher, and maybe that's where your question's going a little bit. A few years ago, we invested quite a bit in Life Sciences, and we're really really pleased with the way the management has developed in Life Sciences.

We've done a little bit of the same in Seals, starting in North America and, more recently, in International Seals. I feel we're getting a stronger bench set across the Seals sector, and that'll put us in a very good position for the future.

Thanks.

Thank you, everyone, for taking the time, and we'll see you in November.