Avon Technologies Plc (AVNBF) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Morning, everybody, and thank you for all of you that have come in person. In the first half, we delivered strong growth in revenue, profit and margin and achieved our financial targets eighteen months ahead of schedule. That progress reflects the benefits of transformation and our growth strategy coming through across the businesses. With transformation now coming to an end, we're increasingly able to focus on the next phase of driving sustainable growth. We have a supportive market, lots of opportunities for organic growth and a balance sheet that provides further options for acceleration. We see lots more potential in the group and are looking forward to the next chapter. I'll now hand over to Rich, and he'll take you through the numbers. Thank you, Joss, and good morning, everyone. So as Joss mentioned, we have had a strong start to the year with strategic and operational progress leading through to strong financial performance. The headlines are closing order book down a bit as we work through some of the Team Wendy military backlog, revenue up 7%, operating profit up 39%, and EPS up 45%, all compared to the same period last year on a constant currency basis. As most of you know, my preferred measure of performance is ROIC, and we have seen excellent progress here up a further 450 basis points to 20.8%. This puts us comfortably ahead of our 2026 goal of ROIC above 17%. Cash conversion at the end of the first half was not particularly good at 38%, but $18,000,000 of cash related to a late flurry of orders of product deliveries in March was received in early April, which would have resulted in conversion of around 100%. Even without this, net debt to EBITDA at the end of the first half was naught point nine times, so the balance sheet is in great shape. So strong ...