Diploma PLC (DPLM) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everyone. Happy New Year to you all. Thank you very much for joining us. I'm delighted to be here with our newly promoted CFO, Wilson. Congratulations to him. A few words on our quarter one performance, and then we'll quickly get on to Q&A. We've made a great start to the year in quarter one, double digit organic growth and exciting acquisition momentum. Starting, first of all, with the organic side, As expected, we've had a strong quarter one, volume-led organic growth of 14%, similar shape to what we saw towards the end of last year. Peerless remains strong. Controls have done very well with some solid end market exposures like aerospace, defense, energy. Windy City is doing well, particularly with data centers and digital antenna systems. Seals fairly consistent with what we were seeing at the end of last year. North American seals doing well. Good progress in Europe and international seals. UK still quite tough and we're happy in a tougher environment, I would say, in life sciences and the healthcare space that life sciences is delivering at or around about our financial model. The margins are good and in line with what we would have expected. If I move on secondly to acquisitions, we're really pleased with the momentum in acquisitions. And as we know, they support our future organic growth at great returns. We've done another four in the quarter, spending around 75 million at a roughly seven times multiple. And that makes eight now in the last two quarters for about 130 million of investment. And I expect those eight to generate annualized profits of around about 20 million. The majority of our M&A, as you know, naturally gravitates towards the smaller bolt-on deals, and very occasionally we do a slightly bigger one. But we're very happy with the p...