Intertek Group plc (ITRK) Q3 2023 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning to you all and a warm welcome from London in front of me. I'm just watching the beautiful sunrise. It's a great way to start our trading update today, which is full of good news, as you would have read in our statement this morning. Thanks for making the time. Colm, our CFO in Denny, our head of investor relations, are with me here in the room. Essentially, if you step back from the statement that we just issued a few minutes ago, there are five key points and messages that we are trying to communicate today. First and importantly, the demand for ATIC solutions is robust. I'm not worried about demand. And in the first 10 months of the year, we have delivered the highest like for like revenue goals in the last 10 years, something that the organization is tremendously proud of. The second thing is, you know, we are confirming our targets. We are on track to deliver our full year targets, which you know very well. It's mid single digit, like for like revenue growth at constant currency with margin progression and a strong free cash flow, essentially, given where we are on the day to day basis. And as we talk today, we have 10 months of actual. So we are confident in our full year outlook. Importantly, our margin progression is healthy. We are benefiting from three important drivers. Our pricing initiatives are obviously kicking in after the price increase we took over the last few years. The faster we grow, the better operating leverage we have. So we've got a really good operating leverage. And as you know, we are very disciplined on cost. Importantly, in this higher interest environment, cash is super king and we are delivering a strong cash performance, which combined with our strong balance sheets enables us to invest in growth and accelerate performanc...