Luceco plc (LUCE) Q2 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Okay, good morning everybody and welcome to the Lusico H1 2024 results presentation. Highlights in what was a difficult period as far as market demand, we think we've executed well. Our revenue up just over 8% of which 3.6% on a light for light organic basis in a market which has declined by approximately 3%. This resulted in an operating profit up almost 17% and an operating margin almost 1% higher. Our free cash flow was also strong, leaving our net debt ratio just over one times. EPS was up over 12%, and our dividend also up slightly. Some highlights I will pick up. Some other highlights I can pick up here. Operating profit, as I say, up 16% to 12.6 million. And historically, we've always been a business which has made a higher operating margin in the second half of the year. We are therefore on track. to perform for the full year in line with market expectations. Our residential EV charging business is also growing strongly and we're extremely excited about the launch of our first EV chargers for commercial applications, some images of which are on the right-hand side here, and also our home integrated management system, which integrates batteries with EV chargers and solar systems and heating controls, and I will speak more about this later. The acquisition of D-Line which occurred earlier this year has gone extremely well and the integration of the business is well on track. And with that, I shall hand over to Will to go through the financial review. Thank you, John. And good morning, everybody. Let me start by pulling out some of the key themes within our numbers. Overall revenue at 109.6 million pounds grew 8.4% or on a light for light basis, an increase of 3.6%. A good achievement against the backdrop of the challenging market, especially the pleasing growth...