Rentokil Initial plc (RTO) Q1 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our conference call for RentalKill's initials first quarter trading update. Let me hand it over to CEO Andy Ransom. Please go ahead, Andy. Thank you, Ellie, and good morning, everyone. Before we begin, as always, can I draw your attention to the usual cautionary statement contained in our trading update this morning, as it also applies to this call. I'll start off with some brief opening remarks and then Paul and I will be pleased to take any questions. As we only reported on performance and strategy just last month, today's announcement is a short update on revenue performance in the first quarter. And just to remind you, we now report in US dollars. In the first three months of 2025, group revenue increased by 1.5% to $1.64 billion. Organic revenue growth for the group was up by 1.8%. We delivered a good performance in international, which are our businesses outside of North America, with organic revenue growth of 3.3% and of 4.6% in pest control. In North America, as we flagged in March, the first quarter's growth was held back principally as a result of weak lead generation. Organic revenue growth was 0.7%, and 0.5% in pest control. If we adjust for one fewer trading day in the quarter, that's slightly behind last year's like-for-like performance. Significant work has been underway in the first quarter with the support of our new agency and additional digital marketing expertise from our UK centre of excellence to improve our lead generation performance. And while organic search performance remains subdued, it was encouraging to see digital inbound lead flow from paid-for activities return to positive growth in March following declines in February as we've transitioned to our new agency partner. We've also been m...