S4 Capital plc (SFOR) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. I'm in China, in Beijing, and Mary, Scott, and Jean Benoit are in London. And we have Henry Cowling, who is in San Francisco on the West Coast at an unearthly hour. So thanks for getting up early or late or staying up late, Henry. So with that, let's just move to the first slide, if we can, please. We're going to run through the results. Mary will run through the results. And then Scott will run through business conditions and business performance. And then Henry will run through our focus on AI. And then we'll come back for a brief summary of the results after Jean Benoit has taken you through what we're doing in terms, particularly in pricing and and utilisation and billability. So with that, Mary, do you want to get into the results, please? Thank you, Martin. Good morning and thank you for joining us today. I'll start with the financial headlines. Our performance in 2024 was impacted by challenging macroeconomic conditions, continued high interest rates and some underperformance compared to our markets. Net revenue was 755 million, down 11% on a like-for-like basis. Operational EBITDA was in line with expectations at 88 million. we made significant cost reductions to deliver an operational EBITDA margin of 11.6%, up 120 basis points like for like. EBITDA improved as these cost reductions took effect and we delivered 58 million in the second half compared to 30 in the first. Adjusted operating profit was 78 million and adjusted earnings per share were 5.2 pence. We finished the year with net debt of £143 million, below our target range, reflecting our focus on working capital management and tight cost control. Leverage was 1.6 times. The Board is proposing a first dividend of one pence per share. Moving now to the in...