Serco Group plc (SRP) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the presentation of Serco's 2024 full year results, both to the people who have joined us here in person at RBC, as well as the participants who have joined us via the live stream. I'm Mark Irwin, the Serco Group Chief Executive. I'm joined today by our Group Chief Financial Officer, Nigel Crossley, and Anthony Kirby, who currently leads our UK and Europe Division, and as we announced in January, has been appointed by the Serco Board as my successor to lead the Group from the 1st of March. I would also like to acknowledge two members of our Serco Board who have joined us today, our Chairman, John Rishton, and the Chair of the Board Risk Committee, Ian O'Mockadam. In terms of our agenda, I will provide an overview of our 2024 performance and an update on the execution of our enterprise growth strategy. Nigel will take you through the detailed financials for the operating period before handing to Anthony, who will cover progress in our UK and Europe division. We will then wrap up the presentation part of the agenda and move to Q&A. Our 2024 results reflect another strong year of operational and financial performance across the group and continued progress against our long-term strategy. As reported in our pre-closed trading update, we accelerated trading momentum through the second half of 2024. This allowed us to achieve full-year revenue in line with our guidance, deliver a 30 percent increase in second-half profitability when compared to the same period in the prior year, and an increase of 10 percent overall in our underlying operating profit on a full-year basis. We delivered a meaningful improvement in margins, which has taken us well into the 5 to 6 percent target range we set. And we've had a very strong ...