SSP Group plc (SSPG) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning everybody and thank you for joining us in the room on our live webcast this morning. I'm Patrick Coveney, I'm the Group CEO of SSP and I'm joined by Jonathan Davis, our Deputy CEO and CFO. Before we take you through the detail of our full year performance for FY24, I wanted to start with some reflections on where the business sits today. I've been CEO of SSP for two and a half years now. What's clear to me is both that SSP is a strong business and that we have more to do to reflect that strength in our profitability and returns. While the pace of transition from COVID recovery to a business with demonstrably strong returns has been fast, it hasn't been fast enough. And there are two key reasons for this. First, as we emerged from COVID, we chose to take advantage of the immediate competitive opportunities we had to build a bigger and a better platform for long-term growth and returns. By this, I mean renewing, winning and opening new contracts, and also making for important infill acquisitions. Out of that, we've strengthened our market-leading positions in the most attractive and high-growth food travel markets in the world, and we have lengthened the remaining contract tenure on our estate from four years to six years. At the same time, we've improved our customer propositions, and we've strengthened our client and customer relationships. While the early performance of these investments is encouraging, we have more to do to build out the returns that we require on these investments. Second, the profitability in parts of our continental European region has fallen short of our expectations. While we've done a nice job in retaining and extending almost 40% of our European contract base in the last two years, in addition to mobilizing new business. But the...