Cohort plc - Investor Presentation (July 2024) - FY Results

Well good morning everybody, thank you for joining us. I'm Andy Thomis, chief executive at Cohort PLC, and I'm here with Simon Walther, Cohort's finance director, and we're going to take you through our results for the financial year which ended in April this year. So I'm going to start by giving you highlights of the results that we're announcing today. Simon's going to give more detail including a divisional breakdown, I will come back with some comments about the demand picture and our future prospects. I'm happy to say that overall we've once again seen a very strong performance: record operating profit, record revenue, and a record closing order book. The numbers are on the slide. Revenue and profit both up very strongly above market expectations. We hit what I think are two major milestones in our development as a group: for the first time we have revenue greater than 200 million and profit greater than 20 million. More specifically, revenue was up 11% to 202.5 million, adjusted operating profit and adjusted EPS also grew strongly to just over 21 million and 42.9 pence respectively, and those are all new record numbers. Very importantly, it was a strong period for new orders once again. The order intake of 392 million significantly exceeded the revenue that we recognized, so that by the year end the total order book had grown to nearly 520 million pounds, and that meant that 90% of the consensus forecast revenue for this year was already on order at the end of April, and our strong order winning run has continued since then. We've taken in over 70 million pounds of orders since the year end, and the order book has now grown to over 560 million, and that's given us over 95% cover for the year. And finally, our cash performance was also strong, bringing us to an end-of-year cash position much better than we had expected, so net funds of over 23 million pounds. And against that background, the board is very pleased to recommend a final dividend of 10.1 pence, once again representing an increase of 10% in the dividend for the full year. If we could have the next slide please.

Andy, Simon will give a more detailed breakdown of the performance of our divisions, but this slide shows the main factors behind the group's performance improvement overall. The sensors and effectors division was the driver of revenue and profit growth, communications and intelligence in fact was slightly behind where it had been the prior year. In sensors and effectors, Chess and SEA generated the large improvement in operating performance. A generally positive demand environment was an important factor in that, coupled to good products that have been developed to meet what the market needed. The most notable example of that was the selection of SEA's Anilia product to protect the Royal Navy surface ships that we announced in March. There was an especially strong turnaround in performance of Chess, which exceeded our expectations for revenue and profit in the year, and that was a demonstration of the success of the operating improvements that have been made by the managing director there, with support from Simon and myself, and we continue to target further operating performance improvements. Elac Sonar continued to trade its large Italian submarine contract cautiously, but again it performed well, and in the year the Italian submarine soone last weite passed its critical design review, a very important milestone, and has now moved forward into the production phase. In communications and intelligence, which performed slightly behind their prior year, the main swing factor was MCL, which returned to a more normal level of performance after an exceptional year in 2022-23. Mass returned to growth and hit new records of revenue and profit, despite being hampered by supply delays on one important contract. EID had another disappointing year, making a small loss, but the good news was that towards the end of the year and at the beginning of this year it succeeded in bringing in some important orders with a total value of over 45 million euros, and that bodes well for a better year in 2024-25. And finally, I should mention a small acquisition made by MCL; it's a company based in Nbra in Yorkshire called Interactive Technical Services. It specializes in providing the support documents needed by defense customers when they buy new equipment, and that's a capability that's often contracted out by equipment suppliers, and MCL has been a frequent user of its services, so we believe that the acquisition will enable it to expand its offering and MCL to offer a fuller service to its customers. The acquisition was completed in May and it will make a modest but positive contribution to our trading in this financial year.

Now, as well as delivering successfully in 2023-24, we've also improved our strategic position for the longer term. First, the demand drivers, those have remained very strong. The world unfortunately is not showing signs of returning to stability. If history ever did stop, it's clearly restarted now with a vengeance. And that backdrop has led us to invest in new technologies to enhance our growth prospects, and our research and development spend was very much up sharply this year. The larger and longer order book speaks for itself. Our book-to-bill ratio was over 1.9 last year, and that momentum has continued into 2024-25. And the result of that is that we can maintain our growth prospects for the current year, with perhaps a little upside from that IT acquisition, which is going to be modest in size but it will be positive and it will be additive. And thereafter, that positive strategic picture enables us to target further progress in those later years. Now I'll say more about all of those points later in the presentation, but for now let me hand over to Simon, who's going to take you through the results in more detail. So Simon, over to you.

Thank you Simon. So that covers the year just passed. Now I'm going to talk about the outlook. I'll start with a broad market position, then I'll talk about some of the investments that we're making in new products and technology to maximize our opportunities, and I'll show you then how our existing order book runs off over the coming years and how it's developed over the past 12 months. So we'll start with the demand picture. The two main driving forces for demand for defense equipment have not changed in the last year: the continuing conflict in Ukraine, and the influence of growing Chinese assertiveness really from the Indian Ocean all the way to Australasia. And to add to those, since October last year there's been the developing violent conflict in Gaza and the related instability in that region, particularly in the Red Sea. The conflict in Central Europe is primarily land-based, it has driven demand directly as the NATO countries seek to assist Ukraine to resist the Russian invasion. So 2023, for instance, saw a real increase of over 8% in defense spending across the European NATO allies and Canada, so the non-US NATO countries. And it's also made NATO and other countries think again about the balance of their defense forces and equipment. Some aspects of that, for instance increasing ammunition stockpiles, don't have an impact on us, but some of the other lessons learned: the importance of electronic warfare, the need to counter drones of all kinds, the need for accurate and timely battlefield intelligence, all of those have had a positive impact on both our orders and our prospects. And then in Asia, growing Chinese assertiveness has not yet transformed into open conflict, but it has come perilously close in the South China Sea. Taiwan is also clearly at risk, the presence of North Korea in the region is not a stabilizing factor. Chinese investment in the navy, which has been one of the main thrusts of investment in China, has led to a response in the form of new maritime programs in the region and elsewhere. The most visible and significant consequence of that was the AUKUS alliance between the UK, the US, and Australia. Taiwan and the Philippines have also launched new submarine programs. Elsewhere in the region, South Korea is investing heavily in defense, notably in its submarine building program. Japan quite strikingly remains committed to a doubling of its national security spend as a share of GDP by 2027. Its defense spending increased by 27% last year and a further 16% in the current year to 2024. Japan has also joined the Anglo-Italian Next Generation Combat Aircraft project, balancing its strong historical US relationship with growing ties to Europe and particularly to the United Kingdom. The conflict in Gaza doesn't have the same direct impact as the other factors, but it's symptomatic of wider tensions in the region primarily between Iran on the one hand and Saudi Arabia and its allies on the other. The attacks on ships in the Red Sea have accentuated the need for drone and missile defense systems, and more widely it's likely to drive further defense spending in what is one of our more important regional markets. It's hard to see how these conflicts and tensions are going to play out in the long term, but it is clear that we're not in a situation that can be resolved with a few compromises and a handshake. The world is now in a new period of instability and tension that I think is likely to persist in the foreseeable future, comparable perhaps to the Cold War but maybe even more complex and unpredictable. Now clearly that's not something that should fill us with happiness, we should all be concerned for the well-being of our families and for future generations. At Cohort, something that really motivates us is that we are able, in circumstances like this, to make a positive contribution because the equipment and services that we supply contribute to the security of our nations and our allies in what has become a dangerous world.

So in practical terms, what is the impact of all of this for us? Well, looking at our domestic markets, the most important is the United Kingdom, 54% of our total revenue in 2023-24 went to the UK directly and indirectly. In particular, we have a close relationship with the Royal Navy, with Chess and SEA both significant suppliers of equipment and support. The Anilia win has deepened that relationship further, but we also provide electronic warfare training and software for the British Army and the Royal Air Force, a wide range of communications and electronic warfare equipment from MCL, and exercise support for the UK's strategic command. I don't see the recent change of government as being likely to change the fundamentals of UK defense strategy. The new Defense Secretary John Healey is a very able man, he's an experienced minister, he's appointed George Robertson, the former Defense Secretary and Secretary General of NATO, to lead a defense review. All of the indications are that the new Starmer government is responsible, and I don't think any responsible government would take risks with defense at a time like the present. Our domestic markets in Germany and Portugal are important but smaller. As I mentioned, in Portugal we finally seen some good order intake for the army, and we're also in discussions about another important program, in this case for the navy. In our export markets, we're seeing strong demand from the European NATO countries for air defense systems, particularly for countering the drone threat. That demand comes to us both directly and via partners like Rheinmetall and BAE Systems. Our capability in this area has brought us into some new markets in Central and Eastern Europe that we haven't accessed before. We are also in northern Europe providing battlefield reconnaissance systems, as well as more widely, electronic warfare software and training. And in the East, we see strong demand from Asia, from the Indian Ocean all the way to Australasia. The naval systems in particular, torpedo launchers and communication systems for surface ships, are both in demand. We see good opportunities in this region for Anilia as well, and for sonar systems too. Submarine programs are being launched worldwide, and that provides opportunities in countries as diverse as Canada, Poland, and the Philippines. Overall, NATO and the Indo-Pacific are the regions that we supply most, though we're also active in South America and Canada. Overall, the demand picture for Cohort we believe is robust.

If we can move on to the next slide. Against that encouraging background, we are increasing our spend on technology development to meet the evolving needs of our customers. This year it was a 26% increase. Now many of the projects that we invest in are sensitive, but I did want to share some examples with you. Looking at the drone threat first, Chess has developed artificial intelligence-based technology to track small and elusive airborne targets like drones. That can be combined with high-power jamming to block the drone command and communication signals, or for a more permanent solution, something like the Bofors 40mm cannon that's shown in the picture on the left could be used, and you can see Chess's equipment based on top of that turret. Chess has also developed related technology to provide battlefield surveillance, based on vehicles or on fixed surveillance posts, and that system can be elevated above tree level on a vehicle on a mast, and then used to detect and track, and also using a laser designator to designate targets for smart weapons very accurately at surprisingly long ranges.

And then moving to the underwater world, Elac's new digital sonar offers an extraordinary level of underwater performance. They have reached a new level of sensitivity, achieved by mounting literally thousands of small sensors into a panel like the one you can see in that central picture there. They have also used some software, some of which is actually unique and a unique capability to Elac, brought in beamforming which allows a target to not only be detected at longer range than ever, but also to be accurately positioned in terms of bearing and depth as well. Now I've talked about SEA's Todor sonar, which is suitable for small lightweight surface vessels. If you were quick you might have caught a picture of that which was flashed up as the very first introductory slide. It has become apparent to us from recent exhibitions and conferences and discussions with customers that the world's navies are looking to grow very strongly the number of uncrewed vessels that they deploy, both on the surface of the sea and under the water as well. SEA's Todor sonar is ideally suited to those applications as a lightweight, low power but very sensitive sonar detector. And last but certainly not least, I must mention Anilia, SEA's system for protecting naval surface vessels from the anti-ship missile threat. You can see that on the right-hand side of the slide. Events in both the Black Sea and the Red Sea have shown us just how potent that threat is. We see a significant international market for Anilia as a result. The product is actually the result of a collaboration between SEA and Chess, and that's a happy outcome because we have two businesses that are world experts respectively in the decoy launcher itself and the stabilized position on which it's mounted, under the same roof in Cohort. Now investment in those and in other projects positions us well to meet customer requirements which are evolving for the reasons that I explained earlier. And finally, in terms of investment, and no less importantly, we maintain our strategy of seeking and investing in value-adding acquisitions. Now we're very selective, and we won't acquire a business unless we know it will add value and growth in the long term. ITS is a small example of that, but it matches very much our profile.

Now if we can move on to the next slide. I've talked in broad terms about markets and capabilities, but this slide shows the tangible results of the demand picture that I've described. If you look at the chart on the right-hand side, that shows the order book runoff for the order book that we had at the end of the last financial year in April 2024. At nearly 520 million pounds, the year-end order book is the strongest that we've ever announced. It includes over 180 million for delivery this year and over 100 million for next year already. And of course, the Anilia order at over 135 million pounds made a big contribution to that order book, but it's worth mentioning that even without that, we would have seen order intake of over a quarter of a billion pounds in the year, and it would still have been the best year for order intake that we've ever experienced and the best closing order book. Now, as I mentioned earlier, since the year end that order book has continued to grow, and it reached almost 560 million pounds at the end of June, giving us now 95% or over 95% revenue cover for the year. If you look at the color coding on those columns, you will see that the larger part of our order book now sits with the sensors and effectors division. SEA makes a very strong contribution to that number, Elac and Chess also add significantly to the total. In communications and intelligence, MCL tends to operate naturally on a short-term order book, so its contribution to the total is modest, although you'll have seen recently we've announced quite a substantial order that MCL has taken, mostly for delivery this financial year. Mass's order book is substantial, but it only increases significantly in years when its large long-term service contracts are renewed. EID has been in discussion about some substantial domestic programs for what has felt like forever, and that was still ongoing at the year end.

But the good news is since May they've been awarded more than 45 million euros of new orders, and that significantly replenishes their order book. Now, just for comparison purposes, the chart on the left shows the shape of the order book runoff last year, and what you can see is that it has maintained its shape. In broad terms, all of the columns have increased in size. The change that really stands out though is for the longer-term revenue, which has grown from 65 million pounds last year to 167 million pounds this year, almost a 250% increase. And that is the impact of Anilia and other long-term contracts providing a steady flow of revenue for over a decade ahead, in fact out to 2037. And that's a solid foundation that we can build on for growth in the years ahead.

Now if we move to the next slide, here you can see in tabular form the order book runoff for the current year together with a comparison against the same position last year. That increase in total order book from 329 million to 519 million, that's more than a 57% increase, is a strong indicator of the potential for future revenue growth. And since then, as I've said, it's gone up to over 560 million with 95% cover for the year. The two shaded columns show the revenue already on order for the year ahead at the year end compared to the same position in 2023. Now in Communications and Intelligence, we can see that the underpin is a little higher than last year's, but as I mentioned, that strong order intake from both MCL and EID since the year end has improved that position really quite significantly. But the big change is in Sensors and Effectors, where the underpinning for the year has risen from 84 million last year to over 120 million just from that division, an increase of over 40%. And that's a really big plank in our foundations for growth in the current year.

So that brings me almost to the end of the presentation. If we can have the next slide, here's a summary of the main points that I wanted to make. It's been another record year in terms of performance. We're not resting on our laurels, but we're very pleased to be growing the size and strength of the group. Perhaps even more importantly than the year's performance, we've achieved a record order book and we see a really strong pipeline of further opportunities ahead. And as I said, that's grown to over 560 million pounds at the end of June. We've got a strong balance sheet and an excellent relationship with our banks that gives us the resource we need to invest in new technology, greater production capacity, and when opportunities arise, to make carefully targeted acquisitions.

The markets that we're operating in are growing, and we expect to see those higher levels of spending maintained in the longer term. And that book-to-bill ratio achieved of over 1.9 is a reliable quantitative marker for future growth. We maintain our growth expectations for the year and beyond. We expect to see some improvement from the IT acquisition, and then beyond the current year, we believe the combination of growing demand and our market position allows us to target further improvements in performance. And I hope what you've heard from us today explains why we've reached that view. As a result of our performance and our prospects, the board has felt confident to increase the dividend by 10% once again, and we've grown the dividend every year since our IPO in 2006.

And if we can flick on to the final slide, in closing I wanted to take the opportunity to thank our management teams and our employees for their continued hard work and professionalism, because thanks to them this year has seen us take another step towards our exciting long-term future as a major independent UK defense technology group, offering world-class systems to domestic and export customers alike. Our strategy continues to be to generate growth both organically and through acquisitions, while paying a dividend that reflects our successful financial performance. And we believe this offers the best long-term returns for investors, while creating high-value employment and enhancing the security of the UK and its allies. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you very much for your attention. If you have questions, then Simon and I will do our best to answer them.

Well, we are, I mean it's not just that we've seen potential, we are in dialogue with both customers and partners with whom we can jointly approach the market on Anilia. As I explained, the new threats which ships are facing because of some of the new technologies that have been developed in China and Russia, missiles that approach their targets where the question is not how many miles per minute they fly but how many miles per second that they fly, the old ways of maneuvering the ship to minimize its frontal area and firing off decoys from fixed directions is no longer going to be effective against that kind of threat. So they're going to need a system like the one that we've developed, capable of firing those large heavy decoys very quickly in the most optimal direction and the right kind of decoy to defeat whatever it is that the threat is. So we see that as a system that's generating a lot of interest on the export market. And where I can't sort of talk to you about specific customers, I can tell you that we're already in discussion with customers and we would hope that that will bear fruit in due course.

Oh, the oversubscription quite remarkable. Yes, we had, our six places were oversubscribed at SCA by a factor of 100 in this year's graduate engineering round. And as Simon said, the reason is that we offer interesting jobs and in SCA's case a pleasant location in North Devon as well, so a good one for the surface.

Well, the short answer is both are growing. It's hard for me to say which is going to grow faster; it rather depends on events. I mean, if there were to be, for example, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, I'm not expecting that in the immediate future, but if there were to be, that would drive exceptional growth in demand from that region, and one that we are well placed to participate in fulfilling. At the moment, as I explained, the UK makes up just over half of our total revenue output, and I expect almost whatever happens that to continue to be a very substantial factor. It's often the case in defense that one satisfies one's domestic customer first, and then that provides a strong boost in the export markets. But overall, there's no doubt there is very strong demand arising from both NATO Europe and indeed from Asia, from the Indian Ocean all the way down to Australia.

That's an interesting one. Well, in this case, MCL has known it for years and they've used them as a supplier, and it's been a positive relationship and they've been pleased with the output. It was ITS that actually approached, or the owners of ITS, that approached MCL in the course of 2023-24, explained that they were looking to exit and asked if we might be interested in bringing the business into MCL. And after some internal discussions we decided that we were, and we went ahead and negotiated an agreement. So it was a relatively simple process. And that does happen where we actually get approached by a seller who recognizes, I mean, sellers are often as well as wanting to obviously finance their own futures, want to ensure that the well-being of employees is looked after and perhaps that the business can continue in its current form to some extent, and you continue the success that they perceive it has. So that was certainly the case with Chess, where we were regarded as being a desirable acquirer. I think that was also the same with Elac, where in that case it was a subsidiary of Wärtsilä, the large Finnish marine propulsion business, and they were clearly very concerned not only to conduct an effective and efficient transaction but also to preserve themselves against any reputational damage by selling it to a new owner that might damage it or close it down in a way that could come back on them. So that's often a means by which we are identified. But of course we also see businesses who we meet and talk to on our usual round of discussions and exhibitions, and we get approached by investment banks and boutique M&A agencies from time to time with prospects too.

There are some. I can talk about. I mean, if you just look at the lessons learned in Ukraine, you can see that certain technologies are very important. I mentioned a few earlier on. So I think electronic warfare, battlefield intelligence, counter-drone, those things are all very important. Another thing that's very, very important is communications, and communications have been disrupted significantly in Ukraine by the use of electronic attack methods. So having communications that are relatively invulnerable to that and can't be intercepted is something that's very important as well. So I think demand for those areas is very important. But it's also important to look at the market dynamics. So if you take an example, drones. You know, if you think in terms of battlefield intelligence, drones are a very, very important component of that. But the barrier to entry in providing drones is really very low. I mean, powerful permanent magnet electric motors, lightweight batteries are all readily available. And so you see drone manufacturers. There's one company I know of which makes drones out of cardboard, together with those lightweight batteries and the powerful permanent magnet motors, together with the necessary communications link. And I mean, they're remarkably inexpensive and it's not difficult to do. You could do it in your garage. And they're being used in the thousands in Ukraine. So that does not seem like the kind of business that would be sensible to enter for those reasons. I think potentially a better business would be the surveillance or other munitions packages or whatever that go onto the drone, rather than the drone itself. So we think about things in that way. It's not just about demand.

Well, yes. I mean, it has its launch order, the CRAIS defense system, in the application of providing anti-submarine capability to light vessels, and that's to a customer in Southeast Asia. I mentioned that was a key part of where we saw the demand coming. And we're keen to get that delivered so that we're able to demonstrate it in that role to other customers. And we would see strong demand coming from that. But that is actually underway, that contract has begun. Two other areas where we see opportunities for CRAIS: one I mentioned to you in the talk is unmanned surface vessels and unmanned underwater vessels, and we'll be keeping close to the Royal Navy and other navies as their plans for those things develop. They're really in an experimental phase at the moment, and CRAIS is clearly a valuable sensor in that sort of world, being lightweight and low power. And the other is as a submarine sensor. So CRAIS is potentially a good augmentation to submarine sonar outfits, and we've been talking to Elac about whether it might potentially be a good sensor to add on to the Italian submarines that they're providing the flank and cylindrical and other arrays for as well. So we see really quite a lot of potential for CRAIS, and as I say, that's actually started now with the first actual contract.

Sure. I mean, I think there are plenty of statistics online. I wasn't around in the 50s, but I certainly was in the 70s and 80s, and you'll remember that it was a time of very strong defense spending. If I remember correctly, about 4% of GDP at that stage. And that was driven really by the concentration of forces either side of the inner German border. And I don't know when or how the live conflict in Ukraine will be brought to an end. I mean, the most likely outcome though is wherever it ends, we will have a similar kind of situation with a tense border with a strong buildup of forces on either side, with neither side being satisfied with the outcome. And certainly that will be the case in Russia wherever it ends. So I think even if Donald Trump is voted in as president of the US and even if he waves his magic wand and is able to bring that conflict to a swift conclusion, then we are going to be stuck in that long-term situation which is very hard to see how it might be brought to an end. If we think back to the Cold War, it was really a sort of differential in economic and industrial progress over many years that ultimately brought about a resolution to that conflict. And we could be looking at many years again.

It's yeah, so you can see where things were, where they are today, and potentially where they could go.