Speaker 0
Good morning. Today we've announced our 2026 first half results, and it's been a fantastic first half for the group. We've delivered very strong results across all of our key financial metrics, building on our long-term compounding track record. We balance ambitious earnings growth, up 36% in the half, with disciplined returns, 23% in the half, together delivering sustainable compounding success. The quality and diversity of our portfolio exposes us to exciting, attractive end markets, in vitro diagnostics, aerospace, defense, data centers and many others. And these support structural, long-term organic growth, up 15% in the half and on average 10% over the last five years. It also builds great resilience into our model. We also have massive geographic and product white space potential. We're focused on the key developed economies. Penetration is still very small across our verticals in the US, Europe and the UK. So we have lots to go for. We accelerate organic growth with targeted acquisitions and we've got great momentum. Over the course of the last 12 months, we've brought in 15 fantastic new businesses into the group and seven since quarter one, spending around 300 million. The pipeline remains very healthy and we've got plenty of balance sheet capacity. Our differentiated value-add customer propositions alongside great performance execution have delivered very high margins again, up 300 basis points in the half to 24.5%. We're upgrading our full year results. We're looking at 12% organic growth for the year. We're adding to our acquisition growth up to 6%. We're expecting margins of 25%. And overall, therefore, we're expecting an upgrade of 6% to profit growth of over 30%. Another fantastic year of quality compounding for the group. And a last word now about our people. I want to thank them for their skill, their energy, their dedication. They make all of these results happen. Together, we're excited about our future. We're excited about our sustainable quality compounding.
