Good morning everyone and welcome to the H1 2026 results presentation. I'm Alan Puri, I'm the CEO and I'm joined this morning by Ingrid Stewart, CFO. I'll start with a results overview and some highlights. I'll then pass to Ingrid who will provide a more detailed review of the financials after which I'll talk about the market and operational review. Following the presentation we'll open the floor to Q&A. So we could just go to the first slide. During H1 the group delivered revenue growth despite short-term headwinds, impacting trading while long-term opportunity remains strong. In a challenging market compared to the prior year, revenue increased by 1.1% to 100.2 million, being a 1.7% increase on a constant currency basis. Revenue generated from renewables decreased by 2%, reflecting globally softer market conditions. Adjusted EBITDA margin at 25% reflects revenue mix. Net debt reduced by 15 million in the period, with leverage reducing to 1.4 times, which is the lower half of our target range of one to two times. These financial results demonstrate the strengths of our differentiating global services model and our scale diversified footprint. We continue to make strategic progress through the first half. We're building an increasingly sophisticated and diversified business through a unique portfolio of equipment and services and global footprint to serve the global offshore energy industry across the full lifecycle of subsea infrastructure. We acquired Hydraulics creating a strategic footprint in Australia to accelerate growth in that market. We consolidated three UK mechanical solutions operations into one creating a global centre of excellence to better service our customers and we continued to build out group capability investing 25.9 million in technology for the long term. Turning to Outlook, in our trading update on 20th of August, we disappointingly noted the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and project slippages, which will impact revenue growth in H2. Confidence in the long term market fundamentals remain strong, with our addressable market forecast to grow at 6% CAGR through 2029, supported by customer backlog and their opportunity pipelines. Turning to the next slide. We're building unrivaled capability while delivering sector-leading financial performance. So what are the Ash technology differentiators? We're a trusted partner. Service failure offshore carries significant financial consequences, leading customers to prioritize reliability, track record, and trusted supplier relationships over marginal pricing differences. We've supported all of our top 10 customers for over a decade. We're deepening our service moat. Increasing focus on integrated solutions embeds AshTech technology into customer projects, de-risking their execution. We're accelerating in-house innovation. The majority of mechanical solutions and asset integrity equipment is designed, engineered and assembled in-house, which can be easily bought or replicated by competitors. We have global reach. We support our customers globally with the world's largest independent subsea equipment solutions fleet and our offering is highly fungible our mission critical flexible service supports offshore construction inspection maintenance repair and decommissioning giving the business exposure across the full life cycle of subsea energy infrastructure for both oil and gas and offshore wind if we look at the chart over the last 10 year period into 2025 we have scaled our business organically and through 10 acquisitions delivering revenue CAGR of 30 percent adjusted EBITDA CAGER of 32% and adjusted EBITDA CAGER of 67%. Whilst we have a long-term growth track record, growth will not be linear and 2026 has proven to be a challenging year but the long-term opportunity remains strong and the platform we have provides a great opportunity to drive financial performance and further scale this business. I'll now turn over to Ingrid who will talk us through financials.
Thank you, Alan. Good morning, everyone. Whilst disappointing, our financial performance in the first half has been resilient given the challenging market backdrop. Our revenue of 100.2 million is 1.1% up on prior year and 1.7% up on a constant currency basis. Our adjusted EBITDA of 25.1 million represents a margin of 25% which falls short of our target of high 20s and is below the 27.3% achieved in the comparable period last year. This is as a result of a higher proportion of our revenues coming from non-rental areas and an increase in our depreciation costs as a result of recent investment. Our adjusted EPS of 20.6 pence is down 6% on prior year, but as a reminder of where we've come from since IPO, this is two and a half times what we had delivered four years ago in 2022. Our return on capital remains ahead of our cost of capital and our internal targets at 25.5%. Our balance sheet remains strong with half-year leverage at 1.4 times. Our revenue growth of 1.1% comes from oil and gas, which saw a 1.9% increase year-on-year, with our renewables revenues showing a small drop of 0.4 million, representing a decline of 1.6%. On a regional basis, we've seen a solid performance from our European business, which has grown by 7.5% year-on-year, with all three business lines performing well in this region. In the Americas, revenues have increased by 2% year-on-year, with a strong performance in survey and robotics and asset integrity, offset with lower mechanical solutions revenues due to project timings. As previously flagged, our Middle East business has seen some impact from the conflict, with their reduction in revenues of 7% being a more robust performance than initially feared at the start of the conflict. The largest lag comes from our APAC business, which is down 30% year on year, in part due to H1 2025, including revenues from the larger TAPTEC decommissioning project and slower offshore renewables activity in 2026. Our EBITDA margin of 37.8% remains within a high 30% target. Our EBITDA margin of 25% is below target, as I said earlier, due to the impact of the higher depreciation charge due to investment in CapEx. Our adjusted profit after tax of £20.8 million compares to £21.6 million in the comparative period last year and represents an adjusted basic earnings per share of £20.6p. We've maintained our strong balance sheet with leverage currently at 1.4 times in the lower half of our target range. While short-term headwinds prevail on trading, long-term growth opportunities remain strong for our business and we continue to invest for future growth through investment in capex and inventory, with a particular focus on our manipulator repair and cable moulding activities that we acquired through the Seatronics and J2 subsea acquisitions and on building a stock of proprietary Ashted items for sale. Our opening net debt was £109 million, representing leverage of 1.3 times. We've utilised our free cash flow and RCF to continue to invest in both organic growth and acquisitions, spending a combined £27 million on these growth initiatives in the first half. We've also witnessed a working capital outflow, in part due to seasonality and in part due to investment in inventory and timing of CapEx spend. As a result, our net debt has increased slightly during the period with it's expected to reduce through the seasonally cash positive second half. Our net debt leverage is expected to reduce to 1.3 times at the year end. I won't dwell too much on our cash flow slide, as much of this has been covered by my previous commentary. Weisler operating cash flow conversion remains strong at 79%. We've reduced our free cash flow conversion due to timing of capex, spend and higher tax payments in the period. Touching briefly on our working capital, we've seen a steady increase in the percentage of working capital against LTM revenues, which is in part due to investment and inventory. Our working capital can also fluctuate due to timing of CapEx spend. Our internal target is 17% of LTM revenues. On capital allocation, there is no change to our strategy, with priorities focused on investing for growth and maintaining our leverage within the target one to two times range. Our business has grown significantly over the past five years, following over £270 million of investment in both CapEx and acquisitions, which has delivered a 3.7 times increase in our EBITDA. We have sustained high returns with ROIC in the 20% and continue to deliver industry-leading margins. All of our investments to date have been funded through free cash flow and RCF whilst maintaining low leverage. whilst mindful of current performance going forward we see the opportunity to continue to invest utilizing our sustainable and growing operating cash flows to put to fund growth in our business and to capture the opportunities within a growing market in line with prior years the board has not proposed an interim dividend and intends to continue with its annual small progressive dividend policy i will now pass you back to alan to give an update on the market and operational review.
Great. Thanks, Ingrid. So the market continues to provide a strong growth runway for the business. The Middle East conflict and prolonged disruption in the Strait of Hormuz will likely reshape global energy markets and force governments to prioritise energy security, resilience and supply diversification at the same time as energy demand is increasing. Ashton Technologies' total addressable market is forecast to grow by 27% to 3.4 billion by 2029 at 6% CAGR. Starting with the left-hand graph, despite recent headwinds the offshore wind market is forecast to grow at 10% CAGR through to 2029. Offshore wind activity has been slow this year but it is forecast to increase as we move towards the end of the decade and offshore activity related to recent auction awards starts to increase. Oil and gas inspection maintenance pair and construction work is forecast to grow at 4% CAGR through to 2029. Oil and gas is an important part of the future energy mix with stronger demand forecasts for decades to come. If we look at the right-hand chart, this graph shows the key regional addressable markets for Ashton Technology, which are global excluding China. We support our customers' operations across the key offshore regions and we are well-placed to benefit from the forecast growth. As we continue to build out our business, geographical expansion is a core theme and establishing a footprint in Australia through the acquisition of hydraulics in June is another step forward. With the platform we have built our team's domain knowledge and expertise and through the deep domain value we deliver to our customers we are very well placed to benefit from the long-term growth across all our key markets. Turning to the next slide. Spend a new offshore energy infrastructure forecast to increase over the next few years. In terms of oil and gas, Greenfield oil and gas capex is forecast to increase to 139 billion per annum through to 2029, up from a historic average of 101 billion. Whilst there will be a time lag between projects being sanctioned and that translating into work for Ashtag Technology, this increase in forecast spend supports our growth ambitions for the business. In terms of offshore wind, despite a new market reality for offshore wind in which headwinds persist. Evident by muted project FIDs, field tenders and developers exiting developments, the long-term structural case remains intact. Offshore wind expected play a key role for European countries underpinned by heightened energy security agendas and the drive to diversified energy sources. Europe installed capacity is forecasted double from 37 gigawatts to 71 gigawatts by 2030. Globally, the number of operational wind farms, excluding China, is forecast to increase from 203 to 312 by 2030, an increase of 54%. The medium-term market forecast outlook for the offshore energy market is strong. Turning to the next slide in customer backlog, subsea activity for the next three years is evident through customer backlogs, which are multi-year. The The left hand chart shows the backlog of seven subsea contractors and how that's changed since 2020, increasing from 36 billion to 84 billion. These customers account for just under 40% of our revenue. Q2 2026 backlog is 3% lower than December 25, due in part to timing of contract awards. While subsea 7 and technique backlogs remain stable at high levels, Saipen's backlog is 15% lower compared to the year-end at December 25. Saipem in the Q2 trading update noted their confidence that 2026 order intake will exceed that of 2025. On the right-hand chart the opportunity pipelines for technique which is on a 24-month basis and Saipem on an 18-month basis both continue to increase pointing to a backlog rebound in 2027. From this multi-year customer backlog we expect a strong pipeline of revenue opportunities. Turning to geographical expansion, geographic and service line capability expansion are cornerstones of our strategy to better support our customers and to position Ashtet technology as an integrated solutions provider. There are growth opportunities to expand our service capabilities across both geographical and end markets. Survey and robotics will continue to benefit from increasing customer propensity to rent. Significant opportunities exist to expand our mechanical solutions capability by internationalizing what we already have and we continue to make progress building out our U.S. capability having opened a facility in Houston last year and we took possession a new mechanical solutions facility in Norway yesterday. Asset integrity has opportunities to add significant value to customers globally through consultancy services, own product development and deployment of niche technologies and if we look at end markets, oil and gas continues to provide an excellent opportunity for business globally. Offshore wind opportunities will likely be restricted to Europe and Asia in the short term with policy disruption slowing US growth. We're delighted to have acquired C-Drawlix in June this year. Whilst our equipment is highly mobile, for certain regions having boots on the ground will allow us to further increase market share. We've supported the Australian market from Singapore for over 30 years, but our customer proposition and the market opportunity has changed. We have listened to our customers and now is the right time to establish an operation in country. The acquisition of a small RV tooling operations creates a platform to accelerate the build-out of a full-service Ashtag technology capability in Australia and at the same time strengthen our RV tooling capabilities globally. We continue to cultivate these type of M&A opportunities which act as catalysts of change to better support our customers. In terms of mechanical solutions, firstly the history lesson. The foundations of our mechanical solutions offering was created through the acquisition of three market leading businesses. UCS was acquired in 2019 for its specialist underwater cutting capabilities and its range of tools have been significantly expanded through in-house design and capex over the last few years to be the market leader in seafloor clearance operations. HireTech was acquired in 2022 for its back deck power and pumping capabilities, which supports both direct customers and complements of cutting and lifting operations. And Ace Winches was acquired in 2023 for its lifting, pooling and deployment capabilities, which has allowed Ashton Technology to provide the market with a fully integrated back deck support proposition. Each of these businesses were successful in their own right. We are harnessing that and creating something new and differentiated. Looking ahead, everything that we do at Ashton Technology is customer-focused. To enhance our ability to win, deliver, and support integrated project, it made sense to further integrate our UK mechanical solutions capability on one site, which is a natural next step given the evolution of our service offering. This consolidation took place very recently, but we have already seen the benefits of a one-team approach and better communication across our technical specialists and it's also delivering efficiency in operations through consistency of standards and approach the key benefits however are customer related greater visibility of our capabilities reduced points of contact reduced equipment interface risk and the benefit of offshore team cross training leading to cost reduction and less people offshore as we bed in this new consolidated operation and look forward to 2027 we're in a far better place to support our customers. And then finally, to Outlook, the board's expectations for the full year remain in line with those set out in our trading update on 20th of August. We've got a clear growth strategy and we're executing the plan. Our unique service offering is highly differentiating, adding real value to our customers. The market we operate in has got strong fundamentals, as we've seen, representing attractive multi-year growth opportunities. High multi-year customer backlogs create a strong sustainable revenue runway for us, and our highly flexible business model is creating multiple geographic and end market opportunities. With continued focus on strong cash generation, balance sheet strength, and disciplined capital allocation, we are well pleased to further our growth strategy, both organically and inorganically.
Well, thanks very much, everyone, for joining us and being part of our results presentation this morning, and hopefully we'll see you all again soon. Thank you.
