SSP Group PLC
LSE:SSPG
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SSP Group PLC
Earnings Call Analysis
Q2-2024 Analysis
SSP Group PLC
The latest earnings call revealed substantial sales growth for the company, achieving a 19% increase year-on-year, amounting to GBP 1.5 billion. This strong performance was largely driven by robust like-for-like sales growth of 12%, supported by net gains of 4% and contributions from mergers and acquisitions (M&A) that added 3%. Notably, growth was particularly pronounced in North America, Asia-Pacific, and the UK, while Continental Europe experienced temporary challenges due to contract renewals.
Underlying EBITDA surged by 24% year-on-year to GBP 106 million, translating to a year-on-year operating profit increase of 21% to GBP 38 million. Despite these gains, the company reported an EPS of a small loss of GBP 0.01, consistent with expectations. The EBITDA margin enhanced by 30 basis points, showcasing efficient operations and a strong cost management strategy, particularly in North America and Asia-Pac regions with margin improvements of 140 and 60 basis points respectively.
Despite the positive results, Continental Europe faced drawbacks reflected in a 2.2% decline in EBITDA margin due to extensive contract renewal programs and unforeseen strike action impacting operations. The overall impact from these challenges is estimated at GBP 10 to 12 million, suggesting a short-term effect on profitability. However, the management anticipates these pressures to ease in the upcoming second half as contract renewals near completion.
The company’s strategic focus on expanding its network has resulted in the opening of 325 outlets over the past year and entering new markets such as Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. In addition, management has successfully completed five acquisitions consistent with regional growth priorities. These efforts are expected to enhance future growth prospects significantly.
Looking forward, management maintains a favorable outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year. They project full-year sales growth between GBP 3.4 billion to GBP 3.5 billion and anticipate an operating profit range of GBP 210 million to GBP 235 million, driven by further improvement in like-for-like growth. Additionally, the company plans to deliver a strong margin enhancement in the second half, projecting an increase of nearly 2%.
Amid potential economic headwinds and increased interest costs expected to reach GBP 40 million for the year, the company’s investment appetite remains robust. Management reinforces their target leverage range of 1.5x to 2x net debt to EBITDA, initiating new acquisitions while managing cash influx prudently. This strategic positioning aims to ensure sustained growth and returns for future fiscal periods.
Overall, while the company encounters certain regional challenges, the robust growth trajectories in key markets, improved operational efficiencies, and strategic acquisitions underpin a strong foundation for long-term performance. Investors should remain optimistic about the company’s agility in navigating short-term obstacles while capitalizing on anticipated market opportunities.
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So good morning, and thank you for joining our interim results presentation for the 6 months ended the 31st of March, 2024. For those of you who don't know me in the room, or on the call, I'm Patrick Coveney. I'm the Group CEO of SSP. And I'm joined for today by Jonathan Davies, our Deputy CEO and Group CFO; by Sarah John, our Corporate Affairs Director; and by several other members of our leadership team. In a moment, I'll run through the highlights of the first half before Jonathan takes you through the financial review. I'll then come back in to set out the operational and strategic progress that we've made and update you on our outlook before we both take questions at the end. But before getting into this, I wanted to make a few opening comments. As many of you will know, I spend a huge amount of time in the business. So I can see firsthand the quality of our offers, the performance of our restaurants, bars and shops across the world. Importantly, it also allows me to engage directly and in person with our teams, our clients, our brand owners, suppliers and local equity partners across more than 30 of the countries in which SSP operates. What's clear to me now, after 2 years in this role is that we have a strong growth and returns platform, one that combines access to sustained structural long-term growth with hard built competitive advantages, deep food travel expertise and an entrepreneurial, highly commercial culture. Indeed, the choices that we have made will drive high revenue growth, sustainable margin progression and deliver attractive and compounding rates of return on the capital that we invest. So that's what we're doing, investing thoughtfully now to capitalize on both the pace of the post-Covid recovery in travel and on the discrete in-market competitive opportunities that we see so that we can secure sustainable growth and attractive returns for the months and years ahead. With that context, let me get into the highlights for the first half. Our business has traded well with sales growing at 19%, driven by strong like-for-like sales growth of 12%, complemented by a 4% contribution from net gains and a 3% contribution from M&A. That revenue growth has been converted into 24% growth in EBITDA with a 30-basis point improvement in underlying margin. 3 of our 4 regions, North America, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and the U.K. delivered strong year-on-year performances in the first half. Our Continental European region was behind the prior year in profit terms, but for some specific and anticipated reasons, most of which are about the scale and the timing of the renewal of our contract platform in the Nordics. The impact of this issue is short term, and Jonathan and I will talk more about it as we go through the presentation. We're a food travel business in which delivery for customers and clients sits at the core of our model. It's encouraging to see that strong and improving year-on-year customer propositions and client relationships are helping to drive in-year like-for-like revenues and the net gains that will underpin our future growth and returns. We've also delivered 5 infill acquisitions consistent with our regional growth priorities and with our financial return expectations. Three in North America and one in Australia have now been completed. And today, we're announcing the acquisition of [ Tari's Gamelan ], a small business, which gives us an entry point into Indonesia. As you know, SSP's financial performance has always been second half weighted. This weighting is becoming more pronounced as our business continues to skew towards the air channel and towards leisure travel. External forecasts are for a strong summer ahead, and we're well set up to capture that demand, serve customers well and deliver strong profit conversion in the second half of the year, all of which means that we are on track against the financial planning assumptions for FY '24 that we detailed back in December. So with that, let me hand over to Jonathan to walk through the financial review.
Thank you, Patrick, and good morning, everyone. So as you've seen, we've had a good first half led by strong sales growth. And looking at the highlights, briefly, sales were around GBP 1.5 billion, up 19% year-on-year on a constant currency basis. Underlying EBITDA was up by 24% to GBP 106 million and operating profit up 21% to GBP 38 million. EPS was a small loss of GBP 0.01 a share, similar to last year and very much as expected. Leverage at the end of March was 2.1x net debt to EBITDA compared to 1.8x last year. And we're proposing to pay an interim dividend of 1.2p per share, representing a payout ratio of between 30% and 40% of the expected full year net income and our intention to split the dividend roughly 1/3, 2/3 between the interim and the final. And this reflects the seasonal trading pattern of the business. So briefly looking at the results under IFRS 16, underlying operating profit was GBP 58 million for the first half, GBP 20 million higher than the pre-IFRS 16 results. The main difference here is the treatment of our leases, where the minimum guaranteed rents are capitalized and therefore, no longer included in the rent line. And the effect of this is to increase EBITDA by about GBP 132 million to GBP 238 million, but correspondingly increased depreciation by GBP 112 million to GBP 180 million. The reported operating profit was also GBP 58 million with the exceptional items broadly neutral, reflecting an impairment charge of around GBP 11 million, offset by some releases due to the successful conclusion of a long-standing legal case and the derecognition of a lease contract under IFRS 16. Now turning to sales. In the first half, we saw strong sales momentum maintained across most of our markets with double-digit revenue growth across all of our regions. Group like-for-like sales remained strong at 12%. We saw the strongest like-for-like in APAC and [ EME ], up 20%, reflecting buoyant passenger numbers across the region, particularly in India, Thailand and in the Middle East helped by the further recovery of international Chinese passengers. We also saw good like-for-like growth in Continental Europe at 9%. And this was despite the significant impact of strike action, which hit the rail sector in the second quarter. The like-for-like performance in the U.K. at 15% was very encouraging, driven by good Pax growth in the air sector and a steady recovery in rail passengers and helped by the more limited impact of strikes this year compared to the prior year. Like-for-like sales growth in America at 8% represented another strong performance given the tough comparatives because this was the region where passengers recovered more strongly in the prior year. On top of this, we saw organic net gains of 4%, which reflects the healthy new contract pipeline that we've mobilized particularly in North America, where you can see it added 8% to sales. The overall growth in North America at 29% year-on-year also included a significant contribution from acquisitions of 13%, and that reflects the midfield concessions deal that we did last summer as well as some smaller acquisitions during the first half at Canada and in Atlanta, where we actually acquired an additional 8 units. Over the first 6 weeks of the half, overall sales have been up 14% year-on-year, with like-for-like running at about 6%, which is entirely consistent with our expectations for the full year of like-for-like between 6% and 10%. So turning to profit, EBITDA, as I've said, increased by 24% year-on-year on a constant currency basis, driven by the very strong growth in North America and in APAC and EME. And group EBITDA margin increased by 30 basis points on a constant currency basis. In North America and Asia Pac and EME, we saw year-on-year EBITDA margin improvements of 140 and 60 basis points, respectively. And the margins in both of those regions are now comfortably ahead of their pre-Covid levels. In the U.K., we saw good profit growth year-on-year, 14% driven by strong passenger growth across the board, as I've already indicated. In Continental Europe, despite the strong sales, EBITDA margin was down by 2.2% in the half. Now this was principally due to the impact of the extensive contract renewal program across the region, much of this being deferred from the Covid period and very much has built into our planning assumptions. As we've said previously, this was [ more smart ] in the Nordic countries, where we've seen an unusually large number of contract renewals and rebuilding programs over the last 12 months, and this has affected all of our major capital city airports in the region. And as ever, these renewals put pressure on the P&L in the short term coming with disruption, closure periods, preopening costs and in some cases, higher rents. Now on top of this, we also saw in Continental Europe, the unexpected impact of strike action, principally hitting the rail sectors in France and Germany. And as ever, the on-off nature of this strike action does make it difficult to fully reduce the cost base in line with the lost sales. So the overall impact of this across the region of Continental Europe was somewhere in the region of GBP 10 million to GBP 12 million or about a 2% or so drag on the margin in the half. As we look into the second half, we anticipate some of these margin pressures easing as we reach the end of many of the renewal programs and we see settlements reached on some of the strikes, for example, as we've now already seen in Germany. Now looking at the wider P&L, overall EBITDA margin was up 30 basis points and operating margin up 10 basis points on a constant currency basis. You can see here that gross margin improved by 40 basis points. This represented another really strong performance, albeit it was helped by some easing in the inflationary pressures that we've seen in many food commodities and across the supply chain. However, once again, it demonstrated our ability to mitigate inflation through pricing action as well as the effectiveness of our work on range and [ menu ] engineering. Labor ratios were 70 basis points better than last year, and that was despite the inflationary pressures, which remain on wage rates. This was achieved through continued discipline in the management of staffing levels and through the increasing deployment of digital order and payment technology. Concession fees were 70 basis points higher year-on-year, and that included the impact of this particularly high level of contract renewals and investment, most notably in Continental Europe, as I described earlier.And finally, depreciation was up about 20 basis points, reflecting the higher level of investment that we've seen over the last 12 months. Now looking further down the P&L, the net loss of around GBP 8 million was entirely as expected, reflecting the normal seasonality of the business. And it was slightly behind last year, mainly due to the effects of higher interest costs and a lower share of profits in our associates. So let me look at both of those. Interest costs were higher year-on-year, mainly due to the average net debt rising as a consequence of the acquisitions we've made over the last 12 months, but also because of the impact of higher-than-expected interest rates during the first half. And now looking to the full year, we're expecting interest costs to be somewhere in the region of GBP 40 million, reflecting those higher interest rates as well as the acquisitions and the recent acquisitions in the second half of ARE and the deal in Indonesia, which we've announced today. The tax charge reflects our assumption of an ETR of 22% to 23% of underlying net profit, consistent with the prior year. The lower contribution from associates was largely due to start-up costs in [ ex-team ], our new joint venture with Aéroports de Paris. And just to remind you, this joint venture will ultimately run all of the food and beverage in both of the main Paris airports operating around a 100-plus units. And finally, minority interest share of profit remained broadly in line with the prior year. And let me give you a little bit more detail on that now. So in North America, despite a 38% increase in EBITDA at actual FX rates, the minority share of profit was broadly flat. This reflects the relatively stronger year-on-year profit growth in airports with lower joint venture shares and the good performance in Canada, where we own 100% of the business. Across APAC and EME, the minority interest charge increased by about 14%, so broadly in line with the EBITDA performance. And you can see from the chart, once again, India performed very well, and therefore, represented a disproportionately large component of that MI charge due to its high joint venture partnership. Now looking at the full year of MI, our expectations remain unchanged, and that is for growth in MI year-on-year to be roughly in the region of 20%. Now moving to cash, we used GBP 240 million of cash in the first half, which was after the investment of GBP 144 million in capital projects and a further GBP 59 million on acquisitions. We saw a working capital outflow of GBP 66 million, reflecting the normal working capital seasonal cycle as well as the unwind of the remaining deferred payments from the Covid period, very much as anticipated, amounting to about GBP 30 million. Net financing costs of GBP 22 million in the period, so similar to the P&L charge, all of which left net debt at GBP 619 million at the end of the half and leverage at about 2.1x net debt-to-EBITDA. Now looking at the full year, since the end of the half, as I've already said, we've announced these 2 acquisitions, one in Australia, one in Indonesia for a combined consideration of just under GBP 90 million. Now reflecting our normal seasonal working capital cycle and the strong cash generation in the second half and including the investment in these acquisitions, we still expect leverage to be back within our target range at the end of the year, our target range being 1.5 to 2x, albeit towards the higher end of that range. In anticipation of the additional investment that we're making and the upcoming maturities on our first USPP notes in late '25, last month, we secured additional financing of around GBP 200 million from the USPP market. The coupon on these notes is just below 5%. So therefore, slightly cheaper than drawing on our RCF and they are for a 5-year term. So turning to a little bit of detail on capital expenditure. This chart shows you how we think about capex, breaking it down into its 3 core components. Looking at the dark blue bar at the bottom, you can see the underlying renewal and maintenance capex running at similar levels to pre-Covid, so about 4% of sales or around GBP 140 million in the year. And this is in line with depreciation, which, of course, is what we've seen historically. On top of this, the pink bar represents the capex on renewals deferred during COVID, about GBP 60 million this year, much of which is in Continental Europe, as I've described in the U.K. And we think that this Covid catch-up will be fully completed by the end of next year. The green bar represents the annual capex on net new contracts, which this year will be about GBP 80 million. Now looking forward, we expect to spend capex in the region of GBP 260 million next year, consistent with around 5% of net gains, and most of this is underpinned by the existing pipeline of secured contracts. On top of that, we're planning for net gains of between 3% and 5% in 2026 based on the pipeline and our recent track record of new business wins and therefore, expecting capex consistent with that 3% to 5% to be in the range of GBP 220 million to GBP 250 million. All of this is exactly in line with the guidance that we gave in December. Fundamentally, our capital model is unchanged. The current elevated levels of capex are all about the timing of investments in new projects and our success in winning business and this Covid catch-up and hence, we are seeing this in the high level of renewals at the moment. Important to reiterate the returns we expect on both renewals and new contract capex are unchanged as indeed is the process by which we evaluate these returns. So let me just say a few words about that now. On the left-hand chart -- left-hand side of the chart here, you can see a reminder of our investment appraisal process, which has been embedded into the business for many years. So all projects with capital spend of more than GBP 100,000 come to our group investment committee, which I chair, Patrick Attends, along with Myles Collins here and the team that provides support and analysis. We use the same financial models and benchmarks to evaluate every project and our minimum hurdle rate is a 20% IRR on a post-tax basis for organic investments. Now on the right-hand side of the chart, to validate these returns, every project goes through a post-investment review cycle, which we've now run from -- since well before SSP was a public company. And as a result, we can point to a long track record of delivering returns well ahead of these target hurdle rates. Now we've recently run our first series of post-investment reviews following Covid, and I'm pleased to report that the results are very, very consistent with our historical performance. Turning to how all of this fits with our capital allocation framework, as ever, our first priority is for capital investment in organic growth, given our ability to generate high returns on investment as I've just mentioned and described. Our second priority is for M&A, where we've been very selective in the past. However, the good news is that over the last 12 months, we have been able to secure a number of deals at attractive multiples, meeting our 15% minimum IRR hurdle rate, and Patrick will cover these in more detail in a moment. And as I've already mentioned, we're proposing to pay an interim dividend, and we still believe that the medium target -- medium-term leverage target of between 1.5x and 2x net debt-to-EBITDA is appropriate for the business. So to wrap up, a few words on our expectations. Our planning assumptions are unchanged on a constant currency basis from the range that we set out in December. And that was for sales of GBP 3.4 billion to GBP 3.5 billion and operating profit of between GBP 210 million and GBP 235 million, all on a constant currency basis. This will now be underpinned by the acquisition, principally of ARE, which will deliver a modest upside in operating profit, albeit this will largely be offset by integration and interest costs, and therefore, will have a minimal effect on earnings. On an actual currency basis, the strengthening of sterling year-on-year would impact operating profit by around GBP 10 million or nearly 4% if these rates were maintained throughout the rest of the year, and this is purely a translational effect. In the appendix, we've provided some additional information on currency mix and our expectations for the lower end of the P&L as previously. So in summary, for the full year, we are on track to deliver very strong sales growth, further margin enhancement and all of this will flow through to a very material step up in EPS. So now let me hand back to Patrick to take us through the business review. Thank you.
Thanks, Jonathan. So I'm now going to set out the progress we're making against our strategic priorities and the way in which our strategy is setting us up to deliver further growth and returns, compounding returns into the future. But first, let me give you some color on the scale and the pace of the change that we're putting through the business and the outcomes that we've delivered in the last 12 months. We've widened our client and store footprint and strengthened our customer propositions across all regions. In this chart, we highlight our progress against several of these areas. The rapid mobilization of our outlet pipeline with 325 outlets opened in the last year, 200 of which were opened in the first half of FY '24, and 124 units secured through our M&A projects, equivalent to a 15% increase in our total footprint.We've secured entry into 3 new high-growth markets, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and New Zealand. We have 4,000 more colleagues working with us than we had at the same time last year. We've won 15 -- sorry, 250 new units, 19 new clients, including Cincinnati Airport, Noida airport in Delhi, Stockyard Airport in Helsinki Rail Station. And we've added 18 new brand or format propositions to the group. And as we continue to combine the benefits of the customer digital experience with our own hospitality experience, we've rolled out almost 200 new digital touch points. So significant progress across the board. We're building for the future while delivering the results that Jonathan has just described. This momentum in our business is being supported by clear structural growth tailwinds in our markets. In a large and fragmented global travel market, forecast demand remains strong. As you can see from the chart on the top right, global air passenger traffic is now back to 2019 levels and is projected to grow at an annual rate of more than 5% from here. Moving to the chart on the left, discretionary spending on travel and holidays continues to be prioritized, even after what all of us recognized was a strong 2023 base. The latest external data points to travel being amongst the top categories in which consumers are looking to treat themselves with higher income categories over-indexing on this. On the supply side, notwithstanding the short-term challenges exacerbated by issues of Boeing, the message here is that record numbers of aircraft deliveries are anticipated over the next 5 to 6 years. Of those aircraft, almost 2/3 are expected to be delivered to the regions in which SSP is prioritizing growth. So let's now look more specifically at the progress we're making against our strategy. Our progress is rapid, evolving a business to be one that is more aviation focused and geographically optimized for where travelers are going to be over the next decade. Indeed, almost 40% of our current sales are now in America, Asia-Pacific and EME, a 4 percentage point increase on last year. Like-for-like revenue growth has been strong, up 12% for the half, underpinned in part by our geographical exposure to countries with higher levels of structural demand growth, but also by a stronger brand and concept lineup, increasing digital capability, engage teams, deeper client relationships and strong sustainability credentials. Taken together, this progress is reinforcing our purpose to be the best part of the journey. Customers are noticing too, with our group reputation score up to 4.4 out of 5 from 4.2, 6 months ago.Delivering operating efficiency is and always has been a core skill at SSP, and we brought in new processes and tools to drive this further. The momentum we have in operating efficiency has enabled us to move the gross profit margin forward by 20 basis points and reduced our percentage labor costs by 70 basis points. Let me now turn to the regions, starting with North America. With a strengthening competitive position there, an experienced team and momentum on all fronts in a large and growing North American market, our plan would be to build a market share to more than 20% in the medium term. We will do this primarily organically through like-for-like growth and new unit growth opportunities in existing and new airports and supplement this where it makes sense through value-creating M&A. Our business development and M&A agenda are coming together at pace in America, and we expect to deliver over $1 billion of sales in America this year, making it a 50% larger business than it was pre-Covid. Growing from 37 airports at the start of FY '23, we were at 51 by the end of March and 52 today, including a presence now in almost half of the top 80 airports in the region. Since the start of the year, we've completed the acquisitions of the final part of Midfield concessions, securing the business in Denver and the ECG business in Canada in addition to acquiring a small business of Atlanta Airport, the busiest airport in North America. Our step forward in EBITDA margin in North America, up 1.4 percentage points from an already good base is particularly encouraging. It is being delivered primarily through continuous improvement in gross margin as we carefully optimize menus and helping us to offset labor cost pressures, digital order and pay solutions now account for approximately 15% of transactions, almost double the level it was a year ago. So we're on track with our strategic and operational plans in North America. Similarly to North America, but from a very different starting point, we are planning to more than double the size of SSP in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East over the medium term. These regions have some of the fastest-growing airport infrastructure and F&B travel markets in the world. We are investing now both to build further scale in our existing geographic footprint and to selectively enter attractive new markets to secure our long-term growth and returns. Currently, we operate in 16 markets in these regions and have a set of businesses that we group into 3 categories that we show on this slide. Starting on the left, unsurprisingly, our most well-established businesses where we have the greatest scale are also our most profitable, India, Egypt and Thailand. Importantly, we see a long runway for further growth in each of these countries. For example, in Thailand, we have opened a further 25 outlets in the last 12 months, taking our outlet count there to more than 100. An important component of this strategy has been extending into convenience retail with our Point brand. The middle column of this slide comprises markets where we have a more recent presence and where we're investing now to grow faster. For example, Australia, where we've acquired ARE to become the market leader now and Malaysia, where we have scaled from 1 unit to 34 in the space of the last 18 months. And the third section represents our 3 most recently announced market entries, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and New Zealand. Saudi is a good example of how we are pushing very hard to build our present scale and relationships in a market where we see structural growth and where projected returns are attractive. We have already secured 10 units across 3 terminals in Riyadh Airport, 26 units in Jeddah, and we see significant potential for further growth. The U.K. is our heartland market. It's our home market, and we expect to lead on multiple fronts, and we're making excellent progress in that regard. We're leveraging our traditionally strong position in the rail channel, where we're seeing a steady underlying recovery in rail commuting alongside building out our presence strongly in the air channel. Improving our customer and client propositions has been central to our strategy, and this is delivering improved like-for-like sales, strong retentions and further net gains. Importantly, we're converting this growth well to profit. In the first half in the U.K., we delivered strong like-for-like sales and 14% profit growth, notwithstanding the impact of further rail strikes and a full renewals program. In terms of the strength of our U.K. customer proposition, as evidenced by what customers tell us, we're making excellent progress with a reputation score now of 4.6 out of 5, up from 4.4 out of 5 last year. The impact of this work shows on how clients rate us too. From a satisfaction rating of 53% in 2019, our client satisfaction, as measured by a survey we conducted comprehensively in March of this year, has now stepped up to 92%, 53% to 92% in the period. So how are we doing this? We've been upgrading the core [ estate ], and we're also bringing innovative new propositions and brands to market. For instance, in the air channel, we've recently opened 3 premium bars in a similar style to our successful Juniper Gatwick proposition. They are Sable and Co, Liverpool, Aster & Thyme in Newcastle and Evergreen in Manchester. In the rail channel, we've been investing to refresh our M&S stores as well as resetting our own brand convenience retail estate, with 18 of our new cafe local formats opened by March and more than 20 to come in the second half. Importantly, in parallel to this growth, we have a full program of efficiency initiatives across all cost lines. For example, we're using new technology to facilitate better labor scheduling, we've adopted new waste management tools, and the ongoing rollout of digital is enabling production efficiencies, speed of service, while also increasing spend per customer. Sustaining this progress in our core home market will allow us to strengthen this important performance engine. Continental Europe is an important part of our group, and we have a long-established presence across the Scandinavian countries and in France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Spain, with strong market positions in each of these countries. While our performance in the first half has been strong in several of these countries, we faced some specific challenges in the region, which have left year-on-year profit down about 10% in the first half, as Jonathan has already described. The key reasons for this are twofold. First, the sheer scale of the rebuilding program in the Nordic airports has as we anticipated, resulted in a short-term disruption as large numbers of units have been closed for rebranding. This program is fully on track, and we expect these units to perform well as they start to mature. Importantly, though, through this process, we have retained our share of space and extended our contracts across the Nordics. Second, as Jonathan said earlier, in Germany and France, we've seen a slower level of year-on-year growth in the rail sector, and this has been exacerbated by a step-up in strike action, most notably in Germany. So, looking into the second half in Continental Europe, we're expecting an improved performance because the timing impact of the renewal activity will naturally ease, most notably in Nordic markets. And in Germany, the strike action has now been settled. As we now look to the summer, we're planning for a demand boost from the European football championships during June and July and from the Paris Olympics and Paralympics in July, August and September. Indeed, across our Southern European and Mediterranean businesses, we continue to trade very well, and we carry good momentum into the summer holiday season. Finally, it's worth noting that last year, we announced the phased exit from our German motorway business. This will be substantially complete by the end of FY '26 and once complete, will enhance our margins in the region by approximately 75 basis points. So looking to the medium term, we're setting up to deliver steady sales growth and sustained margin enhancement from here in Continental Europe. As Jonathan outlined earlier, we're combining operating our business, investing organically and growing our business through M&A. As I said out earlier, we're deploying our M&A spend into the strategic regions, those that combine structural growth with our ability to generate returns. As we're starting to demonstrate through recent acquisitions in North America, targeted infill M&A can add value where the strategic fit and the economics are both right by accelerating growth, providing entry to new airports that would be otherwise difficult to access, unlocking new relationships and accessing new formats or brands in a way that's harder to achieve organically. As we put the 2 Australian businesses together, the newly acquired ARE business and our own, we go from having approximately AUD 100 million in sales per annum in about 40 outlets to having AUD 300 million sales per annum across more than 100. The proven capability of ARE in designing and operating large format bars and casual dining restaurants, their long-standing relationships with East Coast airports and iconic Australian brands and the opportunity for combined efficiencies should underpin the anticipated returns on this acquisition. We're also today announcing the acquisition of 60% of Taurus Gemilang, a business in Indonesia marking our entry to the fourth most populous country in the world and which by 2040, may well be the world's fourth largest aviation market. We will start by operating 13 outlets there, mostly in Bali, but we expect this acquisition to provide a platform for further growth and returns in the market. What each of these 5 acquisitions have in common is a disciplined investment hurdle. We expect each to deliver IRRs in excess of 15%, which typically means we pay an EBITDA multiple of between 5x and 7x. Underpinning the success of our growth and returns agenda is the work that we are doing to strengthen our sustainability credentials. These are of increasing importance to our colleagues, our clients and to our broader stakeholder set. All of the work that we're doing in this area has been set out in our standalone sustainability report, which I would encourage you to review. But just a couple of highlights for today. You can see from the slide on the left that this year, we achieved an MSCI rating of A and also a 42% reduction in our Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2023 against our science-based target initiative approved net zero targets.This progress that I've described across all areas could not have been achieved without the skill, the hard work and the culture of the 43,000 people working with us in more than 600 locations to deliver the best part of the journey to our stakeholders. Engagement matters. We know that when we get this right, we deliver a better colleague proposition, better service to customers and better unit performance. In our recent engagement survey to measure this, we saw a record level of participation with an 80% completion rate, an improvement of 4 percentage points on last year. We're also making good strides in diversity equity inclusion with, for example, 39% of our senior leadership roles across SSP now held by women. While there's more to do, it's encouraging to see the progress that we're making. So each of these priorities come together to set us up to drive improved and sustained financial performance from here. Now let me take a step back to summarize what this means for the SSP investment case. The components of this case are strong. The travel food industry has favorable, structural, long-term growth dynamics. Our strategy to focus our capital and our teams on the geographies and channels with the highest growth is working well. Importantly, we still do see further opportunities to optimize performance and to selectively grow in our more mature markets in the U.K. and Europe. We have the capability to convert this growth efficiently to deliver margin growth and generate cash to reinvest to expand the business. When we do so, we achieve high returns in excess of 20% IRRs. Of course, this cycle of investment takes time, but as these new sites and businesses mature, they generate cash, which taken together with our base business gives us the opportunity to delever and then either accelerate growth or return cash to shareholders. This model will create a cycle of compounding growth and returns for shareholders. So our investment case is a sustainable model from here, with strong sales growth on the back of structural market growth, sustainable margin accretion, double-digit EPS growth, a strong balance sheet and a regular dividend. So to conclude, our business is in good shape. We have strong like-for-like momentum, high levels of new business wins, and we're translating that into EBITDA growth. We've built a platform and we carry good momentum into the second half. These factors, together with the travel industry expectations for a strong summer, give us confidence in the delivery of our planning assumptions for the full year. Furthermore, the progress we're making against our strategic priorities is building a positive investment case and a positive outlook for the medium term where we expect our model to generate sustainable and compounding growth and returns from here. So thank you for joining us. And Jonathan and I will now take questions from the table.
Tim Barrett from Deutsche Numis. Two things, please. Just going back to Europe, it'd be really helpful if you could put some broad figures around what's happened in the Nordics. It sounds like there's a combination of the one-offs of closures, refurbs and whatever and just permanently higher rents. So some numbers would be really helpful. And then secondly, on minority interests, slide 31 shows that you could be guiding to as much as plus 25% in minorities. The first half was flat. So I mean, could you be in the nice position of actually beating on earnings because of minorities coming in better than you flagged?
Yes. So firstly, Continental year, Tim, so what you've seen is margin down 2%, as I said earlier, that if you look at the multiple factors that have impacted us in the first half, and I said GBP 10 million to GBP 12 million in terms of the impact on operating profit. Broadly speaking, that breaks down into GBP 5 million or so, which is really the impact of preopening costs and disruption and short closure periods. Another sort of circa GBP 5 million is really about rental increases. And the rest is really due to the disruption from strikes and other factors, which were unanticipated. So -- if you think about the business in the region as we look forward, you'll also have noted that in the second half of last year, we saw similar impacts in our Continental Europe division. We talked about the impact of renewals specifically. And you have seen that the margin was down year-on-year about 1% for the region. Again, something -- most of that was really around disruption preopening costs and so on and so forth. So cut to the chase, as we look forward, we think that the impact of preopening costs and disruption will ease as we get into the summer. It's not totally gone away, but it will ease materially because clearly, you expect much of this work to be done during the quieter season rather than the peaks of a trading season. We will hit the anniversary of the same sort of impact last year. Albeit -- and we will also hit the impact of the early parts of those rent increases, albeit those will be fully washed out. So I think that it's entirely reasonable to expect those factors to give us an improving margin up to 1% in the second half for Continental Europe, if you do the math. And that clearly will be a contributor to what we see as a swing in H1-H2 margin year-on-year for the group as well. Again, a couple of other points to add. We've also seen a continued, in fact, weak performance in the motorway service areas, which Patrick's referred to, and we've got a plan to exit, which will help us, albeit not for a year or so. And we've also, by the way, in the region, have to face into some poor trading in our Starbucks units because as you will have probably seen in the wider media, that's a brand that has suffered some damage in terms of its trading due to announcements made in the early stages of the Israel Palestine clash. And so there are a number of factors, all of which I think are going to be due to some degree, transient with the exception of the slightly higher rents that we've seen as a consequence of the renewals. So hopefully that gives you enough color there. In terms of the minorities, the first point to make really is that when you looked at the first half, if you were to cast your mind back to last year, we saw quite a sharp hike in the minority interest by comparison with the overall EBITDA growth in the regions where we have joint venture partners, which I think puzzled some people at the time, we said -- this is largely a function of the mix of countries in the Asia Pac and region and airports in North America, where we said we were seeing particularly strong performance, both in sales and profit in some of the airports which had high minority shares. And we did say at the time, we think that some of this will unwind as we eventually hit the anniversary, and that's something what we're seeing now. So I think we're now at a more sort of normalized relationship between reported profit growth and what we're seeing as the minority interest charge. So to your question, I still think our central guidance, which would probably take you to somewhere around GBP 60 million is a pretty good indication of what we think the minority interest charge will be for the full year on the basis of the growth we expect in those regions.
Jamie from Morgan Stanley. Three questions, please. First of all, are you seeing any softness in demand? A few of the airlines have talked about it, I guess, mostly on the passenger side for them, but any weakness either on volumes or indeed on pricing? Secondly, another question on renewals, but this time in the U.K., that margin drop, the statement seemed to suggest that was some pretty big renewals here. So could there be a bigger hit in the second half of the year? And is there any sort of numbers like you've given for Europe on that? And then just on the balance sheet, I mean, a year ago, there were several hundred million pounds of headroom. I guess that's down to not very much now given where the leverage target is. But how do you think about M&A versus buying back stock?
Let me pick up most of those, but then have you jump in on the specifics of the balance sheet. So talk about demand, first of all, we've given data, Jimmy, for the first 6 weeks of the second half, right? So 14% revenue growth so far, about 6% like-for-like. I think we probably feel a bit better about it today than we did 2 or 3 weeks ago because Easter was a bit quirky actually across lots of the world in terms of what it meant for demand, but May has been very good. And we had in the 6% to 10% like-for-like guidance that we gave back last October. We'd anticipated the first half will be stronger because of the comps than the second, but actually, we're off to a nice start for the second half in terms of like-for-like momentum. Inevitably, there are differences by geography. And you could take from this session as sort of a downbeat European-centric view of the world, right? And you'd miss the fabulous momentum and performance that our group has in America and Asia and the Middle East, where, frankly, consumers are just behaving differently and living differently. And it's very fortunate actually that we've constructed a portfolio that covers the world rather than one that is entirely Europe-centric. But even allowing for Europe, if you look at the Ryanair guidance this week on summer volumes, you look at what [indiscernible] have said, you look at what WHSmith are saying about Europe, you look at what IAG have said, pretty much every industry commentator has good summer air volumes projected. And even where people are being cautious on it, it's kind of cautious at the margin, which is largely capping the upside because of things like aircraft delivery and so forth. And that's very much echoed when we do, as you would expect, work in detail with each of our airports on -- in terms of looking at that. So I think we feel quite good about the demand environment through the summer. In terms of the volume pricing mix, you are seeing year-on-year a reducing contribution from pricing as we're starting to annualize the big price increases that we needed to put through when inflation was much higher. And I guess the last 2 things I call out on the demand side is that there is a ton of demand activity happening in Europe this summer, right, with the [ euros ] in Germany. It's hosted in 10 cities. We've got a big presence in 8 of those 10 cities. The Olympics are in Paris. We've got 160 units in total in the Paris area between the ones we own ourselves and the ones that we operate with APG. So we think we're kind of nicely set up to do that. On the U.K., I'll let sort of Jonathan figure out what specific numbers he wants to give in response to that question, but I want to leave you with a clear point on sentiment. Our U.K. business is trading very nicely. There are some quirks in the year-on-year comparisons to be honest with you, Jamie, that disguises the -- some of that in the first half. The -- we're going to have a really good second half for our U.K. business, and we see that in demand, and we see that in the necessary step up in performance that we're getting in the conversion of that demand. And I think we have as a strategy, we front-loaded over the last 18 months, making our business materially better for customers and clients. And we're starting to see the benefit of that flow through in sustained and progressive performance improvement from here, which we need to get, but we're now seeing. And you can pick that up in lots of different ways. But obviously, what you'll be most keen to see is picking it up in our financial results, and let's see what we are able to say about that as we finish FY '24.And then I think the last point on balance sheet is we are working very thoughtfully to balance how we fund making the business better over time through this combination of capital deployment into our existing estate, the pace at which we're pursuing net gains and where we see clever and value-creating ways of getting access to either airports or countries that you simply couldn't get or couldn't get for a very, very long time on an organic basis. And Atlanta Airport is a good example of that, right, where I think a route into that airport required us to make a sort of modest acquisition to get 8 units. Now we've got capability, presence, relationships, relevance when further opportunities come up, and you can kind of make that case for a lot of what we're doing. So -- but specifically, Jon, do you want to pick up on the leverage point and what we think we can and can't --
Leverage-wise, as I said earlier, we'd expect to be by the end of this year, back within our target range, albeit at the top end. I think if you were to process everything that we've given you this morning and looking at consensus, you'd expect us to be back towards the bottom end of that range by the end of next year, notwithstanding the investments that we've been talking about. So I think I would argue that we sort of use the window of opportunity to be selective about some M&A deals, which hopefully will be genuinely very value-creating. And Patrick's talked about the sort of multiples we've [ paid ]. I think we may slow down a little bit, but we'll be very, very quickly back into a position where we are delevering and we'll have to be thoughtful about the pace of growth and what we do in terms of cash distributions. So it's not really a concern at this stage. With regard to the U.K., thank you for passing that to me. I've not really intended to give you any numbers, Jamie. You'd surprised by that, I know. I think just point to the fact that we saw a 30 basis points reduction in the U.K. margin in the first half, which I think may have stood out for people, given the strong sales growth and the sort of rate of progress on many fronts. It was about renewals. So largely in the -- a number of big airport contracts, I could give you places like London City and Newcastle and Bristol and Liverpool. So there's lots of our regional airports in particular, which are the heartland of our U.K. air business, where we've been successful in extending them and have been putting investment in. And of course, as I said earlier, you tend to put the investment in during the first half. So you're not doing that during the second half when you're trading the units hard. Also worth saying that we have and, again, Patrick referred to it earlier on, we have put investment into some core parts of our business like our M&S refreshes as well. But that's it really. I think it's -- again, a final point here. And [indiscernible] said about Continental Europe, as we look into the second half, I would be very surprised if we didn't see a good margin improvement in the U.K. division compared to that very, very slight drag in the first half.
Yes, which we need, and we know that.
And we need it, yes.
Fintan Ryan here from Goodbody. Two questions for me, please. Maybe just following up on that last point around concession fees, like if you look at the P&L for the group as a whole, concession fees were about a 70 basis point headwind in H1, I guess, offset by operational leverage around labor and gross margin expansion. How should we think of those sort of 3 different buckets of sort of cost or margin into the full year? And again, maybe some initial thoughts around into FY '25 sort of where we are, so with the current sort of renegotiations as well as sort of broad labor -- broad inflation? And then secondly, given the -- like I say, you've done a quite a substantial step-up in M&A activity. I guess you started with Midfield, which I think closed around sort of 9 months ago. Can you give us a sense of like how well that integration has gone? What you've delivered in terms of, say, cost savings or benefits? And I guess really, given that you step up in M&A activity, what you've seen from Midfield and what that's fed through in terms of actual organic like-for-like new wins and new concession pipeline? Or if it's just a case of you bought a business and that did standalone? Or like is there a sort of 2 plus 2 is 5 type equation there?
Let me cover the M&A question, Jon, you pick up the concession piece, you're a little bit of an Oracle in that topic. But the 2 points -- I'm going to make a broader point about M&A and then the specifics of Midfield. So the broader point is we've taken on a lot. There are several other things that we've referenced are individually small, but collectively doing 5 things in one, 6-8-month period is a lot. And I think the direction of travel that we're on is a very strong focus on successfully integrating those and getting the financial and the strategic benefits that come from it. But I think you can reasonably anticipate that we're going to slow down a bit from here on that and with a focus on operating this broader portfolio, including what we've acquired and renewing and building, that would be a bit more of a theme through ‘25 rather than the -- what is it, the 19% growth that we've had with the contribution from acquisitions in that. Specifically in Midfield, notwithstanding that in every individual acquisition, there will be things you learn as you go. I think sitting here coming up to a year after we announced it and 10 months after we completed the first wave of it, and we're on track with the acquisition case. And the -- and I think the -- that sentiment would carry through to ECG to Atlanta -- ARE we only completed a couple of weeks ago, so too early to say, but the kind of initial stakeholder engagement and reaction to that has been nice. So -- but we know that if we're going to deploy capital in this way with the financial expectations that we have, we have to nail the integrations and get them right, and we're putting resources and focus to do that.
So... Okay. So your point on concession fees, so stepping back, first of all, we have always said that we would expect concession fees as a percent of sales to rise year in, year out. And indeed, if you went back 15, 20 years in this business, you would see a steady sort of 30 basis points per annum increase in the underlying concession fees once you adjust for mix and so forth, which is really a function of the fact that as you renew contracts, you nearly always pay a slightly higher concession fee, and that's because volumes have grown, you become more efficient. You've got better knowledge around exactly how the business is going to perform. So that is the part of the business you will have heard me say before, the way we think about the business is that we need to drive enough margin improvement through operating leverage and efficiencies to more than mitigate what we always anticipate to be rising concession fees. Now the 70 basis points is unusually high in the first half, but it's really a consequence of a couple of things. One is, it's accentuated because you will have the -- in the sort of low season as it were, it has a slightly disproportionate effect in relation to sales, number one. Number two, this elevated level of renewal activity, principally in Europe, but also a little bit in the U.K., we've just talked about has an impact on it. So in broad terms, about half of that 70 basis points is underlying and about half is, I would say, unusual and the consequence of the high level of renewal activity that we've seen. To your next point, if we then flow that forward, clearly, as we hit the anniversary of some of this activity that we saw in the second half of last year, in particular, we would expect to see that year-on-year increase in concession fees reduced as we get into the second half. And as you would have worked out that if you look at the business overall, based on sort of current consensus expectations and our guidance, we're looking for something in the -- along the lines of nearly a 2% increase in margin in the second half. Now I think we will see a much-reduced concession fee movement in the second half. But clearly, that will be much more than compensated for by strong GP, stronger labor ratios, again, help by the fact that we get into the summer trading season and of course, better leverage on the fixed cost as we see much stronger sales. So I think if you look at the overall pattern of margin progression, I think it's -- we still feel, as we've said, relatively confident that we can deliver that in the second half, helped by some of the factors as well that we talked about in Continental Europe.
I'm Naqvi from HSBC. Jonathan, just regarding the investment review cycle, could you break down whether that's for contracts over the last couple of years? Or is that the entire existing base? And if -- could you split out what the sort of trends are for the existing base of contracts that you have versus the ones that are more immature and where both of those, sort of trending directionally? Secondly, on the digital participation, where are you for the entire group? I think you said 15% was that for the U.S., where can it get to by when? And just in terms of gross cost drivers of that, how much is labor inflating by versus what you can offset from digital initiatives, please?
Okay. So on the post-investment review cycles, the way we have run this for many, many years is to really look at any investment, any contract for which we've got enough trading data to do a decent review. Generally, that means we've got 12 to 18 months good trading data and things have settled down. And then we can clearly run all our financial models using the actual capex, looking at the real sales, any revised expectations around growth and, of course, all the various elements of the middle of the P&L. And so we tend not to pick an absolutely discrete time period, albeit typically, as I say, we're sort of 12, 18 months in arrears. We try to do them as early as possible because clearly, we're looking for learnings that might help directors to take action. Clearly, during Covid, we couldn't do those because we have no normal tracking data to work from. So it's really -- this year is the first time we said, okay, the business is sufficiently fully recovered for us to go back and look at every -- so the reviews that we did very recently covered investments that went all the way back to immediately pre-Covid, right through to stuff that we'd opened more recently. So we covered a broad span of time to something it was a catch-up and covering everything that we thought we had good data on. In terms of trends, I mean, what is remarkable, actually, is that particularly when you sort of strip specific Covid effects out of all of this, it is remarkably consistent with history.So the sort of returns we are getting, which we don't disclose, are very, very close to long run history within which there has been remarkable consistency over many, many years. The learnings are the same learnings as we always get. We're pretty good at forecasting things like the capital, the gross margin, the labor costs, things that are very directly within our control. What we're not so good at is and where we make errors is frankly in forecasting the sales, particularly in brand new sites, brand-new contracts, where albeit we will use many different routes to try and benchmark the sales, inevitably, sometimes we don't get those right. So the learning is always to be honest, the same, which is use as many angles as you can to try and nail the sales assumptions. But what we always do is when we review every proposal, we always look at some downside scenarios. So we are typically, if there's any uncertainty looking at scenarios that take 10% or 20% of the sales line to give us comfort that we will still meet our investment return criteria even if we don't get it absolutely right. So -- but I mean, I guess all I can stress is that the performance is very consistent with history, and it's something we've been doing for a long time. And it's reassuring for us to know that there's nothing fundamentally changed in terms of what we're seeing at the moment.
If I just pick up the point on digital participation, I mean the truth is trying to come up with an aggregate number for the whole group would be kind of meaningless. And I'll just give you one example as to why. So how would you treat, for example, the U.K. M&S estates, right, where it's now largely self-serve TILs, is that digital or not? I argue it is digital, but you're going to have a massive level of digital participation if you start weighing some of those things in. So if you think about our business kind of through a format lens and our U.S. business is so weighted towards bars and casual dining, I think what you'll see is the sort of trends that we've got in America, which is a progressive build in the adoption of digital solutions we're seeing happening everywhere. Two final points I'd make about that. The -- firstly is -- obviously, there are efficiency benefits that come from them, both in terms of how we configure and staff our units. And in general, but not always a tendency for customers in those types of formats to have a higher spend per transaction when they have more time to be able to do it and they're able to spoil themselves in different ways in a way that they sometimes won't do if they're ordering from a server. And -- but the second element that I think we're learning is that we are at our core hospitality business. And you can overdo it. right. And so we have some examples where if I take, say, The Breakfast Club in Gatwick or The Fallow in Dublin Airport, we're actually -- I think we lent too hard into pushing people only and substantially on to digital channels. And actually, we were turning off some customers. And so we have been learning and experimenting as we're doing it to try to get the right mix of hospitality service and, of course, a progressive for the use of digital. Last thing, it's not very capital expensive, right? So the -- once you have the platform and the foundational infrastructure, which we're putting in place, the incremental turning on of an additional unit in terms of a QR code or digital menu is de minimis from a capex point of view.
It's Tony Heine from Barclays. The first question, you touched on this a little bit earlier. You expect a kind of demand boost from the Olympics and the Euros. Do you have any idea as to what sort of level or range of impacts you're expecting, what kind of boost? Second question is, you touched on this area as well, but just to confirm my understanding, are you saying that the Nordics margin should recover back to kind of normal levels in the summer? And then thirdly, are there any major renewals that we should be aware of in the medium term?
Yes. Let me cover the Olympics point Jon and let you continue to tease out the Nordics. The --- I mean we are expecting a strong summer, right? And you'll know this from the kind of first half, second half split in our numbers, like we have to have a big, big step up in the second half, right? To take a midpoint of the EBITDA guidance or revenue guidance we've given, we're going to have a -- the delivery of that is a hell of an outcome, right? And we are on track with that. We have plans to do that everywhere. And I think the delivery of that will be just a very, very strong validation of our model in all sorts of ways. And it's got a tremendous level of near-term delivery focus across our business, which we need and which we have. Now within that, it's possible that things like the Olympics could give us a little bit of a tailwind against that, right? That is possible. But there are -- we're fortunate that we have a business where we've had a leadership team around for a long time and have seen this detailed knowledge of how -- of the trading patterns of the London Olympics, for example, in our group exec. And so we're expecting an uplift in Paris, but there are things that you learn as it opens up in terms of the speed at which people are pushed through rail stations and time people have to spend and so forth. And so we're expecting it to be helpful. Could it be more helpful? Maybe. And -- but all of that output in the context here that we've got to do GBP 2 million sales, GBP 2 billion sales in the second half and a very, very big step up in profitability margin, everything, as Jonathan has described. And we know that, and we're on with it. And if we get a few bits and pieces of help around the place, we happily take it.
So... Okay. So back on the margin point around the Nordics, clearly, we haven't disclosed the Nordics margin, so I'm talking broadly about the Continental [ Europe ] region, albeit a lot of the factors we've talked about are most marked in the Nordics. What I said was that I would expect there to be a year-on-year improvement in the second half. So we're coming from the region being down a couple of percent, I expect it to be up possibly as much as a percent in the second half. But the point is that there are a number of factors that would swing the year-on-year movement between the first and the second half, okay? In terms of major future renewals, I mean, the first thing I'd point to is the fact that if you look at the sort of contract runoff profile across the group, and indeed, across most regions, it's relatively smooth. So again, really, it's a function of the scale of the business, the number of discrete contracts we have. Because remember, in many of these big airports, we will have multiple contracts. It -- there tend to be a few bumps in that. And over many years, we've said, look, just assume this is a fairly smooth runoff, which it is. Now what we've seen here is this very specific impact of Covid and the fact that during the Covid period, we extended and renewed contracts, which has left us in a position where that investment is now going in has been in the last 12 or 18 months, which is unusual, and therefore, has a drag on the P&L. As you look forward, I think -- I don't think we will see anything of that sort of significance arise again. albeit, it is worth stressing that as we look forward over the next 2 or 3 years, we still have -- there will still be, by the way, renewals to come in places like Oslo, in places like Copenhagen. So again, it's never finished, but I don't think we'll get the same intensity of renewal activity as we look forward.
And I mean the math of this helped too, right? So the business and geographic mix that we have, a consequence of that is that our average contract tenure is lengthening, which mathematically means across the totality of our group, the frequency of renewals reduces. So -- let's take a couple of more questions again.
It's Manjari, RBC. I just had a couple of questions, please. I wonder if you could give some color on what you're seeing in terms of spend per passenger growth and maybe how that decomposes between price inflation and initiatives you guys have taken to drive [ spend passenger ] uplift? And then secondly, given the currency devaluation you've seen in markets like Egypt, has that changed how you're thinking about these markets operationally, maybe how you're running those markets at all?
Yes, try and deal with those quickly. The -- so I mean, we had -- I think what -- I think this is a statement that everyone will agree with. We had very good like-for-like performance in the first half. And that's probably -- it's approximately 2/3 volume, 1/3 price. And the -- and so the volume is a consequence of a whole variety of things. But at its core, is a mindset in the delivery to continue to focus on making the customer experience good. Whether that's through digital, whether that's through menu, whether that's through service, whether that's through the fit out of the individual units. And if you've got roughly 8% volume growth on a like-for-like basis, that's a consequence of actually doing a nice job in terms of customer experience. Now we could jump into how that plays out differently by country, by format, but I think that theme is apparent everywhere, and it's important we stay with that, right, which is -- and hence, the reason that we introduce and report internally and indeed externally on things like our customer reputation score because we think that is a strong lead indicator as to what will subsequently happen to volume. The -- I mean, on currency devaluation, I mean, we choose to be in lots of markets. And we think over time, that is very good for the business. The -- there are 1 or 2 where very, very big movements in currency lead to quite a material financial translation effect. And frankly, I'm largely talking about Egypt, as I say that. How we track Egypt is on its performance in local currency. And actually, it's a strong performing market for us in that respect. But the -- as we think about future capital deployment into markets, we do take a view at the time around a whole series of things, including what we think it's going to play out going forward. But you're always going to have some puts and takes within a portfolio of almost 40 markets.
So... I might just add one point. So in the market like Egypt, which is largely foreign national passengers clearly, the immediate response is to up prices to reflect the opportunity in terms of international pricing. So as Patrick said, the performance of Egypt, as we measure it internally on a sort of constant currency basis, is terrific. It just isn't terrific when you then translate it back into sterling. Because everything gets moved... At. So that's -- in terms of taking action, that's what we will do in a market like that, that is largely about international passenger.
Yes. I think we're just going to go for one last question, if that's okay, guys.
It's Leo Carrington from Citi. Firstly, on the 5% net gains for '25 and 3% to 5% for '26, are those already signed? Or are these sort of likely landing points, i.e., is there upside to these figures? And then secondly, separately on minority interests, just in terms of the U.S. airports you're in, have recent agreements and net gains being around that 25% minority interest participation, in aggregate, let's say.
I mean, let me try to do both pretty quickly. We clearly have more precision on FY '25 in terms of net gains. So you could correctly assume that, that is largely a roll forward of things contracted as of now. There may well be some modest additions if we fancy the returns on things that are available to us, we're not stopping the business from a net gains and investment committee perspective. And '26, we've chosen -- and we said this back in December, we've chosen to be quite deliberate in talking about that being ranged, not because we're seeing any reduction in our success rate or the attractiveness of the opportunities that are coming our way, but we could, right? If the market becomes materially more competitive, then we may choose to be more cautious on capital deployment, we're not going to chase net gains as a percentage target. In other words, we're not saying it has to be 5%, we would like it to be 5% if we can get good returns on those investments. And that's the kind of mindset that we're going into us. And that's why I think you'll see us continue to range the outer years in that particular way.
I guess it's also worth [indiscernible] that we can always foresee -- there may always be losses, which we haven't foreseen. So we're underpinning all of our assumptions as we look out over 2, 3 years, there is an assumption around the renewal rate. So again, that's something you always have to bear in mind in making forecasts.
Yes. And your point on minority interest in the U.S., 2 things. I mean one -- and just to make explicit what I suspect many of you will have implicit. And given some of the discussions we've been having in this group and other such groups over the last 1.5 years, you can pretty much expect that we're on top of this issue, which is that we are conscious of making sure that we are working with the right partners but we're also making sure that we are maximizing the available returns all the way through to SSP shareholders, right? So and that is -- you should hope that we were always doing that, but I can tell you in the period in which I've been here, we're definitely doing that now, right. Now within that, in some of the things that we have signed up, including some of the sort of small acquisition activity that I've mentioned, it has been the case that the minority interest participation in those instances has been lower than some of the average minority interest in some of the organic business that have had historically. I think it would be too early to actually put that into a pattern. But I would observe that except to go back to my first point, which is we are running the business very, very strongly to make sure that with all of this growth and opportunity we get in North America, we're partnering with people who are helping us to get it, but we are really on the case in terms of making sure that we're driving that all the way through to net income and earnings per share for SSP shareholders. So, okay. And I think we're going to cut it because we've run -- thank you, everyone, for joining us and happy to take a few questions informally in the room, and we'll look forward to speaking to you later in the year. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.