Volex PLC

LSE:VLX

Earnings Call Analysis

Volex Reports Robust Revenue Growth and Dividend Hike

Volex has seen a robust 11% increase in revenues, attributed to diversification and customer relationships. Strong growth is noted particularly in Medical and Complex Industrial sectors, with improved supply chains allowing more demand. Additionally, the Off-Highway sector is a new area following Murat Ticaret's acquisition. Underlying operating profit improved notably by 16.5%, with margins rising to 9.4%. Investors will be pleased by the fourth consecutive interim dividend increase to 1.4p per share. The management is confident in the company's long-term prospects, evident from its pioneering high-speed cables and strong collaborations in various industries.

Company Performance and Market Sectors

Demonstrating strong overall revenue growth in spite of challenging market conditions, the company has maintained margins above 9% and achieved an impressive 11% increase in revenues, with 4% originating from constant currency organic growth. The Electric Vehicles (EV) sector has reached over $100 million in annual revenues, entirely organically, indicating the company's adeptness in building new business areas from the ground up.

Interim Dividend and Profit Growth

In a sign of financial health and commitment to shareholder value, the company has increased its interim dividend to 1.4p per share for the fourth consecutive year, alongside an underlying operating profit surge of 16.5%.

Sector-Specific Trends and Challenges

Sector analysis revealed a 16% revenue decrease due notably to a strong previous year and short-term customer destocking. The Consumer Electricals sector is experiencing normalization post-pandemic with a 9% reduction in revenue. Despite these challenges, the Medical sector has experienced substantial growth, and with the global shift towards cloud computing and AI, high-speed infrastructure demand in data centers has increased.

Operational Efficiency and Financials

The company is focusing on cost optimization and managing inflation to maintain margins. Free cash flows have significantly increased by almost $12 million, reflecting revenue growth and effective financial management, including maintaining a strong balance sheet post-acquisitions with a current covenant leverage of 1.3x.

Strategic Growth and Acquisitions

By doubling revenues and tripling underlying operating profits over the past five years, the company has demonstrated successful strategic implementation. Acquisitions like Murat Ticaret (MT) have expanded their manufacturing capabilities, allowing for future scalability and strengthening market position.

Business Outlook and Investments

The company is investing in expanding its global footprint with new production facilities in India and significant investments in Surface Mount Technology in Mexico. These moves are aimed at enhancing export capacity and catering to reshoring trends, as well as obtaining niche investments such as those in PCB assembly to further improve business operations.

Future Revenue and Margin Targets

Management is confident in reaching a $1.2 billion revenue target by FY '27, with EV expected to be a major growth sector. The company is a licensed partner for the North American Charging Standard and is broadening its technological capabilities within EV, such as high-voltage cabling. No current update on the 9% to 10% margin target is provided, but future prospectus may be revisited with the integration of MT's contribution.

Customer Base and Market Growth

There is a significant reliance on a predominant EV customer, with no other customers crossing the 10% threshold. Growth expectations are set at 5% for Medical and 8% to 10% for Complex Industrial Technology over a five-year period, with confidence in continued strong growth in EV adoption fueling business expansion.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q2

[Nathaniel Philip Victor Rothschild, executive]

Right. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our presentation of the first half of FY '24. I'm Nat Rothschild, the Executive Chairman. And with me is Jon Boaden, our Chief Financial Officer. First, we will highlight the key points from this period. Then, Jon will walk you through our financial performance. After that, I'll update you on how we are moving forward with our strategic plans, and we will wrap up with a summary and our outlook for the future. And we will have time for questions at the end.

So again, we've delivered strong overall revenue growth across our diversified market sectors. We are seeing positive changes across different markets as they adapt and recover benefiting, as an example, from smoother supply chains. Our approach to diversification and building solid customer relationships has paid off, allowing us to grow profitably regardless of the market conditions. As a specialized manufacturer, we are aligned with growing market sectors and we have seen impressive growth in Medical and Complex Industrial Technology with improved supply chains, allowing customers to scale up demand.

We are also excited about our expansion into the Off-Highway sector having acquired Murat Ticaret, which I will refer to as MT going forward. And we will come back to this later in the presentation. Our Electric Vehicles and Consumer Electricals customers increased inventory levels a year ago. Now with more stable supply chains, they are reducing inventory. This is a normal part of adapting to the improved conditions. Jon will give more details on revenues for each sector later.

Our focus remains on executing our long-term strategy. This means driving sustainable growth, enhancing our capabilities and capacity. We are achieving this through astute investments in infrastructure and through strategic acquisitions.

So turning to Slide 3. Over the last 5 years, our team has transformed Volex into a strong, high-quality company. We have become a resilient organization that consistently delivers profitable growth and is on track with our 5-year plan. Even with recent challenges such as inflation and supply chain issues, we've stayed strong and adaptable. In particular, we've diversified our portfolio, providing us with a high degree of resilience alongside sustainable through-cycle growth opportunities.

We've branched out into new sectors, engaged with new customers and improved the profit margins of our operations. This shift has resulted in a more diverse and robust business laying a solid foundation for future growth. The markets we have entered were carefully chosen. They align with our goal to be a specialist manufacturer in sectors with high growth and structurally attractive characteristics. This strategic approach positions us well for continued success.

So in the past 18 months, since outlining our strategic plan, we've made significant progress in several key areas, showcasing our commitment to growth and innovation. Whether through an expanded EV product set, the latest high-speed data center cables or innovations we have delivered in extrusion capability, our talented engineering colleagues are supporting growth through their development activities. To support this growth and position us for the evolving requirements of our customers, we are expanding our global manufacturing footprint and increasing our capabilities in key markets.

We've achieved all of this in a challenging inflationary environment while successfully maintaining our margins above 9%. With 2 acquisitions in this period, including the transformational acquisition of MT, we're expanding our market reach but also bringing new competencies and opportunities for growth. This puts us firmly on track to deliver on our 5-year plan commitments. And I'll now hand over to Jon to take us through the financial results.

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

Great. Thank you, Nat. So really pleased to be here. Thank you for all of you who've come in, in person. It's great to see you all. I'm really pleased with these results. I think we've achieved a lot in the first half of the year, which has been a robust 11% increase in revenues, of which 4% is attributable to constant currency organic growth. And I'll give you a commentary for each of the sectors as we go through the presentation.

I think the other thing to point out is that our underlying operating profit has seen a substantial rise of 16.5% along with an enhancement to our underlying operating margin, which is a crucial indicator for our business, which has gone to 9.4%, and this has positively impacted our profit before tax. So in line with these strong results, we're pleased to announce an increase in our interim dividend per share for the fourth consecutive year, and that will now go to 1.4p per share.

So turning to Electric Vehicles. In the past 5 years, we've successfully grown our Electric Vehicles business from scratch to annual revenues of over $100 million, and that's all been achieved organically. And this remarkable growth is a testament to our outstanding products, our best-in-class engineering capabilities and our partnerships with some of the world's leading manufacturers. The long-term increasing sales trend of these vehicles are driven by several factors, and this includes government incentives, regulations promoting the adoption of the technology as well as improved EV ownership experiences due to enhanced charging infrastructure and a growing customer familiarity and trust in EV technology.

Despite this backdrop, our revenues for this period are 16% lower compared to the same period last year. We're comparing against a particularly strong first half in FY 2023, where we saw 53% organic growth. We're also seeing short-term customer destocking. Our customers are reducing additional safety stock that they built up to take account of supply chain challenges. This results in a temporary dip in demand despite the fact that industry data shows that vehicle sales are increasing. In addition, our largest customer slowed production in the summer to carry out some factory upgrades.

Looking forward, we're seeing signs of demand starting to return, and we're excited about several new EV projects launching in the second half of the year, including those in North America that we have previously announced. We remain highly confident in the strength of our relationships, our product portfolio and our capability to grow in this sector in the long term.

In the Consumer Electricals sector, we've observed trends similar to those in EV. The pandemic led to a surge in home working, driving demand over 2 years for products like laptops, printers and domestic appliances. More recently, consumer priorities have shifted and we're seeing a normalization in consumer spending. This has resulted in a 9% reduction in revenue, 3.5% of which was attributable to lower copper and PVC costs that we pass through to the customer. Like the EV sector, some of our customers increased their inventory during the previous period to support production. Now with the situation improving significantly, they're confidently reducing these levels.

We saw the destocking effect in Europe first and it took about 6 to 12 months to stabilize varying by customer. This process is largely complete in Europe while it's still ongoing in Asia and North America. However, we're beginning to see early signs of increasing demand from our customers as we progress through the second half of the year. Looking ahead, there are substantial growth opportunities for our Consumer Electricals business. We have strategically positioned ourselves as the most competitive, customer-focused and geographically capable manufacturer in this sector. This positioning is why we're securing new business and why we collaborate with some of the world's most significant consumer electricals brands.

Turning to Medical. In the first half of the year, our Medical business has seen substantial organic growth, bolstered by our clients who are now able to expedite deliveries. This progress comes as customers overcome some of the challenges they had with their own supply chains, enabling them to address backlogs that accumulated over the past 2 years. In response, we've increased our output to support the additional customer demand. The long-term outlook for the medical sector is highly promising.

We are proud manufacturing partners to some of the world's leading medical equipment manufacturers specializing in key technologies such as imaging, therapy and diagnostics. The cutting-edge advancements these companies are introducing into health care as significantly improving patient outcomes. Additionally, the growing demand of an aging population for the latest medical technologies are expected to drive sustained long-term growth in this sector.

In our Complex Industrial Technology segment, we've witnessed remarkable growth due to 2 key reasons. Similar to the Medical sector, our customers are now able to ramp up production scheduling, thanks to better availability within their supply chains of key components. In addition, there's been a surge for demand for our high-speed data center cables. This increase is partly because data center operators can now proceed with their equipment refresh cycles more efficiently. It is also due to the growth in cloud computing and artificial intelligence, which demand high-speed infrastructure in data centers.

We anticipate sustained strong opportunities for our high-speed cables, thanks to their first-rate quality that not only meets but exceeds industry performance standards and all at a competitive price. Our Complex Industrial Technology business successfully collaborates with a diverse array of industry leaders. This includes sectors like aerospace and defense, telecommunications and smart technology. We support these industries with a wide range of manufacturing services from intricate subassemblies and printed circuit board assemblies to comprehensive box build to integrate various components such as displays and processes.

So this is the first time we're presenting Off-Highway as distinct sector following our successful acquisition of Murat Ticaret. However, it's important to note that our involvement in the Off-Highway sector isn't new. The Off-Highway sector encompasses a wide range of equipment including agricultural machinery, passenger transport vehicles like coaches and buses, material handling equipment such as lift trucks, construction machinery and specialized defense vehicles. We've had a great start in this sector, thanks in part to the new revenue streams from MT, but also due to the strong organic growth within Volex's existing operations in India and North America prior to the acquisition.

The prospects in the Off-Highway sector are particularly exciting for us. New agricultural technology is delivering greater efficiency in farming and helping overcome challenges in the supply of labor. Urbanization and economic development in emerging markets are boosting the commercial segment, calling for additional investment in passenger transport and construction equipment. Additionally, the trend towards more sustainable products is poised to drive long-term growth in this sector.

On Slide 12, we've outlined our achievements in enhancing our underlying operating margin, which has improved from 9.0% in the first half of FY '23 to 9.4% in the same period this year. Our commitment to continuous improvement plays a crucial role in optimizing our cost base and enhancing our margins. This approach is especially vital in an environment with high inflation, forming a key component of our effective inflation cost management strategy. We manage direct cost inflation by passing it on to customers either through contractual mechanisms or through regular transparent price negotiations.

Our growth in more complex, higher-margin products, combined with the destocking in higher-volume products, has positively influenced our margins compared to the previous period. The acquisition of MT also contributed positively, blending our margins upwards as we integrate our high-mix complex wire harness manufacturing capabilities. We're also making targeted investments to support the growth of the business, which are expected to bring significant benefits in the long run.

Moving on to the cash flow. Our underlying free cash flows increased almost $12 million, a significant improvement on the prior year despite higher investments in CapEx to fund our growth. A year ago, as we reported, we were seeing increases in inventory levels as part of our approach to manage supply chain challenges. We saw a significant improvement in working capital in the second half of last year as we managed inventory back down to normal levels. For the first half of this year, the increase in working capital reflects the revenue growth that has been achieved.

Interest is higher due to higher rates, and we fixed the interest on $50 million of our debt a year ago. Our current covenant leverage is 1.3x, meaning we've maintained a strong balance sheet after the acquisition of Murat Ticaret. With strong cash generation, we're in a position to reduce our leverage levels further in the next 12 to 18 months. Tax is higher, a combination of increased profits, but also the timing of various settlements and incentives around our global business.

I will now hand back to Nat to take you through an update on our strategic progress.

[Nathaniel Philip Victor Rothschild, executive]

Great. Thank you, Jon. So in the past 5 years, I don't think anyone can argue that Volex has undergone a remarkable transformation, evolving into a dynamic, high-growth company that is strategically aligned with profitable market sectors. We've doubled our revenues, a testament to our commitment and strategic direction, and this growth includes the development of new products and capabilities in the Electric Vehicles sector. We've also significantly increased our PCB assembly capacity, responding proactively to the needs of our customers.

As well as revenue growth, we've also seen a substantial increase in our profits. Our underlying operating profits have now tripled compared to 5 years ago. This impressive growth has been driven by our investments in vertical integration, reducing manufacturing costs and enhancing competitiveness. We've also embraced targeted automation, enhancing quality and efficiency. Another key factor has been the evolution of our customer base where we have strategically focused on profitable sectors. Furthermore, the last 5 years have been marked by an expansion of our capabilities.

Our strategic acquisitions have brought new expertise and strengthened our position in the market. These acquisitions have not only increased our knowledge base but have also extended our geographic footprint, allowing us to serve our global customers more effectively. I think when I started, we had 7 sites, now we have 27 sites. I think we're in 24, 25 different countries. So our strategic focus gives us great confidence in our ability to deliver on our current 5-year plan. We are not just aiming for growth, we are achieving it while also elevating our profitability and expanding our capabilities. This is truly an exhilarating time for Volex as we continue to build on our success and set new benchmarks in the global manufacturing landscape.

As a global manufacturing business, we are all over the world, 27 manufacturing locations, as I said earlier, in 24 countries. And our teams operate globally to put our customers first. In my case, in the last 6 months, I've traveled to our sites in Mexico, China, India and Turkey to speak to our customers and understand their requirements. These customer sourcing strategies are changing and many are aiming to streamline and consolidate their supplier networks. They are increasingly interested in moving manufacturing closer to their own operations, supporting local economies, simplifying logistics and reducing the environmental impact of transportation.

This global presence uniquely positions us to meet these evolving needs. We're investing in expanding our capacity to meet demand. In the first half of the year, we opened a new facility in Poland. And looking ahead, we're excited about further expansions in Indonesia, India and Mexico underway and planned for the second half of this year and into the next. We also utilized our specialist capabilities in key locations to support manufacturing in other regions, for example, producing specialty cables in Indonesia to use in our Mexico sites. This approach enhances our margins.

Our acquisition of MT was a strategic decision made for several key reasons, reflecting our commitment to growth and market expansion. Firstly, the acquisition has created scale in a fifth growth market for us. We've already experienced excellent initial customer engagement, indicating strong potential in a fragmented market. This fragmentation presents us with numerous opportunities to make significant inroads and establish a robust presence. We are already making an impact by securing incremental customer projects, a promising sign of the potential that lies ahead with this business segment.

Secondly, the acquisition of MT offers us an exciting opportunity to develop and expand our business in North America. This market is also fragmented, providing us ample room to grow and strengthen our presence. Our existing footprint in North America positions us advantageously, allowing us to leverage our current infrastructure and relationships. And thirdly, the acquisition presents us with significant synergy opportunities. We see promising prospects for cross-selling, which will not only broaden our customer base but also deepen our existing customer relationships.

Additionally, the acquisition offers the opportunity to improve processes. By integrating best practices from both companies, we can enhance efficiency, streamline operations and ultimately drive better performance.

The acquisition of MT is a strategic move that aligns with our growth objectives and offers multiple avenues for expansion and improvement. It's a step that reinforces our commitment to exploring new markets, capitalizing on synergies and continuously seeking opportunities to enhance our operations and customer offerings.

So moving to the final slide. In the last year, we have achieved remarkable success marked by a series of strategic triumphs and robust performances across our diversified end markets. A key advantage of our business is its diversification. Our strong performance in Medical and Complex Industrial Technology is allowing us to achieve strong growth despite short-term headwinds in EV and Consumer, which we expect to reverse.

The acquisition of MT creates a platform for future growth in the Off-Highway sector. This not only broadens our market reach but also adds valuable capabilities to our portfolio, setting us up for even greater achievements. And the structural long-term growth drivers that underpin our business remain firmly in place, ensuring that our growth is sustainable and scalable. Our target investments are carefully chosen to bolster our core competencies, enhance our technological capabilities and expand this global footprint that I spoke about earlier.

With our strong performance in the first half of the year, we remain confident in our ability to deliver full year results in line with consensus. And all these efforts and achievements keep us confidently on track with our ambitious 5-year plan. We are achieving the stretching goals we set, forging a path of success and setting new benchmarks in our industry. This is an exhilarating time for our organization as we see our progress accelerate. So I would just like to thank everyone for attending the presentation. And now I'd like to take some questions. Thank you very much.

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

Yes. So we'll start with questions in the room. Henry?

[Henry Carver, analyst]

Henry Carver from Peel Hunt. Just one on the data centers. Can you just remind us of the competitive landscape there, particularly in the 800-gigabyte wires and sort of how long you think it will take for that sort of upgrade to work through?

[Nathaniel Philip Victor Rothschild, executive]

So one of the interesting things about the data center market is we are competing against the big guys. So we're competing against the Amphenols and the Molexes of this world. Now we are, I like to say, the smallest of the big guys. So we have a brand that can sort of stand toe to toe with companies that are really considerably larger than ours. They also have different margin requirements to us. They're 20% operating margin businesses. So we're sort of in a very, very unique position in this market because we're a Western company. So we're not -- because of all of the worries about national security, you're not going to see these big global household name companies buying from Chinese suppliers. They just won't -- they won't do it.

So Volex is able to kind of effectively align sort of its offering against companies which have higher cost structures to we do. And that's one of the reasons I think why we are doing so well in that space and be able to be so competitive. Do you want to add anything to that?

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

Well, just in terms of -- in relation to that 400-, 800-gig products, we're selling both of those actively with our largest customers. And in terms of the way that it works in the data centers, it's clearly a -- there's a rationale for the data center operators to move from 100 gig to 400 gig and subsequently to 800 gig. But as well as that, there's also a regular cadence to refreshes. So even when the speeds don't increase, the data center operators refresh their data centers.

And part of the pickup in demand, which, to be fair, we've been talking about for some time that this is going to happen, the pickup in demand is the market has been constrained because the boxes that they buy to put these cables into haven't been available due to semiconductor shortages. And now as that issue resolves itself, then we've seen a big pickup in these cables. And as Matt says, we've got an incredibly competitive product both in terms of its technical specifications but also around the pricing structure. Remember that we manufacture this in Indonesia, which has a low cost base, and we can ship that into the U.S. without additional tariffs. So that's why we're ultra competitive in this space.

[Henry Carver, analyst]

Brilliant. Thanks. And then just secondly, visibility into the second half, what kind of is that in concrete terms? And any other comments around that would be great?

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

Yes, of course. In terms of visibility into the second half, we've got some good line of sight across Medical and Complex Industrial Technology because they're longer lead time products, and therefore, customers place orders earlier. And we're starting to see signs of orders coming through for the EV and the Consumer Electricals products. And it really varies on a customer-by-customer basis, particularly in Consumer Electricals where it's so diverse. We saw this destocking phenomenon first in Europe, and it was triggered by the war in Ukraine and it forced some of our customers in Europe, particularly in domestic appliances to think about supply chains, inventory levels, demand, et cetera. And depending on the customer, it took 6 to 12 months to work its way through.

It started later for our customers in North America and Asia. So we're within that cycle and we're probably about halfway through, again, depending on the customer, how long it's going to take. So the important thing for us is we've got these incredibly good relationships with those customers, which gives us assurance that we'll pick up repeat business. We're also seeing new project wins. So we're winning new projects. We announced some of the new project activity that's happening in Mexico for our largest EV customer, and that's going to commence towards the end of the second half and going into FY '25.

But we're also winning business in Consumer Electricals and picking up incremental projects. And that's due to the fact that we've got great customer relationships, good customer service team, but we're also very competitive in that space.

[Unknown Analyst]

Two questions for me, please. The first on the new facility in India that you're building, just kind of when you're expecting that to come online, I guess. And then the second is a comment on the presentation on significant investment in Surface Mount technology. Just some color around that, please.

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

Yes, of course. So do you want me to take those?

[Nathaniel Philip Victor Rothschild, executive]

Yes.

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

Yes. So in terms of India, it will come online in FY '25. And what we've done in India, we acquired a subsidiary in India 2 years ago, a business called inYantra that does printed circuit board assembly, has a great customer base, mainly Indian customers. So one of the things we're doing with that business is looking at how we can turn that from a domestic-focused business into an export-focused business. That's part of our strategy in India.

The other piece of the strategy in India is to support the requirements of our large Medical and Complex Industrial Technology customers who want to move manufacturing away from China and into other markets, and India is particularly attractive. So we're building this brand-new factory next door to the existing inYantra facility, which gives us good ability to hire skilled workers in the local market. And that will go live next financial year, and we will begin to transition some of our Medical business into that. So we see that as a great opportunity to really make the most of these reshoring trends that we're seeing and the global changes in supply chain.

And then in relation to the printed circuit board assembly technology, we made an investment in Mexico. So what that gives us now, we've got capability in the U.S. for more specialized customers. So we make printed circuit boards for some very advanced manufacturers in aerospace and defense but also in other growing areas like smart technology and telecommunications and metering in the U.S. But we wanted an option for customers who want higher volumes at lower price points, and we've situated that in Tijuana. So we've got a manufacturing center of excellence in Tijuana, which is currently growing, and that contains this investment in printed circuit board assembly technology. So that's a good growth opportunity. And that works in conjunction with the capability that we have in India, which is even higher volumes.

[Nathaniel Philip Victor Rothschild, executive]

Let me just add a couple of things there. The U.S. market for PCB assembly is very, very regionalized, whereas the market in Europe is Europe-wide, is highly, highly competitive. So I don't know if we have any interest in investing in PCB capability in Europe. We think we can supply Europe out of India. The Mexican investment allows us to quote on realms of business that would never be open to us if we didn't have that capability in-house. Because many customers just won't look at you if you can't make an assembly with a PCBA attached to it. So it's very important from a sales perspective.

And then the other thing I would say is that we -- the investments that we've made in PCB assembly have really been kind of niche investments. So if you take the business we bought in Irvine, California, I don't know, 2 years ago now, that business is really just focused on the sort of space and defense industry. So it's extremely kind of niche, where -- again, where the customers are very, very close to the facility. And there, you can kind of make -- I hate to sort of be so sort of blunt about, you can make decent money out of those types of businesses. But what we do not want to do is to get into the sort of the mainstream business where you're kind of competing against Plexus and Sanmina and Jabil. That is not our business and never will be.

And I think with India, what we -- there we needed a platform to onboard our Medical customers. And so much of the kind of Indian electronics market is focused on automotive. There was really very few opportunities for acquisitions. And so we really focused on inYantra because it was -- although it was a PCB assembly business, it had land, it had the kind of -- the bare bones of what we need to then build a cable assembly business alongside of it, if that makes sense.

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

Good. Any more questions in the room? Okay. Should we see if we have any questions on the line? I know we've got a couple of analysts on the line.

[Operator]

There are currently no questions.

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

Okay.

[Unknown Executive]

Great. Then it leads us on to the questions from the written Q&A. Starting off with Stephan Klepp from HSBC who asks, can you shed more light on the cross-selling potential of MT? At the moment, I understand they are only working in Europe. And what kind of growth should that add?

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

Well, do you want to answer that because you're just back from meeting some of their customers, so you could give us some insight about.

[Nathaniel Philip Victor Rothschild, executive]

Yes. I always going to be a bit careful because I worry that our competitors will be listening. But look, what's interesting about MT at the moment is we are actually supplying some of the world's largest agricultural companies into the U.S. from Europe. And that kind of is the best way to kind of -- that's the best kind of indicator to show how limited the opportunities are inside the U.S. that you actually find kind of global household name companies buying our products in Europe and shipping in the hallway across the U.S. So that gives us a tremendous kind of arbitrage opportunity because we already have production in Mexico and in North America.

The individual companies, we're talking about sort of big ag manufacturers, construction manufacturers. I've just come back, as Jon said, at a fair called AGRITECHNICA, which is the kind of largest agricultural fare in the world where about 0.5 million people go to descend on Hanover to look at plows and fertilizers, sprayers and tractors and combined harvesters. And I was able to meet with most of our customers there. And I think, look, there's no doubt that having that platform of a business doing roughly $200 million a year of revenue in Europe gives us an unrivaled calling card to then go and try and cross-sell our other sites.

And this will not happen overnight. There's a lot of work that needs to be done on our side to school up, for example, in Mexico, where we have a lot of other things going on at the moment, to put it mildly, in terms of growth opportunities with other customers. But what's clear is that it makes us a strategic supplier. It's almost inconceivable that we would be given the work that the family who we acquired the business have already done, that we would somehow be marginalized as a result of the change to our ownership where we have unlike Murat Ticaret, a very, very strong presence in, as I've just said, in Mexico but also in Asia.

So I would say that across the kind of portfolio of businesses that we own, probably the best growth opportunities exist in this new Off-Highway space, possibly with the exception of, obviously, of high-speed in EV where there's going to be -- there are additional structural growth drivers. I don't know if I've answered that question. But...

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

Yes, you've answered it very well. The piece I'd add is in terms of the growth opportunity. We said when we did the acquisition, this business would -- this sector would grow at 7% per year. We're incredibly confident that we will achieve that, if not surpass that because it's a great sector for us. So there's got some very good strong long-term growth opportunities. We've owned it for 2.5 months now. So it's a bit early for us to sort of go any further than that. But certainly at the full year, we'll give more color on what we're seeing with MT.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you. So the next question is from [indiscernible] who asks you are consistent with your $1.2 billion revenue ambition. What proportion should EVs make of that in your opinion? And have you already got the relationships with the manufacturers to get there?

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

Yes. So we are definitely consistently on track with our $1.2 billion revenue target for the end of FY '27. EV is a growing sector. It is scheduled in the long term to grow faster than other parts of our business. So it will be an increasing part of our market share and be an important part of what we do. And in terms of the relationships we have, yes, we've got great relationships which are incredibly important. But the other thing is to remember, we've got fantastic technology.

And importantly, we've got some really experienced engineers who have been doing this for 5 years with some of the most technologically advanced and challenging customers that you could work with, real household leading names. And that experience gives us a significant advantage. And on top of that, we've announced the fact that we're licensed partners for the North American Charging Standard, and we expect that will become a universal standard across the U.S. markets. The fact that we're licensed and experienced in that product is a great opportunity for us.

[Nathaniel Philip Victor Rothschild, executive]

I don't think we'd give a number for our -- of the percentage of EV for our 5-year plans. We don't break that out. We never have broken it out. So I mean, I can only say what is a -- sort of what an optimistic statement that I am very, very bullish about the EV sector. And we obviously have one dominant customer. I'm confident that we will have more customers of size and breadth of the one that I'm referring to over this period between now and 2027. So the interaction with those newer customers is extremely strong.

And the other point, which almost everyone in this room will know, is that we are now kind of moving into the vehicle. So we are not just making mode 2 charging grid cords, for example. We are doing some very, very interesting work in the area, for example, of high-voltage cables inside the cars and other very interesting projects, which require a high degree of technological capability.

And also actually, which I referred to in my -- when I was talking about, how we're actually able to sort of ship cables around, for example, from Indonesia into Mexico and so therefore, use the kind of broader capabilities that the group has got in order to sort of maintain very, very attractive margins in what is obviously a very competitive space.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you. Another question on the 5-year plans and targets from Stephan again, this time on margins. He asks, the midterm margin target 9% to 10% looks a bit soft given the contribution of MT. Should we expect an update on the margin target in due course?

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

We -- as I mentioned, we've owned MT for 2.5 months. So we've had 2 months' worth of data. When we get to the full year, we will have owned it for 7 months. So at that point, we'll be able to give an indication of how we think it blends up the margin. We did talk about the effect that it has as part of the equity raise and how it enhances the margin. So I think it's too early right now to give that guidance, but we will come back to it at the full year.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you. The next question is from [ Jesus ] of True Value Investments. He asks, could you say anymore on your current clients concentration if there are any clients above the 10% threshold and sort of top 5 clients concentration?

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

So the one that we disclosed because it's above 10% is our largest EV customer. And below that, there's certainly no one that's above 10%, and I don't have a figure for what the 5 biggest customers are, but there is there's no one above 10% apart from our largest EV customer.

[Unknown Executive]

Great. Just 2 more questions from Stephan now. The first one is, how should we think about Medical and Complex Industrial Tech going forward? How much did the data center business contributes to the strong complex industrial tech growth?

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

Yes. So the -- in terms of the contribution of the growth, very broadly, it was -- the growth was 50% due to the underlying Complex Industrial Technology business excluding data centers, and roughly half of it was due to the increase in data centers. So the data center we use did have a big impact on the growth that we saw in Complex Industrial Technology.

We've grown very strongly in this period, as you can see in the numbers. And that is a result of all the things that we talked about in the presentation. It's due to the fact that supply chains have improved. There's a pent-up demand from our customers. We expect the growth profile to normalize to close to the long-term averages that we talked about in the 5-year plan, which were on a long-term basis, we think, Medical grows at around 5% over a 5-year period on a compound annual growth basis and 8% to 10% for Complex Industrial Technology.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you. And finally, the last question is, can you talk about the end market dynamics going into H2, please? How much visibility do you have on EV and Consumer Electricals? And should we expect these end markets improving from here on?

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

So we absolutely expect to continue to achieve our long-term objectives in those markets. So we expect that there is strong growth in the adoption of electric vehicles themselves, which supports our growth story in EV. And as I mentioned before, we're very competitive in the consumer electrical space. So that gives us the ability to win new customers. We are seeing new customer projects all the time. I was on a call last night with one of our facilities in Mexico talking about the new customer wins that they've achieved and how they are delivering them.

And it's all down to how successfully we've positioned our business. Nat mentioned in the presentation, how we've now got the capability to produce specialist cables in one factory and ship it to another factory, and that is enhancing our margins but it's also improving our competitive position. So we feel very comfortable that there are good growth opportunities in EV and in Consumer Electricals once we work through this period of destocking.

[Nathaniel Philip Victor Rothschild, executive]

Yes. And I just want to add as well that the business we bought in Turkey, DE-KA, again, a regional business, has allowed us to go and cross-sell their customers into Mexico and into Batam in Indonesia, in particular. So I remain -- as I always do, but I always say this that in many ways, the Consumer Electricals business is the best business we have because it requires very little investment and it's extremely, extremely cash generative. And it has a footprint -- a global footprint that almost no other power cord manufacturer has.

And thanks to the efforts of the last 5, 6, 7 years, it's almost completely vertically integrated. So it's a very, very low cost. It has extremely high levels of automation. So in terms of the defensiveness of that business, it's a very, very, very difficult business to undercut because we're in with the customers. We have great quality. We have the sort of Volex name behind us, which is extremely valuable. And like Jon said, I mean, what I find so refreshing is that I can see all the customers that we are winning on a -- I mean, never a day goes by when I don't see the importance of the new customer wins. So when the business comes back, it should come back very, very strong.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you. And that concludes the online Q&A.

[Jonathan Boaden, executive]

Good. Would you like to make some closing remarks, Nat?

[Nathaniel Philip Victor Rothschild, executive]

If I must. No, look, it's a very -- for me, it's very encouraging sort of result. It hasn't been easy. This is a relatively tough market. We've got a very good Team Volex, very low turnover -- almost no turnover actually at the top level, very organized, some extremely interesting acquisition ideas percolating under the surface. And I feel very confident about the next 6 months. So thank you all for attending.