Watkin Jones Plc (WJPLF) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Prepared Remarks Transcript

Alex Pease
CEO & Executive Director

Good morning, and welcome to the 2025 Financial Full Year Results for Watkin Jones. I’m Alex Pease, the Chief Executive. I’m joined today by Simon Jones, the CFO. The agenda for this morning will begin with a short overview from myself, reflecting on the business and operational performance over the year. We will update on the core occupational and investment markets we operate in before focusing on our financial and operational highlights.

We entered FY ’25 with a continued environment of economic volatility and ongoing geopolitical disruption. Slower-than-anticipated rate cuts and a drawn-out wait for an unsympathetic budget have resulted in limited sentiment improvements across the year. With this backdrop, Watkin Jones has continued our approach over the last 24 months with a strategy of control, execution and diversification, looking to provide a firm platform for our future growth. Inevitably, as a consequence of severely reduced market liquidity in the last couple of years, there has been a lag this year on overall revenues due to lower levels of contracted income at the start of the year.

However, we are very pleased to have delivered a resilient and robust operational performance with improved metrics year-on-year across many of our core targets. Our adjusted operating profit of GBP 6.3 million is at the top end of consensus, and we also delivered an improved gross profit margin of 12.4%. We have continued to prioritize our cash and debt management with a strong gross and net cash position of GBP 80 million and GBP 70 million, respectively. It’s worth noting that if not for a 24-hour delay on receipt of transaction funds from