Evoke plc (EIHDF) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2025-03-26 14:48:14 ET

Evoke plc (EIHDF)

Q4 2024 Earnings Conference Call

March 26, 2025, 05:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Per Widerström - CEO

Sean Wilkins - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Estelle Weingrod - JPMorgan

Richard Stuber - Deutsche Numis

Presentation

Per Widerström

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today for our 2024 results. I am Per Widerström, and I'm joined today by Sean Wilkins, our CFO. I've been CEO of Evoke for nearly 18 months now and in today's presentation I'm delighted to report on the strong progress we are making with our business transformation and turnaround.

We start with the agenda on Slide 2, and while we already gave with the key headlines on 2024 performance and our full year trading update in January, I'm pleased to say that our adjusted EBITDA was actually £2 million ahead of the top end of our previous update. I'm delighted to report, we met or exceeded our commitments from the interim results, and Sean will talk through the details of this as well as covering our current trading and outlook for the year ahead. I will then cover our strategic progress and how we are executing against the value creation plan before taking your questions.

Turning to Slide 3 with a reminder of our commitment to shareholders to create the value that we laid out exactly a year ago today. Firstly, driving growth. We have made great progress focusing the business towards our five core markets, which now make up 90% of our revenue. The business is powered by these market-leading positions, which deliver strong sustainable, and profitable growth and support our confidence in achieving our 5% to 9% revenue growth target. Secondly, we're improving profitability through efficiency gains and operating leverage.

Our adjusted EBITDA margin was 22% in the second half of 2024, but we expect this to be more like 20% for full year '25. We are on a positive upward trajectory and continue to see significant long-term upside to our profitability as we build our enhanced capabilities.

Thirdly, we are highly disciplined with our capital and use of cash and are committed to reducing financial leverage in the coming years, accelerating the return on equity for our shareholders. Turning to Slide 4 and just before handing over to Sean to cover the financial results in more detail, I would like to give my personal highlights, my first full year as CEO. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, we returned the business to growth for the first time in three years. We delivered full year revenue growth of 3%, with growth in the second half of 8%, consistent with our midterm target of 5% to 9%. We further improved the mix of the business during the year.

The acquisition of Winner created our fifth core market in Romania and online coal markets grew 12% year-over-year. The business is powered by these market-leading positions which will continue to underpin our strong, sustainable and profitable growth. We transformed almost every area of the business with a complete reset and transformation bringing in new talent and laying the foundation for significantly enhanced capabilities going forward....

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