Grafton Group plc (GROUF) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

SA Transcripts 162.08K Followers Follow Grafton Group plc ( GROUF ) Q2 2026 Earnings Call September 3, 2026 4:00 AM EDT Company Participants Eric Born - CEO & Director David Arnold - Group CFO & Director Conference Call Participants William Jones - Rothschild & Co Redburn, Research Division Shane Carberry - Goodbody Stockbrokers UC, Research Division Florence O'Donoghue - Davy, Research Division Christen Hjorth - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division Alastair Stewart - Progressive Equity Research Limited Charlie Campbell - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated, Research Division Samuel Cullen - Peel Hunt LLP, Research Division Benjamin Pfannes-Varrow - RBC Capital Markets, Research Division Jamie Murray - BofA Securities, Research Division Presentation Eric Born CEO & Director Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Grafton Group plc Half Year Results. A quick agenda. I will start with some operational highlights before our CFO, David Arnold, will go through the financial details. And afterwards, you will have me again talking a little bit about strategy and outlook for the remainder of the year. The performance in the first half was, I would call, very solid. We had revenue growth of 6.7%, adjusted operating profit increase of 8.2% and a growth of our adjusted earnings per share of 10.8%. As you will have noted this morning, we increased the interim dividend by 2.3% and reconfirm our full year operating profit guidance between GBP 190 million and GBP 200 million. In terms of development activities in the first half of the year, we completed 2 acquisitions in Europe's faster-growing markets in Ireland, where we acquired Cygnum and in Iberia in Spain, where we acquired Mercaluz. And both of those acquisitions have started well in our ownership and are trading strongly year-to-date. We also invested into new branches on a group-wide basis, especially in Iberia and also in Ireland and we maintain a strong balance sheet to have sufficient firepower to deploy capital as the opportunities arise. I