Andy Ransom: The Making of a Global Powerhouse | An Intimate Chat with an FTSE 100 CEO (Rentokil)

When I started advising pest control companies back in 2003, Rentokil North America was a 20 million dollar business. Fast forward to 2023, and the company has now eclipsed over 2 billion in revenue in North American Pest Control alone. In addition, over the years, Rentokil has created billions of dollars in shareholder value and most recently executed the largest M&A transaction in the space.

This wasn't an accident, though. This was all executed under the leadership of Andy Ransom, a CEO who likes to keep it simple and execute. 2023 is a special year for Andy. Not only did he just complete the Terminix acquisition, but this year will be his 10th anniversary as the CEO of a FTSE 100 company. Now, the FTSE 100 is the top 100 publicly traded companies in the United Kingdom, and most of those CEOs last maybe five years. But this year, Andy is making it to 10.

As I stand here on the coast of Puerto Rico, I think back to the conversations that I've had with Andy over the years, and they are by far the most interesting and entertaining. And I think about getting back. You know what? That's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to London.

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Making time.

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Why do we have to carry it home?

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Thank you. How was your journey? When did you get in?

I got on on Friday. And it's official now. After, I don't know, a few dozen stops in London over the years, I'm now a crime statistic. I was mugged.

You were mugged? Yeah. Get away. I came out of a posh restaurant, picked up my phone. As soon as I put it to my ear, three punks came. One of them grabbed it and ran.

It went through. Really? It was just one. It was already embellishing in this story. I know you are. Now, nicked my phone, as it were. And, um, it took me, you know, I was with a buddy. As soon as the, the phone disappeared, you know, it's a race to try to turn this thing off. And the thieves weren't particularly sophisticated. The first thing they did was order 24-pound order of Krispy Kreme on Uber Eats. This is, can't make this up. They did spend 20,000 pounds within the first 15 minutes at the Apple Store.

Wow. Before everything was shut off. And, you know, I'm still dealing with the aftermath now. But I went over to the Apple Store on Regent Street. Yeah. Got a new phone. And the guy was just like, listen, you know, it, we see this a dozen times a day in front of this store. And he said, you know, you know, somebody steals from you, can't do anything because you could become the assailant. Yeah. Well, that is true. Yeah. But honestly, it's a safe city. It never happens. It's never happened to me. No. Wow. I'm sorry to hear that. Wow. Can I do anything to drink? What we like? I think it's been a long day. I'm gonna start with a coffee. Yeah. I got a cappuccino, please. Cappuccino. Just black. Black coffee. Any sugars? Not for many things. And some sparkling water, if I get one too. Yeah, please. Yeah. Magic. Be right. Yeah. It's, uh, no, I have no. London's always been a safe city. I've never had an issue. A German friend of mine says, don't wear a watch. Don't, you know, hide your money. And he didn't warn me about the phone. No, no. It's a safe city. Yeah. You just got to unlock it. I did get a monkey for sure. Which makes me think of, you know, you at Rentokil, you guys are always talking about safety, right? Yeah. After this happened, I thought about in North America, I can literally think of dozens of companies where the owners and technicians have concealed carry permits to carry firearms. I would imagine Rentokil North America has a lot of technicians to pack heat. I don't think that's in the company policy. But we're certainly good at killing, killing things. But, but not, not that way. No. So when you're talking about safety, you're more concerned with falling off the roof or those sorts of things? For me, saying I'm passionate about safety, and for a very, very good reason. So years, years ago, I, I, my company, I work for a chemical company. And the business that I ran was in explosives. And explosives is a dangerous thing. And, and so when I took over the business, I said, right, when safety is going to be the most important thing, and we're going to have no incidents at all on my watch. And we did. We had an incident. A father and a son working side by side. And there was an explosion. And one of them died. And that had an incredibly profound impact on me as a, as a manager, as a leader. And, you know, it started with this, you know, no one's going to die on out on my watch. This, it just isn't going to happen. We're going to have a perfect safety record. And then this horrific incident. So it really had a huge impact on me. So whatever job I've been doing, wherever I've been, whatever business, I've always, always majored on safety. And I'm proud to say at Rentokil, we've got an incredibly good safety record. But as they were saying, one accident is still one too many. So every single meeting in the company, every single meeting in the company, board meeting, management meeting, branch meeting, site meeting, starts with safety. Every single one. And, and, you know, I'm incredibly passionate about it. But because of that horrific incident about 30 years ago. Well, you know, from an acquisition style, you guys are the only acquirer in the industry that every time we're doing a deal, you send folks out to do safety audits. You're looking at signage, you're looking at the equipment they have, you're looking at the shoes. You guys come in, you issue all the brand new company shoes to folks. Yeah. Well, the reason for that is a long since held the view that if you show me a company that takes safety seriously and has got a great safety record, I'll show you a successful company. Very rarely do I see, you know, companies that are great at safety and they're not very good at anything else. But plenty of times I see companies that don't take safety seriously. What else are you not taking seriously? It's about the most important cornerstone, right? Yeah. It absolutely is. You know, we want everyone to go home safe at the end of every day. So it is, it's one of those sort of little, um, litmus tests, you know, what is, what's the safety standard like? So, um, and that's one of the great things about, I'm sure we'll talk about Terminix in a bit. But I, I had wondered, well, I wonder what their safety records going to be like. And we did a lot of due diligence. And the great thing is, their safety standards are right up there with us. So that, that was a real reassuring moment for me when we, when we got to that moment. Say, wow, they're as good as Rentokil. And we take it so seriously. So, yeah, no, number one for me, every time, safety. You know, one of the things you and I have never really shattered about is back, I want to say it was 2007 or so. I was not even 30 yet. I decided that I was going to try to raise some money. You guys had bought early in North America. And I saw Pest Control is an interesting business. I'm a young kid. I decide, okay, I'm gonna track down Alan Brown. I'm going to send him a letter. So I said, hey, dear Alan, you know, I'm in the process trying to raise private equity funds that love to buy Rentokil North America. Dropped it in the post, went over the UK. I was in the US at the time. And anyway, gents, I've got your cappuccino, mate. Thank you very much. My pleasure. There's your Americano. And there's sparkling water. Yep. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, sir. No words. And what I imagine happened is Alan probably tracked you down and said, hey, we're starting to make noise and get noticed. The, uh, American crackpots are writing us letters. Handed you my letter. And you sent me a nice letter that says, Dear Paul, thank you for your interest. Cheers. Thank you. Rentokil North America is not for sale. It's core to our business. But hey, by the way, if you happen to find anything interesting for us, we're happy to take a look at it. And back in those days, you were the Corp Dev guy. Yeah. That's right. So you were doing what, I guess Chris, Chris Hunt's doing today? Back, back in those days, probably, uh, are you? I was going to resist the temptations. I was doing it, but better. No, I was always doing it differently. Yeah. And it's absolutely right. Um, so take me back, though. I remember you were, what was it, ICR? Is that the name? ICI. ICI. Yeah. So what, you got your start as an M&A attorney? Well, I suppose I'll go back. If you want to go, if you want to go back to the ancient history of, you know, my, I'd like to go back to a five-year-old Andy Ransom. So I'm grown. Anyways, I'm not sure I can remember that. I'll do my best. Yeah. Look, I mean, I, I was brought up in a tiny little village, but 500 people in the village. Um, my dad was a village postman. My parents didn't own their own home, didn't even own a car, actually. So I went to this tiny little village school, then I went to secondary school, which wasn't very good. And then I moved to a different part of the UK where I went to another school, which was even worse than the first one. So I don't, you know, reasonably, it was a lovely upbringing, wonderful upbringing, but, but a pretty, uh, down to unremarkable, unremarkable. And then, and schooling was, was equally unremarkable. You know, I was going to leave school at 16. I hadn't done particularly well. And I got a job. And I was going to leave. And then one day, I discovered that all my friends were staying on, um, to, to do the sixth form, as we call it. Um, and, and I thought, well, I don't want to be left behind. So I went back to school. Um, finished up, and I did really well. And then I went to university, studied law. And I did well doing that. And then I became a lawyer. Um, started in a London law firm. And then I joined this big chemical company. And one thing rolled, um, into another. And I suppose my time at ICI, I mean, I'm a deal guy. I'm an M&A transaction lawyer. And I did that for years and years and years. What I found, though, was that for me, I was a decent lawyer, but I was a great lawyer, but I was good at the transaction side. It loved. I loved the negotiation. I loved the deal. You still do. I still don't know. I'm an absolute deal junkie. And I, I can't get enough of that. And then on this one fateful occasion, um, I was walking down the office one afternoon. And, um, I saw the fax machine going. Remember a fax machine? Fax was coming through. And, and I picked up the fax off of the fax machine. And I read it. And oh my God. Um, we were being sued. My company, chemical company, was being sued. And Johnny Cochran, who'd just won the O.J. Simpson case, was suing my company for billions. What the hell? What was this all about? And it was all in relation to the Oklahoma City bombing. 168 people were killed in that incident. The biggest terrorist incident on U.S. soil. Um, at that time. And McVeigh and Nichols, if you remember, they were the guys who planted the bomb and caused this explosion. They'd used our chemicals. They'd used their fertilizer chemical, ammonium nitrogen, ammonium nitrate, to create the bomb. And Johnny Cochran brought this multi-billion dollar lawsuit. And even though it's good, you know, I was in a litigation lawyer. I wasn't an American attorney. I looked at that and I said, you know, I, I just want to be, I, I want to defend this. I want, this is outrageous. I want to do this. He never thought and said, stopped and said, well, maybe I'm not the right guy to do this based on my experience. Well, yeah, I'm sure I did. I'm sure it did for, you know, many, many occasions. I probably thought I shouldn't be doing this. But it was important to me. And, and it was, yeah. So I went to my boss and I said, look, I, I want to defend this. And he made all the arguments, you know, why it wasn't a good idea. But I moved the family to Canada. We lived in Canada for a few years, moved to America. And I spent five years defending the company against what was an outrageous lawsuit. And so that sort of took me away from mainstream deal making. It took me into a different world. I ended up running, um, part of the business when I was in America. Came back, um, I became head of M&A. And then, as these things happen, you know, after a wonderful 20-year history of doing all sorts of things in the company, we were taken over. Yep. And that was a sort of, well, okay, what do I want to do? Do I want to be a deal guy? Don't want to be an attorney? Do you want to be commercial? And there were five of us running ICI at the time. And three of us, um, sort of got together and said, well, maybe we could continue working together as a team. And one thing led to another. In this Rentokil thing, more, no idea what this is about. This came along. And three of us came into into the company. So I guess I got lucky because when I came in to Rentokil, um, they gave me all the stuff that he knew I could do, the deal stuff and the legal stuff. And they started to give me, they, I and my colleague started to give me some other responsibilities. And about a year in, I got Pest Control as the business to run. And instantly, I knew what a special business, what a special industry that was. And so it sort of, it's quite gradual, my move from deal making and corporate development and legal and all of that history too. I just landed in the right place. And it was such a, such a different business from what I'd been used to. That was about coming up with product and selling great products. This was all about people. And that was, that was the minute I knew, wow, I found my natural home. This was, this was a, a real light bulb moment for me. A very different type of business. Well, interlock, Rentokil was a very different business then than it was today when you came on board. I think that was around the time of the City Link troubles, right? Yeah. Bank. It's usually good coffee. Um, yeah, that was the back end of the City Link, uh, parcel carrier, yeah, loss-making business and losing 50 million pounds a year, I think it was. Didn't you guys sell it for like one pound and the assumption of debt or something like? Well, we sold it for one pound and we never got paid the pound. So, um, yeah. I got a long memory. You didn't hire debt collectors for that? No, no. So when you see, you came on kind of in the mid-2000s, um, I mean, could you have imagined back then, you know, obviously Rentokil is a very different business now, but, you know, if you think about the Andy Ransom that was doing Corp Dev and a variety of other things versus where you are now at the helm of what's one of the largest service organizations on the planet, really. Um, I mean, did you imagine that you and your team could potentially take Rentokil to such scale? It's a difficult one to answer because, you know, did I, did I actually sit there and envisage that that's what we'd go on to do? No. But would I have thought there's any reason we couldn't do it? No. I didn't. You know, what was really clear was that the pest industry is an incredible industry. And Rentokil had a fabulous position within that. And, and it had pockets of brilliance. And then pockets that hadn't really been looked at and nurtured for many years. It hadn't really had the investment in technology. It hadn't really had the investment in innovation. But at its core was this kernel of brilliant people, passionate people, that had been in the industry for years. And, and so there was definitely really good raw material to work with. I think, you know, I, I'm not saying we, we invented density. But once we really sat and modeled density and how do you create dense networks, that was a real light bulb moment to say, well, okay, that means we can do lots of incremental bolt-on M&A. They don't have to be national, international. They don't have to be big. If we're, if it's a good quality business, could that enhance the density in a town or in or a city and really add to the profitability? And that was a real moment. Once you realize that, and you had the basic raw materials of good people, good position, good brand, and then you could make those investments in technology and, and in innovation. Well, that became the reality. That became, you know, what the plan was. The, the right way plan, as we call it. Is that around the top? I mean, in prior years, obviously, there was City Link, there was these big hygiene businesses. Rentokil was not a majority pest control company when you came on board. Did you guys look at the portfolio and say, well, wait a second, pest control's highest margin, high visibility on cash flow, capital light, we need to focus on there? Thought through the density thing. When was the active decision made to say, you know what, let's become a world-class pest control organization? We did a little exercise. And it was based on Bain Consulting's, um, the four box grid. I think they came up with it in the 1950s. So this is not really, you know, cash cow. No, exactly. All of that. So, I mean, you know, one of the first jobs I, I was given was, was to come up with a strategy for the, for the company. And I've not really done a lot of strategy work before. But I thought, well, no, well, find Johnny Cochran. And, uh, exactly. I've been too busy doing other things. But I took the, the Bain four box grid, exactly, which sort of worked out well. Which of the businesses we shouldn't be in here at all? Which are the businesses that are low margin, low growth, and really haven't got any great potential? And that was, they're the ones we need to get out of. Which are the ones that actually have got all the right raw materials and, and passed, as you say, you know, good level of growth, good margin, the ability to roll up into something much, much bigger, the ability to make a step change in investment in technology and innovation. So that we put in the top, in the top right. Um, and then hygiene, which, which, you know, if we had more time, we could talk a lot about. And I do. Honey, Gene is actually as good as Pest Control. I've heard you almost say hygiene's the new password. We have said that because it, it, it's growing as quickly, its margins are slightly higher. Um, its customer retention rate is even higher. So you've actually got the same, it's again, it's a density play. So it was quite clear the businesses we should de-prioritize. And then it's quite clear the ones we should. Now, the question then, I was, I was like a ball for Britain on this subject. It isn't about the strategy. And it isn't about the plan. It's about execution. And anyone who's ever worked with me or, you know, hung around me long enough, knows that that's what I major on. A half-decent plan that you execute the living daylights out of will always give you better results than the perfect plan. So it really is about execution. And making sure that you deliver on the commitments you've set out to deliver. So I can go back and I look now for a decade of three-year plans. Where do we think we're going to be in the next three years? And then roll it forward another year, roll it for another year. I think we've beaten the plan every year over that 10 years. I was not trying to sound conceited. It's trying to make the point that if you execute the plan, good things happen. But for me, the whole, you know, the magic source. And this is, you know, this is how I feel. But I also know it's how the pest industry feels. For me, the whole model is about people. It starts and finishes with people. So the technology is good, and the brand's good, and what you do on the web's good, and innovation, and all of that. Somebody asked me, I was on stage on one of our events. And I was a comedian there. And he was, he was, um, trying to have a bit of fun with me, which was, which was fine. It wasn't 330 Germans and a German stand-up comedian asking me questions. And then translating the answers, oh boy, into German. It was, half the audience were really enjoying it. The other half were cringing like that. And he said to me, he says, you're a CEO. He said, it's not even a job. What do you even do? You know what? Oh, this is a bit awkward. You know, what do I do? What is the job? And I came up with this terribly lame answer. Lame, but sort of true. Okay, I said, I tell you what my job is. I gotta get 58,000 people out of bed every morning. I gotta get them to work. I've got to get them to do an amazing job for their customers. I've got to get them to do it safely. I got to supervision without supervision on their own. I gotta get them to do it happily. Then I gotta get them home again. In the hope that they come back to work the next day. And it was a, it was a really lame answer. But in that little anecdote is the kernel of what I think the business is all about. If you can find good people, engage with them, inspire them, get them, give them good training, encourage them to develop their careers with you, stay with you longer, good things happen. And that's the, that's the key to execution in the pest business, in the root-based business. So that's really what I've majored on. If anything else about the last 10 years, you know, what do I think I've done well or haven't done so well? I would say working on culture, working on people, has been the most important thing that I think that we've done at Rentokil. And I'm very, very proud of what we've achieved there. We don't just talk the talk. I mean, you guys have won so many, you know, best workplaces awards, which is really quite surprising. It's a pest control company. Like, how can it be such a great place to work? So what are some of the things that you, you know, what are some of the initiatives that you guys have done over the years to really make sure you're putting your colleagues first? I came up with this thing. I didn't come up with it. I, when I worked in America in my old company, I had a project called Employer of Choice. And I thought, I quite like the sound of that. Employer of Choice. So that means people want to come and work for us. So we sat down and did a lot of work with our colleagues and say, well, why do people want to come and, well, why do they want to stay? What is it about the job? And what is about Pest Control? What's about Rentokil that causes people to want to stay? So we put a whole program. It's less about initiatives. And it's, it's about creating this, this culture and this, this nice place to work. And people say to me, what's it like at Rentokil? And I always say the same thing. You know, it's a really nice company. It's nice people. Nice is very much underrated. So we're trying to create this warm, um, collegiate environment, supportive environment, that we help each other. And that goes an awful long way. But there's a very hard edge to it as well. We measure a lot of things. We, I can tell you, we got 2,000 branches around the world. I can tell you, well, don't ask me, but so you'll test me out. But every single branch around the world, how many vacancies we've got in each branch, in each row, how many people have applied for for that job, how many days has it taken to fill that. And we track that. We've been tracking that for years. So you can see trends in any city in the world. So you can actually see, is there a problem in the Shanghai branch? Or is, or is, no, it's always been challenging. It's the same in the Bay Area of San Fran. So the combination of of a supportive culture where we, we spend a lot of time, effort, money on training, we promote from within, we really try not to hire from the street, we promote every time there's a vacancy, promote from within. But also we track and we trace, you know, KPIs over a long period of time. So we can see, are we improving? We've invested a huge amount in training, frontline training, management training. And that's really, really. So we're investing in people. And is those are the things that we've done. I mean, you've said quite rightly, we've won awards. We won, indeed, we won the award for the best employer in the United Kingdom. And Apple came second. You were in the Apple Store. Yeah. So how does Pest Control? It's really by working on that, on that culture. We're trying to be a good, supportive, nice place to work. I hear it a lot. I mean, last time I, a couple months ago, I was having a, a beer with Chris. And I said, why don't you leave? You know, the UK is cold, it's dreary, taxes. Why don't you leave that place, go to the cold, pay no taxes, make more money? You got another run on you. And he said, you know, Rentokil is really a lovely place to work. I just couldn't see myself anywhere else. So I'm going to tap up my pages because, you know, I'm just letting you know, I like to touch the waters, just to see what's going on. Um, but yeah, and one of the nice things, you know, and I came is back to execution. If I look at my team, the global team around me, there's an awful lot of longevity there. There's, people have tended to build their careers here, and they've tended not to move on. Now, you can argue that, you know, sometimes they should leave, one or two times you'd say it would be good if somebody moved because then it allows someone else to come through. But if you've got a business and you're trying to do, as we are, a consistent execution model, having people that have been doing it for a number of years, and you'd see this typically in the industry, people who stay in the industry, is really, really helpful for that execution. So having people that have been with us 10 years and know what they're doing, they don't need to be, they don't need a lot of interventions. Yeah. Makes certainly makes my job an awful lot easier. But it also means that the reliability of that execution is so much higher. Maybe you lose a bit the margins because you've not got the latest thinking from, you know, somebody joining from outside the industry. But I, I do think that counts for a lot. Well, I think that's a great case study in juxtaposing Rentokil and Terminix, right? There was a lot of new people all the time from outside the industry with a bunch of brilliant ideas every 18 months. When I think about Rentokil North America, you know, you hire John Myers. He's he's been at the switch now for how many years? In fact, 14. Okay. 14, 15. 14 and a half. Came out. Did you hire John? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You came on a year before he did. That's right. So you hired John. You know, when I look at what Rentokil has done, um, versus like an anti-c-mix, anti-semics, I think, made an error. And this is my opinion. In the North American market, by putting a suite sending a suite over a brilliant guy, but very culturally different. And I think a lot of foreign companies, you know, a lot of American companies make that mistake, sending Americans over and vice versa. But was that a specific decision to hire an American to run an American business, or did it just work out that way? Because it just worked out that way. I mean, John, John was the right person at the right time. But it was interesting. When 14 years ago, our revenue North America would have been a couple hundred million, 200 something like that, 250 maybe. And I think, you know, we've grown. John's grown the business has grown. But the management team has has grown tremendously as well. And I, I'm not a big student of business. I don't read a lot of business school stuff. But, but I do remember reading years and years ago, Jack Welch in GE. And he said, the, the key to being a successful leader is surround yourself with people who are better than you and then get out of their way and let them get on with that. And that's more or less what he said. And that's really my management philosophy. So Michael, you mentioned Alan. My predecessor, Alan was a bit more central command and control. I'm a little bit more, well, let's say fair. I don't think people would recognize that description of me. But I don't try and do John's job for him. Um, I hold John to account. And then John's, John surrounds himself with, you know, a great team. And that team has evolved over the years as well, as the business has got bigger. And then, you know, with the wonderful merger with Terminix, we've now got an even bigger, more impressive North America team. So, no, we didn't, we didn't set out and say, right, you know, we need an American because it's America. But I, I think he's the right person and has done a super job over the last 14 years. And I'd worked in, in Canada and, you know, and America. And they got used to the accent. They figured it out eventually. So, yeah. Speaking of the Terminix acquisition, at what point in time did you make the decision in your mind, I'm doing this? I first looked at, um, Terminix over a decade ago when they're owned by CDNR. I went to New York. Um, I can't remember the year exactly, but I went to see CDNR. And I took a look at it. We couldn't afford it. And CDNR wanted to do the float in any event. But it was the first time I looked at it. Um, I, I see it as part of my job to know what the competition is doing. So it wasn't just Terminix we were looking at, but we, I looked at Terminix many times over the last 10 years and tracked them very carefully. Known most of the senior management over there from one time or another. A few months into Brett's tenure, that really was quite a, a green light for me because my biggest worry when you put two big, big businesses together, there's two reasons why big mergers go wrong. One is cultural misalignment. And the other is poor execution. So I didn't know Terminix well enough to know whether the cultural alignment would be as it needed to be. And I knew Nick, and I like Nick, and I, I knew him over the years, but I wasn't sure what the culture under Nick was. Um, but I started picking up intel, rumors, whatever, that under Brett, it sounded like we were, you know, we were drinking from the same, you know, fountain, or whatever. He uses different terminology to me. He talks about servant leadership. Without knowing it, that's always been my model as well. So I started to hear things. In one sense, good things about Terminix. Another sense, worrying things, because I kept thinking, well, if, if they execute, are they, are they finally waking up? Then they're gonna, they'll get away from us. Um, and so I really liked what I heard about Brett and the team that he'd put together. Um, so I suppose, yeah, it was, it was, you know, a few months into Brett's, um, tenure that I started to saying, okay, you know, we've been discussions in the past. So I, I knew a lot about the company. But the bit I didn't know was how that culture, um, fit would go. And that's been fantastic. So, so that was for me, was the bigger thing I needed to understand. Were, were we, um, you know, coming from the same? We've both been around 97, 98 years. The companies have got very similar history. But was there a, was there a danger of a big misalignment? Once I got comfortable, no, actually quite the opposite. Quite the opposite. The culture fit has been astonishingly good. And a lot of that is to the 100-year history. But a lot of it's also for the last couple of years, what Brett and his team have been trying to do. So I suppose, you know, that's when I really started looking, um, in earnest again. And I, you know, of course, it was COVID. It was the pandemic. And, and we couldn't, we couldn't meet. We're doing it all through videos. And eventually, I said, look, we're gonna have to meet. Here, and the United States of America wouldn't let me in. And so we had to meet up in Toronto, um, in an airport hangar somewhere. So that was, what that was when we met. So it was, you know, 18, yeah, well, two years ago now. Under Brett, he really focused on retention of employees. And there was the kind of the Terminix turnaround playbook, where he wasn't going to go out and just buy a bunch of stuff and do what folks in the past have done. I mean, is is Brett's playbook still in play now as part of Rentokil with the Terminix organization? It is. Yeah. It is. I mean, it's one of the, the neat things about the, the marriage, arguably the neatest thing is because, you know, being a deal guy and having done a lot of merger type activity at my time, quite often the financial case for the merger is made out of of synergies and savings. It's all about, you know, how many heads can you cut? This was different. This is Terminix with the leading brand, residential and termite brand in North America, with a big position in raising, in a big position in termite. And then here's Rentokil, who's got the leading global position in commercial, with a big brand in commercial. So you've got these incredibly complementary fits. And as we've gone into it, in the, you know, bringing the businesses together, Brett's position has been, hey, you know, we're not going to try and tell you we think we know how to do commercial better than Rentokil. Let's just take the Rentokil playbook, and we'll adopt that. And we've, to a greater or lesser extent, we've taken a very similar position with with residential and termite. I mean, termite, we were always small in. And resi, it's only in America. We're big in resi outside of the United States. We do some really here in Australia and a few other. But, but it's not as big a market. We've always been the commercial outfit. So by playing to each other's strengths and, and letting, um, the natural leader lead the playbook, as you put it. Yeah. Absolutely. So the answer is yes. We're working very hard. And then we, we're trying to do best to breed. We're trying to say, yeah, but have we got some stuff that we do that's better? Yeah, let's bring that in. And have, and they've got some stuff. So we're, we're sort of trying to make sure we, we mesh the best of both. But, um, the Terminix playbook under Brett is absolutely what we're implementing. I can imagine that, you know, you mentioned the brand. I mean, clearly in North America, Rentokil has for over a decade now been an amalgamation of a variety of local brands. Of course, Rentokil, the name is not nearly as known in North America as Orkin and Terminix. So I got to imagine that the brand was an important aspect of this acquisition for you guys. Yeah. Look, for me, it comes back to what I was saying earlier in philosophy. It was about people. And yeah, so you mentioned colleague retention. If I had a single thing that caused me to worry about putting the two organizations together, and I'd get asked this all the time by investors, you know, what keeps you awake at night? What are you concerned about? Colleague retention is the single one that I would, I would put out there. Because back to my terrible story about the German comedian, you know, if you can't get people out of bed in the morning, come to work, or or if you can get them to come to work, and then they leave you again in the next six months, that's a really difficult hand to play. And no matter what industry you're in. So that for me was, was really where my focus was. Much less about brand and all the other things and synergies that I knew that would be good. In the question is, could we together, could we address that and make that better? And I'm feeling, you know, really, really good about that. So the brand was, yeah, it's a wonderful brand. It's got the best, you know, brand recognition in Pest Control, uh, of any brand in, in the United States. So, um, but yeah, I know it is a wonderful, it's a power brand, as we call it. How has the folks out in the field, the frontline colleagues, dealt with this over recent months during the, the integration? I mean, have you had any retention issues? Anyone, you know, graves of exodus because I don't like Rentokil or I don't like Terminix? Or no? Um, it is funny, though. It's a funny old industry. I think I suppose all industries are the same. I, I had some, one of the investors about three, four months ago, saying, oh, we hear people, people are leaving the company. And they, well, where are you hearing that? And, oh, well, you know, we're, you know, we're hearing that, we're hearing it. And that's a little bit. And I tracked it down. And, you know, it was like six people. Yeah. And six people that we've invited, you know, made available to the market, as they say. No, it's been good. It's been, it's been really good. So colleague retention is up, um, in both businesses. And that takes some saying. So frontline colleague retention has improved. Needs to improve further. Um, but that's improved. Management retention's great. Obviously, we, you do have to make changes when you bring big businesses together. So some people have had to leave the company. Some of that has been voluntary. Most of it's been voluntary. Um, but, but nothing out of the usual. So no, I'm actually delighted with where we are on colleague retention. But it's still one of the biggest opportunities to get the overall frontline colleague retention across the combined business up to the sort of levels that we want it to be. I would say is, is probably the single most important focus for me over the next couple of years. How have you dealt with, you know, the harmonization of comp structures across carefully? Yeah. Well, where we're at the moment is, we've done a lot of work on the benefits piece. Outside of America, people don't know what I'm talking about. And you all know what benefits are. But we don't use different language over here. So with things like medical and dental, things like paid time off, things like all of the, all the ancillary benefits, we've done a big piece of work and we've moved on that already. So we're well on the way to harmonizing benefits. Mention safety. We've done things like them. And they may seem like small things, but safety shoes. So Rentokil colleagues had safety shoes. Terminix colleagues didn't. But of course, we're going to give everyone the same. The same with bee suits and other equipment. So we've moved on those sort of, uh, ancillary things. Pay plan is in scope. Um, but the answer to that question is carefully. You don't miss. We have pay plans in in group based businesses and Pest Control without a lot of care and attention and thought. So we will be moving, and we will be moving to a single, uh, pay plan. But we'll do it carefully. We've got a pilot going. We'll get through that. We'll learn from the pilot. We'll make some changes. And we'll move. So, but we're on track for where we expected to be. We're not behind the plan, but we're not rushing that. We've got to get that right. So, um, but yeah, you've got to take care with it. When you think about the fact that you guys own a huge chunk of North America now, you know, since the acquisition of Earth, and more acutely starting around 2012, 2013, you guys have been on somewhat of an acquisition terror, particularly in North America. Yeah. And, you know, I would imagine it's not been bad for you, Paul. It's been great. That's why after our coffee at the end of the day here, I'm buying you the point. Um, but champagne. You guys are going to be more selective, I would imagine, going forward in North America. Yeah. Look, I think, um, as you say, we, we have been doing a lot of acquisition. We're not the only ones, of course. You know, our competitors have private equities gotten very busy in that space. Um, but we've got a lot to do in the next two to three years. We've got a lot to do to integrate, uh, across the, the two businesses. And that's going to keep us busy. Um, but we're pacing ourselves. We could rush this. We could say, I'm going to crash it together in 18, 24 months. I don't think that would be a good plan. So we're going to take 36 months to put together now. At any one point in time, that may mean that certain different parts of the business are cut tied. You know, they're just going to be so busy on that that we really shouldn't give them something else to do like integrate another business. On the other hand, big chunks of the business will either already have been integrated or not yet slated for integration for another 12 months, which means we're going to have opportunities. Um, what I'm not going to allow to happen, um, if there's a must-have asset out there, and there's an asset that we've prized for years, and we've been working on it for years, and we know, I'm not going to let that, I'm not going to miss out on that because once it's gone, it's gone. Um, but it's just acquired by a financial smart system, in which case, you know, we'll make an appointment now and then come see us in three to five years time, I guess. Um, but, but if there are, and we all know that sometimes they're more sort of nice to have. Yeah, that's a good business, but it doesn't, you know, it doesn't tick all of the boxes. We'll probably pass on some of those in the towns or the cities where we're already incredibly busy. Must-have deals will do now. If the must-have deal comes right on top of an integration, we'll just, we'll just incubate it. We won't integrate it. We'll run it as a separate business for a couple of years, and then we'll come back and integrate it in a couple of years. So, um, look, and then the other thing, of course, is we're in 93 countries around the world. Um, and 92 at the moment. There's some Terminix integration in a few markets, you know, Ireland, Sweden, Mexico, Honduras. That the vast majority of our markets, we're, you know, totally open for doing acquisition. So probably means we'll do a little bit more outside of the states, outside North America, and a little bit more in hygiene and well-being, um, while we're giving ourselves a little bit of space in the states. But, but as I say, I'm not going to miss any must-have deals in, in the US. But you're kind of running out of inventory, so to speak. I mean, there's a scarcity of premium assets now in the pest control space. I know they regenerate and all that. But between Anticmax and Rollins and Rentokil, and now the, it's, you know, financial sponsor season, you know, there's not, you know, have these conversations with Alex all the time about the fact that even in North America, you've got some old businesses, you've got some interesting ones, but you don't have the supply of quality assets that you once had just a few years ago. I, yes and no. I mean, you know, I think you're right, certainly.

At the top end, we all look at PCT 100, right? So, at the top end of PCT 100, there's been an awful lot of activity. By definition, if you look at the bottom end of PCT 100, the smallest company in the PCT 100 is still significantly bigger than it was a few years ago. So, it is, it is regenerating, and many of the smaller ones will go on to be medium-sized ones, and several of the medium-sized ones will go on to be great quality companies.

The other thing that is worth remembering is the vast majority of companies that have come into the rental family when they were trading on their own, we're probably doing 10% operating margin, yeah. And when they come into a network like ours or our big competitors, you still get a big opportunity to increase the margins just because of all the density factors. And so, they don't have to be, you know, the biggest. They don't have to be operating at the top of the pile. They just have to be a good business with good people, good customer base. And so, we can still, there's still plenty of runway. But I agree, you know, by definition, a lot of deals have been done that won't be available to be done. But there's still an awful lot. You still got 18 to 20,000 pest control companies in the States, and that's after a decade of consolidation. So, I'll continue to be, I think, I think you'll, you know, I think you're all right if that was the purpose of your question. I think you're all, yeah, you know, since you've come on at Rentokil, you guys have focused on innovation and technology, I think more so than any other player in the space. And I'm not just talking about, you know, tech-enabled pest control. I'm talking about, I mean, I remember back when we did the VDA deal, that was the Vector deal, yeah. And I remember sitting with John and sitting with Alex, and we spent a couple of months going over it. And John didn't want to do that deal. You did. And it was a, you know, they got the scientists and the lab coats. They had very differentiated capabilities, and it put Rentokil on the map as basically the larger, largest provider of vector disease control in the world.

In addition to that, you know, most recently, we did that deal in Israel. So, you know, we talked about gun rights. Let's talk about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. So, you guys officially entered Israel by an IPM Romans business, which, you know, I got to spend a lot of time over there looking at its AI-enabled, you know, optics and all the things. What is it with you in innovation and technology, and where do you ultimately see yourself taking this business over time?

Let me split that into two, because I think technology is not necessarily the same thing as innovation. So, let's start with tech. All right. Um, I like to try and keep things simple because I'm a genuinely, I'm a simple guy. I'm a small village, all of that. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Story. We'll move on. But so, I say simply to my team, why are we investing in technology? What's the, what's the reason why we're doing this? Keep it simple. We invest in technology for one of two things. We are either trying to make it more efficient, more effective, lower cost for us to provide the service to you. So, anything that we can do in the back of house that doesn't negatively impact your service but can lower our cost to serve has got to be a good thing. And that's a, that's a margin play. More excitingly is any technology that we can use to give you, the customer, a better service. If we can give you a better service, and ideally a service for which you value as a premium service, then that's even better. So, if it doesn't meet one of those two criteria, we're not doing it. Okay? Unless it's, unless it's making us more efficient, or it's giving us something neat and cool and innovative to sell to customers.

On the innovation side, the thing with pest control, you know, it is a wonderful, I always say it's the original subscription business before subscription businesses got trendy. You know, it is the gift that keeps on giving. If you've got a contract with your customer, if you deliver great service, if you keep them happy, keep them pest-free, solve their problems, be easy to deal with, be nice, be transparent with your billing, um, then they should, they should be staying with you. Yep. They really, they really should be. So, um, now that will only take you so far. The question is, okay, if you want to keep growing, for us, we think that the differential is innovation. Innovation is the lifeblood of organic growth. That's, that's our view. That's only the, we're coming up with new things to solve existing problems, or we're coming up with new things to solve new problems. And so, um, that's, that's our view. Now, increasingly, that is a lens that you've got to put over the business in terms of sustainability, non-toxic chemicals, low energy consumption. You've got these big themes now that, again, if my view is, if you're not innovating, you're dead. And so, um, some of it is responding to what is happening in the big wide world. Some of it is trying to lead the industry. And we are now, you know, by far and away the biggest player in the industry. And with that comes a responsibility, and we think we've got to do some things differently in the industry, um, and for the benefit of the industry. And some of that is to find new solutions which are, um, less burdensome on the planet. So, for us, innovation, I will say, innovation is not a product, and it's not a process. It's a state of mind. Innovation is, you know, are you open to new ways of working, new ideas? And whatever your job in the company is, are you open to that? In fact, we encourage you to innovate and then share it with the rest of us. And even when it's been a failure, please share it with us, because we won't then copy it somewhere else because we know you've already tried it. So, I think innovation really is very, very important.

You look at, you know, as you talk about the Israeli deal, and, um, I was asked to do an interview with the Financial Times about three weeks ago. I read the article. Well, yeah, but the interview has nothing to do with that. The interview was all about M&A. It was all about, tell us about deals and tell us about Terminix. And at the very end of the session, the, uh, journalist said, is there anything I should have asked you? And I said, I said, you perhaps you could have asked about the most recent deal we did in Israel. And I mentioned, you know, artificial intelligence for for rats. And he said, what, what? Tell me about that. And, you know, I told him a little bit. The story became front page of the FT and the weekend, and then Sky TV called up and wanted an interview. The Guardian. Yeah, it was sort of everywhere. It's like, just sort of makes a point, really, that I think people are interested in the latest technology. And people tend to think about pest control as not very innovative. Well, there's a lot of innovation going on in that space now. Whether you can monetize, you know, facial recognition for rodents, that's another debate for another day. But the fact that you can do it, and it will tell you about rodent behavior, and we all say with pest control, but pest prevention is far more important than pest control. If you can, if you can prevent the problem before it becomes an infestation by seeing early where the issue is and where it's coming from, then you're going to be a better pest controller. So, I think innovation is incredibly important. But some of it we do for a bit of a halo effect, to be the innovator. Some of it we do, um, really to come up with the solutions for the future.

You have your innovation center here in the UK, and I understand you've got plans to build one in Texas, is that right? Uh, yeah, we're, we haven't quite announced it, but we just have now in Dallas. Congratulations. Thanks for that, Paul. So, yeah, no, we're, we're going to open an innovation center for residential, um, for termite, um, based in Dallas. And then we're going to have an extension of that in Mobile, Alabama for termite. And so, what does the innovation center do? Is it a bunch of scientists tooling around with, you know, mixes together? I mean, you've never been to 100 before. You should come. You should come to it. Malcolm invited me out this time around, and I just hadn't had the opportunity to do it. And I, I skipped the innovation center visits when Ronan was doing that back in, uh, yeah.

A lot of what we're doing is, um, observing animal behavior, okay? If you can understand the behavior of, in this case, the rodents, yeah, but it extends also to termite behavior, etc. If you were trying to work out what do they do, how do they, you know, if you can understand their habitat, understand where, where they live, what their patterns of behavior are, then you can start to anticipate. And from a pest control or pest prevention point of view. So, in the UK, one, we have lots and lots of rats and lots of mice, and we've got the largest collection of insects in Europe. And then we've got a mosquito room, you've got fly rooms. So, you're testing every ILT insect-like trap on the market. So, we test our competitors' devices, we test our own innovations. So, we're trying to make sure that we can stand behind the claims that we make from an efficacy point of view. It's where the regulatory team signs off that it meets all the regulatory standards and obligations. So, yeah, we have, we have PhD scientists and technicians in the one in the UK. We've based that where we also do a lot of our frontline technician training. Okay? So, we get the techs come in, and they have great fun, you know, learning. Um, but they also tell our scientists, you don't suppose you've got a solution for this, have you? And they, so we get some of the ideation coming from the front, the frontline pragmatists versus the, yeah, that's all very interesting, but have you got something? Yeah. Right. Which is where tracking gel came from. One of the techs said, you know, we all go in there and we've got this blue light and we're checking. And we came up with this because one of the techs said, yeah, why can't you come up with a, you know, like a tracking gel so we could see exactly where they've been, just put shine a light on that sort of thing. So, but it's, you know, I was in our tech center about four years ago, and I was talking to the guy I was in charge of it, and he was incredibly excited. And he said, you won't believe this, we've, he said, we've worked out that fleas are attracted to a certain spectrum of light. And, you know, here's the spectrum. And I'm like, well, it is impressive. I said, can you tell me how much work we do for flea control? Sort of burst his bubble. We're like, no, we don't really. Yeah, there's not a market. And so, I have to be the, you know, the miserable guy says, no, we're not doing that because we do, we'll only invest in things back to, you know, can it lower our costs, or is it going to represent an exciting market opportunity? There's so many cool things that the scientists have come up with that we've said, that the market's not big enough for that. We won't make enough money. But so, we have to have this very hard-edged commercial side to decide what are we going to work on. But that would be the same idea in the new facility in the States. But we're going to focus there on resi and on termite. And so, over here in the UK, we'll focus on the commercial side. We'll keep the rodent center of excellence over here in the UK, and we'll be working more on flying, biting, crawling insects. In the States, it was interesting doing the Israeli transaction, but it made me start to think about how you guys grow around the world. You know, you've got pest control on your other business lines. It appears to me that you try to identify a country that, although it may be a little bit premature today, it's got some promise. Yeah. And you want to plant a flag there, even if you, you know, I don't know, make up a small country out in the middle of nowhere. You buy a small business there, and now you've got Rentokil, and you can grow as the economy grows and develops. Is that kind of your philosophy? How do you?

Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, I've mentioned earlier, we are in 93 countries. So, there's really two sorts of, maybe three, acquisitions we look for. And keep it simple to start with. First one is density-building acquisitions in the cities. And it's very much a city-based game. And you shouldn't be thinking continents or countries, think in cities. When we went into Brazil, we went into the top three cities rather than trying to get, you know, plant your pan-Brazilian coverage. So, the first one is, if it's a city we're already in, can we find nice bolt-ons? Because they give us density, and that's wonderful. So, that's, that's the easiest, if you like.

The second one, you talked about planting flags. So, we have this thing called Cities of the Future. And we've worked out, guest worked out, not sure which of the cities are going to be mega-cities in 2050. Which are the countries that we think are going to have differential growth? But within the countries, which are the cities that we think are going to have differential growth? Because I, because I pretty much can guarantee, if you can show me a country with really good GDP growth, I can show you cities will be growing faster than the average GDP. And I can show you that pest control within those cities will be growing faster than the city GDP. So, you've got real opportunity for growth. So, for those countries, we've got the list of the cities that we want to go after. Okay? Now, within those cities, can we find the best pest control company, or the second or the third best, but not the 50th best? Right? Can we find someone who's really, really good, that's got that local reputation? They've probably been doing it for a few decades. If we can win that, we probably then change it to a Rentokil brand name. And then we go back to category one. Let's, okay, now we've got the first one. Can we get the second and the third and the fourth within that area? Because then we've got density. If we're right, we won't be right every time. By 2050, we're going to have an incredibly profitable and very dense set of operations in a bunch of cities that frankly, in 2050, will be very well known because they're mega-cities, whereas the day they're not quite as well known. Which means it takes us into some territories that some other people will feel a little bit, a little bit more queasy. We've just gone into Pakistan. I used to run my old business in my old company in Pakistan. I know the country well. Pakistan, as a market, is not for the faint-hearted. You know, we've gone into Lebanon and we've gone into Argentina. And some of these will not be instantly successful overnight. But if we get that densification, urbanization, fast GDP growth, and build up over time, I think, you know, those will be incredibly exciting opportunities. And that's what we're doing around the world. But you've got to weather some storms. I mean, I think you guys closed that poker acquisition immediately prior to the government issues in Lebanon. You know, lights turning off. And, yeah, yeah. And look, some of the markets, you could, there'll always be a reason for not doing it. I'm in Argentina. I've been looking at Argentina for, you know, 15 years. And I'm not sure, not sure, not sure. And we've gone in. And because now it's looking a bit, yeah, but it'll be all right. It'll be all right. If you, if you take your time horizon out to 2050, these will be successful. Even if a few are not successful, then the majority are. The value creation opportunity on the majority dwarfs the one or two that are not successful. So, you have to be, you have to be prepared to accept that you're not going to roll sixes, as my old boss used to say, you're never going to get it right all of the time. But if you're so concerned about the downside, you'll never make any progress there at all. So, I think that's the approach we've taken. And I think we can only be judged on that one in about 10 or 20 years' time, not in the next, you know, six or 12 months. But I actually think that will be, um, incredibly exciting. And again, these are markets, not every time, but very often, these are markets where there's less competition down there. So, I wouldn't see too many people knocking on the doors in Pakistan when we were down there in terms of our normal competitors, um, which, which I think is also interesting as well. So, it gives us, you know, gives us some opportunity to build scale in those markets perhaps a little bit more easily than in the markets where we're butting up against the union. Absolutely.

Characters, you know, being a publicly traded company, oftentimes executive management's focused on the near term. You know, it makes a lot more sense in the near term today to go out and do incremental deals in cities, you know, that on the necessity players, right? Yeah. Whereas here at Rentokil, I mean, you guys are clearly doing those, but you're also saying, okay, let's look out 10, 15, 20, 30 years and start to plant these seeds now, which I don't see many others are doing. Yeah. And look, I mean, I've already done two jobs in my, I did 20 years at the last couple, and 15 years so far at this one. So, I'm a long-term, I'm a long-term thinker. Unfortunately, you're a PLC, or a public company, you've got to do both. Yeah, you've got to do both. Because if, if all you're doing is the short-term stuff, then one day that might run out. Yeah. So, you better be, better been thinking on the medium and the long term. So, I think it is important that you, you do both. You can do both of them. I'd be interested if, you know, if I'm fortunate enough to have another, you know, 20, 30 years on the planet, and I look back at my time at Rentokil, I wouldn't be surprised if the thing that the biggest achievement will actually be the global footprint that we will have built and the technology that we will have built, as much as the positions in the existing markets that we built today. So, I think you need, you need both.

As you enter new markets, is pest control always the edge of the wedge, or are you also looking on, you know, sometimes you enter on a hygiene side? Most of the time, it's pest. Um, you know, I've talked to you before, and I'm on a mission to convince the stock markets that a hygiene business should be valued at a similar rating to the pest control. Um, but they lead the lead entry in nearly all of our markets has been pest. Occasional hygiene, but hygiene with pests on the side, sometimes as opposed to pests with hygiene on the side. But it's nearly always pest. So, I mean, how big is hygiene as from a market perspective versus pest? And typical from a global market?

I was waiting. It's almost impossible to answer that question because pest, you can, it's an industry, and you can say. Was hygiene is such a broad church, it covers so many things. I mean, you wouldn't know that we have a, we have a dental hygiene business that, that, you know, that tube you put in your mouth, and all the rubbish that comes and goes down the tube. Well, that goes into a machine in a filter, and we provide the filters. And then we take the filter and we reprocess the gunk to get the precious metals back out of that. And then we get gold and palladium and all that. You wouldn't imagine that's a business that we're in. It's a business that we're in. Um, when the gold price is high, we make out very well. When it's low, we don't do so well. So, we've got lots and lots of adjuncts to hygiene, so it makes it really quite difficult to answer the question, how big is the market? But what you see in hygiene is a very, very fragmented market. You don't see, you've got Syntech in the States, you've got CWS Boca in Europe, but you don't have many big, big players other than us. Um, and which is kind of what makes it exciting. And in a post-pandemic, oh, this is a world where we are more concerned about hygiene, whether it's air hygiene, surface hygiene, it is an opportunity. So, we're, you know, we're putting a lot of effort in there. We've not spent as much in the M&A space by a long way as we have in pest control. But there is an opportunity to continue to build that. And there's, would you say there's as much opportunity in hygiene from an acquisition perspective as there isn't pest? Is that, is that you asking as a broker, or or is that, I'm just, I'm curious because, you know, the analysts talk about this all the time, right? And I actually get these questions, and I don't know anything about hygiene, but, you know, they ask me, like, you know, Andy's always talking about it being the new pest. What is this? How does it work?

It's hard work to build through acquisition just because there aren't many medium-sized players. Yeah. There's there's a gazillion small players. There isn't a town or or a city in the world in the developed world that doesn't have a high number of hygiene players. But it means it's a very slow process. You know, you'd have to buy buy city. And, you know, if you could find a national player, then that would make things go a lot faster. But we, to be honest, we've been much more selective going after pest. And then side of plate, there's a nice hygiene, there's a nice hygiene one. But as I said earlier, if, if we do slow things a little bit in '23, '24, and pest control United States, it means we will push a bit harder on the hygiene opportunity outside of the States over the next few years. So, there's an opportunity for sure.

Rentokil sheds some service lines over the years. Do you, you know, outside of pest and hygiene, do you focus, spend any time internally talking about like, hey, maybe we should get into this? Maybe we should get into that? You know, you think about like Orkin running lawn care in the U.S. It's a small amount, but, you know, Terminix, of course, was an amalgamation of a bunch of things under ServiceMaster. What we would look for, and what we do look for, is it's got to be route-based, density business. It's got to be a business that has, um, a regulatory requirement. The wonderful thing about pest control, and certainly in commercial environments, is if you don't have pest control, you can lose your license or you can be prosecuted, etc. So, there's a regulatory component, a density component, there's got to have some barrier to entry. Yeah. And zero barriers to entry, lawn, I think, is a zero barrier to entry example. So, there are some in, in the sort of close-by spaces. And you gave a couple of examples. You know, Vector isn't pure play pest control, but it is a nice contiguous space. You know, weed management, that sort of thing. Lake management is another one. So, yeah, we're always looking and scoping. It's easier to see what those areas are in hygiene than it is in pest control. But, yeah, we've got a few, um, irons in a few fires.

When you look around the world now, we've got some potential dark clouds on the horizon from an economic perspective, right? You know, yeah, interest rates ratcheting up. You've got, well, we've all watched the news about what's going on here in recent months in the UK. Yeah. What sort of, clearly pest and hygiene are extremely recession-resilient. And you were around back in the great financial crisis. Yes. I mean, I think Rentokil has done a great job. I remember when COVID came out, you guys got out in front of this very, very quick. What sort of conversations do you have with your team about what might be coming down the pike from an economic perspective?

I mean, I think it is interesting. COVID is not a bad example of, in a global business, you can see the impacts in some cases happening before they've happened in your backyard. So, in COVID, we could see China and Hong Kong and Taiwan, and that was one of the reasons we were able to pivot so quickly because they said, everyone's going around in white suits, yeah, you know, spraying disinfection. Okay, right, that means we can think about that. Um, in terms of, in terms of, um, you know, recession, I think jury's out on that one as well, as to whether we're actually going to have recession. I don't think we're going to have a broad-based deep recession in the way that people were concerned about 12 months ago. Even in this country, which I would say of all of my 93, this is the toughest economic. This is why you got month. The other day, it's tough out here at the moment. Yeah. It was a former teacher. It was out of work. Yeah. So, even here, I don't, I don't think we're necessarily headed for recession. And, you know, the stock markets, like, if you think about it from a stock market point of view, the stock market will be the first to see past these economic conditions. So, the stock market's already beginning to think, maybe we're seeing, seeing calling the end of this, calling the, you know, our interests. Can I get you anything else to drink? It's been an end of a long day. And even when we have a point, if you're buying, um, yeah, yeah, that'd be nice. Pint times two. Yeah. Yes, brilliant. I'll bring them over. Fantastic. Thanks. Um, yeah, so, so as we as we look, I would say the North American economy is holding up. You know, conditions are tougher, but it's holding up pretty well. Um, Europe, Germany's wobbling. France is holding up better than people expected. Even the UK, I think, is, you know, you can begin to see that maybe we're seeing passes. I think, you know, the rates of inflation, falling interest rates are probably close to their peak. They may go up a little bit more. So, we have to work out how to trade through that for the next probably 12 months. And then, then, you know, what happens on the other side, there will be a rebound. So, I think for us, you know, we haven't, we haven't, the danger, I think, is to is to fall into the trap of of suddenly switching into, ah, you know, yeah, it's exactly. And so, you don't want to, I don't think you want to do that. You want to be able to trade through. I said, we were the original, pest is the original subscription business. We've taken the position on price that that we will try to recover input cost inflation through price, not to gain an advantage on our customers, but to recover our input cost inflation. And as we see those input costs beginning to abate, then our position on pricing will abate accordingly. But the last 12, 18 months, we've done a very, very good job on recovering input cost inflation. And you, I think you can see that, you know, beginning to to come off a little bit. So, I'm supposed to, I'm on the bullish side of where the economy is going, not because I think the next 12 months are going to be particularly easy. I don't think they will be. But I think life after that, you can begin to see where the recovery comes from. So, our view is, don't, you know, don't start cutting down to the muscle. Don't start, you know, and I've seen other companies that they back off on things like training. We've never backed off on training, even in after 2008. You always invest in people and always invest in the growth side of the business. But you just have to be a little bit more, a bit smarter about where you where you put your capital to work in recessionary times. But I'm reasonably bullish, if I'm honest. Yeah.

Switching topics here is something more interesting. You know, I, I wrote that note about your Taylor Swift, Swifty. Did you read that little poem, that little sonnet? I, I read everything that you put out. Yeah. Cheers. Thank you, Joe. Thanks. Enjoy those. Thank you very much. She's full. Cheers, Andy. Yeah. So, I don't know if Brett's really a Swifty, or he was saying that to try to be cool. Let's be very, very clear. My kids think this is madness. So, how'd this all come about? Oh, I don't know. I mean, I'm, I'm, I do listen to a lot of music. And normally when I go to the gym, and I just put stuff that I like on. And then I guess I've always quite liked Taylor Swift going back. And I'm all those years when she, when she was country and all the rest of it. But I had this, this this shocking statistic during lockdown one. I got the thing from Spotify, and it said at the end of the year that I was in the top 0.5 of uh Swifters, you know, people listening to Taylor Swift. You beat out millions of teenage girls. Exactly. Exactly. Which is which is a tragic thought. And then the, and then 12 months later, they sent me another email saying I was now in the top 0.25. I'm in the top quarter, which is, um, really, really a strategy. I took my daughter, um, to, uh, Wembley, you know, football stadium, when Taylor Swift played three years ago. I remember I went to the gents, I went to the urinals. And the urinals in Wembley is huge. I mean, it goes on, it's a wall of. I was the only person in the gents. I mean, basically, there were not many middle-aged men, you know, with prostate conditions, you know, going to a Taylor Swift concert. But, yeah, no, I just, you know, what can I say? I, I love to think. So, here, didn't they pick you up and say, what are you doing here, buddy? It was worse than that, because I actually took a photo of it to post it to my family and say, look how sad is this. I'm the only bloke at the concert. But I don't know what I continue really. It's, um, she comes from Reading, Pennsylvania, which of course is where, uh, Rentokil comes from. Ehrlich, Ehrlich land. So, yeah, that's, I can't make that as an excuse. Me. No, you can't. I'll take it today. It's fantastic. And speaking of the beer, this is, what do you call this guy? Richie's Boozer. This is Guy Richie's Boozer. Yeah. The great Guy Richie. I'd never heard the term boozer until this morning. Is that all right? It's the first time. Yeah, yeah. Is anywhere you've been then? No, I guess I've stayed away from the booze. Um, you know, Guy and Richie, right? Indeed. I can't understand any of the films. I don't know what people are talking about. Exactly. Then you've understood them. Gypsies, what are you doing? Potter. Yeah, you can't really understand much of what is being said. You tell me they are proper, um, sort of East End villain type movies. And, and we love them. What's your favorite Guy Ritchie film? Um, probably Lock, Stock. It's not Two Smoking Barrels, outstanding film. But I do love The Gentlemen, which is the, which is the most recent world big movies. So, I'm not sure. Health warning, the language in that film is pretty shocking. But I do love it. He's, um, yeah, so he's quite the character. Who was married to, uh, your very own. I lived in, well, not so far from here, but, yeah, no, he's a very cool character. And just been talking to the barman who said he does come in here from time to time. So, I'm waiting any minute now for him to join us. We might have a better chance to get Taylor Swift in here. Well, you could do that as well. You could do that as well. And if you can get me a couple of tickets, um, I'm sure with your, with your contacts. But let's see what we can do. There we go. It's been great catching up with you. It's always good to see you. Yeah, it's been really good. I've enjoyed it. So, um, glad you're having time and a good time in London, apart from getting, uh, Marmot. Yeah. Yes. Cheers. Cheers.