Global professional services leader, JTC, today (25 July) granted a total of 4,748,909 awards over ordinary shares of £0.01 each in the company, amounting to c. £50m in value, to all eligible current permanent group employees, excluding the executive directors, under its Employee Incentive Plan (EIP).

In a statement, JTC said this followed the successful delivery of the company’s ‘Galaxy Era’ business plan, which saw it double in size as benchmarked against its 2020 performance and was achieved by the end of 2023, two years ahead of schedule.

Since listing on the London Stock Exchange in March 2018, the group has quadrupled in size.

The Jersey headquartered group highlighted that "shared ownership has been at the heart of JTC's culture for the past 26 years, making all employees owners of the business and contributing to the company’s financial success, industry-leading employee retention and attractiveness as an acquiror".

The programme has been widely commended and is the subject of a current Harvard Business School MBA case study.

The EIP, following in the footsteps of predecessor schemes, aims to recognise and reward long-term performance throughout the entire Group. This alignment of employees' and shareholders' interests is closely tied to the Company’s multi-year business plans, known as eras.

The Galaxy era EIP Awards will be satisfied by the transfer of existing Ordinary Shares held by the JTC PLC Employee Benefit Trust (EBT) to each participant. As such, this granting of shares under the EIP is non-dilutive to the existing shareholders of the group.

The Galaxy award is the fourth in JTC’s history, since its shared ownership model was established by CEO Nigel Le Quesne in 1998, when he set up the company’s first EBT and seeded it with half of his own equity held at the time.

Since then, the total value created for employee-owners of the business has grown to c. £400m, with much of that still held by JTC’s current employees globally.

Nigel Le Quesne (pictured), CEO of JTC, said: “I am delighted that the hard work and commitment to client service excellence of our people has resulted in a shared ownership award for all our c. 1,800 employee-owners globally, in recognition of their successful delivery of our Galaxy era business plan, in which they doubled the size of the Group in just three years.

"Our commitment to shared ownership aligns the interests of our people, our wider shareholder base, our clients and other stakeholders and has already energised the business in this first year of our Cosmos era.”

The group also made a pre-close interim update today citing "a positive start to 2024, the first year of its Cosmos era business plan, during which it aims to once again double revenue and underlying EBITDA from that reported in 2023". The business has quadrupled in size since IPO in 2018 through the successful delivery of its Odyssey era (2018 to 2020) and Galaxy era (2021 to 2023) business plans.

Net organic revenue growth in H1 2024 was ahead of the company’s updated guidance of 10%+ per annum, with record H1 new business wins of £18.8m, up 28.8% on the same period last year (H1 2023: £14.6m). The new business enquiry pipeline going into H2 remains strong across both divisions, with win rates of c. 50%.

During the period, the group said it had delivered against its well-established guidance metrics for underlying EBITDA margin (33% - 38%) and leverage (1.5x – 2.0x underlying EBITDA). Cash conversion was strong, in line with levels typically seen in the first half of the year, and the Company expects to achieve its guidance range of 85% to 90% for the full year. As a result, the board said it expects the company to deliver full year 2024 results in line with market expectations.

M&A activity during the period included the completion or announcement of four acquisitions:

• Blackheath – ICS Division
London, UK, completed in March.

• First Republic Trust Company – PCS Division
Delaware, USA, announced in April, completion expected within the coming weeks.

• FFP – ICS Division
Cayman, BVI and Dubai, announced in June, completion expected in Q4. FFP is a strategically important acquisition for the Group as it directly supports the development of its new Governance Services business line, a further innovation from the Group Commercial Office.

• Hanway - ICS Division
London, UK, completed in July.

JTC said these transactions were being funded by a combination of existing cash and JTC’s debt facilities, which were increased in 2023 to support delivery of the Cosmos business plan.

SDTC, the PCS Division platform business acquired in the USA in 2023, "continues to integrate well into the Group and performed strongly in the period. The Company continues to maintain a well-developed pipeline of acquisition opportunities spanning both Divisions and all target growth markets".

Le Quesne said: "The Group has made a very good start to the Cosmos era, building on the momentum of our outstanding results from 2023. Organic growth remains above our updated guidance with record new business wins. We are extremely pleased with the acquisitions made during the period, which support our strategy to increase our footprint in key growth markets and expand our service offering to better meet the needs of our global client base, therefore supporting long-term organic growth."

The Company will announce its interim results for the period ended 30 June 2024 on Tuesday 17 September 2024.