Ancillary Services factsheet 2025
Published 14 March 2025
© Crown copyright 2025
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Under the Defence Reform Act 2014, the SSRO must provide the Secretary of State with its assessment of the appropriate rates used to determine the contract profit rate for pricing qualifying defence contracts and qualifying sub-contracts. Part of the methodology is the categorisation of comparator companies into four activity types.
- Develop, Make and Support[1]
- Ancillary Services
- Construction
- Information Technology Services
The results of these groups are separately analysed and this factsheet describes the Ancillary Services group results.
For further information on the methodology used to calculate these rates please see the Single Source baseline profit rate and capital servicing rates methodology.
[1]The ‘Develop, Make and Support’ activity type replaces the previous activity types of ‘Develop and Make’ and ‘Provide and Maintain’. Further information can be found in the published Q&A document.
Ancillary Services
Companies undertaking comparable activities considered as ‘Ancillary Services’ are expected to deliver either one of administrative, facilities or IT support activities. Companies undertaking these support services are not expected to bear any significant risks other than that of failing to provide the contracted outputs. This captures risk in relation to the delivery of the services, contract risk, procurement risk, staff risk and some quality control risk in respect of these activities.
Profit on cost of production
| 2021/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 | 2024/25 | 2025/26 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Underlying rate (unadjusted for capital servicing) | 5.86% | 7.13% | 4.59% | 5.58% | 5.18% |
| Capital servicing adjustment | -0.63% | -0.18% | -0.09% | -0.36% | -0.39% |
| Underlying rate | 5.23% | 6.95% | 4.50% | 5.22% | 4.79% |
| Rolling average[2] | 4.86% | 5.39% | 4.52% | 4.98% | 4.84% |
Note: The capital servicing adjustment accounts, at an aggregate level, for different levels of capital employed across the companies in the index and so sets a baseline upon which step 4 of the contract profit rate applies.
[2] A four-year average was used for 2022/23; a three-year average for pre-2022/23 and a three-year average (excluding 2022/23 underlying rate) for 2023/24 onwards. The pre-2021/22 underlying rates used for the three-year average were: 2019/20: 5.54% and 2020/21: 3.82%.
Data sources
For further information on the data selection approach please see section 7 of the Single Source baseline profit rate and capital servicing rates methodology. A company update search of the Orbis database was carried out on 1 November 2024 on data update number 354001 using software version 354. The financial data for the calculation was extracted from Orbis at the same time.
Median capital servicing adjusted return on cost of production
Proportion of companies by country
Proportion of companies with defence keyword
Supplementary statistics
| Number of companies | 22 |
|---|---|
| of which profit making | 18 |
| Aggregate turnover (£billions) | 82 |
| Total capital employed (CE) (£billions) | 4 |
| Average company CP:CE ratio | 20.84 |
Source: Orbis (Cash figures shown in rounded GBP Billions)
Names of companies in the index
| ABM Industries INC |
| Antac Support Services LTD |
| Aramark |
| Building Energy Services Group Limited |
| Bulloughs Cleaning Services Limited |
| Cliner SA * |
| Cloudfm Group Limited |
| Compass Group PLC |
| Conduent Incorporated * |
| Coor Service Management Holding AB |
| Corpay INC (J) |
| Firstservice Corporation |
| Glenthorp Limited |
| Healthcare Services Group INC |
| Kinovo PLC * |
| Lacera Servicios Y Mantenimiento SA * |
| Mears Group PLC |
| Mitie Group PLC |
| Rentokil Initial PLC |
| Restore PLC |
| Serco Group PLC |
| Trinet Group, Inc. |
‘*’ Indicates that the company is a loss-maker in the year.
(J) Indicates a company which was not in the activity group last year but has been added this year.