Signal — Serco Group PLC (v40)

The Signal Composite Score

20 May 2026

62

Composite

Established

Peer rankJoint 4th of 8

Peer median61

Cohort top68

Performance band — absolute scale

Tap for trajectory ↗

Foundational

CriticalDevelopingEstablishedAdvancingStrong

Leading

Serco · 62 Established

Peer median · 62 Established

Cohort top · 68 Advancing

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The Read

20 May 2026

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▶Watch it2 min

2.The Readout

View full readout →

What's working

01
Defence is becoming the award shape.
AFRS taken from Capita on capability. Royal Navy DMS Next Generation through 2035. AFMS3 with the US Air Force. Order book £14.5bn at a decade high. Defence now around 40 per cent of revenue.
02
The cash and returns story is real.
ROIC 25.9 per cent. Trading cash conversion 112 per cent for the eighth consecutive year. Exceptional economics for a 5 to 6 per cent margin services business.
03
Governance trust has materially repaired.
Remuneration support moved from 79.39 per cent to 99.71 per cent in twelve months. EY appointed with 99.94 per cent support. Keith Williams Chair transition clean.

What's at risk

01
The old category may harden.
JP Morgan's rearmament thesis named seven peers and excluded Serco. Trade and financial press still reach for support-services language. If that omission repeats, it becomes the category.
02
The FY26 operating bridge looks more exposed.
Margin delivery has to absorb labour pressure, the AASC transition, electronic monitoring, contract-performance issues and MT&S integration in the same window the reclassification needs to land. A guidance wobble before the category resets would freeze the old framing in place.
03
The people story has not reached the frontline.
Engagement stable at 71 per cent. Attrition down 28.7 per cent. LTIR down 26 per cent. Glassdoor still 3.2, recommend-to-friend 51 per cent. Line management, staffing and pay remain the recurring themes.

3.Signal Pillars

All pillars →

4.Signal Expected · 6M Trajectory

Full analysis →

Where does the data say you're heading — based on what's already moving beneath the surface.

With sustained intervention

Advancing

12M 77–78 · closes on Babcock (70) and Compass (72), overtakes Mitie (65)

Peer rank Joint 4th → 2nd

Without intervention

Established

12M 65–66 · drift positive · band held

Peer rank Joint 4th → 3rd–4th

SxE reads the seven Signal Leading Indicators that have historically led composite score movement by three to eighteen months. Four are currently trending positive, two neutral, one negative. The 6-month projection reflects partial propagation of these signals; the 12-month view in the full analysis carries the longer-lag indicators through.

Tap to explore ›

5.Market & Competitors

SMC · 8 peers

◈

Market Context · SMC

+1.0

↑ Tailwind

Segments

Defence Services

↑↑

+1.75

Public Services

→

−0.25

Immigration & Detention

↓

−1.50

Approaching Strong Tailwind as defence weight rises (60%) and immigration weight reduces (7%) — UK SDR, UK Defence Industrial Strategy, NATO 5% all reinforcing.

Open Market Intelligence ›

▦

Peer League · 8 companies

Or watch it

The Read · cinematic

Hero narrated with audio

2:18

Runtime

The Read 20 May 2026

Signal Expected · 12-month projection

The Hero names a gap and a window. Signal Expected puts both on a clock. Two states for the composite at 12 months, plus the Signal Market Context modifier, each tied to a decision the company makes with the evidence base it now holds.

Intervention case

77–78composite

Established → Advancing

Three strategic moves stack across the next twelve months: authoring the platform thesis, closing the workforce visibility lag, and settling the operational severity threads. Multiple expansion becomes available; +11 to +14 points of available uplift.

No-action case

65–66composite

Established → Established

The drift turns positive under its own momentum. Four indicators positive, two neutral, one negative. The cost is the band shift left on the table, while the peer cohort moves further into Advancing.

At 6 months the picture is 64 / 68–69. The 12-month view above is the destination, not the slope.

Signal Market Context

+1.0 Tailwind

Defence +2.00

Public services −0.25

Immigration −1.50

Open the SxE projection ›

A note on what the single score averages

Serco is not one operating context. It is two. Serco North America is a defence-led growth engine. Serco UK & Europe is a legacy outsourcer base in managed transition. Two operating models, two audiences, one composite. The strongest peer comparators for Serco North America (Leidos, SAIC, CACI, KBR) are not yet in the cohort. The unauthored thesis is specifically a North America thesis: a defence-services business at approximately 50 per cent of operating profit and 10 per cent margins, valued today through a group-level lens.

How the story lives across the pillars

The five pillars carry the Hero's argument into the lanes where the work lands. Each opens with the question this lane has to answer, names what Signal sees, and points to the pillar page where the full assessment sits.

Investor

Is Serco being valued for what it has become or what it used to be?

79

Advancing ▲

Pillar SxE 12M Advancing → Strong +3–4

Score built on

ROIC 25.9%. Trading cash conversion 112%, eight consecutive years above 100%. Order book £14.5bn at decade high. 83% twelve-month share-price return, top of cohort.

Where the work sits

EV/EBITDA at approximately 8x versus Babcock 10.7x and BAE materially higher. The next leg of value depends on the platform thesis being authored, not on further operational execution. The unauthored sum-of-the-parts on Serco North America is the central watchpoint.

What closes it

Sum-of-the-parts framework on Serco North America made explicit. Evidence base ready for the next iteration of the JP Morgan rearmament thesis. The categorical question answered externally, not internally.

Open Investor pillar ›

Customer

Are Serco's customers still buying, and is the work they buy moving up the value tier?

59

Established ▲

Pillar SxE 12M Established → Established +2–3

Score built on

B2G loyalty is strong and consistent: 92% retention, NPS +9, 93% B2G customer loyalty, 114% book-to-bill. AFRS taken from Capita on capability. Royal Navy DMS Next Generation through 2035.

Where the work sits

Service-facing regulatory pressure is the drag: HMIP Thameside, Fosse Way, electronic monitoring. Customer relationships have held through the scrutiny, but the legacy perception still anchors below the higher-value work Serco is increasingly delivering.

What closes it

Growing the strategic-partner tier faster than the utility tier exits. Public reporting on B2G CPAR and retention as commercial differentiator. Settling the operational severity threads with a structured remediation cadence.

Open Customer pillar ›

Employee

Can Serco attract, keep and lead the people the next phase of work requires?

49

Established →

Pillar SxE 12M Established → Established +5–6

Score built on

Internal indicators have turned. Engagement stable at 71% across three years. Attrition down 28.7% versus 2023. LTIR down 26%. LaRouche, Walters and Reid arrived in twelve months.

Where the work sits

External Glassdoor 3.2 has not caught up with internal data. Recommend-to-friend 51% sits below cohort median 60%. Senior Management 2.9 and Pay 3.0 are the weakest categories. The lag is the question.

What closes it

Making the internal turn externally legible: public reporting cadence on engagement, attrition and LTIR with the same frequency as financial results. The Believe in People campaign maturing into measurable external read.

Open Employee pillar ›

Compliance

Is the governance recovery durable, and is the operational severity contained?

74

Advancing ▲

Pillar SxE 12M Advancing → Advancing +2–3

Score built on

AGM rem vote 99.71%, up from 79.39% in 2025. EY appointed at 99.94%. Keith Williams Chair transition clean. Sustainalytics Low Risk. Britain's Most Admired Company.

Where the work sits

Sean Williams Prevention of Future Deaths report is the concentrated severity. Electronic monitoring remains below acceptable levels. POA Gatwick s.145B ruling above £750k. The control base is strong; the active exposure is concentrated rather than systemic.

What closes it

Structured public response cadence on the active operational matters. Converting Sean Williams from open severity to historical risk through transparent remediation reporting. Holding the rem vote at next AGM.

Open Compliance pillar ›

Voice Leverage pillar

Does Serco author its own narrative or have it written for it?

51

Established →

Pillar SxE 12M · largest delta in model Established → Advancing +5–7

Score built on

Narrative momentum at 68. Defence story building: Investors Chronicle, Reuters, target raises. JPMorgan Overweight. Fidelity Special Values' Alex Wright on record buying for defence exposure.

Where the work sits

Executive public presence at 41. Last full CMD December 2021. JP Morgan rearmament thesis named seven peers and excluded Serco. The platform thesis is unauthored. The category remains contested.

What closes it

Authoring the platform thesis. A formal narrative moment that makes the defence-services category framing hard to exclude. Lockwood at Babcock holds the ADS Presidency; the venues exist and have been left unoccupied.

Open Voice pillar ›

Signal · The Read

Pillar Spectrum · Absolute Scale

Foundational Critical Developing Established Advancing Strong Leading

Serco Peer median Cohort top

The five lanes, one scale

Each pillar plotted on the same Foundational-to-Leading spectrum. The view is calibrated for cross-pillar comparison — where the strengths sit, where the gap lives, and how each lane reads against the band thresholds the cohort is being judged on.

Investor and Compliance carry the front. Employee remains the watch.

Signal Expected reads where the composite is heading at 6 and 12 months, based on the leading indicators currently moving in the underlying data. The model carries two cases: where the score lands under current momentum, and where it lands with intervention against the indicators most available for movement.

The market context, currently Tailwind and approaching Strong Tailwind on defence-segment strengthening, compounds positive momentum and amplifies the return from intervention.

The current state is that the underlying drift has turned positive under its own momentum. Four of seven leading indicators are running positive, two are neutral, one is negative. The no-action case lifts the composite by approximately three to four points over twelve months. The with-intervention case lifts it by eleven to fourteen, depending on which of the three named strategic moves Serco chooses to make. The intervention case is not rescue; it is leverage.

The Three SxE Numbers

Current score

62

Today · Joint 4th of 8 peers

No intervention

64

At 6M · Established

12M view: 65–66

With intervention

68–69

At 6M · Advancing

12M view: 77–78

Why the trajectory reads where it does

▸ The financial rerating is being awarded; the platform reframe is not. The 83 per cent twelve-month share-price return is real, but the multiple itself has not expanded. EV/EBITDA sits below Babcock and substantially below BAE. The next leg of value depends on the platform thesis being authored, not on further operational execution.
▸ The cohort has revalued the category Serco has not yet entered. JP Morgan's European rearmament thesis named seven peers and excluded Serco. The defence-services category is being priced upward; Serco is in the category by financial composition but not yet by external classification.
▸ The workforce data has turned internally faster than the external read has moved. Engagement stable at 71 per cent, attrition down 28.7 per cent, LTIR down 26 per cent. External Glassdoor sits at 3.2 and recommend-to-friend at 51 per cent. Whether the external read closes the lag is the central Employee question.
▸ The governance drag has cleared and is unlikely to return. The remuneration vote moved from 79 to 99.71 per cent in twelve months. The Chair transition was clean. EY appointment at 99.94 per cent. The structural Compliance headwind that contaminated the defence-pivot story has gone.
▸ Voice is the binding constraint on the next leg. Category authorship and executive voice presence are the two indicators where Serco is neutral or negative. They lift Voice directly and pull Investor and Employee upward in concert. The leverage is concentrated in one pillar.

The Signal Leading Indicators — current direction and rationale

Commercial momentum signal

Investor · 3–6M

+1

£14.5bn order book at decade high. 114% book-to-bill. AFRS taken from Capita on capability. Royal Navy DMS Next Generation through 2035. AFMS3 ceiling at $972m. Contract pattern is partner-tier, not utility-tier.

Capital markets recognition

Investor · 6–9M

+1

Berenberg 200p to 350p over twelve months. Citi 369p, RBC 370p, JPMorgan Overweight. Fidelity Special Values' Alex Wright on record buying for defence exposure at a non-defence multiple. UBS 148p Sell anchors the bear end.

Governance trust trajectory

Compliance · 6–12M

+1

AGM 2026 remuneration vote 99.71%, up from 79.39% in 2025. Keith Williams Chair transition clean. EY appointment 99.94%. Britain's Most Admired Company. The previous structural drag has cleared.

Workforce read closing

Employee · 12–18M

0

Internal engagement stable at 71% across three years, attrition down 28.7%, LTIR down 26%. External Glassdoor 3.2/5 across 4,591 reviews, recommend-to-friend 51%, Senior Management 2.9. Internal turn real; external read has not yet moved.

Talent layer strength

Employee · 9–15M

+1

LaRouche from SAIC as CEO North America (Oct 2025), Wash100 and PSC board. Walters from G4S as CEO UK & Europe (Mar 2026). Reid from Proximus as Group CFO (Feb 2026). Three external senior appointments in twelve months.

Category authorship

Voice · 6–12M

0

Defence-rerating tone present (Investors Chronicle, Reuters, Bloomberg). JP Morgan March 2025 rearmament thesis named seven peers and excluded Serco. No published sell-side note frames Serco as defence-platform multiple. Last CMD December 2021.

Executive voice presence

Voice · 6–9M

−1

Kirby quoted on results and awards but not yet a category-setting public voice. David Lockwood (Babcock, ADS President), Charles Woodburn (BAE) and Phil Bentley (Mitie) carry clearer public association. The most directly addressable indicator.

Three strategic moves and what they would shift

Each move is a coherent strategic move rather than a tactic list. Point uplifts are estimated independently against the indicator framework. Combined intervention with overlap discount produces a 12-month uplift of approximately 11 to 14 points from the 62 base.

A. Author the platform thesis

+6–8 pts

Investor · Voice

A formal narrative moment that places Serco in the defence-services peer set: Capital Markets Day or equivalent, published sum-of-the-parts framework on Serco North America, evidence base ready for the next iteration of the rearmament thesis. The categorical question closes; tier-one press starts naming Serco in the defence-services frame; sell-side notes argue the SOTP; the bull-bear spread narrows. The conditions for multiple expansion improve.

B. Close the workforce visibility lag

+3–4 pts

Employee · Voice

Make the internal employee turn externally legible. Public reporting cadence on engagement, attrition and LTIR with the same frequency as financial results. Programme visibility at contract and unit level. The Believe in People campaign maturing into measurable external read. Senior Management and Pay categories can shift if the internal improvement is felt at unit level.

C. Settle the operational severity threads

+3–4 pts

Compliance · Customer · Voice

Structured public response cadence on the active operational matters: Sean Williams Prevention of Future Deaths report, electronic monitoring recovery plan, HMP Thameside safety closure. Structured public remediation cadence converts active severity into historical risk over time. The cohort comparator (Capita's £14m ICO close-out, Babcock's TSR rollback handling) shows the mechanism works at scale.

Weights. Commercial momentum 15%, Capital markets recognition 15%, Governance trust 12%, Workforce read 15%, Talent layer 12%, Category authorship 17%, Executive voice 14%. Sum 100%.

Weighted Signal Delta. Each indicator carries direction (+1, 0, −1) and weight. Weighted sum produces the raw Signal Delta. Current state: four positive, two neutral, one negative. Raw Delta = +0.40.

Score propagation. A full +1.0 Signal Delta equals +8 composite points over 12 months. Current +0.40 = +3.2 points over 12 months from indicators alone, before market context modifier. Lag profile: 6 months captures 50% of total effect; 12 months captures 95%.

SMC multiplier. Multiplies (does not add to) the indicator effect. Strong Headwind 0.5x, Headwind 0.75x, Neutral 1.0x, Tailwind 1.25x, Strong Tailwind 1.5x. Current Tailwind +1.0 = 1.25x multiplier.

Intervention stacking. Each scenario uplift is estimated independently against the indicators it moves. Combined effects discounted by 10% to avoid double-counting overlap.

Final calculation. No-action 6M: 62 + (1.6 × 1.25) = 64. No-action 12M: 62 + (3.0 × 1.25) = 65–66. With-intervention 6M: 62 + 2.0 + intervention partial = 68–69. With-intervention 12M: 62 + 3.75 + intervention full (11–14) = 77–78.

⚡

Signal Alerts

Forward-looking risks and opportunities · 4 active

›

Signal Alerts surface conditions developing in the external data that sit ahead of the published score. Each alert states what the data shows, why it matters, and the asymmetry at stake. Signal presents the picture; what to do with it is yours to decide.

RISK · VOICE + INVESTOR · 6–12M

The category exclusion is hardening

What the data shows

The JP Morgan European rearmament thesis (March 2025) named seven peers and excluded Serco. The exclusion was a single sell-side moment, but the pattern has continued. Trade press defaults (Janes, Shephard) describe Serco's defence wins as "support services group" rather than "defence platform". Financial press defence-rerating coverage names the company, not the category shift. Serco is the only major UK industrial with approximately 40 per cent defence revenue not currently included in any published rearmament-thesis frame.

Why it matters

A single exclusion is a moment. A repeated exclusion is a category. If the next major rearmament-thesis update (likely from JP Morgan, Barclays or HSBC over H2 2026) repeats the exclusion, the category becomes structural rather than incidental. Closing the gap then becomes substantially harder, because each subsequent thesis defaults to the prior.

The asymmetry

If Serco is included in the next thesis update, the multiple expansion that has not yet happened becomes available. If excluded again, the discount becomes self-reinforcing and the +83 per cent rerating reads as the ceiling for the foreseeable cycle.

OPPORTUNITY · INVESTOR + VOICE · 3–9M

New CFO and the HY 2026 commitment moment

What the data shows

Mark Reid joined as Group CFO in February 2026, from Proximus. He inherits a beat-and-raise pattern eight years deep: trading cash conversion above 100 per cent for the eighth consecutive year, FY25 results delivered above prior guidance, December 2025 profit upgrade well received (+4.9 per cent on the day) with management guidance running 5 to 6 per cent above sell-side consensus on both FY25 and FY26. The HY 2026 results cycle is the natural moment for a new CFO to establish his external commitment style.

Why it matters

The HY 2026 cycle carries asymmetric potential. The new CFO has the standing to host or co-host a recalibration of medium-term external commitments alongside a platform-thesis moment, without the legacy-CFO baggage. The 53-month Capital Markets Day gap suggests the moment has been waiting for the right voice to host it. The timing matters: a recalibration paired with the platform thesis reads as authorship. A recalibration without the platform thesis reads as a guide-down.

The asymmetry

If the HY 2026 results cycle pairs a recalibrated medium-term frame with the platform thesis, the new CFO becomes the authorship moment Serco has been missing. If the cycle is run as continuity, the Capital Markets Day gap continues and the opportunity passes to FY 2026 results cycle or beyond.

RISK · EMPLOYEE + VOICE · 12–18M

Workforce internal-external gap may be testing its own threshold

What the data shows

Internal engagement has held at 71 per cent across three years. External Glassdoor has held at 3.2/5 across four years. The two have not moved in concert. Senior Management score at 2.9 and Pay at 3.0 are the lowest categorical readings. Review themes cluster around line management quality, chronic understaffing and pay parity. The Believe in People campaign launched 29 April 2026 is the largest internal-to-external communication move in the recent history of the company.

Why it matters

Internal-external gaps that persist past 18 months tend either to close or to reverse: the internal data becomes externally legible, or the internal data begins to drift toward the external read. The drift case is the asymmetric risk. If frontline experience starts to align with external review themes rather than internal engagement data, the Employee pillar moves from "lag" to "deteriorating" without external signal until it surfaces in retention or productivity. The Believe in People campaign is the test of which way the gap closes.

The asymmetry

If the lag closes by H2 2026, the Employee pillar becomes a confirming signal for the wider trajectory. If the gap widens or reverses, the internal data loses credibility as a leading indicator, and the company is solving an internal problem the external labour market does not believe exists.

OPPORTUNITY · CUSTOMER + VOICE · 9–15M

Defence customer ecosystem recognition has not yet crossed into UK & Europe

What the data shows

LaRouche's 2026 Wash100 Award and Professional Services Council board election place Serco's North America leadership inside the US federal and defence-services customer ecosystem. No equivalent UK & Europe recognition exists yet for Walters (who joined as CEO UK & Europe in March 2026). The UK Defence Industrial Strategy (September 2025) and the NATO 5 per cent spending commitment have not yet produced an equivalent UK customer-ecosystem signal for Serco at the leadership level.

Why it matters

The North America customer-ecosystem signal has been a credibility multiplier for Serco's strategic-partnership-depth read. The UK & Europe equivalent does not yet exist. The next 9 to 15 months carry several plausible moments: ADS presidency cycle, RUSI fellowship cycle, defence trade body board cycles. Whether Walters or another senior figure occupies these moments is observable and time-bounded.

The asymmetry

If equivalent UK customer-ecosystem recognition emerges, the strategic-partnership-depth pattern becomes geographically symmetrical and the Customer pillar carries genuine cross-territory credibility. If it does not emerge by mid-2027, the pattern reads as North-America-specific rather than enterprise-wide, and the UK & Europe customer relationship continues to be defined by the legacy portfolio rather than the higher-tier work.

What is Signal Market Context?

Your Signal pillar scores tell you how well this company is performing today relative to peers. Signal Market Context (SMC) answers a different question: is the sea rising or falling? A score of 59 in a growing, policy-supported market is a very different position to 59 in a contracting, commoditising one.

SMC assesses the structural health of the markets Serco operates in across four dimensions: how fast the market is growing, how intensely competitors are fighting for the same contracts, whether genuine differentiation is available (or whether it is becoming a race to the bottom on price), and whether government policy is expanding or contracting the addressable market. The result feeds into Signal Expected — a positive market context amplifies the return from intervention; a negative one suppresses it.

Composite Market Context Rating

+1.0

↑ Tailwind

Defence tailwind strengthening as legacy headwind recedes faster than projected. The composite has moved from +0.72 (V3.2) to +1.0 — approaching Strong Tailwind threshold (+1.25). UK SDR (June 2025), UK Defence Industrial Strategy (September 2025) and the NATO 5% spending commitment all reinforce; immigration weight reducing faster than V3.2 modelled.

Market Segments — Why Each Is Positive, Neutral or Negative

Defence Services

60% of pipeline · dominant and growing

+2.00

Strong Tailwind ↑↑

Why this market is strongly positive

Governments across NATO, the US, and the UK are actively spending more on defence — not as a cyclical uptick but as a structural policy commitment. The UK Strategic Defence Review (June 2025) and UK Defence Industrial Strategy (September 2025) confirmed three-way; the NATO 5% spending commitment further reinforces the trajectory. For Serco specifically, this is the largest and fastest-growing part of the business — defence now ~40% of group revenue post-MT&S close. The contracts are long-cycle (5–15 years), require security clearances that most new entrants cannot obtain, and create genuine pricing differentiation based on specialist capability — meaning this is not a race to the bottom. The tailwind has strengthened since V3.2 (+1.75 → +2.00) and weight has increased (55% → 60%) as defence becomes the centre of the portfolio. The Defence sector tailwind operates differently across geographies: in North America it is post-MT&S, US Federal demand-pull driven; in UK & Europe it is SDR-driven domestic demand. The composite SMC score averages these — the underlying strategic shape is two parallel defence engines moving at different velocities.

Public Services

33% of revenue · stable but more competitive

−0.25

Neutral →

Why this market is neutral

Holds at score; weight reduces marginally as defence absorbs share. NHS, justice, transport, and local government contracts continue to exist and are renewed — the volume of work is not declining. However, the government is not actively expanding its use of outsourcing in the way defence is expanding. Budget pressures mean more competitive tendering, tighter framework pricing, and less room for premium pricing. The bigger emerging threat is technology firms (Microsoft, Palantir, Accenture) entering government delivery in adjacent areas, which gradually erodes the territory where traditional outsourcers can differentiate. The net effect is stable but not growing — this market provides revenue visibility without significant upside.

Immigration & Detention

7% of revenue · reducing faster than projected

−1.50

Headwind ↓

Why this market is negative — and why that is manageable

Score holds at −1.50 (headwind present, particularly in retail-facing review platforms and the ISS ESG Q3 2024 norms-based finding on Australia detention); weight has reduced from 10% to 7% as the AsPac exit completes and the Mears Group pairing pattern displaces Serco-as-default-asylum-name framing at institutional and investigative-press level (openDemocracy, Liberty Investigates, NAO). At community and retail-discourse level Serco continues to be named directly. The UK government continues actively reducing its use of hotels and temporary accommodation for asylum seekers — a policy decision, not a commercial one — which means the contraction is structural and continues regardless of Serco's performance. As this weight reduces toward zero, the composite SMC will continue to improve from the current +1.0 toward the Strong Tailwind threshold (+1.25). The exit trajectory is the right strategic direction.

Why the SMC is improving over time

The composite SMC has moved from +0.72 (V3.2) to +1.0 (V27) — approaching Strong Tailwind territory (+1.25). The driver is twofold: defence weight has risen (55% → 60%) and segment score has strengthened (+1.75 → +2.00) on UK SDR, UK Defence Industrial Strategy and NATO 5%; immigration weight has fallen (10% → 7%) faster than V3.2 modelled. The structural market environment is becoming more favourable — and the wind is harder behind Serco than V3.2 reflected. The SxE calculation incorporates this improving trajectory.

What this is

A two-axis read of Serco against eight peers. The vertical axis is the Signal Score for whichever lens is active (Composite or one of the five pillars). The horizontal axis is portfolio concentration: how much of each company sits in its largest reported segment. Tap a peer to see what they do better, the same as, worse than, or differently from Serco.

About this peer set. This cohort primarily represents Serco's UKE-centric labour-intensive services peers. The US defence-services peer set (Leidos, SAIC, CACI, KBR for example) is being added in the next iteration of Signal — it would be the right comparison set for Serco North America at ~50% of operating profit. G4S has been part of Allied Universal since 2021; public disclosure is materially thinner than the other peers and the Investor pillar comparison is low-confidence.

Composite

Investor

Customer

Employee

Compliance

Voice

Composite Signal Score · vs Portfolio Concentration

← Diversified portfolio · Concentrated portfolio →

Tap any peer in the chart above to see how they compare against Serco.

×

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SIGNAL SCORE

Composite League Table

PEER RANKING

Serco vs Cohort · 8 peers

FIVE PILLAR COMPARISON

Score /100 · band-tinted

SUB-COMPONENT DRILLDOWN

Employee · 49

SIGNAL EXPECTED TRAJECTORY (SxE)

Composite · 12-month forecast

MARKET WATCH

Latest signals

WATCHLIST

Cohort · trajectory state

SHARE PRICE

SRP.L · LSE

BROKER TARGETS

Consensus 305p · 7 Buy / 1 Sell

OPERATING METRICS

FY25 · current state

How your cohort is moving. How your buyer is changing. The numbers that anchor both.

"

Serco doesn't sit in one market. It sits in three.

Editorial · Quarterly

The Market Read

Where you stand in the sea state. The portfolio truth, the cohort's relative movement, the segments where the current helps.

SMC +1.0 Tailwind ›

M

B

C

Editorial · Continuous

Peer Moves

Why your peers have the edge, and what you can take from how they got it. Five lenses on each move: people, tools, programmes, stories, capital.

3 moves · Mitie fully rendered ›

Decoder · 5 streams

Editorial · Quarterly

The Buyer Read

Reading the customer beyond the procurement record. The people, the priorities, the upstream patterns that explain where awards land before the bell rings.

Skeleton live · publishing Q3 2026 ›

Go deeper into the data

◇

Peer Mapping

Eight-company cohort · concentration vs score

5th of 8

▦

The Datahub

Cohort matrix · 28 sub-components · trajectory strip

28components

◈

Full Market Context

SMC dimensions · segment detail · evidence base

+1.0Tailwind

Ask Signal

Want to navigate Market Intelligence by question, not by page?

Which peer moves are most adoptable for Serco in the next 18 months?

What does the SMC tell me about defence vs public services right now?

What's the current bench of MoD procurement leadership and where have they come from?

The Market Read

Serco doesn't sit in one market. It sits in three — and the peers ahead aren't ahead everywhere. They're ahead where the current helps, and they moved first.

The defence current is running with you, hard. Public services is flat. Immigration is against you and already receding. Composite SMC has moved from +0.72 to +1.0 — approaching Strong Tailwind.

Mitie sits at 65 because it spent four years rebuilding the Employee pillar before the wider sector caught up. Babcock sits at 70 because it reframed itself as a defence platform two years ahead of the rearmament cycle. Compass sits at 72 because it joined client and employee narratives into a single voice. None of these moves are mysteries. The mechanism is observable.

The work from here is reading the cohort the way the cohort is being read — and taking what's transferable.

01 The Sea State

Full SMC

+1.0

↑ Tailwind

Approaching Strong
from +0.72 (V3.2)

Defence

60% · dominant, growing

+2.00

Public Services

33% · stable, more competitive

−0.25

Immigration

7% · receding faster than projected

−1.50

02Onward

Read this against the cohort

Peer Moves — three peers, five lenses each

›

Read this against the buyer

The Buyer Read — five upstream signals

›

Editorial · Continuous

Why your peers have the edge — and what's transferable from how they got it.

Each move on this page passes three filters: material to a Serco pillar gap, fully populated across the five lenses, and non-obvious in mechanism. Most peer moves don't qualify. The few that do are the ones worth reading carefully.

All pillars

Investor

Customer

Employee

Compliance

Voice

Mitie · Composite 65 Employee · Voice

2019 — 2023

How Mitie rebuilt the frontline and let the score follow.

2019

2023

The most documented UK outsourcing-sector Employee turnaround. Glassdoor 3.0 → 3.7 across four years. Built deliberately, not branded. The mechanism is reproducible. The timing isn't.

●

People

3 named

›

The operators behind the work — observable from public footprints, not inferred. Two are commercially mobile.

YO

Yvonne O'Hara

ex-Mitie Group Head IC & Engagement · now Interim Group Director IC at NatWest

TeamTalk LiveMyVoiceEVP architect

KH

Karen Hutchison Adão

ex-Mitie Group Resourcing Director · now VP Global Talent at Exadel

10k+ hires/yrEmployer brand

KL

Kate Large

Director of L&D · Mitie (in seat)

Manager capabilityApprenticeships

◊

Tools

2 deployments

›

Frontline-mobile-first, not desk-first. Both deployed at workforce scales comparable to Serco's.

Beekeeper

Frontline mobile platform · Mitie deployment, ~50k+ workers

DEPLOYED

Thrive.App (Biffa Beat)

Closest analogue at Serco scale · 70% uptake, 10k workforce

PARALLEL

▤

Programmes

4 named

TeamTalk Live — town-hall format, frontline questions to the CEO unfiltered. GrillPhil — direct CEO listening channel. MyVoice — engagement survey rebuilt as a manager-action tool, not a HR report. EVP rollout — won three 2023 Employer Brand Management Awards including Gold.

The pattern is listening infrastructure first, brand second. Mitie ran the engagement work for two years before the external EVP launched.

"

Stories

Narrative pivot

Mitie's external story shifted from "big outsourcer" to "the science of service." Capability framing, not scale framing. The investor narrative tracked the engagement narrative — workforce as the operating asset, not the cost line.

For Serco the equivalent move is the defence platform reframe. The same architectural logic: lead with what the company is, let the score follow.

£

Capital

Re-rating signals

Mitie's re-rating ran in parallel — Interserve FM acquisition (2020), strategic share buybacks (2022 onwards), and an Employee benefit trust structured around the EVP. Capital allocation visibly aligned with the operating story.

What's transferable

Two of the three named operators are publicly mobile. The mobile-first listening infrastructure exists as a deployable pattern (Beekeeper, Thrive). The four-year arc compresses to roughly 18 months in a market where frontline mobile is now standard rather than novel. The frontline app and the EVP can be sequenced. The CEO listening channel either exists or it doesn't.

Babcock · 70 Investor · Voice

2023 — present

How Babcock reframed as a defence platform two years before the cycle.

Composite climbing on a deliberate narrative re-architecture. The capability didn't change as much as the language did. The investor lane re-rated first; the cohort followed.

2023

now

Read the five lenses on this move ›

Compass · 72 Customer · Voice

2021 — 2025

How Compass joined client and employee stories into one voice.

Hybrid Employee Engagement + Client Communications scope at the operational layer — directly relevant to a B2G contract-holder narrative. The two stakeholders heard the same sentence.

2021

2025

Read the five lenses on this move ›

The Buyer Read

01The Trace

02US Lead-Lag

03Counterfactuals

04Methodology

Ask Signal

Anything about Signal, the assessment, or how to read the page — ask. The full Serco context is loaded.

✦ Signal AI · Verify important decisions independently

Serco Group PLC

FTSE 250 · Government Services · LSE: SRP

Defence

Public Services

UK · US · Middle East

~50,000 employees

Key Figures — FY 2025

Revenue

£4.9bn

Order Book

£14.5bn

Pipeline

£12.1bn

Book-to-Bill

114%

Employees

~50,000

Markets

18 countries

Operating Margin

5.6%

ROIC

25.9%

Leadership

👤

Anthony Kirby

Group Chief Executive · March 2025

Former Chief People & Operations Officer

👤

Mark Reid

Group Chief Financial Officer · February 2026

Former CFO, Proximus Group

👤

Keith Williams

Chair · January 2026

Former CEO British Airways · Former Chair Royal Mail

Strategic Context — What Signal Is Assessing

Serco is undergoing the most significant strategic transformation in its modern history. Defence has moved from being one of several sectors to being the dominant one — 60% of the pipeline, with North America at 10.6% operating margins following the MT&S acquisition from Northrop Grumman in May 2025. The immigration portfolio, which has been the primary source of public reputational pressure for several years, is reducing. This transformation is geographically uneven by design — North America is now the defence-led growth engine, UK & Europe is the legacy outsourcer base in managed transition, and the operating model differs across both. The single Signal score averages a picture that runs at different velocities in different geographies.

Signal's assessment captures this company at a specific inflection point: financial fundamentals the strongest in over a decade, external perception not yet reflecting that improvement, and a structural market tailwind in the primary growth area. The gap between what the financial data shows and what the external perception picture shows is the central diagnostic finding of this assessment.

Notable Events — Last 12 Months

MT&S acquisition completed

May 2025 · $327m · from Northrop Grumman · makes defence Serco's largest sector

Armed Forces Recruitment Service won

Feb 2025 · £1–1.5bn · major UK defence mandate

Royal Navy maritime contracts awarded

May 2025 · >£1bn · three contracts supporting Royal Navy

Remuneration vote: 79.39%

April 2025 AGM · narrowly below 80% UK Code threshold · watchpoint for 2026

Australian immigration contract not renewed

Dec 2024 · onshore detention contract · ASPAC revenue impact £20m

Home Affairs Committee scrutiny

Oct 2025 · asylum accommodation costs found to have significantly increased

✦ Signal Assessment Basis

This Signal assessment is based entirely on publicly available data as at 20 May 2026. All pillar scores, sub-component scores, peer benchmarks, and Signal Expected figures are derived from external sources — no internal Serco data has been used. The assessment is refreshed weekly. Scores are directional intelligence, not audited measures.

The Signal Proposition

Millions of data points.
One clear view.

Signal combines deep research, advanced AI, and algorithmic analysis to continuously interpret investor analysis, competitor activity, employee sentiment, customer narratives, and wider market perception — bringing vast, unstructured data into a single coherent intelligence layer for your business.

What Signal Shows You

◎

Where you stand today

Composite score · five pillars · peer rank vs 8 companies

▤

How you compare to peers

All five pillars benchmarked against 8 comparable companies

◈

How your position is evolving

Trajectory · leading indicators · 12M Signal Expected forecast

Early Signals

Signal identifies the subtle shifts in sentiment, behaviour, and performance that precede material change — before they appear in published results. At its core is the predictive Signal Expected Score, modelling your likely trajectory and highlighting the risks, opportunities, and actions that will shape what comes next.

How to Read the Score

62

ESTABLISHED Joint 4th of 8 peers

Score 0–100 · benchmarked vs peers · direction arrow shows 90-day trend

The score is not absolute — it is relative. Read the number, the rating band, and the peer rank together. A score of 76 Strong in 2nd place is a very different position to 76 Strong in 6th of 8.

Five Signal Pillars

📈 Investor

Capital markets, analyst sentiment, share price signals

🤝 Customer

Buyer sentiment, public perception, review data

👥 Employee

Glassdoor, talent flow, CEO approval trajectory

🛡️ Compliance

Governance, ESG, regulatory standing

📢 Voice

Narrative ownership, executive presence, media momentum — whether the company authors its own story or has it written by others

✦

Signal AI · Fully Integrated

Signal AI is loaded with the complete intelligence picture for this assessment — every score, sub-component, peer comparison, and recommendation. Ask it anything via the Chat tab. What is my biggest risk? What would move my composite score most? Why is my Employee score declining? You will get a specific, grounded answer.

Assessment Basis

All Signal assessments are based entirely on publicly available external data. No internal company data is used. Scores are directional intelligence updated weekly — not audited measures. Signal has no commercial relationship with any company, individual, or organisation referenced in its assessments.

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