A Message From Our CEO: Driving Value-Creating Growth

It is a great honour to be appointed CEO of RS Group and be a part of the RS executive team as we continue delivering exceptional outcomes for all our stakeholders.

I have been a long-time admirer of RS and a shareholder for some time. My involvement with the Company has been through my position as a Non-Executive Director since 2016 and also through the organisations I have worked in over the past 25 years that have either been direct or indirect customers of RS.

RS is incredibly well positioned within a large, fragmented market. We are the link between suppliers and industrial customers who buy many different products in small volumes when required for the maintenance, repair and operation of their businesses. Crucially, we understand our customers’ needs and the wide and diverse range of products and service solutions that keep their businesses running efficiently and smoothly.

Providing industry and product expertise, responsive customer service and innovative solutions to make our customers’ lives easier underpins our differential offer.

We have an exciting growth strategy which I was fortunate in my position as a Non-Executive Director to have helped shape. The performance of the Group over the last five years demonstrates the strength of our strategic vision.

The strong progress we have made is down to our great people who understand our vision and ambition. I would like to congratulate all the employees of RS for achieving another year of outperformance. There is so much in RS that excites me, but it is the people who are at the core of our strength.

In the short time since I became CEO, I have visited many of our offices and DCs across the Group and met many different teams. I can see that RS is filled with people with enormous energy, passion and ideas on how to drive greater market share and execute better.

My role is to harness these ideas, simplify our processes so we can execute better and faster to make our people’s lives easier and generate profitable and sustainable growth and returns.

My focus is to accelerate our strategy, ensuring we are aligned as one team to create the greatest value-creating opportunities for all our stakeholders. I believe that ESG should be fundamental in our purpose, strategy and decision making and I am delighted that RS has a strong ESG ethos, both in how we work and also how we help others. RS is positioned uniquely at the centre of the global industrial value chain, allowing us to help our suppliers and customers pivot towardsmore sustainable product and service solutions.

I see tremendous potential to deliver ongoing exceptional growth as we execute our strategy. It is important that we continue to accentuate our differentiated proposition, focus on improving our operational capabilities, executing well and prioritise our actions to deliver exceptional financial performance. We have only just scratched the surface of our opportunity and so to be CEO of RS at this time of the journey is truly exciting.

Simon Pryce, CEO