Instant taps earned a 44% gross margin. The water cooler market never saw the number.

I keep seeing the same ending. The best business in a group gets sold to fund the parts that are struggling. Strix Group plc has now published the accounts that show exactly what was sold.

The company filed its final results on 4 August 2026, covering the 15 months to 31 March 2026. Billi, the instant tap business it sold in January, sits in those accounts as a discontinued operation. Billi ran a gross margin of 44.0%, against 27.5% for the divisions Strix kept.

What an instant tap business actually earns

ITS means instant tap systems. These are the boiling, chilled and sparkling taps plumbed into a counter. Europe has never had a public set of accounts for one. Billi was the exception, and now it has gone private.

The figures are worth stating plainly. Billi turned over £50.6m in the period and made £22.3m of gross profit. EBITDA was £10.7m, or 21.0% of sales. Operating cash conversion came in at 95.3%.

Now compare that with what Strix retained. The continuing business made a 17.3% EBITDA margin and lost money after tax. Group diluted earnings per share came to 26.2p, and the sold business supplied 29.2p of it.

Billi was also the part that grew. Its revenue rose by just under 10% to £47.3m in the year to December 2025. The group's controls division fell 23.8% over a similar span.

The number underneath the number

Here is the part most readers will skip. Billi's margin went down while its sales went up. The period covers 15 months against a 12-month comparison, so read the percentages rather than the totals.

Gross margin slipped from 45.7% to 44.0%. EBITDA margin fell from 24.0% to 21.0%. Operating profit stayed flat at £8.8m across a longer trading period.

Billi was building a new Australian plant and facing more competition at the same time. Growth in instant taps needs factory money. That is a different model from a rental book. It explains the sale better than any press statement did.

Why this matters if you sell instant taps

Most European operators price instant taps as premium hardware. The accounts point somewhere else. A 44% gross margin on a manufactured product behaves like a service margin. It comes from the consumables and the contract behind the tap.

Zenith's own market database shows the same thing from the demand side. Instant taps have been Europe's fastest-growing segment. The average commercial unit is worth roughly three times a mains-fed cooler. We see that gap because operators submit their numbers to us directly. Local data partners in each market fill in the rest.

Bottled water dispense earns its money another way and deserves fair treatment here. A bottled round turns a similar gross margin into cash without owning a factory. It can also add customers without a capital programme. Plenty of good operators run both books for that exact reason.

The disclosure window has closed

Billi now sits with Crescent Capital Partners. Zip sits inside Culligan. Quooker, Borg & Overström and Blupura are all privately held. Grohe is a minor line inside a building products group.

No listed instant tap business is left anywhere in the world. Every future valuation in the segment now runs on private comparables outsiders cannot see. The accounts published on 4 August are the last public read the market will get.

Use them while they are fresh. In your next data room, ask for gross margin before service revenue is added. Then ask what share of gross profit comes from filters and carbon dioxide. One more question. Who pays for the next production line?

What happens next

The segment is growing and the money in it is real. The lesson from Strix is that owning instant tap growth costs capital. That suits patient private owners better than it suits listed small caps.

Expect more of these businesses to change hands quietly over the next two years. Watch for a European operator or manufacturer publishing a tap margin of its own. The first to do it sets the benchmark for everybody else. Operators holding both a tap book and a delivery round will have the most choices.

P.S. Benchmarking a segment that no longer files public accounts? The 2026 Zenith Water Dispense Market Reports cover 30+ markets, including every West and East European market plus Japan, Turkey, the UAE, South Korea and Mexico on request. Each report carries a full bottled, mains-fed and instant tap model: operators and shares, consumer and business split, revenue, and a 2019 to 2030 outlook. Excel, with the written report on request. Trusted by industry leaders since 1998. https://waterdispenseinsights.com/reports