Ashtead aims to be a leader in the global equipment rental business through the exploitation of growth opportunities and by being world class at what we do. We aim to achieve these objectives by generating strong organic growth combined with growth through acquisition as well as delivering high levels of customer satisfaction. Key components of our strategy are the provision of a strong incentive structure for our staff and the development of computer systems to effectively manage our equipment fleet and provide excellent customer service.
The Group focuses on equipment rental. During 2008/9 approximately 91% of our revenue was derived from equipment rental and rental related services with the balance coming from sales of new and used equipment, parts and associated goods, such as equipment accessories. We believe that equipment rental offers the opportunity to earn substantially higher returns than those which are earned by equipment dealers whose margins are effectively capped by the equipment manufacturer.
We believe that our focused and dedicated rental approach improves the effectiveness of our rental sales force by encouraging them to build and reinforce relationships with customers and to concentrate on strong, whole-life returns from our rental fleet rather than on short-term returns from sales of equipment. In contrast, many of our competitors in the equipment rental industry, especially in the US, follow a mixed business approach, providing rentals, selling new equipment and trading used equipment.
Acquisitions have been and will continue to form a key part of our strategy. Acquisitions are made to expand both our geographic footprint and the range of products we offer. We bring value to our acquisitions by introducing our successful business model and providing the benefit of scale. We will continue to look for value-enhancing bolt-on acquisitions to support our networks in existing geographies. We will also look to further specialist businesses which are higher added value as our customer base looks to outsource their planning and technical requirements as well as renting equipment.
Our most important financial objective is to deliver return on investment (RoI) well ahead of our cost of capital. In particular, we drive RoI by the incentivisation of our people to deliver superior returns.
