Okay, good morning, everyone. I never thought I would be too tall for a, for a mic. Anyway. Good morning again. Thanks for coming along to our FY23 interim results presentation. To those watching online, thanks for listening in. I'm sure many of you have already seen our results RNS this morning, as... Sorry, can you go back? Thank you. You have seen our results RNS this morning, as well as our second annual Fashion with Integrity progress update. I'm gonna take you through a summary of our first half before giving you more color on our progress with our Driving Change agenda, which has been our core focus since we last spoke to you in January, and since October as well. I'll hand over to Katy to run you through our financials in more detail. Today is Katy's last result announcement at ASOS, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank her for her hard work to the very last minute, I promise, and her valuable contribution throughout her time here. It's been a great pleasure to work with you, Katy. I will then ask our incoming interim CFO Sean Glithero, I've never pronounced it so really, to take us through the outlook for the year ahead before we have some time for Q&A. With that, when I first spoke to you as CEO back in October, I set my diagnosis of our strengths and weaknesses, which led to the launch of our Driving Change agenda, which is an action plan to accelerate the transformation of ASOS into a profitable cash generative business. We are determined to do this while retaining our commitment to protect people and reduce our impact on the planet through our Fashion with Integrity program. I'm pleased to say this morning that we have made great progress over the last six months, creating strong foundations for our return to profit and cash generation in the second half of the year and beyond. Against a challenging backdrop, sales in the period at constant currency and excluding Russia, declined 7% with a deterioration since P1, largely due to the impact of our profitability initiatives. This is to be expected as we prioritize order and customer profitability over our mentality of growth at all costs. Adjusted loss before interest and tax was GBP 69.4 billion, reflecting the facing of headwinds and Driving Change benefits across fiscal year 2023, which we'll give more detail on later. Sorry. I'm encouraged by the progress we have made so far. We are having some technical difficulties. Sorry about that. Let's see if we can get back to..... The idea is that I'm gonna continue talking to the, slide we have here. Okay, we're having an issue with the slides. Okay, thank you. Sorry about that. My apologies. I'm encouraged with the progress we have made on our journey towards operational excellence so far. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of all ASOSers, we're on track to deliver, thank you so much, over the GBP 300 million benefits of our profitability and cost savings measures this year, as we announced in October. The team has delivered over GBP 100 million of benefit in the first half, and over 95% of the GBP 200 million benefits planned for H2 will come from actions that we have already taken. The shift to our new commercial model is a core pillar of the Driving Change agenda. In this sense, I'm pleased to report that our stock reduction is ahead of plan, down by 9% in the first half of the year, and we have plans in place to reduce our stock position by around 20% by year end. It will take time for all the benefits of this shift to flow through. I'm pleased to see recent gross margin up more than 300 basis points year-on-year, driven by some of our commercial initiatives and supported by freight and duty pricing. At the end of February, we had cash and undrawn facilities of over GBP 400 million. This month, we have also amended and extended our 350 million RCF facility through to November 2024, supporting the business as we continue to execute our plan. Alongside our robust and flexible balance sheet, leadership and culture is a core enabler of our strategy. Over the period, we have reinforced our senior leadership team, simplified decision-making processes, and empower a culture of innovation. We have made great progress in the period, there is still so much opportunity in this business. As we move through the second half of the year, we remain focused on the delivery of our Driving Change agenda to create strong foundations for the next phase of our growth. Sorry. Thank you. Hopefully, you remember the four pillars of the Driving Change agenda as we set it out in October, but let me remind you a little bit. They were. The first one was renewing our commercial model, the second was improving our order economics and removing inefficiencies in our operation. The third one was ensuring that we maintain a robust and flexible balance sheet. Last but not least, refreshing our leadership team and culture. I'll talk about our progress in each of these pillars a little bit more in detail. The eagle eye among you may recognize this slide from the full year results presentation. I wanted to recap on our plans for the year under our renewed commercial model. The shift to the new commercial model involves, first, a comprehensive change of our ASOS buying and merchandising processes, an improved stock management discipline, and removing complexity from our supply chain. These actions will enable us to give our consumers the best possible experience, increasing the visibility of more relevant full price product. To drive the benefits of our renewal commercial model, it's critical that we are operating with an optimized stock profile. Given the current lead times on product, there is a lag between operational changes and visible results. I'll explain this more in detail on the next slide. I'm pleased with the progress we have made to date. We have reduced our stock balance by 9%, as I said before, since the end of FY22, which is ahead of plan. This reduction has been supported obviously by the GBP 130 million write-off, it must be taken in the context of the challenging market backdrop and the typical stock build over the H1. In addition to taking remedial action on stock, we have changed the way we manage our stock position on an ongoing basis. This enables us to be more flexible in creating and managing our assortment, meaning our customers see more relevant product. That is the end game. To ensure continued discipline in the future, we have empowered our central merchandise planning team to oversee a more dynamic approach to stock management and develop new channels to clear stock outside of the ASOS platform in order to protect our brands and ensure our customers get the best possible experience. A key pillar of our Driving Change agenda is the shift to this renewed commercial model, which is both supported by and a driver of better stock management. That means better buying, better selling, and better clearing of excess stock. I wanted to spend a bit of time on this slide explaining the development of our stock profile, including the three-phased approach we're taking to right size our inventory. Let me first give you some high-level background on our stock profile. At the onset of the pandemic, we saw a spike in demand, stock turn accelerated and inventory levels dropped. As we moved through fiscal year 2021 in response to demand expectations and supply chain disruption, intake was increased considerably and the stock turn declined. As demand fell over fiscal year 2022, under the old commercial model, we did not adapt intake or clear stock quickly enough. This resulted in a buildup of excess inventory and low stock turn. Sorry. In the past, we have kept past season product on the platform for too long. We believed we could sell through all stock at break even or for a small profit if it was available for long enough. This ultimately comes at the expense of customer experience, full price sales and profitability. The new model represents a break from this approach. We will be more responsive, we're already more responsive to what our customers want. We will clear through stock faster and show our customers the most relevant full price product. With my famous image, the fresh fish, if you want. Sorry to repeat it. The three phases of our approach are first, the first stage is the stock write-off that we did. We took a decisive action to clear GBP 130 million of excess stock. Approximately 90% of it is now extracted from our core network, and this alongside brings a significant operational efficiencies and improving profitability in our sales. The second one involves a reduction in our intake for the spring/summer 2023 season that we have already implemented, obviously. Given the change took place partway through the buying cycle, the opportunity to reduce intake was predominantly actioned via a reduction in the number of options rather volume or depth by option. This is a drag on sales, but will drive the 20% planned reduction in inventory levels by year end. The third phase applies to our autumn/winter 2023 intake, where we've been able to apply our new approach properly. The optimized intake for that season, which is effectively H1 fiscal year 2024, reduces volume by option and restores option width, removing the drag on sales and restoring the stock turn to pre-pandemic levels. Alongside the short-term action we are taking to optimize our inventory, we're also focused on increasing our flexibility in the long term. ASOS has a unique proposition that combines our own brand product with curated partner brands. To fully capitalize on the proposition, we need to be able to respond more quickly to our customer demands. Before I talk you through our test and react pilot, let me first explain our own brand approach. ASOS is not aiming to be the cheapest product on the market, nor the fastest on every item. The aim is to offer customers good value. That means fashionable products with good quality at competitive prices. Our customers appreciate that we are able to offer product like embellished dresses, which are exceptional value for special occasions, or their favorite denim that fits so well they wear on repeat and on and on again, as well as product that applies to our unique twist to the latest trends. Having the full breadth of ASOS product, that perfectly blends with customer favorite brands, and this is one of the reason that makes ASOS unique. The test and react pilot will allow us to improve our offering further. To make our offer more relevant, while we leverage our data capabilities and accelerate our speed to market where appropriate. The pilot, which is currently in progress, tests our ability to go from concept to site in approximately two weeks across a small number of product categories. This differs from our major competitors in the react part. We don't just want to repeat successful styles at speed. We want to adapt our designs based on our customers' feedback, our customers' behavior, learn from what they are doing. We are first to market with trends. Initial results have been very positive. Once the pilot has concluded, we will consider how we can roll it out, what we have learned so far, more widely. To increase our flexibility on the partner brand side, the partner brands model allows us to, on our partner brands, the Partner Fulfils. Sorry, not partner brands. The Partner Fulfils model allows us to expand the range of, and depth of our product offering without the associated inventory risk. More than that, this new business model will have an extraordinary impact on our longest lead time product areas, such as sportswear, which typically operates on a much longer lead time than other categories, close to a year. Partner Fulfils has gone from 2 to 24 brands since launch in November 2021, and is expanding rapidly for our key brands. For instance, for one of our key sportswear brands is already accounting to over 20% of sales through the ASOS platforms in the countries where this formula is live. Our tech is continually developing to facilitate the addition of more brands and geographies and improving the partner experience. The second pillar of the Driving Change agenda focuses on operational excellence, improving our order economics and reducing our cost base. We remain committed to investing in the areas where the returns are greatest. We are relocating capital from non-strategic areas and improving our operational excellence. As I said earlier, I'm really proud of what the team has achieved to date. We are delivering on an ambitious plan with more than GBP 100 million of benefits already realized. Importantly, we will reap the benefits of the actions we have already taken during second half. Initiatives already in place will drive more than 95% of the GBP 200 million of profit initiatives expected in the second half of the year. As part of this program of profit optimization and cost mitigation measures, we have made significant improvements to the profitability of our most important territories, as well as removing substantial costs in the business. The actions we have taken in the first half of the year can be split between four buckets. The first one is our buying optimization initiatives that include improving supplier packaging and labeling compliance to reduce reprocessing costs at our fulfillment centers, or taking action to improve profitability, for example, reducing exposure to higher risk categories like bridal wear. Second is our pricing and proposition changes that have resulted from the country review we mentioned at P1, and which I will come back on the next slide. Third is our supply chain initiatives that include things like reducing the use of the currently more manual Lichfield fulfillment center, eliminating split orders, and rationalizing our UK returns footprint. Finally, the other category, we couldn't find a better name, which is a reduction in our property footprint, an increase in discipline on marketing spend, and consolidation of our tech contracts, for instance. Much like our approach on stock, we have taken an action in three phases to improve our customer profitability. Firstly, at the brand level, we constantly refresh our brand portfolio to offer consumers the most exciting and curated edit of product. In October, we added to this with a comprehensive review of brand profitability, we added a lens of profitability, if you want. Brands can become unprofitable for a number of reasons, including heightened promotivity or high returns, which often coincides with limited product relevance. The action we took with each brand, depending on whether this partner was deemed to be strategic or not. For strategic brands, remedial actions are taken to improve profitability. We have included one example on the slide. This brand was loss-making in FY22. We took action to remove promotional activity, reduce discounts, and cap discount depth. This resulted in sales of approximately 9 million units in H1 and a swing to strong profitability. Where the brands were deemed not to be strategic, we have ceased to buy from them. This has been the case with the 35 unprofitable brands we highlighted at P1. From November, we focused on underperforming territories as well, taking a different... differentiated approach to maximizing profitability in each market. Taking the example of Poland, which is one of our top 20 countries by sales and was loss-making in FY22, we have removed free delivery while reducing our standard charge, increased prices, reduced on investment in markdown, and scaled back marketing spend. These actions have driven a significant swing in profitability with average basket value up double digits as a result. Similarly, in the U.S., we told you in October that we were particularly disappointed with the return on investment in that market. We have since taken remedial actions as well, including removing unprofitable brands in the territory, a review of pricing, and changes to the delivery proposition. This has resulted in significant improvement to profitability, supported by a 6% increase in average basket value as well. In short, we have applied the medicine. While the option to exit countries which continue to be unprofitable remains as a last resort, evidence to date indicates that this may not be necessary. The third, more targeted level of action is at the customer level. We are very proud of the customer base we have built at ASOS. We have approximately 25 million highly engaged, young, fashion-loving customers who shop with us regularly. Incentivizing more positive behavior from a small number of our customers could have a significant impact on our profitability. We currently have approximately GBP 100 million profit drag from a group of customers accounting for 6% of our customer base. It's a very small group of customers with a very big impact. These customers generate a loss of approximately GBP 6 per order due to a heavy reliance on discounted product and high returns rate. For some of these customers, the behavior is temporary, for others, it's part of a profitable lifetime journey. For some, it's simply bad business for ASOS. We are now testing a more personalized approach to incentivize positive behaviors from specific customer groups. Moving on our third pillar, a robust and flexible balance sheet. We ended fiscal year 2022 with ample liquidity of more than GBP 650 million of cash and undrawn facilities. However, we also made clear that we would revisit our financing within the next 12 months to provide the certainty and security to support our reimagine ASOS strategy. Today, I am pleased to announce that we have amended and extended our existing GBP 350 million RCF to November 2024. This secures our funding beyond fiscal year 2024, supporting the business as it continues to execute on its Driving Change agenda and return to profitability and cash generation. Strategic investment and innovation remains critical for the long-term future of ASOS business, but we are now deploying capital in a more disciplined way. Having set capex guidance for fiscal year 2023 at somewhere between GBP 175 million and GBP 200 million, below our previously stated midterm range of GBP 200 million-GBP 250 million, we are committed to focusing our spend on projects which will drive improved profitability and enhance customer experience in a highly competitive market. Our tech teams have achieved some really great things in the last few months. I wanted to highlight some of their most recent projects to you today. They have built AI-based tools to optimize our pricing, markdown, and stock management. They have developed recurring payments functionality. They have created an infrastructure for us to launch ASOS Drops, a really exciting new capability enabling consumers to compete to access limited drops of our most in-demand partner brand product. The final pillar of our Driving Change agenda relates to simplification of the ASOS decision-making processes, developing a culture of innovation across the business, and reinforcing the senior leadership team with key strategic hires. Over the course of the last, of the last nine months, we have established a new management committee, replacing many of the numerous boards that used to exist in the business before. This flatter leadership structure is designed to ensure that all critical elements of the business are represented when important decisions are made, encouraging cross-functional collaboration and enabling us to be more agile, reducing our time to market. A strong top team is essential to refocusing the whole business on operational excellence. It was important to me to combine the fresh perspective of external hires with internal promotions to understand what makes ASOS so special. In terms of external hires, we have recently announced Dan Elton as our new Senior Customer Director and Michelle Wilson as our Senior Director of Strategy and Corporate Development, as well as appointing Sean Glithero as our new Interim CFO. You can see, the management committee is now fully functional, and I'm excited about the energy the team is already bringing to the organization. I'm now handing over to Katy for her final ASOS result presentation to, and to take you through the financials, in further detail. Thanks, José. As José noted in his introduction, our financial performance in H1 has reflected our focus on sustainable profit and cash generation over the pursuit of top-line growth at any cost, all set against a challenging backdrop for online retail. Amid cost of living concerns affecting consumer sentiment, our core 16 to 35-year-old demographic have reported feeling disproportionately hard hit. Online retail has suffered as shoppers have returned to physical stores post-pandemic. Online penetration has fallen by circa 100 bps year-on-year, we remain confident in the growth prospects for the channel in the longer term, with penetration still substantially higher than before the arrival of COVID. We have taken wide-ranging actions to improve profitability. Driving Change initiatives include changes to pricing and delivery proposition across multiple geographies, reducing our investments in markdown and marketing, and exiting unprofitable brands, as well as reducing intake to right-size inventory. We estimate that around half the decline seen in sales since our last update in early January is a consequence of these actions, but we remain convinced that they are in the best interest of the business in the longer term. Consistent with this, we've seen sales decline by 7% year-on-year, but gross margin remains resilient at 42.9% in the context of headwinds from input cost inflation. You'll remember that the previously guided 100 basis points full-year tailwind from freight will primarily impact the second half. The phasing of headwinds, two-thirds H1 weighted, and benefits of the Driving Change agenda, two-thirds H2 weighted, have resulted in an adjusted EBIT loss of GBP 69.4 million and an adjusted loss before tax of GBP 87.4 million. CapEx in the period came in at GBP 150 million, a step up from the same period last year due to the timing of the renegotiated contractual payments relating to the paused automation projects in Atlanta and Litchfield. We expect a step down in the second half to bring the full-year investment in line with our guidance of GBP 175 million-GBP 200 million. Meanwhile, our cash outflow was of a similar magnitude to last year, driven by the much larger accounting loss, CapEx, and the phasing of stock receipts and payments with the cash benefit associated with the lower H1 intake expected in H2 FY23. The profit actions we've taken in the half are reflected in our KPIs, with average basket value up 5%, supported by an increase in our average selling price. In the context of flat gross margin, this indicates an improvement in cash profit per order as the benefits of our profitability actions start to drive results. Similar to the trend in sales, we've also seen visits, order frequency, customers, and conversions step back in line with our profit actions and a temporary reduction in the number of options on the platform to facilitate a reduction in intake volumes partway through the spring/summer buying cycle. We have seen some churn in our customer base following the increase we saw during the pandemic. New customer acquisition has also slowed as we scale back spend against a weaker consumer backdrop. However, over the same period, we've taken a larger share of wallet from our customers than this time last year, giving us confidence that the actions we're taking are the right ones to transform ASOS into a sustainably profitable, more resilient business in the future. Here, you'll see the slide we usually show you with some segmental detail. I won't talk about each region individually. As is the case at group level, the variability in performance between segments reflects a combination of the economic backdrop and country-specific profitability actions as detailed by Jose. Turning to adjusted gross margin, this has remained resilient in the face of inflationary pressures in the period. We said in our P1 trading update that we would hold gross margin flat into the half year, which is exactly what we've done, with the expected tailwind from freight starting to come through to offset some adversity from trading activity, including input cost inflation, partially offset by benefits from pricing. We're particularly pleased by the gross margin run rate in recent months, which is up more than 300 bps year-on-year and gives the business the flexibility to prioritize further reduction in stock in the second half, even against a challenging trading environment. Looking down the P&L to the EBIT level, we've seen circa two-thirds of the expected headwinds in our cost base come through in H1, while the benefits of Driving Change agenda are primarily weighted to the second half. The majority of the freight benefit that we've guided to at our FY22 results is also second half weighted. José has talked you through the main elements of the more than GBP 100 million of benefits realized in the first half of the year. I wanted to give you a bit more color on the countervailing headwinds. We've experienced inflation in the mid-single digits across our total cost base, with run rates normalizing above pre-pandemic levels, the impact of which will persist until the increase annualizes in May. In addition, we annualized incremental costs added during the FY22. In the early part of the year, we experienced inefficiencies in our supply chain due to overstocking. These inefficiencies resulted in increased distribution costs relating to split orders in the U.K. being shipped from Lichfield, which is not fully automated, as well as an increased warehouse cost due to fulfillment centers operating above their optimal capacity. As a result of these factors, labor cost per unit in the U.K. was up 16%. Converting some of these changes into our standard disclosure around operating costs, you can see from this slide that by far the two biggest movers in the first half were warehouse costs up 210 bips as a percentage of sales and other costs up 260 bips. Both of these cost lines included labor inflation in warehouses and head office respectively, while warehouse also saw the majority of the impact from return rate normalization, and other includes the impact of incremental costs arising in the course of FY22. Finally, bridging from adjusted EBIT to our reported free cash flow for the period, you'll see that the largest drivers of the outflow are, firstly, the EBIT loss, secondly, CapEx, which we expected to step down in the second half of the year, and third, a working capital outflow which reflects decrease in payables, largely offset by the lower stock value, with the cash benefit associated with lower intake in the first half flowing through in H2. With that, I'll hand you over to Sean to talk you through our outlook and guidance. Thanks, Katy, and hello, everyone. It's great to see many of you in person for the first time. Whilst the first half of FY23 has been challenging for many reasons, the actions ASOS has already taken have laid strong foundations for a return to profit and cash generation in the second half. While we're not expecting the trading environment to improve in the coming months, and the actions we've taken to reduce unprofitable sales will continue to drag on top line growth, we're very confident that we're pursuing the right strategy to restore profitability and rightsize our stock position. The headwinds we experienced in the first half will continue but abate somewhat. Inflation is expected to persist in the mid-single digits, albeit starting to ease, and the impact of normalizing return rates will annualize in May. In parallel, the benefits of the various Driving Change initiatives will ramp up, with more than 95% of the total H2 impact, or around GBP 200 million, flowing from initiatives already in place. We will also see the full benefit of contractual freight reductions at a gross margin level. As a result of these dynamics, we continue to expect a return to profitability and cash generation in the second half. I'll now talk through some more detailed guidance for the remainder of the year. Since the end of the half, we've seen a continuation of the sales trends experienced in January and February, with approximately half of the sales decline linked to profitability measures we have taken. However, the improvement in adjusted gross margin run rate has also been maintained. Looking ahead to the remaining four months of the year, we expect no change in the external trading environment and a continued impact from our planned profitability measures. As such, we expect a low double-digit decline in our top line for H2. In terms of the other guidance for the second half, we expect second half adjusted gross margin up around 200 basis points year on year. After allowing for more investment in markdown to achieve our planned inventory reduction of about 20% by the end of the year, as the weak trading backdrop persists. We anticipate second half adjusted EBIT in the range of GBP 40 million-GBP 60 million as we return to profitability, representing an adjusted EBIT margin of about 3%. Free cash flow before incremental refinancing costs will be over GBP 150 million or over GBP 125 million after extra interest arrangement and advisor fees. capex in the second half of between GBP 60 million-GBP 85 million will be considerably lower than in the first half, is in line. That we are in line with our previous guidance of GBP 175 million-GBP 200 million for the full year. Finally, for FY23, free cash outflow prior to those incremental refinancing costs will be around GBP 100 million, That's at the bottom end of the 0-GBP 100 million outflow guidance we provided at FY22. I'm now gonna pass over to José for a few closing remarks. Thank you, Sean. Just wanna give a short wrap-up. No worries. Just to wrap up, we have covered a lot of ground in the slides, but also in the last six months, as you have seen, we have make, we are making tough choices and taking decisive action to prioritize profitability and cash generation over a growth at all costs mentality, as I said before. I have talked you through some of the tough actions we have taken in the period. This has undoubtedly had a negative impact on our revenue trajectory, but this action we're willing to take to lay stronger foundations for our next stage of growth. Our new commercial model is central to our purpose as a business. In order to deliver its full potential, we have taken action to optimize our stock position, and that's the first step to the implementation of this model. This has required short-term sacrifices with regards to our option count in recent months, but by the autumn, we'll be in a better place. We have delivered on our plan of profit optimization initiatives in the first half, and we are confident on reaching the GBP 300 million of benefits for the full year. These actions are substantially improving the core profitability of our business model. We have successfully amended and extended our financing, providing clarity on our future liquidity, and we have hired externally and promoted internally to form our new management committee. Against a challenging backdrop, ASOS has achieved a great deal in this period of reset. We are well positioned to return to profitability and cash generation in H2 FY23 and beyond. While there remains much to be delivered in the next few months, I am confident that the ASOS will exit the year a more resilient and a sustainably profitable business. Thank you so much for joining us today. Now I'm gonna hand it over to you for some questions. Michelle is gonna. Okay. Great. If you could say your name before you ask your question. If you could limit it to 2 questions each, just in the interest of time, but maybe ask 1 question at a time, please. Over to you, Mike. Morning, thanks all. Michael Benedict from Berenberg. My first question is just on keeping the offer fresh. Some of your peers have focused more on growing their own separate off-price sites. I wondered if that's something ASOS would consider? Sorry, you said so they have focused on? Growing their own off-price sites. Okay. Is that something ASOS would consider? Well, I think that, when we're talking about keeping our offer relevant, there is a lot about, sorry, the famous fresh fish. Bringing stuff that is relevant for consumer means that is, that is relevant in the moment. There is an element of price in that, and, there is no question that, and that's why we say we wanna be competitive when we're talking about prices. What we also see is that when we offer the right styles, consumer act accordingly and they buy into that. I, we see off-price as a way to clean old stock, but not as a core part of our value proposition where we're talking about relevant and new and... Clearly it's part of our business model to clean old stock, but not the core. Thank you. My second one is just on the Driving Change measures. Sounds like they're largely implemented for FY23. I wondered if you could give some color on the further actions that could support FY24 and beyond. Well, we, as I said before, we have put in place a set of very comprehensive actions. In reality, it's more than 140 actions that are supporting these GBP 300 million of profitability costs improvement during the course of the year. We are quite confident that they will come to have an impact on H2. Will this impact be sustainable over time? The answer is yes. Obviously, we are not doing one-offs. The ambition is to, and the intention is to have a set of actions that remain on time and improve the profitability of the company. Certainly, yeah. If I may, and maybe deviating a little bit from the question, I think it's relevant. Obviously, these actions have had an impact on sales, as we have been very clear, and it might still have an impact during the first months of the next fiscal year. The ambition is to have a very decisive action to give ASOS the right profitability level. That will create a solid base for the future growth of the company. In that sense, we have not hesitated to take tough actions. As I said, there are no secret goals. I think to your question about next year, this year has been the first phase, actually a lot of the tools and the data and the insight that we've seen, we can build on that. That going forward, it's about moving those less profitable customers to be profitable and refining what we're doing. Yeah, trying to, you know, improve retention, trying to get repeat rates up. That's the next phase. I think Caroline has the microphone. It's Caroline Gulliver from Stifel. Actually, just my first question is on that customer churn that you've been seeing. You mentioned that 6%, attribute sort of GBP 100 million of the loss. I just wondered, is there any overlap with the 7% reduction in Premier customers that you've already seen, and sort of how do those two play together? Yeah. That. Well, first of all, I think it's not uncommon to see that not 100% of the customers are profitable in many businesses. Being said that, what we have done is to take action to promote the, if you want, the best possible behaviors, and that we have increased prices in Premier, for instance, or we have implemented thresholds to try to reduce that. Some of these customers are Premier customers. That is true, but not 100% of them. Sorry, to go back to the same idea. We are taking decisive action to make sure that we have the right level of profitability. That has come with an impact in the number of customers, yeah. That some of them are Premier, yeah. That doesn't really mean we don't love our Premier customers. We really love them to pieces. We need to make sure that we have a sustainable business model. Just as an addendum to that, you saw a 9% drop in active customers in the U.S. Are you expecting a further reduction in active customers with the measures that you've put in place? The vast majority of the measures are already in place, we would see that probably this is gonna ease during the course of the next months, there might still be some loss of customers. Among other things, we have implemented a more disciplined approach into marketing in the U.S., obviously that is having an impact. We are seeing that the impact in profitability as well is quite remarkable. Okay, good. There we go. Adam at the back. It's Adam Cochrane at Deutsche Bank. The first question, you talked there about the actions that you've taken. As you've gone through the first half, when have these actions been taken to improve your profitability? Should we expect that they will fully have annualized in the second half, or will some of them be in the first half of next year as well in terms of the sales impact that you sort of said might maybe sort of 6% or 7% coming from that? You wanna take that? Yeah. It's the program has grown over time, hence why you're seeing sort of that sort of 1/3, 2/3 split in this financial year. You know, we started to implement back end of the calendar year and actually then get, got into full speed at the start of this calendar year. That's around the time that they're gonna start to annualize. For P1 next year, there'll still be a drag on the active customers or visits or something because of those actions. I think we'd annualize in P1. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, hopefully also an impact on profitability. Yep. The second question, you talked about 6% of customers not being profitable. Is that correct? Yeah. Yep. Are those 6% of customers left at the end of the period or still to be exited? What was that number like at the beginning of the period? No, that was the number at the beginning of the period. Is that? At the beginning of this fiscal year. What is that now? I don't know, to be honest. I couldn't answer that one. Obviously, I'm sure it's significantly smaller because we have taken a lot of actions to tackle that behavior, but I don't know if it's 6%. Okay. Will you have to What are you reliant on to achieve sales growth again? Historically it may have been pricing, promotion, improved deliveries. Is it now just gonna be about annualizing all your changes, waiting for the consumer to recover, and then hopefully the better product that you're putting in front of them? Well, right now we're really focused on our Driving Change agenda. This is an agenda that is really focused on having the actions to take the company back to profit. We are less focused on this growth agenda that you have. There will be time to talk about that, but right now. If you want, probably one of the reasons why we have been able to execute 140 options plus in this period of time is that the company has been really focused. I think focus has been critical. I wanna make sure that that focus continues for the remain of the fiscal year. There will be time to talk about growth once we are over this fiscal year. If you want, in general terms, obviously the improvement of the quality of our assortment and the improvement of the quality of the engagement with consumers will bring additional growth. If I may, we already see some impact of that. If you look into our core consumers in the UK that are the 16 to 35 years old, we are gaining share with them, which means that they are recognizing the value of what we are doing, and they are recognizing the value of having a more engaging assortment. Thanks. Just to come back on your 6% of active customer questions before we move on to Anne. That was a group of active customers that we identified as particularly unprofitable at the year end, so the 6% is based on FY22. The reason they're particularly unprofitable is they're typically shopping on promotion, they're returning a lot, and it's very high frequency. It's not that we're giving a proportion of our customers are unprofitable. We're just calling out this particular group where we're looking to take action. That action started from around March, and there's a lot of kind of testing to do to see what we can do to drive those customers back into profitability, but we're not gonna kind of keep giving an update on where that 6% moves to. Thanks. It's Anne Critchlow from SG. First question about the US. How have you changed the delivery proposition there exactly? Secondly, just to check on the returns rate. Is it still running 150-200 basis points higher than pre-pandemic? It sounds as if it is, but just to check. Thank you. On the U.S., the question is, what have we changed in the delivery proposition precisely? To be honest, I don't have all the details, certainly we have changed things on our next day delivery and the standard proposition. We have some of the, when consumers have to pay for delivery, we have increased some of the rates. I think from the top of my head. Yeah, we've shorted the shortened the return period as well. Have shortened the return period to accelerate returns. The second one was, sorry. Returns rate. The returns rate. Let me take a little bit of perspective here. When we analyze returns rate quite in detail, and obviously returns rate is impacted by a lot of things. Geographic composition, different geographies have different returns rate, and we know that certain countries have a significantly higher returns rate. When these countries are performing better, our average returns rate go up. Certain product classes have a higher returns rate. For instance, dresses. When dresses perform better, returns rate go up. Also the tenure of our consumers, the longer they are with us, the more they return. What we saw, if you want, starting March to May last year, was that most likely as a consequence of the cost of living crisis, is that, if you want, the underlying behavior of consumer was changing, and they were returning more. That seems to be here to stay. This behavior is continuing at this level. We got one from Tony at the front here. Tony Shiret from Panmure. A couple of questions. First of all, obviously there's a lot of negative stuff going on that you're, you know, firefighting pretty vigorously. I just wondered, in the sort of way in which you've looked at the business and tried to sort of identify areas of underperformance, whether you think there are some longer term things that are gonna come out of this that, you know, maybe you don't wanna be in a particular region, or you don't wanna sell something or the other, or you need to make a fundamental change to the way you operate in a region to make it worth doing. The question is there any sort of longer term analysis dropping out of this current exercise? The second question, which is a bit simpler, I guess, is, can you give us some idea of how the stock will look, post all of the change you've made in terms of SKU count, age of stock, that sort of thing, some KPIs. Thanks. On the long-term analysis. I'm assuming you're asking about long-term analysis from a geographical point of view. Could be. Okay. We were quite disappointed with the performance last year, and that's why we put in place the kind of measures we have put in place. If let me recap, even though I mentioned that during the presentation. We started tackling our brands and we had a very decisive action with some brands. We moved to geographies, and we are now seeing the outcome of these two actions. We are very happy to see that there has been a significant change in the profitability of most geographies. We still have a third wave of changes to come. That is what we were mentioning about consumers. This is gonna be coming. You know, it only started in March, and it's gonna be coming during the course of the next weeks and months, and we are expecting an even deeper change in the profitability. Right now, we don't really see any urgency from a geographical point of view in making any drastic decision. Being said that, we are open to make decisions if things change, and we wanna make the right decisions when it comes from a strategic point of view, also from a geographical or footprint or whatever. I guess answering to your question as well, when we make a decision, the decision is not necessarily binary, 1 or 0, being a geography or not being a geography. There are a set of models that we can implement in some geographies to still remain there without a negative impact. This analysis is a continuous analysis. We are always looking at what we're doing. If you want to summarize it, we don't see any urgency right now to take any drastic decision. The stock question as well. Oh, sorry. I forgot about that. I mean, as we want to reduce stock cover, it's naturally going to improve the aging of the stock. As we want to have less committed buy and actually grow into our buy through a season, and that will help it be more relevant, fresher. Yeah, we will see better aging from those activities. From a SKU count, I think you would see, as we, yeah, we talked about earlier, that we want to have, you know, more width. That's part of the activity we saw in the first half that we didn't have the width necessary or that we wanted. We'll have more width in the future, and that'd be both our stock, and then as we do more with Partner Fulfils, other brand stock as well to increase the assortment for the consumer. If I may, this is a very relevant point. This is like, because Partner Fulfils is going to enable, it's already enabling us to manage the stock in a more efficient way. it's enabling us to add local heroes from smaller countries that we would not be able to do it with our normal economic model that now we can. obviously that is gonna have an impact on our stock width. What is your SKU count at the moment? Normally it's 250,000 options. This is what we normally have. Now it's a little bit less because of the actions we have taken. How much of the GBP 250 is Partner Fulfils? Right now, Partner Fulfils is still small. It's still small. I wouldn't be able to tell you, but right now it's still small. Okay, thanks. Yeah, Partner Fulfils, yeah, we're targeting that part of the business to be 5% sort of our GMV. It's small at the moment. Thanks. Hi, it's Miriam Josiah from Morgan Stanley. Firstly, just on the gross margin, if you could just walk us through the sort of 200 bps improvement you expect in the second half. Is that still being mainly driven by freight, or are there other drivers there? Also, are there any risks in terms of the promotional environment in terms of being able to achieve that 200 bps expansion? Just coming back to growth again, I mean, I understand that you're saying that in the UK you're gaining market share, but how are you still balancing your view of long-term competitiveness of your customer proposition, particularly outside of the UK, and your willingness to maintain your market share there? Okay. if I. Yeah. you do market share. Yeah. I mean, the second half margin is a function of easing inflation. It's a function of the freight and duty initiatives that we've put in place and the contractual rates that we've signed up to flowing through. We're feeling, we're feeling positive about that increase in gross margin in terms of both of those factors. It also gives us. We've, we've obviously accounted for a level of planned promotion in that margin, but it's a good growth margin. It's a good step up, and it gives us flexibility if we want to do more, if the market continues to be particularly tough. It gives us room to push harder if we need to. Market share. The market share. Sorry, when we're talking about market share, let me go back to the idea I said before. Right now we are focused on making sure we have the right level of profitability, and we are sacrificing sales, and we are aware of that. Market share is important if it's in our core geographies and in our core customer segments. Otherwise, it's less important because having market share that is unprofitable is not something we are chasing right now. In that sense, we will chase market share if this is sustainably profitable or sustainable, if you want, or whatever would be the right word. That's where we are right now. And just- Hi there. remind us to ask one at a time, please, Andy. Yeah. Hi there. Andy Wade at Jefferies. Can I ask about the written-off stock? Just mechanically, how's that worked? Where's it gone? Where's it sitting now? Has it been sold? Has it been given to third party? What revenue has been recognized in relation to it? Can we just run through the details of that? Yeah, sure. 90% of it has already been extracted from our warehouses. There is still 10% to be extracted, but the vast majority has already been extracted out of the system. I don't know if you recall it, but what we said is that the vast majority of this stock is gonna be sold through third parties, not through our own. That's why we have extracted it. We have sold a part of it, but it's not a big one. We are closing negotiations to sell the rest, and we are optimistic or we're positive that we will do it. It's not an easy environment because there is a lot of excess stock in the market, but we're advanced there. In terms of the recognition of the sales, it's GBP 2 million. I'm getting a hint. So far it's very small. We always know and we always took into account that that would be a small contribution per unit in terms of cash. Obviously, it's all loss-making. GBP 2 million recognized so far, then there's more to be recognized in the second half. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Sort of similar quantum, GBP 10 million? I mean, what sort of- No, it should be more than GBP 2 million. Yeah. Yeah. Somewhere between GBP 15-ish million. and that, has that stock been fully written off? Yeah. It's been written down to the estimated sales. Right. It'll net to GBP 0 contribution in the second half. It'll provide a revenue number, but no profit. No losses. There will be some extraction costs still as well to finish off the last 10%. Fine. Okay. All right. Going back to the question on gross margin. Just to be clear on that, you're guiding to a 100 basis point benefit from freight for the full year. You've seen a little bit in the first half. Presumably most of that 200 basis points in the second half is coming from that freight being up 100 basis points for the year, right? At least 150 of it. Yeah. The 100 basis points is the year-on-year benefit, you say? Yeah. 200 bps for the second half. Most of it coming in the second half. Most of it's freight, and most of that's locked-in contracts. So, so- Easy numbers. ... where I'm going, getting going is if almost all of your 200 basis point uplift in the second half is coming from freight, I would've expected you to have been to getting some... If you're doing putting all these measures in to improve basket economics, And you're seeing a 5% or 10% impact on your revenue from implementing them, wouldn't you have been hoping for underlying gross margin to be ahead to leave you in a better place? Yeah. I mean, that's a good question. The thing here is, like, we're also seeing a challenging environment. There is always a triangulation between margin, stock, and cash. We are using part of it to make sure that this triangulation works well because the ambition is also to make sure that we don't pile up on old stock at the end of the year. There is the fact that we put in place all the measures we put in place is giving us the flexibility to do that. Otherwise, we would not be able to do it without a deterioration of our margins. The basket economics come through in lower units, which then comes through your distribution and your warehousing costs. Yeah. Okay, fair. All right. Thank you. Hi, it's Nicolas Katsapas from BNP Paribas Exane. I just have a couple on the stock profile and gross margin impact on that. It sounds like you're definitely moving towards buying more in-season product. Can you be clear as to whether you're speaking about your own brand or is it third-party brands included in that as well? Do you can you put a figure to that, you know, a target sort of proportion of the stock that you wanna get to buying in season? What would be the puts and take on the gross margin from that movement into more in-season buy? 'Cause presumably it's a bit more expensive to contract, but you'd see better gross margins from fresher product. You know, just some thoughts around that. As I tried to explain before, obviously there is a different approach to our own brands and to our partner brands. When we're talking about our own brands is where we can apply this in-season purchase. This short cycle or ultra-low short cycle or whatever you wanna call it, where we try to benefit from what we learn from the behavior of the consumers. As we said, it's more about making our assortment relevant, not necessarily repeat what they buy. In that sense, what is our target? We have started with a small base, but just to give you an idea, already more or less 30% of what we buy, it's happening in closer sources. It's already having this impact of being bought in closer sources. Not necessarily whatever we transition to this model is gonna have a very negative impact on intake margins, because we are already buying in short. In short, I mean in the UK or Europe or Turkey. Not necessarily a lot is gonna have an impact on it. We would have to go beyond 30% to have an impact, and we are not even close to that right now. It's not gonna have a, if you want, a sizable impact in the coming year or years. We've got Simon and then George, and then time for one more from the, from online. Cool. Thank you. Simon Bowler from Numis. Changing tack a little bit, first of all, can we talk a little bit around kind of warehouse automation and capital commitments and what was spent in the first half? What are your plans there? Is it a complete automation of those two projects? How much further can that be delayed if that is indeed the plan to complete them through? As we said, we were pausing these two projects. Actually one of the reasons why the capex in this year is more tilted towards H1 is because of some contractual agreements with the providers. In that sense, that clearly explains that. We will be continuing with these projects during the course of the calendar years 2024 and 2025. We will be aligning that with the evolution of our sales. In that sense, no, we will need to see as we see the evolution of the market. In, that was your question, right? Yeah. Yep. Okay. Then secondly, aligning your kind of revenue gross margin guidance, it looks like you need to cross all the operating cost balances, GBP 100 million, give or take, reduction half on half or year on year. It's similar maths. I understand some of that's gonna be volume related given top line, but can you just talk a little bit more around which specific kind of cost categories are there opportunities coming out of? Is the big step changes in terms of the warehouse handling line or where are those other aspects really focused? You, you're right. In terms of the volume benefits come through in the distribution and warehouse. We also get benefit in the warehouse from the reduced stock and, you know, that naturally from running lower stock and not having to move it around as much, not doing the split orders that will come through, and that's part of our profit optimization that comes through in that line. Also part of our cost measures that we put in place that will come through more in the second half. That's gonna be spread across quite a lot of the different lines across payroll, across tech costs, across other overheads, et cetera, and marketing. There isn't big chunks, but it's a sort of a right sizing and operational excellence approach on most lines, but the volume impact's probably the biggest. Okay. Is that second half cost base therefore a sensible one to start thinking about as we think about out years and I guess fiscal 2024 explicitly? I think it is. Whilst factoring in, you know, the volume as well, and inflation. I mean, with inflation, whilst it's eased, you know, there is, it still persists. We've, you know, it's not gonna be a flat cost base. You know, it's gonna rise because of inflation. Sure. Okay. Thank you. George. Hi, it's Georgina Johanan from J.P. Morgan. Thank you. I've got two as well, please. First one, just a high level one. I appreciate that you're sort of focusing on the cost side of things and profit optimization at the moment, but just taking a step back and thinking much longer term, I think you mentioned in the release that you're sort of confident in that growth in online penetration more long term. I was just wondering if you could talk through how you see some of the drivers of that, or actually, do you think we're reaching a place where potentially online is maturing in some of the developed markets in Europe? Thank you. My second one was just around the other costs line. A huge increase in that line year on year, I think about GBP 30 million. I mean, I appreciate that there's energy inflation, I appreciate there's probably mid-single digit% inflation in some of the head office wages and so on and so forth, but just seems a huge increase. Was there anything sort of one-off in nature in there or kind of anything to call out to just help us understand the move better, please? Thank you. Let me take the first one. When you're talking about the evolution of the markets, it's interesting to see how of the digital markets, it's interesting to see where we are right now. What we're seeing is that the markets are going back to their natural rate of growth. After the acceleration during the pandemic, now they are going back to a natural rate of growth. That is pretty much happening almost everywhere with very few exceptions. The only place where I've seen that this abnormal growth is remaining there is in Latin America. In the rest of the world seems to be going back to their natural growth. It's going back to their natural growth. We are now in the moment that where we're seeing this deceleration because of this return to their natural curve. We are not seeing that penetration is going to be reduced or that consumers are going back to the stores, to the physical stores or anything like that. Just to remind you in the world of apparel, obviously it's different by different markets. The most developed markets have a 30% penetration of online sales, which is still very small. When we talk to consumers, and we do a lot of that in our core target, that there's not You don't really see a return to stores or anything like that. I think penetration is going to continue. This is the digital shopping experience brings something that the physical experience cannot bring, and is getting better and better every day. Clearly, there is not going to be a stop in that if you want transition towards digitalization. It's like physical cannot offer all the sizes as digital can. Physical cannot offer all the options shown in an outfit as digital can. Clearly, this is not gonna stop there. What we're seeing right now, in my opinion, is much more a return to the normal growth. I want to take that. The other costs. We do have it in the release, although not in huge detail. You're right, there was certain amounts of inflation that we've seen. There was also quite a strong element of annualization. It's just, it was the, you know, the annualized cost entering the year compared to the average. You know, that created its own headwind. We've been unwinding some of that through our cost optimization measures. There was. We call out one-offs quite transparently. This was inflation and annualization of cost coming into the year. Thank you. time for one final question from online. John Stevenson from Peel Hunt. What do medium-term sustainable EBIT margins look like for ASOS? That's a good one. Today is not time for guidance. I think if I may, let me use this one a little bit also to wrap up. When we established this Driving Change agenda, the aim is to make sure that we take ASOS back to a profitable profile. We said we would take tough decisions, we have. We are seeing now the impact of those tough decisions, the positive and the negative. In that sense, I think when we look at H2, it's gonna start to look more how the company is gonna look like in the future. Whether we're gonna give now a guidance, certainly not. That's not the purpose of today. As I said, focus is super important. We want the organization to be totally focused on the execution of the second half. This is where the value is going to be. Again, I think that looking at the performance we have on the second half, I think is giving a good indication of what is a good base for ASOS looking into the future, but still early to come with a guidance. Great. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.