Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming. Couple of quick introductions. Mike Schmidt, hands up. How many weeks ago you joined us, Mike? Three and a half. Three and a half. Delighted to have Mike up and running. Mike has been spending the last literally, three weeks just touring the business, spending time with the different functions. I think next time you hear the results, Mike will be fully in charge. Thank you for joining us, Mike. The second introduction is Peter Waterhouse. Hi. Pete is our Group Financial Controller. Pete, you've been in the business almost 10 years now? Yep. Pete has always been my right hand as number two in finance, and I'm sure that Mike will rely on Pete's counsel over the next few years. Pete is very experienced, technically very sound, and he's going to cover the financial presentation this time around, then we pass it over to Mike. Excellent. I will open with a very quick summary, then I will hand it over to Pete, and then we'll concentrate on some of the business themes, and I will invite a couple of my colleagues on stage later on. I will introduce them at the time. If we go to slide number one, I will just recap some key numbers. You've already seen this on the RNS, but it's important just to remind ourselves where we are on the half. Group revenues increased by 1.8% year-on-year, and that's just over 29% on a three-year basis. We look at the B&M U.K. segment. I think the key number in here is a like-for-like in Q2 of +2%. I will expand in a bit more detail, actually, what is driving that, and what is happening in the early weeks of quarter three. 10 gross new openings at B&M U.K. in the half. Very strong performance at Heron and B&M France. France grew at 18.2% sales in the half, and Heron at 14.6%. We've opened seven new stores at Heron and four new stores in France in the first half. The new space is performing well. Adjusted EBITDA for the half at GBP 232 million, which is a group EBITDA margin pre-IFRS 16 of 10%. Key driver compared to last financial year is growth margin in the U.K. That's some moderation on a trading basis of 213 basis points, and I will expand what is happening in the second half of the year. Very disciplined stock control across all three businesses, and I think that comes together on the next point, which is cash from operations is up 83% year- on- year. We've delivered from an EBITDA of 232, GBP 370 million in the half of operating cash. In simple terms, that tells you that what we set out to do when we presented back in May, we said stock was going to come down rapidly. That's exactly what has come, and we're exiting half one in a very good, clean position heading into golden quarter. I'll ask you to take the point that operating cash flow doesn't deliver that level of performance if stock has not come down significantly year-on-year. Okay? Net debt is at a very conservative level, 1.3 on an LTM basis, very comfortable in terms of our ceiling of 2.25. Liquidity is very high. There are no maturities anytime soon. We have a very strong balance sheet heading into the next financial year. Now we are going to be keeping the interim dividend at 5p, exactly the same as last financial year, which will be basically paid mid-December as per normal process. That's the normal interim dividend. Okay? Pete, I'll hand to you. You have three or four slides to take us through in finance, and then I will concentrate on some of the business highlights. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, if we move to the first slide, this is our summary profit and loss. The figures I want to call out here are our adjusted EBITDA at GBP 232 million, which is a 10% margin. That's down from last year's figure of GBP 282 million, which was a 12.4% margin, but significantly ahead of our pre-pandemic position of GBP 151 million, which was 8.5% margin. That's a 50% increase overall over those three years. This next slide demonstrates the building blocks behind our 1.8% revenue increase. It shows that the negative we suffered from the like-for-like result is more or less offset by our new store program. A strong performance then in Heron and France added another GBP 59 million to our revenue figure. This next slide shows the journey from GBP 282 million EBITDA down to GBP 232 million. The main driver of that is the like-for-like estate, which is captured in the group margin dropping from 12.4%-10%. Against that, there were several mitigating factors. I'll call out a couple. There was GBP 10 million from new stores, and there was GBP 7 million from France. This next slide shows our group interest expense. It has increased in half. That's both planned and expected. The main driver of that is because of our new GBP 250 million pound bonds, which were in November last year, and therefore not in the comparative. We're in quite a strong position in terms of our key tranches of debt. The maturities are not until 2025 and 2028. This slide demonstrates our strong cash generation. That's been driven by our working capital management, which itself is a result of our planned and material reduction in our stock position over the half. Alongside that, we've maintained our strong controls over our capital expenditure. Maintenance CapEx remains under 1% of revenue. There's no significant CapEx projects required or planned. That's led to our operating cash flow pre-IFRS 16 increasing by GBP 160 million year-on-year. That's maintained our strong leverage ratio at 1.3x, well under our leverage ceiling of 2.25. We are in a significantly liquid position going into the second half of the year. Thank you. Pass back to Alex. Thank you, Pete. Very clear as always. Thank you. Thank you. Total revenue for the group is clear. It's 29% on a three-year growth basis on the left-hand side. It's important to remember the evolution on a group basis. The EBITDA margin pre-pandemic started 8.5% for the half, moved from exceptional circumstances to 12.4% last financial year in the half, and we have settled back on a 10% in half one this year. Just remember that this is a 53% EBITDA growth for the group on a three-year basis. I'll highlight a couple of points in terms of the P&L structure. We concentrate on B&M U.K. We look at the bottom of the chart. Yes, there is a reduction in gross margin compared to last year, but we're still 100 basis points in the half higher than pre-pandemic levels. We've exited EBITDA margin at 10.6% in the B&M fascia. Heron Foods had a very strong performance in the half, above 6%. I'm happy with that level of performance, and the business has a lot of momentum heading into the second half. France has gone from strength to strength, delivering an EBITDA margin of 9.6% in the half. It's important to remind ourselves that only two or three years ago, that business was loss-making. There is a lot of operational commercial momentum in France heading into the second half. Sales densities in the three businesses continue to be significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels. That has already increased again in Q2, and I expect this to continue to increase in the second half. Key driver on B&M is a trading growth margin of 213 basis points reduction in the year, and that is primarily gardening season, which started too late. We took proactive actions. I didn't want to carry any stock. There is no merit in compromising the operational flow of the business. We took the decision, and we exited in a very clean stock position heading into the second half. To remind you what we said back in May, we guided for the full year a gross margin percentage at B&M to a tune of 120-130 basis points moderation for the year. I've never provided a half one or half two split. I'll expand why I think the second half is already in the right trajectory, but I maintain that level of guidance, which underpins a full-year EBITDA range of GBP 550 million-GBP 600 million, which remains unchanged as in May. If we summarize the margin position at a group level, we started pre-pandemic at 34.3%. It peaked at 37.4% in the half. Last financial year, we're at 35 basis points. What are the components of this margin? B&M U.K., 213 basis points reduction on the half, primarily garden and season. Grocery gross margin, so FMCG, flat year-on-year, no change. That business is very steady. It's always been steady. The business is maintaining a very strong price position, and there is no pressure on margins. What I would say at this stage is that non-grocery margins, seven weeks into the golden quarter, is already at a significantly higher level than the first half, and it's directionally consistent with what I set out back in May or today for the full year. That's an important point. Stock is clean, inventory levels are now at the right level, and the sell-through is very strong. It's not on the slide, but I'm going to share one interesting point that I think brings this to life. My Halloween, our Halloween sell-through is higher than last year's. I already have several categories in the business in non-grocery, not only improving ahead of the half, but on a year-on-year basis, that gross margin percentage on what we call brown box is actually higher than last year. I think it's important to remember that what we've said for the full year, 120-130 basis points gross margin moderation. That's how we have set the business into the second half. We have been conservative on the buy. We don't have any markdowns ahead of us, so I'm comfortable that the trajectory on that gross margin is consistent for the full year on what we set out to do. Heron has performed strongly and France goes without saying. I think France continues to build the leverage in terms of common buying on a brown box from the U.K. Gross margin is performing well, sales are performing well, costs are performing well. The French business continues to have significant momentum. Looking at the cost base. We set out a plan that we said operating costs for the B&M fascia will be basically flat this year- on- year regardless of the quarterly sales volatility. We exited the half virtually flat compared to last year. We exited at 23.9%, which is just 7 basis points higher than half one last year. That's neither here nor there. Remember that achieving that level of operating leverage when we had a highly negative Q1 LFL, given the annualization of the prior year, I think the team has done a very strong job, whether it's retail, whether it's a transfer and distribution to maintain very strong cost discipline in the business. I don't expect any fundamental change getting into the second half. To put this in context, the 23.9% is still 70 basis points better cost base than pre-pandemic. Okay? Heron has had its own level of investments, which I think will moderate in the second half at 25.9, and you can see the level of B&M performance at 34.8%. Significant improvement on the cost base compared to the prior half. We look all of this at the group level in the half, our cost to sell is identical to last year, 25%. I expect that discipline to continue and carry forward into the second half. Momentum. We concentrate on the blue line first. That's the one-year LFL. We know that Q1 was highly negative, primarily because of the first five weeks on the prior year comparison. You remember that the last eight weeks of the quarter, that started to improve markedly. We've exited quarter two at +2% LFL in the B&M business. If you look at it on a three-year basis, i.e., pre-pandemic, LFL has accelerated from just over 10% to above 14%. What gives me significant confidence in the quality of the trade down happening from higher price point competitors. Trade down from higher price point competitors is that this trend is continuing into golden quarter. In the outlook, you have that the one-year, six weeks LFL is +2.5%. I'm not going to do your job necessarily to work it out, but just a bit of a hint. If you try to calculate the three-year LFL for the first six weeks of Q3, I'll tell you that that three-year LFL is in excess of 19%. Just over 10, just over 14, six weeks into the golden quarter, three-year basis in excess of 19%. That gives me confidence that the cost leverage of the business is well controlled, the stock is exactly where it needs to be at the right quantity, and the sell-through on non-grocery is coming through. One final point. The chart is not here, but it's important also, it's on the RNS, another lead indicator for me. If I look at quarter two for the first six, seven weeks of quarter three, my like-for-like transaction numbers compared to last year are positive. There isn't a single week during the 13 weeks of Q2 or the six weeks of Q3, where my like-for-like transaction numbers, so that's customer count, in any single week has been lower than last financial year comparable period. That again tells me that the volume is coming through, the trade down is happening, and we're just sticking to what we do well, which is razor-sharp pricing and very strong store execution across the whole business. I'm not going to tell you which categories are these ones. I think some of you are familiar on the ups and downs. This is Q1, Q2. Blue is grocery. The orange or light orange is non-grocery. If you look at Q1 on the left-hand side, you have many negatives, and that's not surprising because the first five weeks we're trading on a very tough comparison basis. If you look at Q2, that's the shape I would expect. Most of them are already on growth. Some of them are already in the trajectory to recover into Q3, but I'm cool with that. I'm going to share only one, and I'm mindful that there is competition, sensitivity here. What is number P? Of course, it's alcohol. People are drinking less. I would expect alcohol to be on a negative LFL when they were stuck at home last year. Yeah. Fast-forward, I think these categories are moving on transactions and LFL in exactly the direction I expected they would. B&M, when we presented the prelims in May, we quoted against the Big Four on FMCG. I have to be very careful in here because I have the number one P&G MD sitting at the back as a guest. We quoted 15% price comparison. That's cheaper than the Big Four. I have no reason to believe that in this half and in Q3, that price position has done anything but marginally strengthened a bit further. I'm not going to quote you a number, but you can take from these that against the Big Four competitors, as we track identical SKUs, we are better than 15% price gap against them. Going back to the grocery chart, if my price position is holding, my gross margin is steady, and I am seeing the transactions, that points me to an underlying health position in the business where we are getting the traffic we need. Supplier collaboration is strong. It's a very simple business. We don't indulge in any complicated back margin industries. It's a very simple way how we transact with the FMCG brands. That remains unchanged, and I think that allows us to keep flexible and drive the volume as we need. Non-grocery, look, I'm not going to expand on the sourcing model. You already know it. Continues to be incredibly flexible. One highlight for you, if you walk into a store, we have now launched our Simply Everyday brand across home. We've sharpened even further our price entry position to actually dial up the price credential we have on that category. Consumers are feeling the inflationary pressure. Consumers are feeling the macro environment, and I think it's right that we continue to dial up what B&M does best, which is offer the best price possible on what is a very good quality product. You can see it on the ranges, on the aisles. It's selling very well. It's trading, I think in line with expectations. Before you ask me the question, I will say that it's non-margin dilutive. Before I introduce you to one of my colleagues, who is Gareth Bilton. Gareth is our B&M U.K. Retail Director. Gareth has been 23 years in the business. He's basically the person in charge of running the shops in the U.K. Since July, Gareth and I, and a couple of more, colleagues who are in the room, but I'm not going to introduce them today, we've done significant amount of work to ensure that store standards, availability are to the highest possible level so we can drive that LFL performance. I'm just going to quote you one stat. Gareth, myself, and two more colleagues, since early July, we've visited more than 1,000 shops. I'm not talking about the regional teams. I'm not talking about the supervisors. It's us. This is unannounced. I want Gareth to give a bit of the color on what he's been up to and what is the priority of the retail team. I will ask you to connect what you're going to hear from him with the momentum of like-for-like, because the two are two sides of the same coin. Gareth, come and join us. Thanks, Alex. Good morning, everybody. I just want to take a couple of minutes to expand on what Alex has just talked about. He's positioned it pretty well. As you would expect, we've always had a reasonably strong focus on retail standards, but through quarter two particularly, we stepped that up. As Alex has described, there was a small team that we set about visiting stores unannounced. The real objective of that was just for the senior retail team to see the store through the customer lens, 'cause that's the important measure. A thousand visits later, I think we've got a really good picture on that, and we've significantly stepped the store standards up. The shape and the color behind it was to, A, improve in-store availability to drive sales. B, make sure that the clear pricing message through the buying team was displayed in the stores, and we launched it that well. Another key factor was consistent execution of the events calendar and all of that price promotional activity that we run through to raise the standard across the store estate. I think when we look back now, the output of that is that the gap between our best and worst stores now is much narrower, and the ceiling of the highest performing stores has moved up. If you picture it there, it's kind of shifted this way, so a much narrower band and a higher standard across the estate. That was set about to make sure that our stores are as good as they can be through a customer lens and that we start to think more about the customer's journey through the store and drive those standards up. We will continue that on. All of these visits are conducted outside of the senior retail team, so it's not the senior retail marking their own homework. It's a really unbiased view of the store estate. That's the store standards piece, and we'll continue that. I think if I was to summarize where we are, happy with the progress we've made. We've consistently stepped forward. There's still room to grow, which is good news, but we're in a much better place than we were. A couple of other points on the slide I just want to talk about. Alex has already mentioned 10 gross new store openings so far this year. There's been seven closures, which have been smaller, older stores, end of lease, and four relocations. The relocations are key. I just wanna touch on a relocation case study, because it will be more of those to come. There was this. We've got a store in the South of England that was a pretty average store. It sat well within the average band, 10 years trading, coming to end of lease. We had the opportunity to renew the lease or move, and a unit on an adjacent retail park came available, which was a better retail park, bigger sales floor space, better car park, better competitor, better footfall. We took that. The shop was in the same catchment area. We were able to retain all of the existing colleagues and the existing management team and move into that store. What happened in that store is sales increased in the first week 237%. Actually, a number of weeks on, we are still pretty much within that band. Transactions increased 118%, and the ATV was +55%, purely because the sales floor was bigger, and it allowed a better mix of products in there. As a additional sales strategy, we've got relocations to think about. I think from a retail perspective, as I stand today, I think our retail standards are better than they've been for a long time. We're well placed through Q2, well placed Q3 now to go into the next seven weeks of peak trade. Can you share a bit of the colleagues' new rhythm and colleagues' enthusiasm of seeing the results in the shops? In sales and in standards? Yeah. As you can imagine, the unannounced visits and score in the store unannounced caused a little bit of emotion at the start. The good stores were really pleased. The poor stores, 'cause we're very transparent about these results. We're now in a place where this unannounced score is a motivator. It's a key driver in replan, it's a key driver in setting store standards, and almost now we've gone full circle to store managers wanting a mystery shop visit because they know that their store's in a good place. That's key. The second thing is, at the sales, as we go through to peak trade now, stores are fuller, availability is better, the stores are tidier, the footfall's strong. We see our store managers really starting to reap the benefits of their stores being in a much better place. I think all around, if I was to describe the emotion, it was this at the start, and now it's started to level down, and it's actually driving some of the right behaviors. It's 100% improved the performance of our store managers and our field-based retail teams. Thank you, Gareth. Yeah. We do justice to Jon Parry, who's sitting at the back. Jon joined us from Asda a few months back. Jon runs basically supply chain, transport, and distribution. He will have a chance to join us when we meet again in May. I would say that from a supply chain perspective, we are significantly ahead in terms of productivity than where we were last year. Some of that is going to continue, which underpins all the retail work we're doing. France. I will organize in the spring the right visit to France. It will be the right opportunity to meet everybody with the French team, so I'm not going to dwell a lot on France. I would just say the business is in pretty good position. I will concentrate on this slide. We have been very tactical and thoughtful how we continue to expand some of the FMCG lines. That continues to drive footfall. It's a much closer proposition than what you see in the U.K. Non-grocery, which is a yellow, orange bar, continues to perform strongly. The garments business is pretty much nonexistent. Yeah, so that business is having broad-based LFL performance across the whole spectrum of categories. Store standards, exactly the same principle as the U.K. We're doing exactly the same in France. That is underpinning LFL momentum as well, okay? We've been very purposeful in sharing best practice across B&M U.K., France, and Heron, and the team basically is tailoring what is appropriate for the French market, but you're going to work on the assumption that all of that momentum continues. We now, of the 111 stores, we have 31, which is not mandated, so it's our own store managers. That gradual trajectory continues in which every new store we open is our own manager. Tactically, we expect in the medium term to have a much more balanced portfolio. Let's call it half of it our own stores, half of it on the mandated manager. As we learn and tweak, that becomes much more balanced. Look, the business continues to open. It's done four new stores in the first half, three more to have, seven in the year. They are performing well. The supply chain is resilient. The product in brown box, non-grocery is the same. The French consumer is reacting to it and the pipeline is building for a higher level of growth next year. You can assume that it will be not less than 10 new store openings next financial year in France. You know, so I'm comfortable. The team, we've spent with all of them a couple of days, Monday and Tuesday in Lille. The key insight in France, the leadership team is now well-bedded, they're stable, they're working well together, and they are getting the support where they need from the U.K. business. Now I'm going to introduce you to Tony Dobbs. Tony, you've been 30 years at Heron. I have, yes. Tony used to be the operations director before B&M bought Heron. Tony is with us in the same journey on store standards. You have three minutes on the floor, Tony, on some of the learnings on Heron in the last 12 months and enjoy. Okay. Thank you. Morning, everybody. For me, this is really to give you an idea of what I built this business on to give the performance of 14.6% increase on last year. It's simple retailing. Simple retailing, we've had to push the boundaries with our warehouse first to be able to get more product into our stores. That has been the game changer for what we've got in situ in stores now. The majority of the stores in the estate have taken an additional 120 ambient lines. Those 120 ambient lines have been to give us a more credible range for what we can and need to sell through. Also, 20% of the larger stores, we've been able to put even more products into them for an even better range for what people need and require where we sit in the market. That market is convenience for us. Those 314 stores are based High Street, shopping center, and most importantly, in neighborhoods. Neighborhoods where people can come to us with the hours that we can trade to help them with the big brands at the lowest possible prices. The niche part of our trading is what we do with clearance. Clearance is what excites our customers. You can get the basics in life from a Heron Foods store, but the excitement comes when you see the here today, gone tomorrow offers. That is right across every one of the ambient, frozen, and chilled. For us on chilled, that has been probably our biggest challenge. Biggest challenge because we've had to give the customer a better offering on fresh. Fresh produce, fresh meat. What comes with fresh is waste. For us, waste is an investment in sales. That's where we see the customer confidence to be able to come to us for those products for what they need. Also, we've really looked at how we can help the customer with these challenging times of the meal deal. We've seen the success. We've been able to give them the solution to the challenge of, here you are, just scrunch down on there. You've got this fajita, the chicken breast, GBP 4. Anywhere else, you'd be probably paying over GBP 6. For us, that has been able to help us give the customer that confidence again to shop with us, not just as a frozen food store. This is a store that can supply the more credible range of what we do. Frozen, this has been our biggest challenge. Biggest challenge by a long shot. How we reinvigorate and put some passion back into getting frozen to look as good as fresh. We've done that successfully with introducing what we've done with our new ready meal range. Again, a very diverse range across from all of the different Indian styles, as you can see on there, through to some different solutions we've put into the meal deal solution again in frozen. Just for last week. Last week's frozen meal deal, GBP 2.50 for fish, chips, and mushy peas for two people. For two people. You know, it is what we need to do. All of this is really underpinned by my experience in 30 years, it only comes from great people, great products, and great price. Heron Foods has that now in the market. Exciting times ahead. The momentum of what we've taken from that increase in H1 will continue with the foundations of what we've got there now. Back onto store standards, that has been something I've driven for 10 years. Simple retailing. Simple retailing is as far as my operational background is understanding what a manager have to do on a day-to-day life. For me, I can give them the solution to be better at what they do. For us, those store standards have been second to none. Serious about standards has been the DNA of this business for 10 years. Now the success of what we can deliver with those big brands at the lowest possible price, the customers really appreciate having that number one priority of availability. We cannot be without product for what that customer needs, and that is the number one principle we have in this business, is availability, followed by customer service. That is the thing that we do exceptionally better than our competition. We leave that customer fulfilled of what they require, but a personal touch on customer service. For us, I'm really excited for where we're gonna go over this next half year. For what we've got in place now can only point to success. Thank you, Tony. Thank you. I appreciate that. Cheers, Tony. To recap before we open to questions. The three fascias, the three businesses are well set up for golden quarter. We're already on week seven of 13 in the golden quarter. The business are performing well. Relentless focus on pricing, product, store standards. You will hear from me in the future more and more around store standards. Doesn't mean that product and price will take a backseat, it won't. I will keep coming back to you on store standards. First six weeks at B&M U.K., +2.5%. That on a three-year basis, it's in excess of 19%. LFL transactions, positive. It's not ATV, it's not inflation, it's transactions. Gross margin will improve in the second half. I've already expanded on that. On a full year basis, I maintain the guidance I gave back in May, where we expect a moderation compared to FY 2022 in the order of 120-130 basis points. I'm relaxed with that outlook. Cost and cash disciplines are absolutely better than the business, and there will be no slippage on any of those. Stock is in the right place. We are confident that that EBITDA margin is going to be materially above pre-pandemic levels. The second half, we're going to open 10-12 additional B&M U.K. stores, three in France and eight in Heron. To close, the guidance remains unchanged as in May, pre-IFRS 16, between GBP 550 million- GBP 600 million EBITDA. I will open now to questions. Hello. Hi, Ben Hunt from Investec. If what you say is true, that you're staring at the moment down the barrels of good like-for-likes, your gross margins seem to be in a pretty healthy position compared to where they were. You're saying what I'm saying is true. Has to be true. I will end up in jail if it wasn't true. The leverage is fine. If I take the lower end of your guidance, it seems to imply that assuming the trajectory in sales at the moment is fine, then you've got a fair amount of leeway in terms of margin for the second half. What's stopping you then from perhaps tightening up that guidance going into the full year? I think the time to do it, I've thought about it. I think the time to do it is early Christmas, January trading. I know exactly where we are, and that's the moment to tighten it up. Okay, the second question, which you've been a little bit quiet on the store pipeline. I know during the pandemic, there was legislation obviously that prevented you from perhaps taking some of these opportunities. I think that's now cleared, if I'm right in thinking. What's holding you back again from where is the softness in the pipeline this year? It is, but you have the two years or so of built-in delays. Yes, it's below than what we want. Let's assume we're going to open 22 in the U.K. The medium-term target remains unchanged. We're going to grow it up, but there is a bit of a catch up. Look, I'm keeping the position in here, which is the right decision is never compromise on the quality of the asset. I can open plenty of high street, secondary or tertiary sites. Why would I do that? This is a long-term game. No, I'm not going to get too worried in the short term about whether it's 20 or 30. We need to build it up. I think the message there is not compromising on the quality of the space. No, the long-term potential is clear. Frankly, even at 22 this year, when I compare what the competition is doing, I'm well ahead on a relative terms to them, so I'm not losing space to them. On absolute or relative terms, I'm fine with that. Okay. Final question, if it's okay. Last year, there was talk of trials of online. I was wondering how that's been going. It feels like your competitors have been a little bit more authoritative, online at the moment. Read your thoughts on that. It's a very good question. Look, it's a trial, you know. I will update you when we get to the next touchpoint, which we may. It's very contained trial. We're learning. It's early days. Thank you. Hi, Alex. I'm David Roux from Bank of America. So just two questions from my side. Firstly, on the gross margin, correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume that the full year non-grocery gross margin would still be above pre-pandemic levels. If that is the case, I mean, what makes you confident that you can maintain this high level of gross margin for non-grocery given that category demand is normalizing? My second is on stock levels. As it stands today, are there any categories where stock levels are still materially higher than pre-pandemic? Two good questions. Thank you, David. The first one is the bear case. Whoever created the bear case six months ago said, non-grocery sales are going to fall off a cliff that will unwind the gross margin benefit and/or the consumer demand is going to squeeze it. Price position is very sharp. My sales participation across the two elements of the store, grocery and non-grocery, continue to perform well. I'm not sacrificing on price. Product is looking good, the demand is there. I'm confident that the mix and those new customers allows me to maintain it, but at a much more reasonable, moderated level, which is what we said, which is compared to FY 2022 in the 120-130 basis points moderation, which is significantly higher still than pre-pandemic. Fundamentally, it comes down to the price position, the quality, the product is what B&M does well, and I am comfortable and confident that I can take share from the higher price point and specialists. On your second question, no stock is clean. Stock has come down to a tune of GBP 50 million of cost compared to half one last year. I expect that to throw another little chunk. By the time we get to half one, the stock is clean. Great. Yeah. Thank you. Hey, it's Adam Cochrane at Deutsche Bank. A couple of questions, please. Congratulations on being the first company not to mention the US dollar or the consumer in a presentation. Would you be able to just talk about what the hedged rates for the US dollar purchases are, what they look like into next year? Have you felt any of the impact of the stronger dollar as yet? And secondly, you've been buying your products now for spring, summer of next year. What's your outlook in terms of, you know, what are you buying towards, in terms of units or even total sales? And then finally, if you gave the guidance of 120 to 130 down, yet the markdown was unexpected in the first half. I assume you didn't plan on marking down garden inventory. No, of course not. What has gone better in order for you to meet that guidance? Thank you. Let me try the first question. Everything we have spoken to is around the consumer. Store standards from the consumer lens, pricing from the consumer lens, so we can help them. Lowering prices, extended ranges to support consumers. I will rephrase slightly your question. Everything we do at B&M is around the consumer, which is around razor-sharp pricing, best product we can, and presenting it to the consumer in the best possible way. Your second question was, remind me, Adam. In terms of foreign hedging. Hedging. If you look at the detail on the RNS, we're well hedged all the way to September 2023. Clearly, on a competitive basis, I cannot disclose it, but you will see that there is an asset on the hedge account in excess of GBP 100 million, which tells you that my hedge position over the next 12 months is well in the money. To your final question on gardening, look, it came a bit later. Ideally, on the garden category, you want the first heat wave to hit you, ideally late March, early April. We had to make a decision. We basically dealt with the stock and it's clean. I think it's more. I'm not debating whether it's the right decision. It's more if it was unexpected, how are you still within the guidance range? Something must have moved the other way in order for the guidance range to still be. I never guided on half one and half two. I think the business has sufficient resilience to be able to accommodate that. I think maybe the point which I mentioned in the second half is that we have taken a prudent position on the buy for the second half, given the consumer and macro environment, to make sure that we're not taking any unnecessary risks, and having any unexpected markdown. Is that prudent buy continued into next year? Absolutely. As well? Absolutely. By prudent, what do you mean roughly? Sufficient growth, but being cognizant of what the consumer pressures are. Okay. Thank you. If that helps you, still positive LFL growth next year. Brilliant. Thank you. Morning. Nick Coulter from Citi. Hi, Nick. Hi. Can I ask on SG&A inflation and notably, energy and staff, both in the half and then your outlook? I don't know if there's an asset on the balance sheet for energy. We don't hedge energy. Okay. We only hedge dollars. Thank you. Secondly, just to follow up on inventory. In the half, is that a GBP 50 million move or just volume or units or is there a cost per unit move as well? I'm guessing and hinting at underlying inflation on a like-for-like basis. Thank you. Energy, look, of the three businesses, the business that is more susceptible to energy by definition is Heron, refrigeration. In B&M, I don't expect energy to fundamentally change the dial in the second half. As I said back in May, look, it's ±10 basis points all in the mix. The only business that we have hedged and well hedged on energy is actually France. That predates the pandemic. It has its own French peculiarities, but I don't expect to fundamentally change the equation in the second half. To your question on stock. Just on staff as well if it's possible to get a comment there in terms of inflation on wages? Cost to sales ratio remains unchanged. That's how we run the business, and we'll flex accordingly. To your question on stock, it's of course units and values both. I guess just on staff, Alex, the wage inflation is quite notable in the market at the moment. If you've got very little like-for-like inflation going through your top line, but your transactions are up, I'm just kind of struggling to balance that equation, I guess. What you have is a multitude of mix elements, some categories. The mix is a balance. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Of course. Pleasure. Warwick. Thank you. Warwick Okines, BNP Paribas. Two questions, please. Just on current trading. Forgive me, but you've been quite robust on the gross margin performance of general merchandise and et cetera, but you haven't particularly talked about the mix effects between categories. Can we assume that balance mix between general merchandise and grocery has continued into Q3? Within long-term parameters, they are stable. Yeah. General merch could even be flat to up in early trading. Yeah. Secondly, you talked about the store pipeline a little bit. Could I just pin you down on your thoughts, early thoughts for the outer year? What sort of gross numbers should we think about for the year to March 2024? Difficult for me given the environment to give you a precise number. Warwick would never do it. Look, I cannot imagine it's going to be any less than the current year, and I will be driving, you know, the focus to be higher than a number. I will firm that up when we're closer to the end of the second half. Thank you. Morning. It's Simon Bowler from Numis. Two questions, if I may. I think I'm right in saying that kind of as you think about it, transactions, which is also how I would think about it, to be clear, transactions isn't the same as volumes. So I'm just wondering if you can talk a little bit in terms of what you've seen from average transaction values, and what we may infer from that from a volume perspective. And secondly, I was wondering if you could give a little bit more color on kind of that first half gross margin piece. I appreciate the comments you made around the garden category. Given the size of that category, it feels like there must have been some other moving parts within that gross margin as well. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Is that a fair assumption of any of the bits that we should be aware of? First question. Thanks, Simon. If you look at it at the simplest broad level of grocery, non-grocery, the sales participation are within normal historical tolerance. But within each of them, you have significant movements in terms of ATV. Yeah? I don't want to be too specific on the categories, but I will mention one. If you think about, let's say, pet foods. Pet foods will be booming for us in volume. Alcohol is the other extreme. Yeah? Given the amount of categories we have, I would argue that an inflation average measure is totally meaningless because you have too many moving parts in, within grocery and non-grocery. ATV will be broadly within historical levels, but the metric that I am very focused, Simon, is on those transaction numbers. Because ultimately, that is for me the lead test on how many consumers are, I'm getting into, you know, new consumers we're getting into the business. I'm not dodging the issue, but, you know, we have 25 categories and probably in excess of 100 sub-categories. An inflation average number doesn't tell me much. Yeah? The pricing position, whether it's grocery or non-grocery, remains very robust. That's what gives me the confidence that in the second half of the year, given sell-throughs and the buy position, which is measured and conservative given the consumer and macro environment, gives me confidence that the run rate will head in the right direction. On your question on non-grocery, yes, of course, there are moving bits. I would say the material number is the gardening category. Thank you. Next question. Dave, do you want to take any calls from the. Any questions from the? There's no questions online. If anyone is online, we've got time for another two questions. Please submit a question. If not, we can draw stumps. Excellent. We're on time. Thank you everybody for coming. Bye-bye.