Good morning. Thank you for attending today's Bunzl pre-close trading statement. My name is Sarah, and I'll be your moderator today. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call, with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you'd like to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. I'd like to pass the conference over to our host, Richard Howes, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thank you for joining. This morning, we gave our pre-close statement for the first half of the year. Given the progress we are seeing and the impact of geopolitical events over recent months, we thought a call would be helpful. I'll make a few brief remarks before opening up for questions. We expect group revenue for the first six months of the year to grow by around 4% at constant exchange rates, driven by underlying revenue growth of around 3%. Within this, volume growth year -to- date has been encouraging, supported by growth in North America. Volume growth in our distribution business has also been good as we continue to see operational progress with encouraging growth across various customers and the additional benefit from new business won in the second half of 2025. I'll come back to this in a moment. Alongside this, we expect revenue in the second quarter to reflect an increase in selling prices across certain categories due to product cost inflation. Generally, across much of the group, we started to implement price increases during May. In addition to underlying growth, net acquisitions are expected to contribute growth of around 1% to the group over the first half. Currency will be relatively neutral over the period. In the first half of the year, we expect to deliver good year-on-year growth and adjusted operating profit at constant exchange rates, with a modest expansion of operating margin year-on-year. While this performance includes the annualization of Nisbets synergies, margin progression is driven by the profit impact from turning inventory within an inflationary environment. The impact is expected to be temporary in nature. Furthermore, we are mindful that the world remains an uncertain place, and input prices continue to be volatile. As such, there is real potential for prices to normalize from more elevated levels in relevant categories. These considerations are reflected in our implied guidance for the second half of 2026. With all this in mind and looking ahead to the full year, we upgrade our outlook for 2026. We now expect revenue growth at constant exchange rates to be driven by modest underlying revenue growth, supported by some inflation alongside a small benefit from acquisitions. We continue to expect operating margins to be slightly down year-on-year. As a reminder, that is relative to last year's 7.6% margin that excludes share-based payment credits. Turning to our North American distribution business. At our full-year results in March, actions we have taken are delivering improved performance, as particularly demonstrated by the business wins generated towards the end of last year. Operational progress has continued during the half as expected, with the food service distribution business showing some volume growth despite a challenging U.S. food service industry. As for the drivers of improvement, our service levels and product availability are now largely restored. The business responsiveness and agility has improved. We have refocused on preferred supplier brand growth alongside our own brand development. As a result, our teams are engaged and motivated to deliver. With the business continuing to improve, our focus is on increasing market share through both new customers and increased share of wallet of existing customers, although the market remains competitive. I am also pleased to note that in April, we completed the acquisition of Scientifix Group in Australia, a distributor of critical products and services to the life sciences and biotechnology sectors. It represents an expansion of our growing healthcare business in Asia Pacific and will provide cross-selling opportunities. More broadly, our acquisition pipeline remains active. Given our conversations with potential sellers, we continue to expect 2026 to be an improved year for acquisitions compared to 2025. We continue to see significant opportunities to further consolidate fragmented global markets. Overall, this has been an encouraging period for Bunzl. It is pleasing to see that continued underlying revenue growth and to demonstrate the resilience, agility and scale advantages of our business model. We continue to expect 2026 to be a robust foundation for future profit growth, and we are confident in our ability to deliver long-term compounding growth and value creation for all of our shareholders. I am happy to take your questions. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. To remove your question, press star followed by two. Again, to ask the question, press star one. As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking a question. We'll pause here briefly as questions are registered. Our first question is from Annelies Vermeulen with Morgan Stanley. You may ask your question. Please. Just on the volume side, could you talk a little bit more about how much of the improvement you've seen particularly in Q2 is with existing customers and how much of that is new business wins, either from the second half of last year or in the beginning of this year? As part of that, given the product price inflation that you've seen, have you seen any acceleration of the mix shift towards own brands, for example? Then the second question is on cost base inflation. Do you see a risk that even as pricing potentially comes off in the second half, as you've flagged, is there a risk of lingering cost base inflation as maybe that takes a little bit longer to settle back down? Or is that already somewhat baked into your unchanged margin guidance? Thank you. Annelies, you broke up on the last question. Could you just repeat it? Oh, my apologies. It was just on the cost base inflation. Do you see any risk that even as pricing potentially comes off in the second half as you flagged, is there a risk of lingering cost base inflation? Is that already in the unchanged margin guidance that you've given today? Did you get that? Okay. Let me take the first. Yeah, I think I got enough of it. In terms of the first question on volumes, there was GBP 100 million of new business in the end of Q3 last year. We are seeing the full year effect of that roll through 2026. If we look to the split between the two, just directionally, you can assume that the volume growth we're seeing actually is more to do with our growth across various customers than it is the new business wins. It's both obviously, but it's primarily actually growth outside of those new business wins. On own brands, well, I don't have any own brand details to give you at this stage. We'll update you at the half year once we get the full picture and data on own brand growth across the group. Look, as price comes off, yes, look, I think part of when we talk about some margin pressure in the second half, if prices do reduce, then yes, there will be an element of that which is contributed by the fact that our fuel costs are still elevated, albeit of course, they're over time as well. I think the point still stands that we will, should there be prices reducing in the second half, which I think is potential for that to happen, that we will see some margin pressure. Understood. Thank you. Thank you. We are going to pause for one moment to change the speaker's line. Please stand by. Hello. Thank you. Our next question is from Suhasini Varanasi with Goldman Sachs. You may ask your question. Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. On margins, can you help us understand your expectations in the second half of the year? It feels like you do expect a step down, compared to the strong print that you expect in the first half of the year. Beyond just inflation coming off, are there any other factors, and of course, the share-based one-off payments, are there any other factors that you expect to put pressure on margins? Maybe related to that, how much is fuel costs as a percentage of your SG&A, please? Are you able to pass it on to customers fully, especially in North America? Thank you. Suhasini. Look, we're guiding to the full year to be in line with what we guided previously, which is slightly down on 2025. The first half will be up, though. I think you can probably assume about 20 basis points higher than last year in the first half. As a consequence, there will be lower margins in the second half. We were guiding to that anyway. We are guiding to a bit more of that relating to the fact that, yes, look, I think we will see some step down in pricing, and that will have a margin effect. That will play out as we see it today. That plays out in the second half of the year. Full-year margins we're guiding to are still in line with what we guided to previously. As to fuel costs, as a percentage of SGA, it's around 15%-20%. It's not just the full fuel cost, of course, it's also our 3PL costs. We do have various surcharge arrangements across the group. Depends on where we have our own fleet. We have our biggest fleet in North America, where about half of our outbound is done on our own trucks. It's about the same in the U.K., and it's a bit lower than that, about a third, in Continental Europe. Overall, we are able to pass these on to some degree. The levels have to hit a certain level before we can pass them on, but the surcharges will kick in and have kicked in in the first half. As prices drop, we'd expect to see that unwind as well. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Rory McKenzie with UBS. Please go ahead. Morning, all. Firstly, I wanted to ask about just how you built your pricing outlook in particular. You said that you started to put prices up in May. Can you just comment if they've continued to rise sequentially in June, maybe as you're working your way across more customers and segments? I know the spot oil price is obviously down from the highs a fair bit by today, but can you talk about what kind of lag time typically you'd see that feed through into your finished goods that you're then passing on to customers? Yes, no problem. As I said, we are seeing prices go up in May in particular. I think there are some further price increases that will go through in June. When we look into the second half, yes, look, our leading indicator would be for prices being back roughly where they were. That's in part what's driven this, the large part that's driven this. We are also seeing some of our products prices starting to decline. It's already happened in certain areas. Overall I think the best indicator at this stage, as far as we can see, is the softening oil price. Okay, thank you. Given those dynamics, can you just talk about how you're trying to help the business run in terms of your working capital and inventory? I guess maybe you're trying to be relatively lean given that the price of some stock might be quite high right now. Yeah, any thoughts around inventory levels as we turn into the half year and where you expect maybe leverage to be running at at the moment? Yes. I think our businesses have been careful to make sure that we only hold the level of inventory we need as prices increase. It's always a balance though, because we prioritize availability for our customers given the nature of our business, and the fact that supply chains become extended through this period as well. It really has been a balance for them. We will see how we get on come to the half year. We'll update you more on that when we get to the end of August. As to leverage, I'm expecting to be a bit below two times a half. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question is from David Brockton with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Good morning. Please could you just give a bit more insight into the price volume split through H1? Obviously, it's encouraging you're seeing volume growth alongside the temporary pricing benefit. Do you sense there's any pull forward of demand in that volume growth? That's the first question. The second question, it again feels like a quieter period for acquisition spends, notwithstanding the deal even announced this morning. Can you just talk about the pipeline and how that looks trending into the second half, please? Yes, David. Look, in terms of price volume split in the first half, you can assume that about 2/3 of the growth is volume driven, with the remainder being price, which I think is encouraging on both fronts. It's good to see our volumes improving. As to whether there's been any pull forward, I'm not expecting any pull forward from Q3 into Q2, let's say. There have been various things within the quarter, as you'd expect, but I'm not expecting it to affect the picture in the quarter or bringing forward from Q3 into Q2. As to the level of M&A, look, it's good to announce the Scientifix deal this morning. We think that's a positive. We still see an active pipeline that should mean that 2026 will be ahead of 2025. Clearly, it's going to be more second half weighted now than perhaps previously. I still think it's going to be a decent year for M&A. Thank you. Thank you. Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question is from Sanjay Vidyarthi with Panmure Liberum. You may ask your question. Morning, Richard. Just a question on Europe and rest of world. You've not mentioned any of the dynamics you've seen in those markets in the statement. Can you just talk us through what you're seeing in those markets, where it's different from what you've seen in the U.S.? Sanjay. We'll update you more on this, of course, when we come to the half year. I think it's fair to say that we are seeing volume growth across all of our end markets, all of our business areas, I should say. That is certainly true for both Continental Europe and the rest of the world. We'll give you a lot more color on that at the end of August. Okay. You're also seeing the same dynamic in terms of prices as well then? See, pricing depends on where the I mean, the pricing is obviously driven by ICIS Plastics primarily. As a consequence, pricing itself by region flows depending on where we sell most of our plastic products. That is true mainly for the U.S. It's also true for Continental Europe and the U.K. There's a bit in Latin America, which is about half of our rest of the world. Less so in Australasia, given the nature of the products there. It really just depends on what products we sell in which markets. Okay. Understood. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next question is from Will Kirkness with Bernstein. You may ask your question. Thanks. I just had a couple of clarification questions, actually, if that's okay. Underlying growth was about 4% in Q2. I just wanted to check whether the price volume split that you gave, the two-thirds volume, is that applying to the first half or is that applying to the second quarter? The second clarification was just about the pricing unwind in the second half. I guess kind of following on from Rory's topic. Are you actually seeing any indication that your suppliers are seeing prices topping out or coming down again? I'm wondering whether this is sort of you baking in an assumption versus what you're seeing kind of on the ground. Will, I think the question that was asked was a H1 question. H1 volume is 2/3 of the growth. If you're looking at Q2 it's about 50/50 between inflation and volume. Q2 is where we've seen most of the volume impact, the price impact in the quarter. Take 50/50 for Q2 and about two-thirds, one-third volume in H1. As to the pricing unwind, yes, without a doubt I think we've seen this primarily as the leading indicator here being your price softening back to pretty much the levels where it was pre the war. We have seen some prices soften as we've gone through the back end of Q2. There's the upswing a bit, but really the leading indicator here is your price. Okay, thanks. Could I just ask a follow-up on North America and whether you see any kind of revenue and cost synergies between North America and the rest of world business? I think there's lots of ways in which the group sees benefit across the group. We certainly are often the biggest customer of our biggest supplier, and I think that's an important dynamic when it comes to not only price but also the supply of products. It's important that we have that scale with our suppliers. Obviously we have our Asian sourcing operations, which have been very beneficial, particularly during COVID, that have helped the whole group. There's things like sustainability and digital that it's important and helpful to be part of a wider group to be able to pull on the expertise when we need it. We have also seen own brand development being aided by being able to collaborate with wider parts of the group. That best practice sharing generally is actually not to be underestimated. I think there are plenty of areas where we can point to good synergies across the group in the way we operate. Okay, thanks very much. Thank you. Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. There are no questions waiting at this time, I'll turn the conference back over to Richard Howes for any further remarks. Thank you for joining us today. The group is expecting to deliver a good first half performance. We're pleased to be upgrading our 2026 outlook. While the backdrop remains challenging, we are confident that the resilience and agility of our business model leave us well positioned. We continue to expect 2026 to be a foundation for future profit growth. Thanks again for your time. Thank you. That concludes Bunzl pre-closing trading statement. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.