Hi there. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our Interim Results Presentation for 2022. It's absolutely brilliant that we're able to be here in person. We were just reflecting, this is Kate's fourth set of results, I think, as CFO, but the first face-to-face, and what a fantastic venue to be in. We're also delighted to be with some other executives and our Chairman, Scott Wheway, sitting here. So any really difficult questions, Scott is absolutely on point to take them. Look, I'd like to welcome those of you watching this in the webcast as well. We look forward to seeing many of you over the coming weeks. Total presentation today should last around 50 minutes. I'll cover the performance and the progress in our turnaround, and then Kate's gonna look at the first half financial performance, share with you our thoughts on capital allocation and the updated financial framework. Then finally, I want to spend some time talking you through our long-term strategy, including some of the evolving growth opportunities that we see across our retail, our optimization, and our infrastructure activities as we look to capitalize on what I believe are unique capabilities and make the long-term investments needed to support our customers play a leading role in the U.K. and Ireland's energy security and help Britain reach net zero, all whilst delivering a return for our shareholders. Kate and I are then looking forward to taking your questions, along with Scott. How did we do in the first half? It seems like right now, every time someone sets the scene, they use the word unprecedented, but it really rather accurately describes the landscape that we continue to navigate right now. Regardless of how you want to describe it, our amazing team is managing volatility in the market incredibly effectively. They're helping to ensure our customers remain supplied while de-risking, strengthening, and positioning Centrica for growth. Performance has been strong. Financial and operational results from our energy infrastructure and our optimization businesses were both improved when you compare them to last year. Operational performance in the retail businesses improved as we invested in enhancing customer services and absorbed both inflation in services and an increased bad debt exposure in energy. We expect the impact of higher energy prices and general inflation to dampen both energy demand and discretionary spend in our services business. We'll continue to invest so that when economic recovery comes, as it will, we're in a far better shape coming out of the crisis than we were going into. We reported a strong set of financial results, with EPS excluding Norway E&P increasing to 10.2 pence from 1.3 pence last year, and total free cash flow was up by 23% to GBP 643 million. At the end of June, we had just over GBP 300 million of cash. We completed the GBP 1.1 billion disposal of Spirit Energy Norway, at the same time transferring over $1 billion of decommissioning liabilities to the buyers in the process. We agreed with our partner in Spirit Energy to refocus activities to production and net zero opportunities. Spirit Energy is no longer engaged in exploration. The 2022 financial outlook is positive, although, of course, there are significant uncertainties, particularly so in today's environment. I am really pleased that we're now in a position to restart the payment of dividends for the first time in three years. We declared an interim dividend of 1 pence per share, and we intend to retain our historic policy to pay roughly 1/3 of the full year dividend as an interim, with the remainder coming as a final dividend. We're acutely aware of the difficult environment many customers and colleagues are facing due to rising energy bills and the wider inflationary impacts that we see in the economy, and we're gonna continue to do all that we can to support them. We're investing more than GBP 100 million in customer service, support, and prices, and we took on another 200,000 customers from failed energy suppliers in January of this year. Now that takes the total number that we've rescued to well over 700,000. We're working hard to make sure the U.K. has resilience in its energy supply chain. You can see that by the multi-billion GBP deal that we signed to increase gas deliveries to the U.K. over the coming three winters. We're simultaneously working with government on proposals to reopen the Rough field as a gas storage facility. One of the best things of my role is being able to create jobs. I'm delighted that in addition to the 1,000 new engineering apprentices that we'll have by the end of this year, we're also investing in 500 additional U.K.-based customer service roles in British Gas Energy, and that's so that we can cope with the increased demands from customers and to be there when they need us. We're supporting our 20,000 amazing colleagues through these challenging times. We're working hard to serve them well. We agreed a new pay deal earlier this year, and that takes account of current inflationary pressures in the U.K. I was also delighted to see a further increase in our colleague engagement to 63%. We take our responsibilities to community seriously as well, and in January, we repaid GBP 27 million we received from the U.K. government in furlough funding. We also provided GBP 6 million of funds for our most vulnerable customers through the British Gas Energy Support Fund, and that's in addition to the GBP 7 million we've contributed to the British Gas Energy Trust, which helps fund debt charities and provide grants of up to GBP 750 to help any customer, not just a British Gas customer, but any customer struggling to pay their bills. We believe that this is the biggest ever aid package in the U.K. energy sector, and we're gonna continue to review what more we can do in the light of future projected increases in the price cap. I'd like to move on now to cover our continuing turnaround. You might remember this slide from February. It sets out the three overlapping phases to our turnaround, and I'm really pleased with the progress we're making. We were clear that the most important building block was to simplify and de-risk the portfolio and in the process strengthen the balance sheet, building the foundation from which we can grow to make sure that we were in control of our own destiny, we had the space to make the right decisions rather than being forced to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. Now the sales of Direct Energy and Spirit Energy Norway together raised GBP 3.5 billion. This coupled with a relentless focus on cash means we've now eliminated our net debt, but that's not all. As you can see here, we've removed over GBP 6 billion of liabilities in the past two years. You can see significant reductions in decommissioning liabilities, the technical pension deficit, and the future expected losses from the Saltfleetby legacy gas contract. Now to put this into context, that's equivalent of more than GBP 1 per share in equity value. Stage one is complete. The foundation's laid, and we're on the way in our journey to deliver phase two. We've managed to stabilize the business. We're now focused on improving operational performance, in particular, in both the British Gas businesses. We're much more focused on customers now with the restructuring largely complete. The restructuring removed management layers, and it resulted in fewer and more focused business units, engaged and empowered colleagues, as you can see by the increase in commitment to 63%. We've still got further to go to world-class in that space. I'm confident we'll get there. All but one of our business units today has top quartile engagement levels. An amazing turnaround, a huge turnaround in colleague sentiment. We continue to build the services engineer workforce to ensure that we can meet not only our customer needs today, but the demands in the future. We've recruited a further 600 qualified engineers and apprentices in the first half of the year. We're now increasingly turning our minds to phase three, not because phase two is finished, but because we've always got to be looking ahead. The opportunities presented by net zero for our retail businesses are absolutely huge. We've got the largest field force in the U.K.. We've got the capability and capacity to further upskill and cross-train colleagues, and that means that we're incredibly well positioned. I'm really excited about the future for the retail activities, and that's why we're investing heavily in these businesses. We also said in February, we'd look at options to deliver growth through investing more capital into flexible distributed generation, as well as developing options to repurpose existing infrastructure to support the energy transition, to turn it from hydrocarbon infrastructure into net zero infrastructure. We've made good progress here, and I'm gonna give you a bit more color on that after Kate's taken us through the financials. Today, let's look at the group. Centrica is focused largely on the U.K. and Ireland. We participate selectively across the energy value chain. We've got strong U.K. and Ireland retail positions through brands such as British Gas, Hive, Dyno, and Bord Gáis. We've got world-class pan-European optimization positions and capabilities in Centrica Business Solutions and Centrica Energy Marketing and Trading. We've got incredible infrastructure positions in the U.K. and Ireland in gas production and processing, in both nuclear and gas-fired electricity generation, and in battery storage. Now all of these activities are interlinked, and each and every one of them have got significant growth potential. Now that includes both British Gas businesses. They're currently focused on improving operational performance in order to position us well so that we can grow. In British Gas Energy, we're focused on improving the areas we control, and I was really pleased that we delivered organic customer growth in the first half of 2022 while NPS continues to improve. We remain focused on IT platform migration, investing in the lower cost software as a service platform. Now this is gonna future-proof the business as the U.K. energy system develops, and there is an inevitable and substantial increase in electrification. Combined with more modern and agile ways of working, this is also gonna allow us to offer a better customer experience while ensuring that our cost per customer remains competitive. Now for those of you that have seen these types of migrations, you'll know that it requires focused efforts and also it can be bumpy. We've now got almost 1 million customers on our new platform. We'll continue with a controlled approach as we scale up and migrate all residential and small business customers over time. Now the current environment remains incredibly challenging for customers and for suppliers. As you know, more than half of U.K. energy suppliers went out of business in the past year. Those players like us who've got a responsible business model and a disciplined approach to hedging and risk management will be able to see out the situation. We think the regulatory focus has got to ensure that both the market and all suppliers are viable. We've been clear that there's been a huge regulatory failure which required urgent intervention and financial services style credential regulation. Now that includes fit and proper person tests, capital adequacy rules, well-monitored risk management activities, and full protection for customer deposits. There's been a number of positive changes to regulation over the past six months, which include the introduction of regulations that should ultimately protect 100% of customer deposits. Together with a market stabilization mechanism, which should ensure that companies are not commercially disadvantaged by hedging responsibly when commodity prices start to fall. Now whilst we would always like change to be quicker, we are supportive of what we see coming out of Ofgem. We'll continue to engage on the future of retail energy markets in the U.K to ensure that only well-run, responsible suppliers are allowed to remain in this market and that they can make a fair return. That's very important as well. We've been encouraged by positive action from the Irish government in terms of direct support for customers rather than intervening in the market with potentially unintended consequences. The U.K. government customer support package has been similarly encouraging. Finally, in this section, let me cover British Gas Services and solutions. Operational performance here is improving, and we've got significantly reduced reschedule rates and higher engineer NPS. We've also seen some improvement in our boiler and parts supply chain issues after the issues that we saw earlier this year. Our engineer recruitment drive is continuing apace. I'm really proud of the team who've regrown this recruitment and training capability far faster than any of us had the right to expect. You can see in the chart how we've changed this. The team have been phenomenal. Now, this investment obviously impacts on productivity in the short term because new recruits, when they're trained, then mentored by existing colleagues, that takes some productivity away, but it's absolutely essential for the long-term health of our business. We have to grow our own talent. Now, we can expect this impact to last probably into early 2024 until the apprentice pipeline normalizes. It's not gonna go back to the levels of 2018, but it doesn't need to stay at the levels of 2021 and 2022. We're also seeing inflation and the cost of living crisis affecting both the cost base and our sales performance. Therefore, full financial recovery in this business is likely to be dependent on how long any economic downturn lasts, and therefore it's probably gonna be a bit slower than we would have hoped when we spoke to you in February. Now historically, in this environment, our approach would have been to make unsustainable cost cuts to underpin in-year profits. This happened in late 2019 when a substantial proportion of contracted labor was let go just at the start of winter, which impacted customer service from the fourth quarter onwards. Actually, only now are we recovering from that. You can see here that we carried out more than 400,000 additional service visits in the first half of this year, whereas when you compare it to the same period in 2020 and 2021. Now while both of those comparable periods were impacted firstly by COVID and secondly by industrial action, that actually masked the impact of the very short-term decision that was made in 2019. We won't repeat that. This business will only realize its growth potential if we continue to invest in our capacity, in our capabilities, in our technology, in our colleagues. We'll continue on the path that we're on to ensure that we capture the great opportunities that are presented by net zero. Now we feel there's no contradiction between the planet and the profit when you talk about net zero. Look again at how we made our money this year. By managing 15 GW of power across Europe, 80% of which is renewable, by sticking with low-carbon nuclear. The energy transition is an immense opportunity for us at Centrica. We want to be the ones to install the heat pumps or convert gas boilers to hydrogen, who link up the solar farms and wind farms of the U.K. and Europe into one giant sustainable grid, who pioneer the new technologies like carbon capture that will take Britain and Ireland all the way to net zero. That aim's at the forefront of everything that we do. Now I'm gonna hand you over to Kate to talk about the financials, and I'll come back and talk about our strategy. Thank you. Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone. All right. Let me move straight on to the results. Overall, financial performance was healthy in the first half of 2022. Revenue increased in all our business units, which reflects good operational performance against the backdrop of higher commodity prices. This also resulted in higher gross margin in our upstream and energy marketing and trading businesses. Operating costs increased by just over GBP 100 million. This is largely due to higher bad debt charge and the GBP 27 million furlough repayment made to the government in February. We continue our focus on discipline in costs while prioritizing OpEx investment into our retail businesses to improve service levels and position for future gross margin growth. Adjusted operating profit was up significantly to GBP 1.3 billion, although nearly half of a billion of this relates to the disposed Norwegian Spirit Energy assets. I'll cover the segmental detail in the next slide. Net finance costs were lower, which includes the benefit from over GBP 900 million of debt maturities since the start of 2021. The group tax rate increased to 46%, reflecting the increased proportion of operating profit made in the highly taxed E&P businesses. This resulted in adjusted earnings per share of GBP 0.11 pence or GBP 0.102 pence when excluding the disposed Spirit Energy assets. Moving now on to operating profit. Chris talked to how we think about the integrated portfolio, and I'll follow that structure, albeit there is some overlap in our current businesses. In retail, we include British Gas Services and Solutions, British Gas Energy, and Bord Gáis. Optimization includes Centrica Business Solutions and Energy Marketing & Trading. Infrastructure includes our Spirit Energy, CSL, and nuclear assets. A notable outlier from our overall strong performance in the first half was British Gas Services, where operating profit reduced to GBP 7 million from GBP 60 million last year. That's where I'll start. As you've heard from Chris, operational performance is improving. However, it is going to take time for this progress to be fully reflected in the financial results. You may recall we said last year that COVID and industrial action had cost us GBP 50 million in the first half of 2021. All things being equal, you would have expected this to reverse out in the first half of 2022. However, as we signaled in February, elevated absence rates continued into 2022, while we also saw ongoing high levels of customer compensation following disappointing service levels over the last winter. We caught up on our backlog of annual service visits, while the level of customer call-outs was higher than we had expected, which we believe is a function of customers choosing to have non-urgent work that they had been delaying over the COVID period completed. These should be temporary factors, but they impacted the result by approximately GBP 25 million in the first half of the year. We are seeing commercial challenges exacerbated by the current high inflation environment. Customer retention rates remain strong at above 80% as we remain mindful of the price changes customers can absorb. However, customer acquisition has been challenging, and we lost a net 157,000 customers in the first half of 2022. We are also seeing more customers trade down to lower price products within our home care range. This negatively impacted us by around GBP 20 million compared with the first half of last year. We are making a number of choices to improve the resilience of our business, investing in service and pricing and ensuring our current propositions are attractive, and we're well placed as alternative heating solutions gain more prominence. This investment includes the recruitment of engineers and apprentices and the training of colleagues who have joined us over the last 18 months as more experienced engineers mentor new joiners. We continue to invest additional OpEx in our core IT systems to improve our productivity, particularly in planning and dispatch and modernizing our supply chain and in building our net zero capability. We are seeing increasing costs in a high inflation environment, including our own employee costs, as we look to support colleagues through the cost of living crisis. Mindful of this difficult time for customers, we are choosing to invest in our pricing by not fully passing these inflationary costs on to our customers. This investment totaled around GBP 50 million, and although this will create a drag on profit in the immediate term, we believe these are the right short-term choices for the long-term health of a business which can play an important role in helping households transition to net zero. Finally, on services, heating installations were up 13% compared with the first half of last year in a market which reduced in size. However, the average sales price was lower, with customers again tending to choose lower price boilers. Global supply chain issues earlier in the year resulted in higher costs and reduced productivity. Combined, these factors drove a negative impact on profit of GBP 10 million compared with last year. Moving on to British Gas Energy, where operating profit reduced by GBP 74 million- GBP 98 million. The current market environment continues to make the forecasting of customer numbers and demand challenging. Given the tariff default cap remains cheaper than nearly all fixed price offers available in the market, we saw a continuation of the trend from Q4 last year, with a higher number of customers moving onto the default tariff than we had purchased gas and power for. We now have 83% of our portfolio priced on a capped product. This resulted in us having to procure additional commodity at high market prices with Ofgem allowances for this unexpected cost only kicking in from April. This was a negative factor in the first half financial result. Offsetting this, warmer than normal temperatures in the first half naturally reduced demand, but meant we were able to sell surplus gas and power back into a high price commodity market and resulted in a net positive impact overall from weather. These were large swings moving in opposite directions, which almost netted out. In OpEx, we recognized a roughly GBP 65 million increase in our bad debt charge, linked to both elevated revenue and emerging pressures on customer wallets. This took bad debts as a proportion of revenue to 2.3%. We also made the GBP 27 million furlough repayment I talked to earlier. Finally, for retail, Bord Gáis Energy operating profit increased from GBP 19 million to GBP 33 million, despite a challenging environment for energy supply, with good trading performance and the Whitegate CCGT back online following a major outage throughout the first half of 2021. Next on to optimization. Centrica Business Solutions contributed GBP 20 million of operating profit in the first half compared with a GBP 24 million operating loss in the same period last year. Within this, we saw a recovery in the energy supply, with no repeat of COVID-19 driven demand reduction seen in H1 2021 and warmer weather, allowing us to sell excess gas and power back to the market. The loss in new energy services halved, reflecting improved commercial performance and lower operating costs as we refocused this business. Switching now to Energy Marketing & Trading, which made an operating profit of GBP 278 million, compared with a loss of GBP 40 million in H1 2021. As we mentioned in our May trading update, EM&T has managed the commodity markets well. Our portfolio of physical contracts and associated capability, technology, and data are well placed in this commodity environment. This portfolio, which includes PPAs, storage, and LNG, delivered a strong optimization performance across the European markets in which we operate. The longstanding legacy gas contract for Salt contributed an operating profit of GBP 25 million in the first half as we used optionality around the timing of gas offtake. We currently expect the contract to broadly break even for the first half, after which the contract only has another 2.5 years before it expires. At current forward commodity prices, we expect the contract to lose around GBP 150 million before it ends, albeit the phasing of the losses is uncertain. Lastly, I'll talk to the infrastructure or upstream businesses. After excluding the Spirit Energy assets sold in May this year, pre-tax operating profit was GBP 421 million compared with a small loss last year. The retained Spirit Energy assets delivered operating profit of GBP 59 million, with strong operational performance at Morecambe and Cygnus, and higher achieved prices despite the impact of forward hedging. This was partially offset by higher depreciation rates as a result of impairment write-backs last year. CSL operating profit increased to GBP 76 million as operational performance was robust and enabled us to optimize production from the Rough asset. Production was up compared with the same period last year, and the achieved gas price was higher. In nuclear, reliability exceeded our expectations given our 2021 experience, with volumes up 11% despite the closure of two stations since June of last year. Operating profit was GBP 286 million in the first half as a function of the higher achieved prices, lower OpEx, and depreciation following the closure. Finally, touching briefly on the disposed Spirit Energy assets which contributed GBP 485 million of operating profit. With the valuation date for the transaction set as of January 1st, 2021, we've isolated this contribution. Moving on to cash flow. EBITDA increased by GBP 1 billion, while tax payments of GBP 367 million were made compared with the net rebate received in H1 last year, reflecting the increased profit. We used a lot more working capital this half, resulting in a cash outflow of GBP 438 million. This was largely in British Gas Energy for two main reasons. The impact of taking on supplier of last resort customers, which will unwind over the next nine months, and the impact of higher commodity costs, as we typically pay for the purchase of commodity in advance of receiving payment from customers. Growth in Energy Marketing and Trading activity also resulted in a working capital outflow in this business. Net investment was flat versus last year, while exceptional cash flows were again lower as our 2020 restructuring program comes to an end. As I've highlighted before, any OpEx investment we make, like those in British Gas Energy and British Gas Services and Solutions to improve operational performance, will not be charged as exceptional items. Overall, free cash flow was GBP 643 million, up from GBP 524 million from the same period last year. Switching to the right-hand side of the slide, pension payments were reduced as we saw no repeat of redundancy-related accelerated payments from 2021. We also saw a reversal of our margin cash position over the first half. A core capability in managing our business risk is how we balance market credit and cash liquidity risk. The potential exposures to these individual risks are particularly acute in this current environment, and our strong balance sheet and access to liquidity ensures we have good options to manage this trilemma. It is very possible our margin cash position could increase further as effective risk mitigation lever. Our cash position gives us good choices in how to balance this trilemma and is one of the reasons we will continue to run a conservative balance sheet. You can see the GBP 233 million minority dividend paid to our Spirit Energy partners following the completion of the Norway disposal. The net impact of all of this was a net cash position of GBP 316 million at the end of June. I'm pleased with the progress we've made on the balance sheet over the last two years. A strong balance sheet and strong investment-grade ratings remain important to us, and the benefits of this are clear during periods of extreme commodity volatility like that we are seeing at the moment. As regards pensions, recent increases in corporate bond yields mean that we now have an accounting surplus of GBP 747 million. However, it is the technical provisions deficit which determines the future level of cash contributions that the company has to make. Here we have just reached agreement in principle with the pension trustees regarding the March 2021 technical deficit valuation at GBP 944 million. I am pleased that on a roll-forward basis, the deficit is around GBP 600 million today, reflecting changes in real gilt rates and deficit contributions since the valuation date, and a solid covenant rating. Deficit contributions are expected to remain at around the current level of around GBP 175 million per year. Pensions have been an unpleasant source of volatility in recent years. As Chris said, reaching over GBP 2 billion a couple of years ago. We have been heavily focused on de-risking our net pension liabilities. As you can see from the table on the right, the overall level of interest rate and inflation hedging as applied to the asset base has increased from 36% three years ago to 95% today. This means the volatility of our pension deficit should be much reduced in future. Before I move on to cover our updated financial framework, let me address the outlook for 2022. Financial performance so far this year has been good, which positions us well as we head into the second half. We'll continue to invest in and drive operational improvement over the second half of the year, particularly given the uncertain economic environment which creates challenges for British Gas Services and Centrica Business Solutions, and also increased bad debt risk for our energy supply businesses. If forward commodity prices were to stay around current levels and asset performance remains strong, it is likely that full year adjusted earnings per share could be at, or even above, the top end of the current sell side consensus range. However, as always, there are a range of external factors that we cannot control, most significantly, weather and wholesale commodity prices, the risks from which are elevated in the current commodity environment. As a reminder, we start hedging our upstream production and generation ratably 24-30 months ahead of delivery. On the right of the slide, you can see the amount of gas and power we have already sold forward in our EM&T and nuclear businesses, which will help you with your modeling. We also have exposure to European power prices through our PPA and route to market activity in energy marketing and trading. Finally, let me turn to our updated financial framework approach, which will underpin our strategy moving forward. It should come as no surprise for me to start by talking about the balance sheet. Maintaining a strong balance sheet will be key to our continued success. We are currently in a net cash position. Remember, this figure does not include the GBP 1.5 billion of gross Spirit Energy and CSL decommissioning liabilities, nor the GBP 0.6 billion current roll forward valuation of the technical pension deficit. We've talked about the significant cash swings and the in-year uncertainty, and Chris will provide more color shortly on how we see the investment opportunities ahead of us. With current levels of volatility and economic uncertainty, I intend to maintain a prudent balance sheet which provides cash agility, resilience, and the ability to respond to opportunities while maintaining meaningful headroom to maintain our strong investment-grade credit ratings, given their importance for our energy procurement and optimization activities. Let me now turn to dividends. Importantly, we are now in a position to reinstate cash returns to shareholders, starting with the 2022 interim dividend payment of GBP 0.01 per share. The full year dividend will be progressive, and over time, we expect the cover ratio to move to around 2x, recognizing the ratio is likely to vary each year dependent on the business cycle. We will continue to invest in our people and technology, whether that's through OpEx or CapEx, and this will underpin further improvements in customer service and productivity. In turn, improved customer retention. Our balance sheet approach also means we're able to support increased working capital capacity should attractive opportunities arise in our optimization activities. Next, we have the opportunities to invest in a value-accretive way in flexible and lower carbon assets to accelerate the energy transition and improve security of supply in our core markets. Chris will lay out the robust framework we will consider each opportunity against, but you would expect each one will need to deliver appropriate returns commensurate with the risks taken. Such investment will also help us retain a diversified and balanced portfolio as our existing EM&T and nuclear assets naturally reduce in scale over time. Finally, we will continue to focus on the efficient use of capital. While the current volatility of the market and uncertain timing of our potential investments means we can't yet get clarity on timing, this does include the potential to return any surplus structural capital to shareholders. I'll now hand back to Chris. Thanks, Kate. Now we've stabilized the group, we've reshaped the portfolio, and we've put in place our operational improvement plan. We can share our long-term strategy and outline the growth potential. For those of you that know me, you know that I prefer to let my delivery do the talking. On this occasion, I'm actually really quite excited to share a little bit more. How do we see Centrica today? We're evolving into a new type of integrated energy company. It's not about investing in upstream assets to hedge the downstream activities. That is, as my kids would say, so last century. It's about balance. It's about balance in our portfolio, balance in an increasingly imbalanced energy system. It's about investing in net zero, investing in the retail business to deliver new net zero propositions, investing in flexible assets which will enable a net zero electricity system, and using our optimization capabilities to help de-risk the group and add value to the retail businesses that we've got in the U.K. and Ireland. It's about investing in net zero infrastructure, which will capture carbon, and it will produce net zero gas. It's about our unique combination of strong retail optimization and infrastructure businesses. The strengths of each of our businesses reinforce and de-risk the other elements, and this makes us a stronger company. Our markets are dynamic. Our de-layered organization allows us to respond quickly. We won't invest to get the best returns for the ideas that we've got. We'll only invest where the risk is compensated by the returns, and we expect to have a mix of merchant and regulated assets. We're market-led. We're not gonna invest material sums into primary research and development. That's not our bag. We'll invest in our proprietary optimization technology, and we'll deploy new technologies faster than our competitors can. These are the principles that guide our strategy, the principles that guide our approach. We've worked hard to get into this position where our portfolio makes sense, where each part complements another, where we've got growth opportunities, where we've got balance. The great thing is that we've got growth opportunities across the entire value chain. We can choose where to invest, and we can choose the mix dependent upon the circumstances. We've got choice. Firstly, let's look at the growth opportunities that we see in the retail businesses. I talked a lot in February at the prelims about how well-positioned we are for the transition to net zero. This hasn't changed in the past six months. I'm as excited, actually more excited today than I was then by the growth potential of both British Gas Energy and British Gas Services and Solutions. We're the largest energy supplier and the largest related services company in the U.K. and Ireland. We've got more than 10 million customers. They're served by the largest energy services field force with well over 7,000 engineers, and as you saw earlier on, it's growing. We've got another huge competitive advantage, our award-winning in-house training academies. They already allow us to both train and to certify our own apprentices and to upskill engineers to install everything from heat pumps to EV charging points, from smart meters to hydrogen boilers. These are the people that are gonna deliver the U.K. Net zero future, the people that will allow us to capitalize on the opportunities presented by decarbonization. It's what allows us to confidently participate today in Hydrogen Village trials, to install heat pumps while other people talk about it. All of the parts of the training journey are in our hands. Our competitors would love to have something similar. The regulatory environment in U.K. Energy supply is actually heading in a more sensible direction, and that means that suppliers like us focused on improving customer service levels should be able to make a fair and a sustainable return. The decarbonization of heat is gonna drive substantial demand for new heating systems. This is a huge opportunity for us. There are 28 million homes in the U.K. and more than 2 million homes in Ireland, and each and every one of those homes will require some form of change to their heating systems, probably over the next decade, to ensure that net zero is achieved. Now we don't know what the exact technology mix is going to be, but it is almost inevitable that both heat pumps and hydrogen will have a massive role, but we plan to be the leader no matter what the technology is. Now the timing of the switchover to lower carbon heating is also quite uncertain, and I would argue it's not helped by the current cost of living crisis. Whatever the mix, whatever the timing, our job is to be well-placed, and we are. We clearly need to get match fit to be able to access those opportunities, and that's why we're investing so much in improving our operational performance and our customer service across the British Gas businesses, to capture the huge opportunities that will inevitably come in the next decade. We stand at a very interesting point in time. The changes coming in the energy landscape in the next decade will be monumental, like changes that we've never seen before. The energy system will become much cleaner, much more complicated, much more volatile, and much more intermittent. Those with the skills to optimize such a system will have a competitive advantage. Now we've always had a requirement to manage our commodity exposure and the risk in our core markets, given the scale of the retail and the infrastructure positions that we've had historically. The expertise that we've gained through doing this is incredibly valuable, as we're seeing at the moment in our results. When commodity prices are high in a regulated downstream business, you typically don't make more money, but the risk profile increases materially. Our world-class power and gas trading and optimization capabilities help to mitigate this, and they are a genuine differentiator for us. We use the knowledge and expertise that we gain through doing this to put a modest amount of risk capital into commodity trading. Now the main point here to note is we're not taking speculative punts. We're optimizing a wide range of positions to make a return, and this has turned something that would otherwise be a cost center into a profit center for Centrica. Over time, energy markets have also become increasingly international. Gas has moved from being separate local markets to one which is now an interlinked European market. It's actually now becoming much more of a global market, with LNG playing an increasingly important role. Electricity markets across Europe are interlinked. Our optimization activity is generally underpinned by contractual positions, including within our route to market business, and that provides market access and optimization services for customer-owned assets. We've grown this. Now we manage 15 GW of third-party assets with about 80% renewable technologies, mainly across 8 countries, principally in the U.K., in Germany, and across Scandinavia. A typical example of one of these types of deals would involve us receiving a fee from a renewables asset owner to take on the balancing cost. We can then utilize our intraday trading capabilities to make an additional return. For more flexible assets, such as combined heat and power units or CHPs, we can also help them schedule when they run to optimize the return and also to participate in demand-side response. We've shown on this slide how the 15 GW of assets break down by technology. The majority relates to wind, to solar, to CHP. At a small scale, we are also optimizing other technologies that will be important in the future. For example, we're involved at the moment in optimizing about 200 MW of green hydrogen production from electrolysis. In a number of trials. We've got proprietary technology deployed. We're always learning, always gathering data, understanding the markets and we're changing, evolving. You see we also manage our global LNG portfolio. You're probably familiar with the Isle of Grain capacity we've got in Kent and the long-term LNG contract we've got from the Sabine Pass plant in Louisiana. We've also been building up a number of medium-term positions that de-risk and optimize Sabine Pass and their overall LNG portfolio. Over the past two years, we've transported almost 300 LNG cargos across the world. We've got a world-class team with a deep understanding of the LNG market and its logistics. We'll continue to seek options to de-risk and potentially grow the portfolio, which is enabled by our stronger balance sheet, our ability to act quickly and decisively, and our deep knowledge of global gas markets. Now, hopefully this demonstrates the strong optimization positions that we've got today. We've been building our capability and market knowledge over the years, and this means that we understand the direction energy markets are heading. Why is this all important? Well, we already build and maintain customer assets as well as our own today through Centrica Business Solutions. Combined with our world-class optimization capability, this is core for future growth. We spent years gathering the data on how European energy markets operate. What we've got is unrivaled. It's something our competitors don't have. We see things that they don't, and that's not because we're smarter than them. We may well be, but it's because we have the data that they don't have. We have the knowledge that they don't have. It's also because we don't stand still. We keep moving. We keep improving. Even if they try and catch us, we keep moving forward. Now all of this gives us the knowledge to compete across the value chain and the confidence that we know where to invest Centrica's capital in flexible assets. How are we going to deploy that knowledge? How will we monetize the data that we've spent years building? Well, investment in the U.K. and Ireland energy system is expected to increase materially over the next decade. You can see here up to nearly GBP 200 billion in total, and this might be conservative. It's going to be driven by government decarbonization targets in the U.K. and the need in Ireland to address the intermittency that they're seeing, together with the push for increased security of supply we're seeing in both countries and elsewhere. A combination of technologies is going to be required, and it will create opportunities for companies with strong balance sheets, flexible business models, and detailed knowledge of these markets. Companies that don't have a legacy portfolio to defend will be able to move quickest, companies like Centrica. The majority of the investment is projected to come from intermittent renewable technologies such as wind and solar. We don't know what the precise mix is going to be. Nobody knows. You can see from the chart on the right here that the proportion of the U.K. electricity generated from intermittent technologies is projected to more than double from below 30% in 2020 to around 60% by the end of this decade. What you might ask? Well, the increased intermittency is going to result in a growing need for distributed rapid response electricity sources, and it will demonstrate the value of having strong optimization capabilities. Now with security of supply also remaining important, assets such as gas peaking plants and gas storage are also likely to play an important role. How do we know this? Well, you look in the top 20 countries in terms of electricity generated by wind per capita, we're active in 12 of them. We know how the system's working in Denmark. We optimize a large part of it. We know how the system's working in Ireland. We have a material presence there today. Now whether it's wind or solar, it doesn't really matter. What matters is how do you optimize an intermittent energy system? As the U.K. looks to double its energy from intermittent renewable energy sources this decade, if it succeeds, it will become more like Ireland, or if it overachieves, it will become more like Denmark, both countries where we've got a lot of experience and a lot of data. The opportunity for Centrica is significant, and we've got a clear view on where we can participate. We're weighing up those opportunities using a robust framework which takes account of the size and growth rates of the market, the appropriate levels of return commensurate with the risk taken, including whether the asset might be regulated or merchant. What competitive advantage we have, specifically, why are we better at developing and running an asset than competitors? How an asset complements the existing portfolio. As an example, investment in flexible distributed energy assets provides offsets with intermittency-related volatility in wholesale prices, which can feed into our downstream businesses, our retail businesses. Clearly, technologies are going to develop and new opportunities will arise. At this point, we see the main areas of investment focus are likely to be in batteries, gas peaking plants, solar, hydrogen, and carbon capture utilization and storage, or CCUS, as people call it. The focus for our investment will be in the U.K. and Ireland markets, where synergies of their retail positions and capabilities are the most obvious. We could consider other countries where we have a strong optimization position. Of course, we will remain focused on improving the operational performance of our retail businesses. Owning the right type of flexible assets will help to de-risk the overall portfolio, utilize our leading optimization skills, both of which provide us with a great opportunity to help with and benefit from the transition to net zero. We've got a good mix of current projects, near-term opportunities, and longer-term options. Although we might see variability in capital expenditure between years, the phasing should be controlled so we can comfortably afford this spend within the boundaries of our financial framework. The majority of these projects should be relatively small capital commitments, short cycle, rather than multi-billion-pound, multi-year projects. Flexibility for us is key. Having choice. Potential investments in smaller scale, flexible generation will be aligned to existing capabilities. We already own operational assets in the U.K. and Ireland. We've got a battery at Roosecote, a 50 MW battery in the northwest of England. We've got a gas peaking plant at Brigg, and we've got the Whitegate combined cycle gas turbine power plant in Cork in Southern Ireland. We've got the ambition to grow a bigger portfolio of flexible distributed assets, and we're already developing a number of projects across a range of technologies. We've got a great legacy. We're not starting from scratch. The opportunities have become clearer through the lack of the bureaucracy and complexity. We've got sites at Roosecote, which is gas-adjacent to the Barrow Gas Terminal. We've got a site at Brigg, a site at Barry in Wales. Each of these previously housed major electricity generation activities. In Ireland, we've got a number of sites which we believe are suitable for various types of power generation, not to mention the Whitegate Station in Cork. We're currently building an 18 MW SoLR farm at Codford in Wiltshire. That will cost around GBP 15 million, and we hope it will be operational around the turn of the year. It'd be not great because there might not be too much sun around the turn of the year, but it should be operational. We recently made the final investment decision to build another 50 MW battery on the site of Brigg, beside one of the gas peaking plants we've got. We expect this to be operational in the next year to 18 months. As I mentioned in February, we were successful earlier this year in the Irish capacity auction with bids to offer up to 200 MW of capacity. We're now moving towards final investment decision on the build of two separate 100 MW gas-fired plants which should cost around EUR 250 million. These would support the growth of renewables and maintain stability of energy supply in Ireland. Remember, twice the intermittency that the U.K. got. Including these projects, we've got brownfield sites across the U.K. and Ireland that could support well over 1 GW of new flexible generation capacity over the coming five years. That includes the Barrow and Easington gas terminals. They could support further investment in power generation assets. Now it's worth noting that the investment that we're looking to sanction in Ireland will initially run on methane, but we expect to be able to convert them to run on zero carbon hydrogen, and that's gonna be the aim for all of our future gas generation investments. We would expect all of these projects to deliver asset returns in excess of 5%. This is before we include any optimization upside that the unrivaled capabilities I've spoken about should allow us to achieve. These short-cycle projects, typically taking no more than two years from initial investment decision to being fully operational, will limit the amount of pre-productive capital deployed at any one time. Again, retain flexibility, retain choice. Overall, we're very comfortable we should be able to make returns on these investments that create substantial shareholder value over time. What about the infrastructure and assets? The benefit from the balanced portfolio that we've got is clear in the current environment, is clear in these results. Providing diversification for the group and generating good levels of cash flow. However, their lifespan is necessarily limited, particularly so now that we've stopped exploring in Spirit. The retained Spirit portfolio is expected to decline at between 10% and 20% each year, and that's fairly typical for a gas production business. At Rough, the existing reserves will by and large be exhausted over the next two years if we simply produce the remaining gas. Two of the remaining five nuclear plants are due to close in 2024, with another two expected to be closed by around 2028. We expect the Sizewell B nuclear power station to be granted a 20-year life extension and ultimately run until 2055, so for more than an additional three decades. Our challenge is to reinvest these cash flows into new net zero assets which continue to provide the balance our portfolio benefits from today and create shareholder value. Now, as you would expect, we've been working hard on this. We've got two great assets in Rough and Morecambe, and we've owned them both for decades, so we know these assets very well. We've been working to maintain optionality, to extend their lives, and to utilize them as net zero assets, ultimately to maximize the value of these assets. Both are currently producing gas. Rough's got a couple of years of production remaining, as I mentioned, while Morecambe could conceivably, depending on prices, keep producing for the rest of this decade. Now as you know, we've been looking at the possibility of repurposing Rough to store gas, initially methane, which would support the U.K. security supply, but subsequently storing hydrogen, the world's largest hydrogen storage facility, which would support the U.K. hydrogen strategy, which recently aimed to double hydrogen production from 5 GW- 10 GW by the end of this decade. Hydrogen should play an important role for Centrica in the future, and that doubling of the capacity is, I think, the thing that means that Rough is required. Rough's potential as the world's largest storage facility is a real enabler to allow us to achieve those aims. It is, in our view, impossible that this target can be met without hydrogen storage capacity. Once you start to use it, you have to have an uninterruptible supply. In our current estimates, the project would cost in the region of about GBP 2 billion, including the cost of converting it to store hydrogen. We are highly unlikely, I'm sure you'll be glad to hear, to invest in a project of this scale in such a nascent market on a merchant basis. We're looking for a regulated return model. We're not looking for government money. We can fund this, either ourselves or with partners. We're simply looking for a model such as that which is used for existing strategic U.K. energy assets. We're due at the moment to start decommissioning Rough in the next two years. That would cost about GBP 300 million. If we can repurpose this asset, that could delay some or a substantial part of that cost for decades. We remain in active conversation with the U.K. government on the role this asset can play in the future of hydrogen, and we're very encouraged by the discussions. Now, the newly refocused Spirit Energy gives us the opportunity to repurpose the large-scale Morecambe field ultimately into CO2 reservoir. It could be the world's largest such facility, and I've been reliably informed that it could store more molecules of CO2 than there are grains of sand in the Sahara Desert, which would make it essentially, to me, as a non-technical person, like the world's largest SodaStream. It's in very early stages, but we're gonna continue to look at the various options as to how we maximize the value of this asset. We've got more time with Morecambe than we have with Rough, given the remaining life of gas reserves in the field. It's an incredibly exciting option for Spirit Energy, for our partners and for Centrica. Like Rough, any investment could defer material decommissioning costs, plus a regulated model would offer low-risk returns as well as de-risking the overall portfolio that we've got. In summary, our diversified group has served us well throughout this crisis. There are four main messages I'd like you to take away from this session. Number 1, we significantly simplify, de-risk, reset, and strengthen Centrica. Number 2, we're driving improved operational performance across the group, particularly in our British Gas businesses, as we look to get them match fit so they're positioned to capitalize on the huge opportunities presented by the move to net zero. Number 3, we're focused on delivering sustainable value over the long term, empowering colleagues, growing our business, growing jobs. Number 4, we'll continue to focus on delivering sustainably, simply and affordably for our customers, while delivering stable and attractive returns for our shareholders. I am really pleased that we've been able to restart the dividend today, and I am personally very grateful, I know our board is grateful, for the patience that's been extended to us by our Shareholders. Centrica is evolving into a new type of energy company, a new type of integrated energy company. We're using our strong established positions, our capabilities, and our unrivaled data across retail optimization and infrastructure. After a period of extreme market volatility, we're turning a corner. We're emerging stronger, and I hope you agree, much more focused, and I think just in time. Britain and Ireland are crying out for long-term investment. We're putting Centrica at the center of that. We're backing it by our capabilities and our financial strength, which will allow us to invest in attractive opportunities aligned to the energy transition and the move towards net zero. I hope that you're as excited about the future as I am. I guess we're gonna find out as Kate and I look forward to taking your questions. Thank you. I think it's gonna be a hybrid thing. I don't know if we've got people online. Is that right, Martin? This is a bit of a voyage of discovery for us as well as you. Ajay, how you doing? Hi, it's Ajay Patel from Goldman Sachs. Can you maybe help with a few things? Firstly, on a conservative balance sheet, clearly we have quite uncertain times, and there's requirements in the balance sheet for margin cash, working capital move, which have been quite sizable, but also maybe for gas storage, coming up. In this type of environment, what type of net debt to EBITDA leverage would you look to? And/or would basically net cash be a good place to start until maybe some of the market conditions and certainties start to form? Then secondly on, I know that, the company's highlighted that it doesn't really want to expand on the exploration side, but is there any opportunity on the exploration licenses that Spirit Energy own that could be sold for value? Is there any merit in maybe developing some licenses to get the incentives that the government have highlighted recently? When I piece together what you've put together on the CapEx outlook in regards to SoLR batteries, gas peaking, and then put that to sort of potential cash flow that you could generate over the next three years, I'm just wondering, there seems to be some further opportunities there. I'm just wondering, is it, is that more towards M&A? And if you would, what would be the criteria for M&A? Is it more to consider the excess CapEx in regards to a capital structure, could it be returns of value? What are the thought processes for such decisions? Ajay, thanks very much. I'll take the second two, then Kate can come back and talk about the balance sheet. On the exploration licenses, we won't explore. It's not a core competence. We weren't very good at it in Spirit, to be open. But it's also not aligned with a company that's looking to deliver net zero to go and find new gas and oil resources. We focus on gas. Around some of the fields that we've got, if there are existing proved gas deposits, we'll develop them, if it makes sense financially. What we won't do is to go out into primary exploration, those days are gone. We're disbanding the exploration department, that's not an option. But if we've got existing value, fine. If there's existing value in exploration licenses, the way it works is if you don't drill it, you give it back to the regulator, they give it to someone else. We have very little, if any, exploration licenses. If we had some where we thought there was huge value, we would have drilled them already. If you remember, we drilled West of Shetland. Didn't find much. Spent quite a bit of money. We're gonna focus on what we're good at, not just in Spirit, but across the group. On the CapEx and the cash flow, I mean, obviously you see as we lay out the investment in the flexible assets, that's one thing. You've then got potential for Rough and potential for Morecambe. Now they're more binary. Either we'll get the yes or the no, and either we'll get the right regulated model that will support the investment. We as a board will make that decision. Firstly, is it an investment we want to support? Then secondly, how much do we want to support? There's some fairly big fluctuations there, but Kate will probably talk about, come on and answer the third question on net debt to EBITDA ratios. I would ask if we have just a little bit patience. We're really happy that we've got the dividend started, and what we want to do is to take one step at a time. You'll see the financial framework lays out how we think about it. First, I would never rule out M&A. It's not on our agenda at the moment. We're always looking for value, so we would look at an inorganic opportunity in the same way as we look at an organic opportunity. Inorganic, I think, brings more risk than organic, but it's all about value. Ajay, thanks for the question. I mean, I understand the dynamic in terms of, you know, how one looks at relationships between net debt and EBITDA. If I just come back to the trilemma that I talked about with regards to margin, credit, and cash, you know, those risks are very accentuated at the moment. Having cash that is available as a lever to manage those other two material risks is a real really big enabler to helping us ensure that we're realizing the potential that the group and the positions have as a whole. I don't know how long this environment is going to last, and I don't know what that's going to mean for margin outflow in particular. When you look at the, you know, the very, you know, accentuated EBITDA positions that we have that are, again, you know, somewhat tied to that net debt to EBITDA ratio is very difficult to look at as a mechanism right now. You know, I think it's a question of let's see how this runs through, but really understanding kind of the dynamics and the purpose that, you know, conservative balance sheet serves in the here and now. Do you mind if I have one follow-up? Just on Rough and Morecambe Bay. What sort of timing do you envisage to get a decision? Is it something that could happen over the next two or three years, or longer or shorter? Rough at the moment, you'll have seen we've been granted a storage license for Rough, which was necessary, but it's not sufficient to restart it. The discussions over Rough are around can we have this reopened this winter to store gas? Now, it's a phased return to storage. It's Rough could have a capacity of up to 200 BCF of storage. This winter you're probably talking about 30, about 9 LNG cargos. You could have investment next year to double that, and ultimately you can make a choice whether you want to take it up to the 200 BCF. 200 BCF would be the largest storage facility in Europe. There's nothing bigger than this. It's critical for the U.K., but it's actually quite important for Europe. For Morecambe's got a production profile that goes out to the late part of this decade, and is not really suitable for gas storage because it's so huge. If you put gas in, you're gonna have to pump it in for about 30 years before you get any out. It's not really all that good. It is very suitable for CO2 storage, we think. The Morecambe license has been included in the current licensing round for carbon capture and storage, so we're starting to have a conversation about that. That's, I think, a far slower run. There's some upsides and downsides. Morecambe is not beside an existing industrial cluster, which in some ways can make it more difficult 'cause you don't have sources of CO2 right beside Morecambe where it's located in northwest England. However, it could be suitable to ship CO2 in, so it may not compete with other existing industrial clusters. It could be a very different revenue stream, both for us and for the U.K. These are very early stage. I would say Morecambe's on a far slower run. Rough, I would guess, if it is reopened, will be initially reopened at a smaller level with a short-term agreement pending future because the government haven't yet published the hydrogen business models, and they still want to have those conversations in Rough as a hydrogen storage facility could well be captured by that. That's almost a two track thing there. Hi. Mark Freshney from Credit Suisse. Kate, a follow-up on, if you like, capital structure. I accept that net debt to EBITDA is very difficult, but if we were to look at the absolute reported level of cash, I mean, presumably that's a bit misleading because a lot is within Spirit, which is ring-fenced. You're advocating and pushing Ofgem, which they seem to be following, to ring-fence customer balances, then you've got to take out margin cash. Would you be able to give us a net debt number? And then there's the pension fund as well. I don't know whether there are any Scottish limited partnerships or other things that you've done in the past. What would be the true net debt number that's free to you? Just as a follow-up, I mean, you've given the investment opportunities, Chris, but what about the investment appraisal? Is it, you know, what kind of returns would you be expecting? My final question, again back to you, Kate, is just on what was formerly the British Gas residential business. I mean, there was the GBP 234 million credit last year, which was for SoLR costs. What would be the net credit in the first half? 'Cause last year it was severely loss-making were it not for the credit, right? So what would the underlying level be this year? Thanks, Mark. Let me take the returns question, and then, if I can, I'd like to touch on the Spirit stuff before passing on to Kate. What we said was we would expect to make a minimum 5% asset return, but it depends really on whether it's regulated or not. The regulated models can be a rate, can be a simple RAB model, it can be a cap and floor, you can have CFD models. It really does depend, but we would expect to make minimum 5% on these smaller flexible assets. And Kate will talk more on the net debt. I think rather than say what is the true net debt. The Spirit's cash. Spirit's a controlled entity. We own 69% of it. The shareholders agreement that we've negotiated, and it took a long time to negotiate it. Our General Counsel, Raj, is here. He's got the scars from it. We wanted it to be right. What that does is it holds cash within Spirit until it covers 150% of the anticipated decommissioning costs. Kate talks about credit risk and market risk. What that does is it means that we don't have any risk of our partner not funding that. Now, we have a great partner, and we don't think that they would look not to fund it, but we didn't want to strip cash out of that joint venture. I would argue that the net debt number you see today is a true net debt number. There's about GBP 200 million ring-fenced for customer credit balances. You've got to look at all sides of Spirit. You've got to look at a decommissioning liability that's in excess of GBP 1 billion. You've got to look at the fact now we've got an agreement, which means the cash is within that joint venture to do it. The only restriction is actually on the dividends that can be paid to the minority shareholder. Then the last one I can touch on, the BGE, and Kate might touch on this. It's not actually a loss. The SoLR costs that you reclaim, you remember we went through a lot. It's easy to forget. When these companies collapsed, they had customers that you could only price to the cap. Assume the cap's GBP 1,000, and at that point, it may have cost you GBP 1,500 to actually buy that stuff in the market. The way SoLR works is you buy that stuff in the market, you submit essentially a big expense claim to Ofgem and say, "We're gonna sell X at GBP 1,000." That's the cap. We've bought it for GBP 1,500. They do an audit, and they say that your expense claim is approved. I just wouldn't want to think that anything to do with SoLR made an unprofitable business profitable. The SoLR customers carry no profit at all, no gain, no loss. You're kept whole for the first period of having them. I just wanted to say that before Kate comes in and probably gives you the right answer on debt. In terms of, I mean, I think I said when I was talking about the net cash figure of around GBP 300 million that, you know, there, you know, there's a gross decommissioning of $1.1 billion. That is, as Chris says, you know, there's around 90-odd% of that, so it's got the cash within Spirit. You know, against that, so it is balanced and also, you know, remembering the cash generation potential of that business going forward as well. With regards to the, you know, the pension, again, you know, we talked about the GBP 600 million. I am alert to the dynamics around the British Gas Energy, you know, ring-fenced to customer balances. You know, that is a figure that we've put aside. Also just looking at what kind of, you know, frameworks over time may come out of the regulators to recognize the risks are, you know, that come with being a very large energy supplier in terms of what they would look to us to ensure that we have an appropriate balance sheet that we could demonstrate. You know, what the, you know, what the mechanics of that are, remain to be seen. You know, I mean, as Chris said, you know, I think the net cash figure is the net cash figure, but you're quite right in how I look at the prudent balance sheet, how I look at headroom. As you'd expect, I sensitize this for all sorts of different, you know, commodity environmental factors to ensure that, you know, that we are in, you know, a strong and robust position when it comes to, you know, credit rating and being able to meet our obligations, while also being able to have choices in the opportunities that we want to, you know, take advantage of. Just onto the British Gas Residential business. I think Chris has talked about it, but just a few numbers perhaps that may help you, and you'll find these in the notes later on in the pack. You know, we've put in a claim. I mean, overall, the costs are sort of north of GBP 500 million, a little bit, and we've claimed for over 2/3 of that. We've got around GBP 100 million of that back already. We'll get the rest of that payment back by sort of April-ish time, 2023. We'll be putting in a further claim, and then that amount for that last third will come through in sort of 2023- 2024. There'll be a degree of working capital overhang that will come back in this year. There'll be more to see in 2023 and a little bit more in 2024. Now, in the interest of applying new technology, I see that we've got three questions on the call. Can we maybe take one of the online questions first? Bear with us because I don't know how this is gonna work. The first question from the telephone is from the line of Martin Young with Investec. Please go ahead. Yeah. Good morning to everybody. If I can just ask a lot of hopefully three, you know, quick questions. In terms of the market stabilization charge that you mentioned, Chris, obviously there's the Ofgem consultation to extend this through to March of next year. It's possible, probably probable, that that MSC won't be triggered by that time. So do you think we need to move this to an annual feature, or does Ofgem just move along, kicking the can down the road every six months? Also, on the issue of affordability, you know, Shell and others are predicting quite a significant increase in the tariff come October and then a further increase come January. I think it's pretty clear that the government has been slow to act in the past with the packages that it's brought forward. You know, what do you think government needs to do to help offset the devastating consequences, energy bills of this magnitude. Finally, on Sizewell C, and the possibility of investing in new nuclear. You know, nothing said about that in today's presentation. You know, I would say that, given the reputational risk of getting involved with projects that could overrun on a cost basis and overrun on a timing basis, it's probably not where you want to go. Just wondered if you could confirm that you're not looking at it, as I'm conscious that there have been press reports recently suggesting it was potentially on your radar screen. Thanks. Martin, thank you very much. Look, on Sizewell, as you know, we are obviously involved in Sizewell B. Sizewell A stopped producing a while ago. We own the land in which Sizewell C would be built, along with our partner, EDF. We had the opportunity to go into Hinkley C. We decided against that. We're happy that we decided against that. We look at every investment opportunity as it comes. I'm sure EDF would rather finish the negotiations with the government to figure out what the overall funding model is, and the regulatory support model is for Sizewell C. Once that's done, if we think that there's an opportunity for us to make an investment which makes sense for our portfolio, helps to de-risk our portfolio and is aligned, then we'll discuss that as a board and make a call. It has to add value. In terms of the affordability question, look, there's loads of people giving politicians advice, so the last thing they need is additional advice from me on what they should do. The two candidates for Prime Minister have both noted that they intend to do more to help energy customers. We welcome that. We welcome the fact that the U.K. and the Irish government have already provided support to energy customers, and we should wait and see where the price cap comes out. If it comes out at the levels that people are predicting just now, then it's not unreasonable to expect there'll be more help from government. On the Market Stabilization Charge, I'm sure your ex-colleagues at Ofgem would be delighted to hear you saying that they're kicking the can down the road. Look, I don't know what they're looking to do. I think that this is one of the examples of quite quick implementation of regulation, which helps to cover a potential risk in the market. As you say, I mean, we've seen quite an uptick in wholesale prices over the past three or four days, which would suggest that the Market Stabilization Charge is not something that's gonna kick in or be needed before March 2023. I don't know what Ofgem's intentions are, whether this will be a permanent feature or not, 'cause there's a bit of controversy about it. What I would say is for those that have been involved in the energy industry for any period of time, you just got no idea as to where energy prices are gonna be in the next month or two. You know, I'm quite comfortable for us to wait and see. Ofgem, I think have done a good job on the Market Stabilisation Charge. Okay, thanks. Excellent. We've got another question in the room, and then maybe we'll go to two questions and then maybe we'll go to John and Jenny online, so. Yeah. Thanks, Chris. Pavan Mahbubani from JP Morgan. I have two questions, please. Firstly, there were some headlines, I think from a media briefing this morning, on GBP 600 million of windfall tax. Would you mind just clarifying what that figure was and sort of over what period and how it's calculated? Secondly, I appreciate that the Energy Profits Levy, again, that's had some changes. I just wanted to get the latest on whether or not you can offset any of the tax with decommissioning costs. Also, is there going to be any impact on your deferred tax assets as a result of that Levy? Those are my questions. Thank you. Pavan, Perfect. Let me take the first part, and then Kate can talk about deferred tax, 'cause I could never even figure it out when I was doing finance. The GBP 600 million windfall is the Energy Profits Levy, so the windfall tax that people don't want to call windfall tax. That's just calculated that it's expected to be in place until the end of 2025, which is when there's a sunset clause. It's calculated based on the prices at a point, when we looked at the numbers, the prices have gone up, so it could be more than GBP 600 million. You can't offset decommissioning, you can't offset brought forward losses. Again, the current context of the Prime Minister, one of them said they'll keep it, and one of them has hinted that there might be some changes, so we continue to look. That was the best estimate, I think, at some point on one day. They're the same thing. The windfall tax I referred to this morning with the media is the same as the Energy Profits Levy. Deferred tax? Look, I love deferred tax, Pavan. I mean, I think as Chris said, because you can't do things that are historical, it's the future dynamic, and the future decommissioning that you can take against the deferred tax asset. There's some change, but it's pretty restrictive in terms of its application and our current read of it. That's fine. Good questions. Yeah. Morning, very much. Verity Mitchell from HSBC. Just a couple of questions. The first one is, I'm very interested in your plans for Rough and Morecambe. I mean, would that change the decommissioning costs for both assets if you're thinking of developing them, and maybe change that pricing dynamic? Secondly, on British Gas Services, I mean, you're spending essentially about half of your operating profit on services and pricing, and yet you're not projecting an enormous exponential growth in decarbonized home products. I mean, what's the payback gonna be for that level of investment, given that there is pressure on households for conventional gas boiler servicing? Thank you. Very truly. Thanks very much. On the, there's a couple of things in the services business. Twenty-eight million homes in the U.K., our analysis is that 5.5 million homes can only be decarbonized with heat pumps, and there's 6 million homes that can only be decarbonized with hydrogen, and there's, I don't know, 16.5 million homes in between. The debate sometimes focuses on is it hydrogen or heat pumps, which we think is the wrong debate, because my view is why don't we just start on these two bookends, and the bit in the middle will figure itself out. The current increased energy prices could give a bit more incentive to people to have a more energy efficient boiler. Unfortunately, heat pumps just now are not more energy efficient. The other cost of living squeeze could cause people to be less likely to invest money on heat pumps. That's why we said we actually don't know when this is gonna come. The investment we're making is not to turn thousands of gas engineers into heat pump engineers. The investment is to make sure that we've got a multi-skilled workforce that will install all of the new hydrogen boilers or as many as we can, and as many as we can of the heat pumps. We already do hundreds of heat pumps a year through our PH Jones business. The investment is about making sure that we are ready to service and install the largest amount we can of 20 million heating systems in the U.K. and 2 million in Ireland, whether heat pumps or hydrogen. On the Rough and Morecambe numbers, the decommissioning, obviously, whatever kit you can reuse, you don't decommission, you push it out for however many years. If you take Rough, for example, at the moment, the investment is not huge, and over the next couple of years, it wouldn't be huge. To go to hydrogen, that's when the investment comes up to probably the GBP 2 billion number. You're likely at that point to require a new platform, so the legs will be fine. What's called the jacket, that's all fine. You take the topsides off. The jacket is not that expensive. The expensive part is all the processing kit. Likely you probably decommission a lot of that anyway and put some new stuff in. We would expect to see a good amount of deferral, but not. You wouldn't defer the entire amount. You would still replace some of the kit because what we're looking to do for both Rough and Morecambe, if it works, is to have these assets for another 40 years. Now, thankfully, when they were designed, they were designed at a time when lots of these things were overengineered. But some of the kit just won't be suitable. Hard to give a number there, but we would expect to defer a good proportion of it, but not all of it. Excellent. Thank you. We're gonna go. We've got John. If we go to John Musk online, and then we'll come back at the back. John Musk. Yes. Go ahead. Yeah. Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking it. Two questions from me as well. Firstly, coming back to Rough. If you do go ahead and look to bring that back online for winter storage this year, can you just confirm who's on the hook for the investment you make for that? I think you mentioned you make for that? I think you mentioned 30 BCF. Is that something that you would be sort of paying for, or is there some form of, you know, government subsidy that's gonna look to help with that? And then secondly, you gave us some indication on hedging, obviously around the nuclear position there and the upstream position. Can I also understand your hedging on LNG and how those contracts now look? Because, on my calculations, those are looking extremely profitable, as you put up your prices. John, thanks very much. Let me take the Rough question, and then Kate will talk about the LNG hedging. There's already about 14 BCF of gas in Rough at the moment. Therefore, you would look to inject more in there. The model's not yet agreed with government. I would just emphasize, we're not asking government for any money at all. What we're looking to do is to get this thing back storing gas. The easiest model to have is it simply responds to price signals, which is when the price is very low, you inject gas. When the price is very high, you withdraw gas. Part of our offer is that we are happy to fund the working capital on that to do that. That requires a very straightforward model. If there's a desire to have something that's more of a strategic reserve, which is not within our control, even if I wanted to, I'm not sure I could persuade our CFO that that would be a good use of our money. Those are the kind of things that we're still discussing. You forgive me if I don't give you an answer because frankly, I'm not really able to. We just want to make sure that it makes sense for us because we're convinced that it makes sense for the country. John, just on the energy, I mean, it's probably helpful for me just to remind you of a few things that we've said before with regards to LNG and specifically Sabine Pass. You know, the pricing of that dynamic has, that Sabine Pass portfolio, just under sort of $300 million that we'd need to make good in market prices. And through activity that we do in advance, we hedge that in so we can ensure that we're not carrying those losses. And that's what we've done coming into 2022, and those hedges would have been put in place some years back. Similarly, you would be expecting that the degrees of those covers would be hedged into 2023. However, how we've demonstrated today, and Chris has talked with the energy portfolio, is more than Sabine Pass. There's degrees of other opportunity that comes with that energy portfolio that we're putting to good use, and that's why we're confident in its profitability in 2022. Thank you very much. We have a question at the back, and then we've got two here, and then we'll go to Jenny online. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Kate. One question just on Hinkley. Not Hinkley, sorry, Sizewell. Did you suggest earlier that you had effectively a first right of refusal over investment into Sizewell? I'm just wondering if you decided to invest in nuclear in the future under a RAB model, would you need to acquire into that project, which could be a competitive process, or do you have rights to participate? So just a point of clarification. Very quickly, just recently there's been some press articles mentioning MP comments about retail price caps again, just your views on how seriously government may be taking those suggestions and whether you think that that might be a part of the landscape in future. I know we're revisiting old territory there. Thirdly, if you were to ask us whether we would be expecting a first half skew or a second half skew this year in your EPS, given the challenges you faced in retail first half, challenges in services, and then your hedge books rolling off as you progress through the year, we would have suggested a second half skew. I'm just wondering whether there could be material upside to the upper end of consensus if things progress as planned in terms of production and energy prices remain broadly in line with where they are now. I guess trying to give some quantitative scale to the upside if things do progress well. Good. Thank you very much. I'll take the first two, and then I wish you well in getting anything out of Kate in terms of the H1, H2 skew. Of course, there's that. The one thing I would remember, what we would remind you of is that the hedging policy in Spirit was ratable but had a 12-month cliff hedge. The policy which is changing now, it basically said that at the first 12 months for the start of the year, you had your full production paid in. It's not the same impact in Spirit. Obviously, we're the same volumes. That was just why you see a difference in price between the price hedge for Rough and the price hedge for Spirit. I do wish you luck in getting some clarity there on the skew. On Sizewell C, I think the best thing is for us to let EDF as the operator and the government agree what the overall model is. I don't think they're yet done. Obviously, as part owner of the land, we might have a view and others may have a view. However, I don't think that's really all that relevant, if I'm being honest. I think that we value our relationship with EDF very much. They're a very good partner. It's quite clear if you read the reports that between them and the government, they're looking to bid in 40% or so of that, so they need 60%. I wouldn't see it as being something whereby you necessarily have to be part of a competitive bidding process. But if you do and it makes sense, excellent. And if it doesn't, fine, good luck to them. It's not something that we feel. We don't have any ideological positions in terms of where to invest. It's all about value. It's got to be aligned with our strategy, but it's got to be value. In terms of the price caps, the comments are coming out of the BEIS Select Committee and the report into the energy market. We contributed to that and gave evidence in person. We've been quite clear that we think that help should be targeted at those that need it most. Conceptually, some kind of relative price cap or some kind of social tariff, which they also mentioned, is not something that would that we would violently disagree with. However, I think that the devil's in the detail in any of this. What we the point we continually make and will continue to do so is if we're gonna have any change to price regulation, let's spend the time to work out how it's gonna work. Let's agree the objective and get the best way to do it. Rather than comment on does this one make sense, does that, I think that arguably that's why we're in some of the situation we are with the price cap, which is there are unintended consequences in the price cap. Some will tell you they were foreseen, some will tell you they weren't. That doesn't really matter, but it's clear there's unintended consequences. I think we have to take our time and make sure we design any revised price regulation properly. We can have targeted intervention in the way that we've seen the government in the U.K. and the government in Ireland taking to help consumers with the bills. We'll see over time. We continue to contribute to the debate. Anyway, I'll leave it for question three. On question three, I mean, we've given a lot of information today, and I'm sure it'll take a little bit of time to kind of digest the implications of it. I'm comfortable with what we've said with regards to outlook. I would work that through and draw your conclusions. The only thing perhaps that may be a little bit more helpful is just to recall that within Spirit, there's more outage in the second half of the year than in the first. Thanks. We've got another question here, and then we'll go to Jenny, who's waiting patiently online. Thank you. Arie. Arie, sorry, could you press the button to put the microphone on. Okay. Can you discuss what level of annual CapEx maybe would be sustainable? Assuming the investment opportunities are there, what kind of level of growth CapEx you'd be comfortable with? Do you want to take that or do you want me to? Do you want me to have a go and then you can correct me? Yeah, have a go and I'll add. Yeah. Excellent. Perfect. I think the annual CapEx, I think as we said, will vary over time. The projects we're talking about, the flexible projects, they are shorter cycle. They're smaller projects, so it really depends on when we sanction them and when we move through. I don't think it will be linear. You've obviously got the big thing, which is if we get an agreement on Rough, that's a substantial proportion. What we'll then do is to sit there and say, "Okay, how does this look in our overall balance sheet? How much do we want to fund? Do we want to fund it all? Do we want to fund a small part? Do we want to bring in equity partners? Do we want to bring in debt partners? I think one of the key things, what we got from the presentation is we want to be in control of our own destiny. We never want to overextend ourselves. We want to retain the flexibility, so every time we've got an investment, we'll have some choice, like we were talking about the Sizewell C. I think it's quite hard to see that. With a commodity-exposed business, then some years the profit's gonna be a bit higher, you can dial up your CapEx, and some years it's gonna be a bit lower, and you can dial it down. That's the beauty of the portfolio for us. The flexibility in CapEx, because a lot of commodity-exposed businesses have to launch into multi-year, multi-billion-dollar projects. If you're caught on the wrong side of a price movement, that can be catastrophic. We don't have that problem. It's one of the unique things about our portfolio. We're not reinvesting in these huge oil and gas production things. I think there'd be a bit of variability. Also, by and large, it depends how much we can persuade Kate to give us. I mean, that neatly tees me up. I mean, with regards to the CapEx profile, it is very difficult to give you a dynamic of a linear sort of click rate. It would be largely opportunity-driven. We've talked about the criteria that are important to us. You know, what's our portfolio? You know, how would an opportunity, you know, manage within the portfolio? How does it benefit the portfolio? What are the risks around it? What are the compensating returns for it, and how does that fit? You know, there is, you know, high degrees of cash generation potential this year, and next year. What we're looking for is ensuring that we can create a portfolio that fits for us, as we have today. Perfect. We'll go to Jenny online, who hopefully is still there. Hi. Morning. Yep, still here. Most of my questions have been asked, but I still have a few. Just returning to the potential cash returns and more specifically focused on timing. I guess, given the need for working capital, et cetera, and you know, investments, assuming we hear from government later this year or beginning of next year, is it fair to say that really, the next opportunity for you to look at cash return is probably going to be a year from now? First question. Second one, with regards to organic customer growth, which I think you talked to. Clearly there is no churn in the market at the moment, and arguably the market stabilization mechanism is making it less likely that we'll have a competitive market going forward. How do you think longer term the retail market will play out? Do you think there's gonna be further Ofgem or government intervention to try and create a competitive market and we see churn starting up again? Thank you. Jenny, thanks very much. Let me take the question, the competitive market. You know, on the cash returns, I would say your questions are always super, in that they're a good try, but, you know, let us be happy that we've restarted the dividend and not pin us down to comments on potential capital returns. I mean, the key thing to take away is we're really focused on the fact this is the shareholders' money. The shareholders own the business. We work for the shareholders. Secondly, we want to be agile and have choice, and so I think that would be one that we wouldn't be drawn on. But rest assured, it's something that occupies my thoughts regularly, it occupies Kate's thoughts, it occupies our chairman's thoughts. It's something we think about a lot as a board. How do we manage the shareholders' money? All in good time. You'll clearly be the first to know. On the market, you're right, there's not much churn. I mean, retention's about 98% just now. That's why I'm delighted that we've managed to grow organically. It's not huge, but it's good. Will Ofgem look to intervene to drive more competition? We all want a competitive market, so we don't worry about competition. We don't fear competition. But what you can't have is a return to the illusion of competition and the illusion of savings for consumers. We had that over the past few years where Ofgem's sole focus, by and large, was on customer churn. The Chief Executive of another energy company I thought was quite interesting. He said, "It's a weird market where the regulator has a single success measure, which is dissatisfaction of customers." I thought that was quite profound actually. What we can't have is a return to what we had before, which is you let anybody into the market, and they basically have a heads I win, tails you lose bet. You know? Everybody, every single household, the poorest people that you see are paying GBP 88 just now in their electricity bill to pay for those people that come into our market and blew up their businesses. We can't go back to that. What we've got to see, and what some companies are fighting against, unfortunately, just now is energy retail in the U.K. is a risky business. Therefore, what we believe in Centrica is, you know, as I said, we manage shareholders' money. It's the shareholders' money that's at risk. If we get it wrong, the shareholder loses out. Which is why it's quite right if we get it right, the shareholder gets a benefit. These companies that don't have adequate capital, and they still exist today in our market, if they go under, each and every one of us in the U.K. is gonna pay that. If they make money, they get richer. If they don't, every single person you see in the street pays for that. That's the thing that we've got to be really careful. Our work with Ofgem is to say, make sure that this is a market where there is moral hazard for companies that are involved in it, make sure the companies are adequately capitalized, and then let us all compete, and we'll compete as hard as anyone else. The competition that we had, the customer switching, that wasn't true competition. That's left us with a bill that runs into the billions and billions and billions of GBP. It is possible that it could happen again this winter. Undercapitalized companies being in our market today. The big thing we've called on Ofgem to do is to make sure that every single company in our market has adequate capital before the winter starts. They don't all have it at the moment. Excellent. Have we got any other questions? With Kate. Thanks, Jenny. Thank you. Have we got any other questions in the room? You don't have to have one of them. You guys have got a busy day today. Ajay Patel from Goldman Sachs again. Just one. You mentioned on the energy side of the business that you're approaching 1 million customers on the new platform. Yeah. What sort of savings are you seeing on the cost to serve? How fast can you continue that migration? What can I expect in, say, three years' time in terms of how we get there and transfer over? We'll see the true savings on the platform when we've got all the customers. Just at the moment, we've got dual running, so the cost is actually a little bit higher. We don't always expect, but it's a long-term investment. The pace at which we can migrate depends on a couple of things. One is the speed at which we build the features in the new system. The new system still has features that need to be added in. The speed at which we and the providers can build that, and then the speed at which you can pass customers through the industry backbone. The limit before was for transferring customers, and this was a problem as we went into SoLR. The one good thing that's come from this SoLR process is that you can see that you can actually push more customers through the industry backbone because you had to. You know, we've had, what, 4 million customers being displaced. The speed at which you can migrate is actually quite a lot better than it used to be. But the pace of the development of the features is probably the rate limiting factor at the moment. What we've got is this constant focus and pressure, which is let's do it as quickly as we can, but let's not lose. Let's not do it just to move customers onto a new system, which ultimately is not the right thing for customers. We've got this constant battle. I would hope that in three years we're on one system. That would be my aim. Do you mind if I just follow up on just so I know that you're running maybe higher costs with the other systems, but once you finish that process, how much of a benefit to cost to serve would you have relative to the point on which you didn't have two platforms? I would say overall cost per customer rather than cost to serve, because our cost to serve right now is actually relatively competitive. But then when you lay in the systems cost and some other things, we're aiming to get that down. I wouldn't want to give a full target, but we're aiming to get us about GBP 94 excluding or including bad debts. We're aiming to get that down by, you know, GBP 10-GBP 20 or so. Our overall aim is to make sure that our cost to serve is competitive. Another thing you'll find from SoLR is, as some companies had a homogeneous customer base, they could have a lower cost, but they couldn't grow into the other customer segments. If you've got larger energy suppliers, which I think we do now, who have a less homogeneous customer base, then they have the same complications. I mean, one of the complications we've got is we have customers from every single thing. We're the biggest prepaid business. We've got 1.2 million customers on prepaid meters. A company that's only focused on prepaid can probably have a lower cost to serve. Our system has to cover all types of customers. With other energy companies being in the same position, then you might actually see their cost to serve going up a little bit. I know they've got pressures as well with people calling them and the like. We'd see a bit more of an equalization, but we would expect to shave, you know, GBP 10+, maybe even GBP 20 off our overall cost per customer. Well, look, with that, what we've got. Oh, we've got another question online. Sam. Yes. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes. Excellent. Well, listen, I'm sure we're getting to the end of the questions, and I think we've covered most of the topics, but I thought I'd just try one last one, which is related again to all these investment opportunities that you've set out and the kind of potential sort of future CapEx focus. Maybe just the first comment to Mark, that is, I think the focus you set out on energy assets across the different areas is very welcome and I think in contrast to, I know, conversations in the past around Centrica investment in insulation and electric vehicle charging and so on, which a lot of people think are sort of quite tough markets. You know, at least from my point of view, the focus you set out today makes a ton of sense. What I thought I could do there is just get you to answer a question that clients ask me a lot, and is about the Centrica sort of track record on delivering, you know, in backgrounds where a good spread of return about lag. People kind of look historically and okay, this goes way back before your time, Chris, but into the, you know, the gas power stations, North America, you know, some of the early capacity markets starts, the retail IT investment. You know, there are quite a lot of CapEx programs at Centrica that have been difficult over the years. If you were in a room with me and I got this question from clients, what examples would you point to that to just show the best examples of Centrica kind of creating value through growth CapEx? Can you talk a bit about the kind of level of returns that have been achieved and the value creation spreads? Wow, that's a big zinger right at the end, Sam. Look, I think undoubtedly you would argue that we have had problems in some of our investments. West of Shetland exploration, $200 million didn't make. I was here during that. You know, I'm not going to sit and say a big boy or a big girl did it and ran away. We as a company have had some very successful investments and some less successful. What's one of the most successful, I mean, it's not truly an investment, but decisions is when we decided not to sell the nuclear business. You can see the value of that today. We've got a superb battery storage facility at Roosecote beside Barrow, which is the Morecambe terminal. I was there a couple of weeks ago. We took a decision three years ago to turn Rough into seasonal storage facility to maintain the optionality, to allow us to convert it into a storage field. Had we not done that, this thing might actually have already started decommissioning. It might be beyond recovery. The reason I share those is I would say that the way to think about it, and you're gonna have to judge us by what we deliver. The way to think about it is we don't take an idea and run with it, and you could maybe criticize us for that in the past. We had an idea, and we fell in love with it, and we ran with it. Every single decision we make is focused on value. Every decision. Whether it's optionality around Rough, whether it's about let's not sell the nuclear business, we're always looking at value. I promise you that I feel that pressure acutely. I have a pressure that I put on myself, a pressure that I have from our board. We are all focused on delivery. We're all very cognizant of things that have happened that happened in the past. I'd also then say that our business is a long-term business, and you've seen massive impairment write-backs through our books. The Spirit assets in the nuclear business today are worth more than we paid for them. Two, three, four, five years ago, we might have sat and thought, "This is actually not that great." I think that as you look at a business like ours, this is why we want a mix between regulated and merchant businesses, 'cause merchant businesses in the energy production industry are probably a bit more volatile than we would like. We don't want to fill our balance sheet with them. There's a place for them. Very stable, regulated businesses, lower return, but very stable, have a place for us. The impairment write-backs show that what we paid for Venture Production, the assets are worth more than it. What we paid for British Energy is worth more. Now, that's after quite a few years of pain. Obviously, look, trust us. Trust that we're focused on having a balance. Trust that we're focused on creating value. Trust that we're only going to invest where we can see an acceptable return which compensates for the risk involved. Hopefully that helps answer your question, Sam, but I really look forward to answering that over the coming years. I would also just draw your attention, I'm sure you saw, but on Slide 40, one of the things we said is we've got to rebuild our power generation muscle. We're not saying we've got a great idea, let's go into more power generation. Let's just pile in, Kate, will you give us some money? I get the nod from the Chairman, and we just run into it. We've got to rebuild that muscle because it's atrophied a bit. We've still got very good talent in it, but we've not got as much as we would like. We want to make sure that that's there before we sanction investments. We're learning a lot through the work to bring the Irish peaking plants to sanction, and we're learning where we need to grow the talent that we've got. We'll be disciplined, and we'll be balanced, and we'll be focused on value. Excellent. I'm sorry if it was a zinger of a question, but it was a zinger of an answer. Very helpful. That's very kind of you. I was just about to say we're finished, but Jenny's got a follow-up question. We'll finish because you guys will have other things to go to. I do appreciate your patience on what is a very busy day. Thanks very much. Sorry, hopefully a quick one for Kate. Well, a two-parter. One, just on the net cash of GBP 300 million. How much of that is margin cash? I realize you paid out somewhere around half a billion GBP of margin cash during the first half, but I just wondered whether more of that cash is earmarked for outgoing in the second half of the year. Then, Chris obviously talked about having a mixture of RAB regulated versus merchant assets. I just wondered if you do take on regulated assets such as one of Rough, how much credit agency sort of balance sheet capacity does it then free up? Obviously, they tend to have a tendency to favor regulated assets over merchant. I wondered whether you can give us a sense of the scale there. Thanks. Jenny, if I can touch on the credit agency thing before Kate comes in and tells you. I just want to share something, which is when I worked in previous companies, our credit rating in oil and gas, our credit rating was limited by the fact we were in a risky oil and gas business. When I came to Centrica and met with the rating agencies when I was CFO, they warned me that if we sold the oil and gas business, if we sold Spirit, our metrics would go up because we'd increase the risk of the group. I mean, credit rating agencies are clearly quite amazing people, and they're and they do a super job. It is really. The reason I share that, it's really difficult, I think, to see if you put this in our portfolio, what does it do to the metrics? You have to just sit down and redo the whole thing, again. I think that's probably a really difficult question to answer. If you've got one, I'd love to hear it. Yeah. I mean, I think with regards just to answer the net cash question is on the order of around GBP 400 million. But that figure does move around a lot, so I'm sure I'll have a very different number for you one way or another at the end of the year. With regards to credit metrics, I think just kind of to remind people where we're at at the moment is, you know, BBB with S&P, Baa2 on negative watch with Moody's. We eagerly await Moody's kind of review on the negative watch. We've been on negative watch for a while, but that is more reflective of the industry and the broader kind of economic environment. So that's what we're awaiting for. There's a real balance, as you know, that's placed between sort of business industry risk, and the metrics are very, very strong right now. Thank you very much. Well, look, just thank you very much, everyone, for coming. Hopefully, you understand a bit more now about why we are so excited about the future. You also see that we're gonna be disciplined in what we do. We're gonna be disciplined about the pace. We're gonna be disciplined about the returns. We recognize front and center that we manage the company on behalf of the shareholders. We manage the Shareholders' money. A lot of your clients are managing shareholders' money as well. If we can add value to that money, we give it back to the shareholders. We let them take it and add value. We think we've got enough ideas that will add value and keep us busy for the coming while. If not, then we know whose money it is that we invest. We just say thank you very much. We'll see you over the next few weeks, but if not, we'll see you back in February. Thank you.