Results for 6 months ended 30th of April, 2023. My name is Nadia, and I'll be coordinating the call today. If you would like to ask a question, please press S followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you have joined via the webcast, please use the Questions tab above the slides. I will now hand over to your host, Peter Truscott, Chief Executive, to begin. Peter, please go ahead. Thank you, Nadia. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our half year results presentation for the period to the end of April 2023. We'll be adopting our usual format this morning with our agenda. I'll start with a summary of the period just completed before handing over to Duncan, who will provide a detailed financial review. I'll then return, pick up the market overview, and as always, there is a lot happening out there. It really is never boring, is it? I'll also go into some detail, updating you on progress against our strategy and the future outlook. Finally, of course, there's a Q&A session, and as usual, there will be plenty of time set aside for this, and we'll try to be pretty candid on how we're seeing things out there. You may remember when I stood up here in January, I was lamenting the constantly evolving landscape out there and pleading for a bit of stability. I think what I was actually pleading for was a bit of boredom. We did very nearly get that, but with wider inflation being a bit stickier than everybody had thought, there may well be some further volatility to come. Also, as I alluded to in January, it was definitely a challenging start to this half. November and December, both historically quieter months for us, also suffered from full-on Trussonomics. As we expected and articulated then, a significant price correction has so far been averted. It has played out broadly as we thought. Volumes taking the strain, with pricing holding up and then a steady recovery in volumes following on, albeit at lower levels as normal, as confidence returned and mortgage rates stabilized. Pricing has broadly held up due to there being very few distressed sellers at this point. Of course, as I touched upon, the recent inflation data does now need to be considered, and the associated increases in the mortgage rate will have to be absorbed. The reduction in first-time buyers remains the biggest issue in terms of returning back to industry trend of volume levels, and in reality, government are going to have to think about this pretty quickly if they want any actions to play out before the next election. We have continued to be active in the land market. Our concentration has been on high-quality assets and with our underlying assumptions reflecting the current market conditions. There has continued to be competition for the best sites, albeit reduced from the overheated market conditions last summer. With the planning environment getting worse, and I'll come on to this later, we still believe that securing quality land now will benefit us in the longer term. We have seen in recent months the supply of land for sale reducing as land sellers hold back, awaiting better conditions in the future. Our expansion into Yorkshire and East Anglia is on track. We said that we would be proportionate in the pace of this investment and growth, and I'll again give more color on this later in the presentation. Despite tougher market conditions in the short term, we're running the business for the long term, and our balance sheet enables us to do this. That's why we've continued with some land investment and are growing our operational footprint. This has left us well positioned for growth when better market conditions return, as they inevitably will. Let me now hand over to Duncan Cooper, Group Finance Director, for his financial review. Thanks, Peter. Good morning, everyone. I'll start with the income statement, as I normally do. For the half, we reported revenue of £ 282.7 million, down from £ 364.3 million in the prior year. Adjusted gross profit follows in turn, down from £ 77.5 million to £ 50.6 million, and that's an adjusted gross profit margin of 17.9%. Coming down to administrative expenses, and they were £ 28.3 million in the first half. Be careful when comparing that to the prior year comparative and extrapolating a full year out to them. The prior year first half is lower for a number of reasons, mainly due to the ramping back up to full operations post COVID-19. We expect full year 2023 admin expenses to be around £ 60 million, that's in line with the guidance we gave you at the prelims earlier this year, where we outlined the driver, drivers for that increase, which I won't repeat now, but again, are detailed in our half year statement today. That brings us down to adjusted operating profit of £ 22.1 million and adjusted operating profit margin of 7.8%. I'll come on to give you an operating margin walk from that later on today. Adjusted profit before tax of £ 20.9 million, down from £ 52.5 million last year, income tax of £ 5.3 million at an effective rate of 25.7%, brings us to an adjusted profit after tax of £ 15.6 million. Below the line, we have a £ 5.5 million of exceptional items, net of income tax, and this includes £ 11.1 million of recoveries we've been able to achieve in the half in respect of our combustible materials obligations. Again, I'll break this out into more detail later. Coming next to the dividend, the board has decided to hold the full year 2023 dividend at the same level as full year 2022, which equates to a dividend of £ 5.5 pence per share for the first half. I'll talk about the rationale for this later in a slide on capital allocation. Finally, return on capital employed down to 14.6% from 18.3%, reflecting lower earnings, clearly, and the investment we have made in land, again, which Peter will talk to in more detail later. Coming on to the next slide and the usual sales metrics we provide. Average outlets for the half were 448, and we started to highlight this time last year that the planning environment was becoming increasingly challenging, and this has affected the pace of opening new outlets. It's one of the reasons we remained active in the land market in the first half of this year, to keep that pipeline of new land moving, and again, Peter will touch on this later. Our SPOW rate for the half was 0.54, obviously down versus the strong market comparative last year, but reassuringly up from the 11-week 0.35 we quoted at the prelims. That sales rate's quite uniform across our divisions. The market doesn't appear to be more or less resilient in any particular part of the UK. Clearly, as we look forward, the outlook on interest rates is going to play a significant part in how that demand unfolds in the second half. ASPs were up across both private and bulk tenures, and that's largely a reflection of a profile that saw house price inflation continue to feed through in the second half of last year, before tapering down to relative neutrality at the end of 2022. Finally, forward sales at June 2, 2023 were 2,354 units and £ 597.4 million GDV, representing approximately 85% of full- year 23 revenue. On to the next slide on exceptional items. We signed the developer remediation contract on the 13th of March, 2023, which helpfully now brings certainty to the scope of our responsibilities in this area. In the top part of this table, you can see we received a £ 10 million recovery in the first half from a third party, and we're actively engaged with several other counterparties seeking redress from them in respect of faulty workmanship or design. That's offset by a £ 1.4 million further charge to refine the latest estimate of the provision, and it's worth saying that's ostensibly a pair of offsetting technical movements, with a change to the forward forecast of inflation applied to a material provision, offset by the discount factor to reflect that. The underlying provision has only moved by a de minimis amount. This is all detailed in note 5 to the accounts. The £ 2.2 million finance expense reflects the unwind of the imputed interest on the provision to reflect the time value of the liability. The £ 1.1 million credit in the JV line reflects Crest's share of a recovery we've managed to achieve for that amount in a joint venture entity. When added to the £ 10 million I referred to earlier, makes the £ 11.1 million of total recoveries. Our provision at the half year is now £ 139.2 million, and we expect around £ 72 million of that to be unwound within the next 12 months. Again, that's detailed in the provisions note. We're currently working on around 90 buildings in various stages of assessment, from design and planning to works underway and works completed, but awaiting sign-off. We're making good progress in this exercise. Next, I want to come on to talk about operating margin, as I referred to in my opening slide. We start with last year's 15% on the left-hand side. The first down block, labeled volume rate, highlights the impact of two major shifts on last year. Firstly, the start of our financial year coincided with the immediate aftermath of the economic crisis post the 2022 September mini-budget and the instant collapse in demand that followed. This translated into a much lower number of private completions in this year's first half, accompanied by continuation of affordable delivery, which, from a rate perspective, has seen a significant increase in the proportion of lower margin affordable units and the total number of completions and the consequent impact on the margin mix. Secondly, last year, we were operating in an environment where average selling price inflation was equaling or exceeding build cost inflation, that clearly hasn't been the case this year. ASP inflation has been broadly neutral, yet build cost inflation has remained more persistent than consensus opinion would have originally envisaged. The second block relates to other items within gross margin, which I consider to be more one-off in nature and isolated to our first half. These include further NRV charges at Farnham, which, as we've repeatedly outlined, is a complex and challenging scheme to complete. In a world of high build cost inflation, it's these types of schemes, with bespoke material requirements and labor requirements, that are more susceptible to material cost movements and increases. That's also true for the next element of this block, at old sites, which relates to remedial costs for some completed schemes. The number for that half is in line with the five-year average for Crest, last year was relatively de minimis by comparison. Again, these costs are generally attached to those legacy schemes, which are non-standard house type construction projects. Finally, within this block is also a modest increase on prior year of incentives, which you'd expect given the current market conditions. As I said at the beginning, on this block, I think most of these items to be more one-off in nature, and hence have an expectation of higher growth and operating margin delivery profile in the second half. On the graph is the movement in administrative expenses, which I've already touched on in the first slide. Slightly higher sales and marketing costs follows, and then the non-repetition of the ECL charge we took for disposing of the London Chest Hospital, which gets you to the 7.8% on the right-hand side for half year 2023. On the next slide, I want to come back to something I've shared before on the evolution of the short-term land portfolio. I think it's easy to become lost in the year-on-year reduction when we get jolted by market uncertainty such as that we've experienced. Our confidence and visibility in the quality of our land assets and what they are replacing, given that's still being recognized in the earnings profile now, remains high. Firstly, as I would remind all of us, we still have poorer schemes still being recognized at either the nil or low margins. 45 units at Farnham this year, and similar unit sales in full year 2024 and 2025. We've got 51 units to recognize in closing out the Centenary Quay tower development in Southampton we've also previously referred to. Notwithstanding the dilutive effect of these schemes in the mix and the deterioration in market conditions with respect to sales price and build cost inflation, we still see gross margin accretion being realized over the next three years as the land portfolio rebalances to one that is predominantly standardized house types, with new land acquisitions struck on current assumptions. In essence, the portfolio represents improving returns for lower risk. On to the next slide on the balance sheet. Net cash at the half was £ 66.2 million, down from £ 173.3 million at the prior half. Net debt, including land creditors, was £ 82 million, up from £ 6.6 million at prior half. Average net cash was up to £ 104.2 million, from £ 98.6 million, and the pension surplus under IAS 19 reduced to £ 14 million. The overall lower level of capitalization of the balance sheet should be in line with expectations, given the weaker earnings performance year-over-year, and our decision to continue investing in land during the half. I'll come on to talking about capital allocation again, more broadly in the next slide. In summary, we've been able to use a very, very strong net cash position at the end of last year for our relative size, to drive a greater level of capital efficiency through acquiring some excellent assets, which position us strongly for a future recovery in trading. It also means we'll be less active in the land market in full year 2024, when we expect demand and the pricing for new sites to increase again as the sector looks to expand outwards. It's this context which has enabled us to adjust the proposed dividend and maintain the FY 22 dividend per share. We understand its importance to shareholders and are pleased to be able to make this commitment. I now want to try and stitch together the past few slides and present something I showed at our Capital Markets Day in October 2021, that outlines how we see capital allocation. The market conditions are undoubtedly a lot more challenging now than they were then, our four core principles remain enduring, even if the relative importance in the overall mix has changed slightly. The first item is the importance of maintaining a robust balance sheet. Over the past four years, we have swung from having a very inefficient balance sheet with capital tied in complex schemes and long-term loss-making sites and over-distributing dividends, to having a very strong net cash position at the end of last year. That journey has happened during a period of significant market volatility and macro events. The financial position we have now, I think, is about right. Hopefully, when you hear Peter speak later, we can outline how we've been able to deploy some of that capital into high-quality sites, as well as maintaining the dividend. Which brings me to the issue of geographical expansion. We fundamentally believe the best way to create value for shareholders is to grow the footprint of Crest Nicholson. As Peter will outline later in his section, the planning environment is not going to get any easier anytime soon, and that's especially true in Southern England. Investing in both Yorkshire and East Anglia gives us opportunity to access a wider range of possible sites, and the revenue growth that accompanies this provides greater operational leverage to the group's fixed overhead base. We have a dividend policy of two and a half times cover, which we think ordinarily provides the right balance for returns versus growth and is appropriate when thinking about a sector that has historically been cyclical. The last few years of volatility have outlined how resilient the housing market has become. The medium-term fundamentals continue to look attractive. There is a chronic imbalance of supply and demand, the rate of population growth driven through immigration, as outlined by the government's own numbers only a couple of weeks ago, is only accelerating after Brexit, not reducing. As we look forward, inflation will recede, interest rates are expected to reduce again, there will undoubtedly need to be some support given to first-time buyers, as we rightly refocus on the virtue and the need of getting people onto the property ladder. I said back in October 2021, if we bought as much land as we could sensibly acquire, and our combustible obligations were codified and known, then we would look to return surplus capital to shareholders. It's with these parameters and this market context in mind, that we've decided to flex the dividend policy for full year 23. Finally, I come to the last block on capital efficiency. As I hope I've managed to outline on the previous slides, the quality of our land portfolio continues to evolve. Through discipline and selective acquisitions of new sites in prime locations, and plotted with our standard house type range, we've created a higher margin, lower risk store of future value. With our combustibles obligations now clearly codified and the continued depletion of our poor legacy schemes, the group will deliver increasing levels of capital efficiency in the future. On to the next slide on the usual land disclosure items we give. In the short-term land portfolio, we had 894 home completions and added 1,539 plots since the year-end, including 473 plots at Wheatley in Oxford and 400 plots at Harlington in Bedfordshire. Peter's going to cover both of these scheme case studies in his section later. 73.8% of the short-term portfolio is owned versus controlled. In the strategic land portfolio, we now have 22,461 plots held at over 27% gross margin after sales and marketing costs. This continues to represent an excellent store of economic value for the group, especially in an environment where new land release is dwindling and allocations are taking longer to materialize. In summary, we had a challenging start to the first half. First two months of the year were heavily impacted by the shadow of the September mini-budget crisis. The good news is that trading has stabilized, albeit at a lower level, and pricing has remained robust. As we thought it would, the market has once again shown its relative resilience, vindicating our decision to remain selective in adding some high-quality sites to the portfolio. The balance sheet remains strong. Net cash at £ 66.2 million, when considered in conjunction with an anticipated lower level of land activity in 2024, and the combustible obligations now being codified, gives us the confidence to adjust the dividend policy for full year 2023. We start the second half with a strong forward order book of 2,354 units and £ 597.4 million GDV, representing approximately 85% of full year 2023 revenue. This position gives us a great platform for the rest of this year, but we should recognize, although, that although stability returned in the first half, the recent core inflation rate results have already led to the market pricing in further interest rate rises to curb this. If rates rise much further from these levels and remain elevated for a sustained period, we could see an impact to confidence and demand again. Providing trading conditions remain stable in the second half, we expect full year 2023 adjusted profit before tax to be in line with consensus of £ 73.7 million. With that, I'll hand you back to Peter. Thanks very much, Duncan. I'll now turn to the second part of today's presentation as I provide my overview of the market and update you as to where we are against our strategy that we set out in October 2021, a strategy centered around geographical expansion. Starting with the market overview. As I've already touched upon earlier, it's been a challenging period for the business and indeed the sector as a whole. Generally speaking, so far, and it's too early to be complacent, but so far the market is playing out broadly as we expected it to do. There is a little way to go before we see a sustained period of recovery, as inflation does have to be defeated and monetary policy is the Bank of England's chosen weapon in this regard. Mortgage rates are trending upwards again. In fact, you can see this, the graph on the right, but we're hopeful that the trend line will flatten in a few months or so, and that rates will not reach the peaks seen previously. What is the story so far as we reach our half year? As I explained in January, the autumn and early winter was tough, with slow selling rates and higher than usual cancellations. From January, increasingly, sales rates stabilized as mortgage costs began to gradually reduce and confidence returned. Affordability was and still is a challenge for buyers, but confidence is important too, especially as it became increasingly clear that there was unlikely to be a price crash. There have always been, throughout the period, plenty of potential buyers, but they're of course nervous, and a wait and see approach has been adopted by many, and this is understandable, especially with affordability being stretching. This has been particularly true for first time buyers with even higher mortgage costs and now no support from Help to Buy either. The important takeaway is this: there is still a massive imbalance in supply and demand, and let's face it, the planning system is not going to help to address this anytime soon. The population continues to grow, and alternatives like renting are hardly an attractive option. In the absence of distressed sellers, and these are at modest levels, it is of course, little surprise that pricing is broadly holding up and that the outlook remains for a soft landing. There may well be some short-term challenges, especially around volumes, but these will be transitory and will once again stabilize and build as the economic outlook improves. I've mentioned inflation in the general sense, but more specifically in our sector. In terms of build costs, it has persisted for a little longer than we expected. There was still plenty of work around with the supply chain in the early part of our half year, and some externally driven cost pressure was able to be passed through. We remain of the view that with the very significant reduction in volumes for the sector, and I think you'll have seen the number of starts reported as being up to 40% down in the latest Q1 NHBC numbers, this has to eventually influence supplier pricing. We're seeing it in pockets across a lot of the supply chain, but not all yet. Across the year as a whole, inflation may well average in the low to single digits. I'm very confident about the direction of travel on this, but the timing has been slower than expected. Finally, I've talked about the mortgage rate outlook. There is still competition amongst lenders, and they're taking a longer-term view. Buyers' expectations on rates are more realistic now, too. Rates of 4% to 5% are increasingly seen as normal. Although clearly the near-term moves in rates may well be upwards as inflation gets back under control, they will again start to come down, although probably not back to the lows of the last decade. I think 3% to 4% will be the new norm as we go through 2024. I'm going to just talk for a moment on something which is more of an industry issue, which is around planning. I want to talk about this planning environment as it's a factor that's going to influence the sector in the medium term, and of course, has a reach across the land. Obviously, we've all seen the net migration numbers, up to 605,000 in the year, with a similar trajectory likely this year, too. People need housing. The household occupancy rate is also interesting. In the U.K., it's been stuck at 2.4 for a decade, whereas across Europe, the rate has actually fallen further, and for me, this suggests unsatisfied, pent-up demand in the U.K. when the conditions are right. The planning system is simply not responding. It's highly politicized at both a local and a national level. It's getting worse. Market conditions are, of course, influencing housing starts in the short term. Planning will constrain volumes and output in the medium to long term. This matters. It matters because the supply and demand imbalance will continue to be weighted to the demand side. House builders, such as ourselves, will help in satisfying this demand. It matters in terms of the land market. We just do not see the likelihood of a tidal wave of land coming to the market anytime soon, and we see price pressure and margin pressure for those who need an overweight position in order to restore outlets. In reality, I think that most of the participants actually will be pretty disciplined, and the result will be that the industry itself will shrink to reflect the supply of land coming through. Why is it like this? The scrapping of top-down targets resulted in exactly the behaviors that we would have expected: a large number of local councils scrapping or delaying local plans. This has less of a short-term impact, but does matter in the medium term. It was a bad decision driven by short-term politics. Local authority planning departments have a myriad of complexity to deal with when managing planning applications. They're often under-resourced and inefficient, and there are no consequences for poor performance. Overall, planning is now dysfunctional, and communication is often poor, too. There is the growing and unresolved problem around nutrients and, of course, water neutrality, and then coming down the track, recreation, mitigation, and perhaps air quality, too. Almost all of these are not issues created by housebuilders, but increasingly we're caught up in the middle of these things. The government have so far proven to be incapable or controlling this agenda, and to regulate sensible, proportionate outcomes. Some of the above commentary may well be harsh, but sadly, it's true. If you look at the graph on the right, you can just see the statistics I mentioned earlier around the Q1 2023 start and how they compare historically. You can see that the supply side is being squeezed very tightly indeed. I don't think you can separate the land market from how you're thinking about planning, especially when you're looking at the future land release and how this is going to impact supply and demand for this vital commodity, but also timing. There is increasingly a time lag between identification of land in the planning system and bringing it through to production. We always have to be thinking forwards, having a view on the here and now, but also the future. That's why we held our nerve and were disciplined last summer when the market was particularly competitive, and we were underweight with our land buying. Why, with the strong balance sheet that we have, we stayed in the market in H1 and secured some excellent sites as others pulled out. To be clear, no one was fire selling land at that time, but there were sellers keen to exit, and better value was achievable when compared to the summer. Once those land sellers, who had either been jilted at the altar, if you like, or those betting on a crash had left, the supply of land tightened quite quickly. In a similar way to house builders taking lower volumes but holding price, land sellers have largely done the same thing. They are, of course, equally aware of the tightening supply situation that the planning system has created and are not generally going to sell an important asset for a low price unless distressed. Again, there are a few distressed land sellers out there. As I mentioned, we have a strong balance sheet, and we approved just under 2,000 plots for purchase in H1, with a weighting towards larger sites that will contribute through the next cycle. These were acquired at an average gross margin, 26.2%, after sales and marketing costs. Crucially, in strong market locations and based upon up-to-date assumptions. As these sites come through into our ownership and other agreed deals since H1 come through, we expect to have lower participation during the balance of 2023 and through 2024, when we expect the land market to once again become more competitive. Earlier purchase also gives us longer to work through the planning system and get the sites into production sooner when better selling conditions emerge in 2024, and particularly in 2025 and 2026. Keeping with the theme on land, I just wanted to bring a bit of color to the types of sites that we were acquiring, and I've pulled out three which are now completed. Firstly, there's the site in Windsor, a grade A location and a stone's throw from the River Thames and the M4. This is a greenfield site. Last summer, when we bid, we were a bit off the pace in third and fourth place. As others withdrew or delayed, we were able to both reduce our offer price and get better deferred terms because we were able to convince the landowner of our credibility to perform. Traded a bit of margin for better deferral, but these are healthy returns for this sort of location, and we're also talking to the landowner about another phase, which could become a separate outlet. Wheatley Campus, a few miles from Oxford, is a strategic purchase for us, with plans for just short of 500 units in what is one of the UK's strongest market locations. The land price is phased over a number of years, with some held back pending performance conditions. It's a strong margin for the Oxford market and with a site of this scale, we're in discussions with potential financial partners with a view to sharing some risk. We would, of course, expect to receive a premium on any part disposal of our interests. Finally, there is Harlington, just off junction 12 of the M1 in Bedfordshire. It's an attractive village and highly commutable into London, either via the M1 or from a train station, a 5-minute walk from the site, with direct services into London St Pancras. This is a 400 unit site and has a gross margin of just under 27% after sales and marketing costs. It's a simple site to develop. We're paying for the land over a number of years. As you can see, we're buying high quality land that will perform well in any market conditions. If anybody out there wants to take a reservation, I'm sure we're happy to put a dot on the plan. You can see when the business is viewed holistically, we have all of the building blocks in place to support our investment case. We're moving towards sector normal margins as old, lower margin sites are depleted and newer land bought at higher margins comes through. With operational efficiency and standardization of product in place, and a strong balance sheet, which provide us with options and flexibility. Our land portfolio is a key strength. There are really good sites coming through. We will be in a great position to benefit from these as market conditions improve in the coming years. Let's not forget our fabulous strategic land assets, held at very low cost on our balance sheet, and these expected to deliver enhanced margins to complement our open market purchases. Finally, we have a very experienced team of house builders here at Crest Nicholson. I'm surrounded by people of genuine quality throughout the organization. These human assets are every bit as important as our land assets. We talked about the land and planning environment. Planning policies are squeezing land supply, and this is likely to be the case for a while. In this period, having less reliance on capturing all of our land in Southern England and instead having a wider geographical footprint is important as it creates more opportunity and spreads buying risk. In the medium term, this wider business footprint will be a real engine of growth for Crest Nicholson. As land supply pressures ease, as they must do over time, we will have the divisions in place to expand our operations, and at this time, we will also consider a third new division. In terms of the two that we're concentrating on, Yorkshire is of course now up and running, with six pipeline sites and ready to contribute from 2024 as these become operational. East Anglia is a little further back in evolution, with the team starting to emerge and office opened this year in Bury St Edmunds and now with three pipeline sites. We were very disappointed to narrowly miss out on 5-star customer service status last year. A number of immediate actions were put in place. We recruited a team of customer service managers to provide a direct interface with customers at site level, to complement the role previously undertaken by the site managers themselves, who will now have more time freed up on build, delivery, and quality. There are now better real-time processes around reporting so that we can identify any problems earlier. It will, of course, take a little time for the full benefits of this to show, but we're already seeing a beneficial impact. Getting things right first time is, of course, our priority. Where issues do occur, we need to be able to track and respond to these more rapidly. We've also enhanced our aftercare processes within the divisional offices. Of course, the New Homes Quality Code has been introduced, and it's introduced wide-ranging procedural changes for the whole industry. We're well prepared to deal with these, and our sites have been extensively trained in this area. Our multi-channel approach to selling homes and buying land remains an important part of our strategy. We continue to see good interest from the PRS market, particularly since the market stabilized. We're working with established partners, and as well as sales already secured, we're in the process of negotiating a number of further sales, which will make a contribution to 2024 and beyond on attractive terms. In terms of affordable housing, registered providers are still engaged. The number of offers on affordable housing units has reduced, but there remains competition and good pricing for these units. I've touched upon strategic land already. This is managed by our partnerships and strategic land team. They've enjoyed a number of successes in the period, with new assets added, further allocations secured, and with the prospect of these assets providing superior returns. This longer-term view does allow us to see through some of the shorter-term planning difficulties. Another area where we've made strong progress is around sustainability. Overall, we're making strides against our wide range of targets. Firstly, to reduce greenhouse gases. To achieve this, we've increased our use of biodiesel and increased the proportion of electricity on renewable tariffs that we use across our operations. We've increased our monitoring and reporting. Of course, most importantly, continue to build thermally efficient homes. Another initiative has been around the education of our supply chain, with an increased proportion now engaged with the Supply Chain Sustainability School. During the period, we signed up with a new charity partner chosen by the wider workforce, Young Lives vs Cancer. We'll be holding a major fundraising event in September. Of course, I can't just wait to walk another 26 miles. Finally, around social value, we have, in the period, been accredited as a living wage employer. To summarize, in terms of sales and the market in general, I think there's a pretty consistent message around this. Sales rates have stabilized, albeit at lower than normal rates. Pricing has remained relatively firm, too. I think we may see these conditions for a little while longer, although the trajectory of the latest moves in the mortgage rate are going to need to be absorbed. We've invested in the land market during the period and have acquired some high quality sites. We would expect to reduce our land investment as we go through the rest of 2023 and into 2024, when I expect there to be a good deal more competition in this environment, where the planning system is causing real supply side issues. Our geographical expansion is on track. We aim to grow our footprint steadily over the next few years, and solid progress is being made. In terms of the outlook, whilst there'll be no impact for 2023, I think that the only intervention from government that will make any real difference before the next election will be some sort of support for first time buyers. This government really are struggling on housing, and it's pretty much the only thing that could make a difference before the next election. We'll just have to wait and see. Given our strong balance sheet and the confidence that we have around our business outlook, we've decided to maintain the 2023 dividend at the 2022 level. We have a well thought out and well explained capital allocation strategy. Overall, we do think the market will improve from 2024, probably quite gently at first, with a more sustained recovery from 2025. We're in great shape overall and well positioned for when this recovery materializes. Now on to the Q&A session. Thanks. Aynsley Lammin from Investec. Just three questions, please. First of all, on net cash, with your kind of view that you meet the consensus EBT, just tie in some other things in there. What's your kind of expectation for where net cash ends up at the end of the financial year? Secondly, on the dividend, obviously maintaining that EBT for the full year, did you consider share buybacks rather than kind of maintaining the dividend where the share price is? Just interested in your thoughts around that. Thirdly, just on the recent interest rate moves, have you actually seen any impact and what's the kind of increase that your customers are now seeing already? Do you think that increase in incentive, just put more color on that would be great. Yeah, Aynsley, thanks for those. I'll just touch on the third of those, and then I'll ask Duncan to just talk to cash and expand on the dividend. I mean, look, we were expecting a question on recent sales as you would expect. It was, what? Just under three weeks ago that the news was out around the inflation data print. To try and be helpful, I think it's fair to say in the first couple of weeks that there was a bit of softening in sentiment. You know, this week it's actually looking like a pretty good week, so it's just too early to say to be honest. I mean, there's certainly nothing new in terms of incentives at this point in time. Duncan? Yeah. Hi, Aynsley. Look, trying to be helpful and get into the specific forward guidance on net cash, obviously, but order of magnitude, it showed under £ 300 million net cash at the end of last year. I think sort of half, broadly half of that would track sensibly from where we are at the moment. But with moving parts, and I should say, one of the biggest swing factors on that will be when we have to send cash out the door to settle things in the Building Safety Fund and the combustibles obligations. Ironically, we're actually in a position where we're trying to settle that quicker than we're being asked for it. That plays a factor. As you'd expect me to say, we considered all capital allocation decisions and ideas with our advisors. I won't go into that in too much detail, given that's a confidential sort of consideration. Needless to say, I think the level of cash commitment and certainty we would have had to put behind a share buyback would have been significantly more than we've done in flexing the dividend policy. you know, noting our comments around, there is still some uncertainty as we head into H2 with that, obviously, I'd say on that as well. Thank you, Jamie. Harry Goad from Berenberg. You talked a couple of times about the increased share of standardized products in the portfolio. Can you just give us a feel for, if you look at where you'll be in 2024? T hat's maybe where you were at three, four years ago in context, at least. Then secondly, separately on build cost, I think, Peter, you said it's running at a high single digit, I imagine that's probably a blend of a slightly higher number in the first half, slightly lower in the second half, because build may were trending down to the second half, definitely. Yeah, you're right. In terms of the second question, Harry, you're right in terms of how we're not going to give a specific up-to-date number as at now, but you can imply from high single digits that it was higher than that at the beginning, and it's taken down. Right. Okay. I mean, in terms of the portfolio and what we expect from standard product, we've historically put up a slide on that. Because now it's business as usual, and we're expected to be, you know, sort of mid-18% next year coming through on standard product. It depends how far you want to go back. If you went back to 2019, before we introduced the strategy, it probably could be much lower than that, maybe even 30%. Right. Sort of range. It's moved up quite rapidly, and it's now BAU for us. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Hey, morning, guys. It's Emily Biddulph from Barclays. I've got three things. Firstly, just on the outlook for the outlets number, you can give a sense of sort of where the average might be for H2 or sort of the exit for this year. Secondly, on the gross margin, you've obviously called out that portion that you thought was sort of relatively one-off in H1. Is there any component of that year-on-year in H2? Of the component you sort of called out what you sort of thought was underlying margin headroom, is the scope for that to be sort of slightly better or worse in the second half of the year, as well in terms of what's actually being put through P&L? Thirdly, on the land that you're buying, you obviously gave a sense of what the gross margin is, and sort of called out the sort of rule now witty bits where previously you were sort of not close to it. Do you have a sense of what the sort of underlying actual value reduction would be? Thank you. Okay, thank you. I mean, in terms of outlets, it's extremely difficult to predict simply because we have a planning system where it's quite difficult to get any communication. We definitely expect it to trend upwards. We've got more land coming through. We've got more planning applications that are being processed. Import have little impact on our H2 numbers. We have near-term visibility around H2, so that's not going to be an influencing factor. In terms of into 2024, we will expect the trend to be upwards, but I'm reluctant to be too optimistic, just given how difficult the planning system can be in actually predicting things. If I answer the third one, and then I'll just ask Duncan to pick up the gross margin evolution. In terms of land, I think typically somewhere around 10%-15% of better value than summer of last year would be fair and better deferred terms, because of course, sales rates have been trending downwards. In order to get the return on capital employed to hit target levels, you need to expand the payment terms for land. Duncan? Yeah. Emily, maybe expand your question out slight to try and be more specifically helpful. Look, the way I think about the sort of bridge of as we go into H2, we generally have a greater weighting of unit delivery in the second half versus the first half. Historically, that imbalance has only been amplified by the challenges of trading the first couple of months in terms of completions. Some elements of build cost inflation continuing, as Harry's referred to, continuing to come off, albeit that probably plays less into the mix for this year. Given the amount of built stock, the impact of that is less. A little bit of timing of some planned land sale activity. Just again, to contextualize that, so that isn't taken in the wrong sense. You know, we did £ 13 million of land sale contribution in H1 last year, placed £ 3 million this year. Just to put it into some context, we've underdelivered onto that land sale contribution in the first half, but some of the timing of that in a normalized sort of year would be more H2 weighted. Then there's one offs I referred to, I can say it was David Slack, who's in charge of delivering Farnham. We've got a latest cost position on Farnham, which we're pretty confident is codified and locked into the first year, and we are ostensibly through the built component of that. Yes, have confidence that that is ring-fenced in the first half and won't be repeated. A number of reasons why we think the sort of purity of the underlying margin position in the second half will be better, notwithstanding some of the caveats we've said around just general market stability and the demand environment in the second half generally, and hence, and hence the common market consensus. Final is that, three, if I may? You referred to first-time buyers as being the sort of key target area for some policy change. Do you think it'll be a revised Help to Buy, probably with a different tag? Is that the sort of best solution, I suppose, on that front? The second one was around your comment around the sort of consensus and meeting that 30, 73.7. You've assumed sort of stable market conditions. Is that stable market of first half average or the first half to the last couple of months aside, and trying to get an idea of your definition of stable within there? The third one was around about 85% that you've sold for this year's reservation. Without going back to all my notes, have you got a figure for, to remind us as to what that percentage would have been of the, I suppose, more traditional periods, 2018, 2019, that sort of thing? Okay, thanks. The first time buyer comment, Clive, is more of a general market comment. It's not specifically related to us. I don't think anything that's gonna happen is going to influence our number this year. Who knows what the government are going to do on this? If you look at it from this government's perspective, they've got a problem with housing policy, and clearly they have. Nothing they can do on planning is going to have much of an impact before the next general election. Society has got a problem in dealing with trying to get first time buyers onto the property ladder. Mortgage costs are particularly high. The availability of large deposits to access better priced mortgage products is difficult. Something along the lines of Help to Buy is an obvious, an obvious target for a government to look at if they want some form of impact in the market and for the affected group in the period before the election. Duncan? Clive, on your sort of your second question on the surplus of demand assumption in terms of it actually a slightly lower sort of overall slow rate assumption than is in our forecast in that, in that guidance that we've seen across the actual first half. It's not, it's not racing per se, and we don't think it's untenable. You know, again, we've just talked about the fact that there's the chance we are back to tougher times. I could give you the number from last year for the coverage of slightly the rate, which is 96%. It's crazy that we're having to go back 3 or 4 years to find a clear baseline, isn't it? To think back, I have to say I can't remember the 2019. We definitely didn't give you one in 2021 because of COVID. Jenny can push that number out for you. If it's 96%, it's not last year. I think the difference, Clive, between this year and last is the sales position was incredibly strong. It was just bloody difficult to build them. This year, we've continued to invest, and it hasn't come up specifically in the slides, but we did say in January we were gonna continue to build. We've continued to build that at a sensible rate on our sites, and we are in a good position on build and have plenty of flexibility around the products that we can offer customers for completions. We'll get to you last. Paul, Chris. Just asking about the affordable mix first, and whether that's going to normalize in the second half. The next one's really just on bulk sales, where's your attitude on that, on sort of discounts and the financial impact on the sales rates. Then the final one I'd just like to get your opinion on is the CMA investigation. You know, where they're probing, where you may see risk in that, and just an overview of that as well, please. Yeah, I, okay. I mean, in terms of the affordable mix, I think it will be proportionally higher year-over-year. I don't think we're going to see anything particularly different in H2. If you look at it in a comparative to last year, it will be a little bit higher, because as you would imagine, we would be concentrating more of the build on units that have sold and the affordable units that sold. On the PRS stroke bulk, it has been a part of our strategy for some time, and we've guided that the sort of discount that we're seeing to OMV is probably in the sort of 7%-10% range. As you might imagine, it's probably towards the higher end of that range on average now, rather than the lower part of that. That is part of our strategy. We've said that, you know, typically 15% to 20% of our volume come from that, and that still remains the case. I mean, on CMA, look, I can understand why this is being looked at, because housing is such an important issue for the UK. In some ways, we welcome the intervention, because I think that it's important to look at the housing sector and how it's operating in the UK. Of course, there is a lot of work involved in that, and we've been contributing to that debate. I don't per se see any particular threat that arises from there. It's more around short-term workload that it creates in actually participating in that review. Chris, just to build on Peter's point, on the affordable point. Just think, I don't think it's what you're asking, but just to make sure we're covered off. Obviously, it's a shift H1 to H2, just simply because the private volume elevates H2 set across the total denomination of completions for the year. Its composition will be lower for the full year versus for the half. Yeah, absolutely, right. You're saying absolute terms, similar? Correct. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I wouldn't add anything on the CMA. I think it's territory we'll leave, we'll leave alone. Thanks. Thanks. It's John Fraser-Andrews, HSBC. Three from me as well, please. The first one is on the land gross margin hurdle rates that have been achieved at 26%. How defensive is that hurdle rate to any changes in build cost inflation or can you share what kind of assumptions you've made to achieve those gross margins on build costs? Second one on build costs, can you say, Peter, what you are seeing out there at the moment? You referred to some early signs of some declines or deceleration. Also on incentives, the language in the statement implies they've gone up a tad, but perhaps you can put a number on what that incentive level increase is and how you're approaching pricing at the moment. Thank you. I think Duncan and I both pick up the answer on incentives, because I would try and build on that a little bit. In terms of the gross margin, as I said, the underlying assumptions that we've made in these investment cases reflect the market conditions that we've got, which include our view on selling revenues and build costs, and of course, also the current sales rates that we would have. I mean, we do build in some build cost inflation into our typical land purchase as a contingency anyway, but for commercially sensitive reasons, I'm not going into exactly what that is. Obviously, in making those assumptions, we are taking into account the current market conditions and the forward-looking view that we would have on things like build costs as well. In build costs more generally, some of those individual discussions, as you can imagine, with suppliers, are gonna be commercially sensitive. We're seeing probably cost across quite a wide range of materials, discussions around pricing, which are more encouraging than they have been for some time. On the subcontractors, I mean, we had thought that the price pressure would have been released a little bit earlier, but it's taking longer than we thought, particularly as there was a lot of work still around in the latter part of the last calendar year and early part of this year. On new tenders, which is the current up-to-date indication of where people are thinking, we're getting some pretty competitive pricing coming through now. I think it's too early to call that it's completely turned. It's still in pockets, but increasing pockets. We're convinced that given the workload that is out there, which is falling quite fast, that that's got to eventually be reflected in the way people think about costs, particularly those which aren't simply passed down through energy and raw materials. I mean, on incentives, we look at this slightly differently because we're looking at our price to book, rather than specifically what incentives we offer. We don't break out a particular incentives number. We were tracking probably just ahead of where we thought our pricing was the early part of the year. It's probably come off just a tad. Overall, throughout the year, we're probably just around level with where we expected to be at with our book prices. I don't know if Duncan can give that one. Not anything much more. I think it's relatively de minimis. I think I'd point out, I know the first part, John, again, I'm sorry to labor it and feel like we're protesting, but back to that point on the hurdle rates, you know, I'm far. What keeps me awake at night is far more the fact that we get another half a million £ cost movement, not far, than our ability to absorb another 1, 2% per percentage points of margin degradation on something like Maidenhead or Windsor that we've just put up on the page. My point being, it's, you know, it's getting through and getting these older sites done and out of the way that is the challenge. You know, and that, and that bring to bear a greater impact on the P and L. You know, we do strike those assumptions on present terms, but they're far more controllable and far lower risk. That, and that's the point we just keep trying to get across in terms of the way the portfolio evolves. Indeed, the whole sector will be subjected to those in terms of these returns. Our challenge has always been to articulate how we get this business back, correlated back to sector average returns, whatever those sector average returns are, as opposed to it being, uniquely stuck with sick margins, and creating the belief case that those can be course-corrected and changed. Just. Sorry, a quick follow-up, if I may. I think I understood, Peter, from the answer on incentives, that they're de minimis. Your net pricing is more or less unchanged from where it was pre-budget. Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah, that was right. Yeah. Thank you. Jenny, I think Alistair and Glynn's got some questions. Alistair, just for consistency, I hope you've got three. Great, I'm suffering from deflation there, too. On that subject, following on from John, you were talking... I'm looking more at the product inflation. I was looking at the base numbers yesterday, the inflation data. It's a bit of a blunt instrument, I admit it. Material performance, cost inflation on average is comparable, 26%-4.5%. What I noticed was, it's for new house building is 7.4%, and for all the other new build is 3.7%. I just wondered, you know, why is it that discrepancy in other new build versus other house building? If you've got any ideas on that. Very briefly, one of the other questions was about the last three weeks, and I think you answered it in terms of the consumer. Have you noticed any change in the lenders? There was a big spike up last week in five-year fixed rate mortgage issues. Have you seen any ongoing sales sort of held up by withdrawing repricing from lenders? Let me pick up that latter one, perhaps Duncan can just talk around inflation data. I mean, no, not in terms of behavior from lenders other than the rates themselves. I think there's a lot of there's been a lot of publicity around the lenders pulling products from the market. What we've got to remember is that there are still around 5,000 products on the market, which is actually, by historical standards, still pretty healthy. That's not really the issue. Throughout this situation, going right back to the mini budget, I think lender behavior has been very sensible, particularly when compared to, say, the GFC, when, you know, we saw valuations trying to get ahead of what they thought might happen. There's been a lot of discipline, I think that's partly been reflected in the way that the mortgage market has operated and people disciplined throughout the last decade anyway. Duncan. Actually, sorry to be obtuse, but it's challenging enough in this job, putting your name to data that you are in charge of and have seen. Having not seen the data sets you're referring to, I can't comment, but I can try and be helpful. Just. Send it through to me on email, and I'll try and give you some considered thoughts. Yeah. Glynis Johnson, Jefferies. I'm still one of the askers slots rather than the questions. First, just in terms of forward sold, you talk about 85% forward sold for the year. Obviously, you have the social already, I was wondering if you could give us what that percentage would be of the 5 including bulk. Second of all, in terms of the third-party recoveries, in terms of the combustibles, I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about that. Is that about the contractors? Is that from the build product companies themselves, what are you getting those recoveries? You know, what is the reason why you're getting those? Also, the total number of building, if you say you're on 90, you're fixing 90, what's the total number that needs to be fixed, and what's the proportion that you're yet to start on because of the various reasons? Average net cash, it goes very good through the first half. I'm just wondering, should we be assuming, you know, average net cash in the second half is a similar delta to what it was in the first half, or is there, you know, bigger ebbs and flows that come through? I suppose for the 6 months, you can just for the year, but we might need to know where it might be at the year end. Finally, the site that you bought gives two examples of quite big sites, 473 units. What is the average size of the, you know, the sites on your land bank? If I assume it's 400, it doesn't give you very many sites, so it's obviously lower than that. What is the average size of site? Going on to your point about buying less land in 2024, what's the right length of land bank for you, Simon? Yeah, okay. Just on the land, Glynis, I simply don't have the data in front of me as to what the average size is, but I'm quite happy to go back and get that. Get that for you. I mean, in terms of what should be the right size land bank, I think it's always got to be reflective of planning. If the planning environment was more benign, you would be looking at, say, somewhere in the sort of 4.5 years short term would be right. But that does stretch out when you've got an environment, and clearly, it's going to be more than that. It won't be five or six times, which is the optimum at just at the present moment in time. Let us come back to you on the average. Duncan will pick up the average, net cash. In terms of buildings, those identified that need work were about half of those would forward sold. I wouldn't, but I wouldn't break it out, unfortunately, Glynis. On third, do you want me to the third-party recoveries one as well? Yeah. Do you want... Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, they are, as you'd expect, confidential, sensitive negotiations, which I can't comment on. Actually, if I even start to talk a little bit around it would start to become pretty clear who I was referring to. Needless to say, they are, they... Those conversations of that size of materiality tend to be more focused at subcontractors than necessarily architects or design firms. Okay. Thank you. I've got a feeling that might be it. Yeah, that's just came out of SD. Do you have any comments? I look, I wouldn't, I think your working premise is a half sensible one to be working on. I wouldn't draw much further on that. Sorry, you asked about land creditors? Sorry, I just remember. A similar, as inconsistent for the last, the next couple of years, we don't see that changing remarkably. See, that's what you get when you don't ask three questions. We get completely confused. I think, ladies and gents, that's probably it for this morning from the room. Thank you very much for your interest and participation this morning. Please feel free to stay and have a cup of coffee. Thank you.