Good day, and welcome to the trading update. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question- and- answer session. To ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone and wait to hear a brief message instructing your line is open. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand the call over to your speaker today, John Martin. Please go ahead. Tracy, thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. Thank you very much for dialing in and joining us on our call this morning. I'm John Martin, the Chair and Interim CEO of Countryside. Delighted to be joined today by Tim Lawlor, who is our new CFO in his second week of the business. Great to have Tim on board. I've also got Gary Whitaker, who's our Company Secretary with me. Gary is our remediation guru, and Tom Wright, who did the site-by-site review with me and was standing in before Tim arrived. We've got a full home team. Look, our goal today is to share the conclusions of our site-by-site review, to update you on our half year results and the outlook for the full year, and also give an update on the remediation of multi-occupancy buildings, all of which you can see in the RNS that we've released this morning. Just going back to January, we announced a site-by-site review of Countryside's operations, and over the last 10 weeks we've performed a detailed review of the, it's actually 128 operational sites across all regions, as well as looking at the pipeline of new opportunities. I've also had a great opportunity to meet with some of our customers, our partners, our JV partners, local authorities and housing associations that we work with. That's given fantastic insight into the strength of Countryside in the market and also the quality of our products. We are held in very high regards by those partners. They truly differentiate us in the market, and we are helping them provide great quality homes at affordable prices. Our reputation in the market is very strong. We are not experiencing competition issues here or market issues. The demand for our homes remains robust. Nothing in the site review has changed my perspective on the purpose or potential of Countryside. Just going back to our partners, all of our partners want us to deliver more quality, affordable homes to them. They want us to carry on developing places people love. I should say as an aside that we were notified last week that we'd retained our HBF five-star status that our teams work very hard to achieve. As I mentioned, we're seeing no change in the competitive environment. We remain the leader in the partnership space. We've got some great projects in the pipeline which have not yet started. For example, we will be redeveloping Clapham Park Estate, which is a huge site in London. We're doing that in joint venture with Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing Association, over 2,000 homes over many years. Another example, we're redeveloping the old Metropolitan Police Training Center in Hendon, in partnership with our partner, Optivo, over 800 homes in Hendon. These projects and many more will provide significant activity and significant income in the years ahead. I should say that in talking to our partners, we are regularly the partner of choice in the development and redevelopment of affordable and mixed tenure homes. Similarly, the demand for quality, affordable homes remains robust. Nothing's changed in the long-term structural demand for affordable homes, either in the private or in the rental market. Let me touch on the conclusions of the site-by-site review. There are many parts of our business performing today very well. Our regeneration business in London and Thames Valley, I would say it's the go-to. It's the partner of choice, I think, for local authorities who value a number of things. They value our collaborative approach. They value our deep understanding of the whole management of the regeneration process. They absolutely value our build quality and our placemaking. Our business here continues to thrive. We're building out existing developments and winning more than our fair share of projects in a very attractive pipeline. In the home counties, our regional teams, we set out last July, they have two priorities. We got some of the very best talents in the industry. They are establishing a partnerships business in the home counties that we are confident will be the leader in the market. The demand for mixed tenure developments and for affordable housing in the home counties is strong. Key workers and first-time buyers, they're often priced out of this market. They still need somewhere to live close by to where they're working. We are gonna fulfill some of that demand. We said last year that we expect to deliver GBP 60 million of profit in 2023. We're on track to achieve that in the home counties. The second thing in the home counties, the teams there, they're also realizing those housebuilding assets that can't be used in the partnerships model. We set out last year to deliver GBP 450 million of cash realization from the proceeds of those sales. We're GBP 150 million into that now, slightly ahead of plan. The proceeds are being used to fund the share buyback program and the progress with that described in the RNS. Significant parts of the group are performing very well. We also have some issues that have dragged our performance back. First, we haven't realized the benefits of the Westleigh acquisition. We've got some great people building a quality platform in the regions established from the acquisition, but it's been very tough going. There are still site liabilities to close out, as we talked about in the review. You know, one of my colleagues pointed out yesterday when we were going through this, he said, "John, we would've been better off, much better off starting from scratch." I agree with that. Now, we're building a good business, and we're establishing a quality supply chain, but it has been hard work. Anyhow, the good news is, by the end of this year, we will have traded out of all of the old Westleigh sites. Second, we've had some operational challenges in the North, and that overlapped with the Westleigh issues in Yorkshire as it happened. We've had disruptions to our supply chain with a number of contractors not delivering for us. That's led to a combination of low volumes and poor margins. We've got a good team working on this, and we've got some good development sites. We will improve our performance here. Third, our plans to expand into new regions have been too ambitious. We're now gonna focus our resources and consolidate four regions down to two. One of those we flagged for review back in the autumn. Look, this isn't to say we can't achieve good results from a standing start. We're making very good progress in the new southwest and south London regions. It's simply we shouldn't spread ourselves too thinly. Fourth, we've invested a lot in new manufacturing capacity. The new site at Bardon cost GBP 2.6 million in the H1, that is pre starting production, which is due to start shortly. Our manufacturing facilities, they are forecast to lose GBP 10 million this year. That's a very significant investment. We need to review that capacity. We need to look at all options to improve the returns. We don't have the appetite to make significant losses in this business over the long term. Fifth, we have a high cost base. We don't always ask our colleagues, the colleagues who are actually building homes, what support they want from central services. We need to focus the business on the operational divisions, and we need to hold the operational divisions accountable for performance. Our group we should provide any services that are needed for compliance or that the regions specifically wants to be provided centrally. Overall, reductions in regional costs, group costs, and their office footprint are gonna generate savings in future years of GBP 50 million per year. Look, if I look at those issues, as we said in the RNS, these issues are not market related, they're not structural, and they're definitely not insurmountable. They are execution related, and resolution of them is absolutely within our control. We will focus now our resources on resolving them. Let me move on to the financial results, if I may. Firstly, look, let me be clear, we are very disappointed, I am very disappointed with the financial results in the H1. Bluntly, they don't reflect the range or the quality of assets that we have in this business at our disposal. You can see from the RNS, we're showing a full operating profit number for the H1 of GBP 45 million. We've shown the comparison to last year and the year before, because both comparatives here are relevant. Firstly, I should say the full results are stated after charging just over GBP 10 million of one-off charges. Okay? That's GBP 7.7 million of aborted bid cost and the like from you know, brought forward items, and also GBP 2.4 million for an NRV provision on one piece of inventory at one specific site. Secondly, look, it is important to understand here what happened last year. We disclosed in the September 2020 financial statements that we had surplus inventory of GBP 225 million held over because of COVID, and that related to more than a thousand completions deferred into the H1 of 2021, which generated operating profit last year of GBP 30 million in the comparative period. I think that's very important for understanding the direction of travel of these results. Thirdly, the 2022 figure, as we've shown, includes just over GBP 6 million of losses from manufacturing. If you take those three factors into account, I think that contextualizes the results in the H1 of this year. We're not proud of the financial performance in the H1, but the underlying performance on a comparative basis is better than it first appears. I touched on some of the performance issues in one or two regions. Look, these do go to the heart of our operations, construction management, supply chain management, contractor management. These are things that we normally do very well, and we must do well to generate our model returns. The reason that we've mentioned the Westleigh acquisition isn't simply because our teams in those areas, you know, they've had to rebuild the supply chain from scratch. They've had to close out old low margin contracts and also do that at the same time as developing a new business pipeline. These issues are absolutely solvable, and they're being solved by some good, tenacious managers and leaders in the business. Let me touch on the forecast. Our revised forecast for this year is for operating profits of GBP 150 million. If you look at these profits in from two sources, the source from building homes and the source from bare land sales, actually from building homes, that result would be ahead of last year, even after incurring the GBP 10 million of one-off charges and also the manufacturing losses. That figure is also before the GBP 15 million a year of cost savings that we are implementing, of course, but those are going to be phased in throughout the remainder of the year. Those cost savings, they come from a consolidation of regional teams, they come from de-layering of group costs, and they come from reduction in office space. Let me just touch on a number of other initiatives that I think will make a substantial difference to our operations going forward. We are clear now on accountability, and we have implemented the performance reviews that are needed to make sure that managers are accountable for their performance. The board and the executive have got good visibility now down to site level. That visibility extends from the P&L to the balance sheet. We've implemented weekly revenue reporting, so we know where we are going through the month, daily cash reporting, all the stuff that great companies have. We are in a much better position now, I think, to drive performance than we were before. Let's touch on the long-term outlook, which is the last question I really wanted to address before opening this up for questions. Look, in terms of medium-term financial targets, I think it's best for Tim and the next CEO of the company to set out what longer term targets should be. Let me be clear, there is a very significant opportunity here for us to raise our game and improve Countryside's financial results. The forecast for this year is GBP 150 million, but that's after the GBP 10 million of one-off charges and after manufacturing losses of GBP 10 million. We also will be reducing the cost base by that further GBP 15 million. Those factors should support profit growth into next year. There are also other opportunities for improvement. First off, the biggest opportunity might come from sharpening the focus of the organization. Historically, we had two divisions. We're making good progress in exiting our legacy housebuilding assets. That is gonna free up management's attention to focus on our partnerships business, which is unique. From my own experience, sharp focus is a critical ingredient for success of the business. Second, we should allocate our capital, we will allocate our capital to the best possible projects. We can do better here. The pipeline, I said before, is robust. We will cycle off current projects in the coming periods. Our team then will become more and more selective in deciding which projects the company takes on and ensuring our capital is directed to those projects that are gonna generate the most attractive returns and the best profit profile. Third, excess costs have burdened the business. We talked about this. They've burdened the business. That has a depressing impact on margins and on returns on capital. We've got a substantial opportunity to improve this as we talked. Then fourth, there are a number of projects with, I hesitate to say this, but dead assets at the moment, which depress returns on capital. As we move forward, we need to liquidate those less efficient assets and recycle that capital into better returning projects. Let me move on to fire safety. We signed the pledge yesterday. We're not yet in a position to quantify the likely exposure accurately, but we will work hard at quantifying this going forward, and Tim will give you an update on progress at interims. Best data that we can give you, we think we've developed about 290 buildings of more than 11 meters over the last 30 years, including the 69 buildings against which we provided the GBP 41 million last year. Remember, we do not expect all of those buildings to require remediation. Also, we will assume the liabilities have been notified to the Building Safety Fund, which stand at the moment at GBP 24 million. Look, I've gone on for long enough. Let me summarize quickly. I do think Countryside is a very special business. We are well positioned with growth drivers in a market with significant unfulfilled demand. The company's issues, they're execution related. We're getting on with solving them. There's a big opportunity here for Tim and the new CEO, when that person arrives, to improve the financial results, which currently don't really reflect the quality of our business. I'm gonna turn it over for questions now. Do feel free to ask me or any of the team any questions that you've got. Just remember, we'll be presenting our interim results comprehensively with a full data set in six weeks' time. So if you've got detailed data questions, please save them for then. Tracy, please open it up for questions and if you would. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad and wait for a brief message instructing your line is open. Please state your first and last name before you ask your question. Thank you. We'll now take our first question. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Morning, Glynis Johnson here from Jefferies. Three, if I may, please. The first one is, you know, well, you said the issue is execution related. I wonder if you can therefore talk us through where you are in terms of the process for a CEO and what we should anticipate in terms of the skill set you're looking for from a CEO in order to make sure that execution is resolved. Secondly, right at the very beginning, you said you're confident on the positioning and the potential. I'm interested in what you're confident on, what is the potential. Is the potential the margin? Is the potential the growth? You know, if you can sort of give us a little bit more color around that. Lastly, in terms of that fire safety provision that may be taken, I wonder if you can sort of, again, provide us color in terms of how the board is thinking about how that will be paid for. Does that come out of some of the proceeds that come from house building, or is it that will come from what is happening within your partnership business? I'm just wondering if we should view those two items as being effectively separated or the wall in between. Glenys, thank you very much indeed. Look, on the CEO sort of where are we and what we're looking for, we're exactly where you'd expect in the process. We are beginning the interview process. I think that's, you know, we've got some great people on the list and, you know, we are proceeding apace with that. What are we looking for? We're looking both inside and outside the industry. We're absolutely looking for a proven CEO, someone with a very demonstrable track record of value creation. Someone who can drive performance in a decentralized structure, a decentralized business structure, and someone who can really sort of, you know, challenge our business. Challenge the established business, and obviously take the workforce with them. Those are the, you know, those are the real sort of. That's the essence of what we're looking for there, Glynis. On the sort of the opportunity set as we resolve the challenges, actually there is both a volume and margin. There's both a volume and margin opportunity. When I started looking at the business at the start of the site-by-site reviews, my most significant challenge to the team is why aren't we building more homes? We've got fantastic land bank opportunities. We've got fantastic pipeline opportunities. We need to think carefully at how we can bring volume through, at a faster pace on the sites that we've got. In combination with that, there are significant margin opportunities. Even if you look down at site level, and all of our teams know this, we've got plenty of opportunities to manage the subcontractor cost base better. We've got plenty of opportunities to ensure. You know, if you look what our partners want, and very often they're joint venture partners as well, so we have an absolutely shared interest in this. They want us to develop homes economically. It is great to come from a place where the very large majority of customers are very happy with quality. That would be, if I was sat here today telling you we had a quality issue with our product, I would be very unhappy. By the way, you know, there are always odd instances of where we haven't been fantastic on a customer journey or whatever else, but overwhelmingly customers are delighted with the quality of the products. They also have a strong desire to build as many affordable homes as they can, and we should remember this, you know. The affordable bit is important, and that means building these homes economically. We have lots of opportunities both in the margin and in the volume side. Your third question then, Glynis, with regard to the fire. Look, as we said back in the waterfall that we set out back in November, settling legacy liabilities is the top priority for cash generated by the company. I think that's very clear. Now, of course, at that time, we didn't know that essentially this warranty period on building of homes was gonna be extended back from 15 to 30 years. It has. That's the pledge that we've signed up to. Those are, if you want, new liabilities. They obviously need to be funded from our retained cash earnings along the way. Those liabilities will come through, I think, over a prolonged period. I think the pledge, Gary, is to sort these over the next decade. Mm-hmm. You know, over the coming months, Tim will put his mind to sort of quantifying them, and we will put our mind to actually what's the likely cash profile of that going to be. There will be, you know, they will be resolved over a prolonged period. I think what I would say today, you know, we said what we said last year about the realization of the proceeds of the legacy house building asset disposals. We're not changing that today. I don't think that changes the capital structure landscape. Nevertheless, obviously those funds need to be found. They will ultimately be a call on shareholders' funds. They will be paid out over a long period. Hope that helps. It does. Thanks. Can I just come back on the question two, just in terms of, when you said you should be building more homes, building faster, that there's opportunities in margin, is that relative to where we are today, or is that actually relative to where we were two years ago? Ooh, that's a good question. Well, I mean, let me tell you certainly relative to where we are today, you know, we want to build more homes. Look, in my review. Look, this is a momentum business, right? If you look back, I've got a chart sat in front of me of sort of the origin of our profits today. There is a chunk of profit that comes from opportunities that were signed up many years ago. If you look at it, you know, we don't generate profit today from projects that we sign up to today, at least not in the main part. It's a momentum business. When I've done the review, my focus has not been on budgeting, because our budgeting historically wasn't, you know, that good. My focus has been on what are we doing here and now? How are we utilizing the assets that we've got now? How do we focus today on improving performance today? That is absolutely my philosophy from a management perspective. I just want to see today what is the urgency, attention, focus that we're bringing to improving our performance today. That's absolutely my start point at Guinness from a management perspective. That's the way I think of the world. How can we incrementally today do better than we did yesterday and tomorrow do better than today? I just want to grow this business, grow its returns, grow its profitability, you know, day on day, week on week, month on month. That's my mindset. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Tracy, next question if we can. Thank you. We'll now take our next question. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Oh, hi there. It's Sam Cullen from Peel Hunt. I've got three, I think. First one is kind of two part, one on headcount. I think on the Home Counties, you said it's got some of the best talent in the industry. Where's that talent coming from, given you kind of said the business has suffered from execution issues in the past? Is that internal moves or is that, kind of, external hires? And more widely on headcount, what's the scale of, kind of, headcount reductions you've seen in the last six, nine months, either kind of voluntary or not? The second one is on kind of that visibility issue from kind of board to site level. What was blocking that in the past and what have you changed? On the fire safety, just interested to know what gives you kind of the confidence to sign the pledge, you or you and the board, if you don't have a kind of an accurate number of how much the remediation cost is gonna be. Thanks, Sam. Thank you for those questions. Look, the headcount. Home Counties is, you know, the headcount is our existing headcount. We're not doing large scale recruitment here. We've got the headcount. This was always my challenge when I joined the business last year, was right, we've got a well-performing team. Can we use them on a. You know, can we use them to service the unique partnerships model? The answer is yes, we absolutely can. You know, the processes that you go through in building affordable mixed tenure homes, whether they're on brownfield sites or regeneration sites or whatever, they are very. They are absolutely similar processes, right? Great people, you know, great house builders can build great mixed tenure developments and do. That's where our headcount is coming from. My comments about, you know, some of the best people and best teams in the industry, you know, they were there in our housebuilding before, and they have stayed with us. We haven't seen any significant change in turnover. Nothing remarkable. Your second question, just on visibility, it's a good question because, you know, I have in front of me a file. The team laughs at me because I carry around this file so that now I have visibility of every single site. How many homes are we building? When did it go through planning? When did we start on site? When did it go to investment committee? How many houses have we built? Affordable, PRS, private, how many are we going to build? What's the margin? The margin to date, the margin to come. Then there's a qualitative as well. You've got all the data. To me it is obvious that is the data that you need in a business. We only have 128 sites, right? It isn't a lot. Each of those sites is unique. When you consolidate that data, it loses its granularity, and you need that granularity for context on specific sites because the partners are different, the geography is different, you know, the land conditions. Everything about those sites is about the site itself is different. Now, clearly, we've got some standard, you know, some standard house types that we're putting on those sites, but the land conditions are different, and that makes a big difference to the economics and the performance. Why has that visibility not been there historically? Look, I just don't think that was different managers. They have different styles and different philosophies. I like to get into the specificity of what we're dealing with, because then you know, there ought to be performance discussions that are not unpleasant at all, but they are detailed. You know, people should know that I care about every one of those sites. Because if I don't care, you know, why would they care? If I don't care and they don't care, then, you know, sort of you'd lose the will to live. You'd lose the riches of this being a business. I do care, and they do care, so we should sit down, and we should talk about any challenges in the business. What do we see? What can we do about those challenges? Can we help? Can we help, you know, just thinking it through with somebody? We absolutely can with quite a few of these things. I think my colleagues would say today, yeah, actually, occasionally Jonathan helps. That, of course, comes in a torrent of stupid questions. That's all of which helps. I think that visibility is fundamental. It's fundamental to the, to me to understand the business, and I think it'll be fundamental to, you know. It's my gift to the new CEO when that person arrives. Look, your question about confidence in signing the pledge is a good one. Look, let me tell you, I think that we have the same visibility that every other player in the industry has. Let's remember here, we're going back 30 years. We're going back to when I was a 25-year-old in short trousers. It's a long time. Have we got perfect data on what we did 30 years ago? No, for the very simple reason that in a company, document retention policies don't go back 30 years. 15 years, yes. 30 years, no. You know, we haven't got perfect data about this fact. Why do we recommend signing the pledge? I think for two fundamental reasons. The first is that there is agreement by us and around the industry that where there have been remediation issues, they shouldn't be footed by leaseholders. Okay? I think for us, our ethical status in this industry is second to none. Okay? That's the first thing. I think, you know, that's the carrot. That's our motivation, if you want. You know, and on the other side of this, you know, I think DLUHC and the department have said, "Look, you know, if we the industry are not responsible for this, then we would struggle to, for example, get planning permission on sites and everything going forward." I don't think in that sense, there isn't a considerable choice. I think that's the sort of, that's the stick end of this. But look, we are overwhelmingly guided by the carrot end, I think of this, you know, here, which is we want to do the right thing. You know, it's. That's what's given us the confidence to sign the pledge. I think one other piece, Sam, if I may, and that is when I go around our site, there is a huge focus on quality. The processes that we go through, they are very high-quality processes. When I talk to the customers, they are almost universally, and our joint venture partners, they are almost universally positive about the quality of our products. You know, we should be confident that we have built. On the whole, we have built very high-quality buildings. If we have not built a building of sufficiently high quality, we will, you know, step in and remediate it. I think those are the things that have given us the confidence to recommend to sign the pledge. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Sam. Tracy, let's move on. Thank you. We will now take our next question. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hello. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hey. Morning, guys. It's Emily Biddle from Credit Suisse. I've got three questions, please. The first one, just coming back on the fire safety cost, can you remind us on what basis you've provisioned to date? Sort of how far you've gone back, and does that just include buildings where you continue to own the freehold and essentially give us a bit of a sense of those 290 buildings that you talk about, are you able to give us a sense of how many fall into the category of taller buildings or any incremental detail that could give us a bit of a sense of the potential here? Secondly, on the consolidation of divisions, does that automatically reduce the operating capacity of the regional business on a sort of long-term basis? Do you view this like those regional businesses can sort of actually cover a bigger area? If that's the case, and it doesn't proportionately sort of reduce the sort of volume capacity of the business, are you comfortable that management of those divisions are able to be sort of spread over a larger area and continue to sort of have good oversight of the business? Just thirdly, on the net debt position, the average of GBP 110 million, could you give us a sense of how you think that trends for the balance of the year? Thank you. Emily, thank you. Thank you very much. Let me just answer those in a slightly different order 'cause Gary's gonna cover fire safety in a minute, and I'll just cover the first two. Your question on the consolidation of the regions, it's a really good question. I have, you know, I've sat down with the teams and gone through that question as well. Let me tell you how I view it. Certainly, we are not withdrawing from those geographies, if that makes sense. Let me tell you, I think I can probably sort of answer the question a slightly different way. In future, when we do other geographical expansion, I would be tempted to go in with a small team. I wouldn't build a big office. I'd go in with a small team that is nimble and able to go and get the first sites, you know, win those first sites, and obviously there's a period to developing out those sites. It can take six, 12, 18, 24 months even to get to the first site, that's fine. We should be prepared to make that investment. Go find the first site, find the second site. Make sure those sites are always assessed in accordance with Countryside's overall return requirements and investment requirements. Rather than going with a full-throated, you know, we have to have this infrastructure. Directed to do this, directed to do that, directed to do this. 'Cause otherwise, you've got a lot of people early on in that investment process who aren't, you know, necessarily going to be as, you know, fully occupied as they otherwise would be. I think in future when we go, we'll go with, you know, slightly more consolidated resource, and we'll be absolutely happy. Yes, you know we've got X people. Don't worry if you can't get the right sites, that's fine. Work until you can get the right sites. Work until you can find the right sites. 'Cause otherwise, you know, if you set up a big office with a big overhead structure and big budget and big expectations, will it encourage you to be sort of, you know, to think about the world in a different way? I don't want to do that. I want people to think about the world in a Countryside group way. No, we're not gonna withdraw from the geographies. I am very confident in the teams to cover the geography with the teams. I'm very confident at that. Does that mean to say that some of our regions, you know, can do more with our existing teams? Yes. I mean, it is a fact that resolving problem sites, that is the thing that consumes a huge amount of time in the business. If the team is really good at bringing through the good sites and you can avoid the duffers, then you will be able to do more. You know, I'm afraid that's a simple fact of business. You know, we spend a lot of time on the underperformers and not so much time on the cracking performers. So, on net debt. Look, I think when I sort of took over as interim CEO a couple of months ago, the first thing I wanted to see is, you know, what's the debt every day. That's sort of what I'm used to, 'cause as you know, once upon a time, I was a CFO. You know, I like to know what cash we've got in the bank. You know, if I look now, there will be a working capital build from where we were at the end of March, and there will be a working capital build through to the end of the year again. It's for us, I think, to try and smooth some of those working capital movements over time by making our operations just as consistent month on month as we possibly can, and we touched on that in the RNS. I would like for us to get to a position where our net debt is trending back towards where we said the center of our range of net debt would be, which was sort of debt-free, cash-free on an ongoing basis. I would like to see us trending back to that place now, and, you know, doing that over the coming months. It won't happen immediately, but nevertheless, I'd like to see us doing that over the coming months. Let me just hand over to Gary on the fire safety question. Gary, if I may. Morning, Emily. Looking first at the 69 buildings, we did the review going back 15 years in 2019, so that takes us back to 2004. We looked at all multi-occupied buildings, not just those above 11 or above 18 meters. Of those, about 4/5 are owned by other freeholders, the remaining by us. Contrasting that with the 290 that we put in the statement, those 290 are where we acted as developer. I would like to point out that we have whilst we have developed, whilst we have built other multi-occupied tall buildings, in many of those cases we acted as sole contractor, and that is excluded from the obligations of the pledge. I would imagine that the vast majority of those are owned by other freeholders, and all of them are 11 meters plus. Does that answer your question? I think so, yes. Where you're saying you acted as sole contractor, you're essentially saying that the developer is someone else that is, isn't Countryside in those instances? Yes. Is that? That's correct. Okay. That's really useful. Thank you. Okay. Tracy, can we get the next question? Thank you. We will now take our next question. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yes. Hi. It's Rajesh Bhatti from JP Morgan. I've got two as well, please. Firstly, appreciate your comment, John, that the new management team sets out the medium-term targets, but do you think the 2024 targets set out six months ago are still possible, or will they take longer to achieve? Just connected to that, why do you think the GBP 15 million cost reduction plan will not be a hindrance for the medium-term growth profile of the business? Secondly, just on the manufacturing point, are the losses there largely due to the low utilization rates of the facilities, or are they impacted by any other factor? Thank you. Thanks, Rajesh. Not on the target side, let me tell you what I absolutely think, and this comes back to the philosophy that I was talking about with Glenys before, which is, you know, we have so far to go. There is so much here. There is so much opportunity to improve where we are. That would absolutely be my philosophy today. Look, remember when we look back to what are we doing with the legacy house building business, we're doing that fundamentally for two reasons. Number one is to improve the focus of the business on a really great and differentiated market space, which is partnerships. The other was to recycle assets that were expected to be lower return assets or lower return on capital assets over the longer term into higher return capital space. You know, we ought to be ambitious in our ability to improve the return on capital of the business, not least, which we are retiring capital today, as we get on with the share buyback. We're retiring capital that was, generally speaking, employed in the lower return on capital house building business. You know, we ought to see returns in the business improving over time. You know, that's my style. I'd really like to set out and it. You know, if I'd been the CEO for the business, I'd say, "Right, whatever your return on capital was, I wanna see how are you improving it? What are you doing to improve it?" I wouldn't be so interested in someone telling me, "Oh, in X years it's gonna be this." I'd really boil it down to, what are you doing? Why should I believe you? How are you doing what you're doing? What are you doing? How are you doing it? I'm interested in that as a management process, right? How are we going to improve our return on capital? I am more interested in the how than I am the, you know, than I am the end game, because tomorrow I'll have the same discussion. Certainly in my last role at Ferguson, for those of you who know, you know, we improved the margin every single year. I had people a decade ago saying to me, you know, "What is it gonna be?" I said, "I don't know. All I know is that I expect our teams every quarter, every half, every year to improve their margin. And we will work every year on improving our margin and improving our return." That was my philosophy. It remains my philosophy. It's very difficult to teach an old dog new tricks, as you know, Rajesh. That would be my point on targets. Look, cost reduction plans, they absolutely will not hinder our growth. No, I don't think that's the case at all. On the contrary, I think in most organizations, as you look at, you know, what do we wanna do here? When I walked through the door, my challenge was, how do you make sure you put as much resource as you can, as close as you can, to people who are actually building homes? 'Cause that's our purpose, that's our raison d'être, that's what we're here for, is to build homes safely, quality, and then build as many as we can really as quickly as we can. Those are the priorities. That's what I keep suggesting to people inside the business and eventually, you know, people get it. In bringing that focus, the advantage is it strips out some of the other stuff, and some of the other stuff is quite expensive. I think that what we'll find is the cost reduction plans help to bring focus to the business rather than hinder future growth. There's an old saying about, you know, if you want something doing, give it to a busy person. I rather like that one because it is a fact that, you know, certain people in our organization are very effective. That's where we need to be directing our resource, both our human resources, you know, and our capital resources. Your third question regarding manufacturing. Look, the biggest driver of the cost at the moment, and we referenced the Bardon piece because today that's not yet online, so obviously that is sort of somewhat dead cost at the moment. The biggest driver is capacity today. We are not putting enough capacity through the network of facilities. So I think that is overwhelmingly the biggest challenge here to resolve. We have a small team on that today. We will look at the options carefully as a board and we'll get on with this, you know, both from the executive and the board's perspective. By far the biggest challenge is, right, what are we gonna do with this capacity? Got it. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure, Rajesh. Tracy, next one please. Thank you. There are no further questions, so I'll now hand the call back to you, John, for closing. No further questions. I can't believe that. Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Tracy. Look, let me just therefore give you the highlights once again. We've done a thorough review of all the sites. Large parts of this business are performing well today, so I don't want you to take away that everything is tough. We have got some challenges. We've got some operational challenges. We've described them in the statement. They are primarily execution related. We can solve them, and we will absolutely solve them. We've set them out there. I am very positive about the pipeline of opportunities. That is a strong pipeline. We're confidently on that and converting that, and I'm very proud of what the team are doing there. Obviously the outlook, you know, I was asked yesterday, what's your confidence in the outlook? We have been through this in a very considerable amount of detail, right? We have been through it on a site-by-site basis. We're not dependent on lots of new sites. We're not dependent on lots of land. This is a question of us being able to build out the homes, bring those to the market. We are very positive that we have done a thorough job on that. I will happily close. Unless, Tracy, there are any final ones coming through? No final questions coming through, John. Thank you all very much indeed for dialing in today. Appreciate it. You'll hear from Tim and I again in May when we do the interim numbers. Thank you. Thanks, Tracy. That concludes our conference for today. Thank you all for participating. You may all disconnect.