Good morning and thank you for joining the Currys' half-year results call. I'll now hand you over to Alex Baldock, CEO. Thanks, Molly. Good morning, everyone. I wanna leave maximum time for your questions, so I'll be brief up front. These are strong first half results, with strong trading behind them. We're pleased with the market share gains, the stable gross margins. In fact, better than stable gross margins and the strong profits and free cash flow that we've thrown off. We're pleased that the signs of sustainability of these results, by which I mean happier colleagues and happier customers, are also continuing to head in the right direction with the latest colleague engagement showing a further rise from what we shared at the Capital Markets Day now to 78, and customer NPS rising five as well year-on-year. Strong results, and we've done that by making more and more of our strengths. We're a much stronger business now. Technology's playing a more important part in millions of lives, and we're making more and more of that. I think particularly on the stronger business front, I won't repeat everything you heard at the CMD. One thing I will draw out, though, on the sustainability of our progress, we talked about ESG being an opportunity for the business here, and we're really pleased to have got the A rating on climate by CDP, which puts us in the top 1.5% of the world's largest 13,000 companies. I think that shows the yard that we've made there. It's not just that, you know, we've got the strategic clarity, a simpler, more focused business with the hardest yard of the transformation behind us, sustainable progress financially in much better shape, all as before. Technology is a bigger market. It's 20% larger year-on-year in the first half for all the reasons that we spoke about. We are making more and more of that as the growing number one with the winning omnichannel business model. It continues to show that it is the winning model, and we can talk about our progress on all the lengths of that. We've also flagged this morning that the market has softened in recent weeks. Let me say a few words about that. It has. In the run up to Christmas, we've seen some bumpy customer demand in the market, and we've seen some supply chain disruption. I think the good news is, I mean, we've talked about us being a stronger business, and we've evidenced that in being much better able to ride out these short-term ups and downs. The bumpy market has been mitigated by our growth in market share. We've shown 70 basis points of growth in market share in the U.K. in the first half. The supply chain disruption has been mitigated, and the evidence of that is in our market leading product availability. We are number one with our suppliers as well as with our customers, and the evidence of that is in the 15% higher stock levels that we've got this peak versus last year, which, as I say, show that we've been able to, in large part, mitigate these bumps. When you add that to the still stable growth margins, the good cost discipline, all of that gives us the confidence to stick to the expectations we set out at the CMD of circa GBP 160 million of profit. That assumes, by the way, that the market doesn't get any better. We're also standing by our medium-term commitments of GBP 250 million of sustainable free cash flow by FY 2024. We absolutely believe that we are nowhere near the full potential of this business. I'm happy to answer any questions on our progress on building Customers for Life here, and there is progress right the way across credit and other services and building more Customers for Life. As I say, we stand by the medium-term commitments for the GBP 250 million of free cash flow just as we stand by our in-year promises. With that, I'll pause, and Bruce and I will take any of your questions. Thank you. If you would like to ask a telephone question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure that your mute button is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, it will be the star or asterisks key followed by the number one to pose a telephone question. We will take our first question from Ben Hunt of Investec. Please go ahead. Morning, Ben. Hi there. 70 basis points of market share is, I mean, a satisfactory result given, you know, some of your peers were struggling, you've increased the range and done all the good things that we talked about at the Capital Markets Day. I'm just trying to sort of gauge if there could have been more upside there, really, and if you could sort of break down where it was strong and where it wasn't across the channels. Maybe if you could give us some reassurances in the second half, how you're gonna meet the full year expectations if the market does remain soft, which is unknown, I guess. Really what you have up your sleeve to underpin those, your meeting of the full year consensus, or sorry, the full year expectation of GBP 160 million. Okay, let me kick off on that, and Bruce may have some builds. You ask about, I mean, are we satisfied with our market share? Clearly never. I mean, we've set out the ambition to continue building it, and we aim to keep building our lead right the way through the life of this plan. It's heading in the right direction, but it's nowhere near full potential is how I would answer that question. I mean, clearly, in a business that historically has been geared towards stores, the events of the past 18 months had the potential to see our market share take a dip rather than continue rising. In one sense, you know, over two years, our market share has had to face into the headwinds of channel mix changes. For example, over two years, our market share has dipped 30 basis points, and that's despite 300 basis points plus of improvement in market share in each of the channels. In one sense, you know, the market channel mix is a headwind that we've shown that we can navigate with our winning omnichannel model, and we've shown that we can continue to grow market share as we've done and extend our lead. I mean, the second point you ask about how we can have confidence in our full year expectations. I mean, clearly, within the current uncertainty with. Sorry, I. Somebody's got a little bit of an echo on the other end of the line. I wonder if I could ask people to be on mute while we're on. That would be helpful. Thank you. You ask about how we can have confidence in the full year expectations. I mean, clearly we're with some caution sticking to the GBP 160 million of full year profit that we flagged only recently. I think that reflects the uncertainty of the current environment, you know, bumpy customer demand, continuing supply chain disruption, and the as yet unknown full impact of Omicron and associated government restrictions. Excuse me. When you put all of that together, you know, what gives us the confidence? Well, we continue to gain market share. It's not just in the first half, but in the period since, we've seen continuing market share gains. We've continued to have market leading product availability. The relationships with our suppliers that we talked about at the CMD have come good to the extent that, you know, we are the last to run out of almost all key lines and that we've got more stock in the business, and the stability of our gross margins. As you've seen, in the first half as a group, we improved gross margins by 50 basis points, as well as the continuing cost discipline as we make progress towards that GBP 300 million of sustainable cost reduction that we flagged at the CMD. All of that leaves us confident that with the strength of this business, we can weather these ups and downs in our environment and continue on the path that we've set out. Yes, good morning, Ben. I guess I'll reiterate what Alex said, but the first thing I'd say is how strong our first performance has been, both from a profit and a cash perspective. Now, I guess as we think about the full year, we're being consistent at GBP 160 million worth of PBT that we previously guided to. We believe, I guess our key concern is that the market got carried away and extrapolated that forward. As Alex has said, what we're trying to do is reflect a level of caution in the second half, but we have plans that get us to that position. Okay, great. Maybe just a bit, if you could give us a flavor over the peak period that we've seen recently. I mean, has it been sort of colored by sort of lower footfall? Is it a conversion? Also on the website, you know, have there been drops in footfall or traffic across the websites? Or is it a conversion? Any color on that would be useful. Well, Ben, we'll get into some of that at the trading update in January. I mean, for now, I think we'll leave it at the fact that, you know, in a bumpy environment of some bumpiness in demand, that we've been able to post the market share gains that we have, and we've been able to do that with a strong reopening of stores, which have accounted for over 50% of the sales in the period, while continuing to show strong growth online, which online sales have been up over 50% year-on-year. It's been a broad-based story because that's our model. We're a broad-based model. We're an omnichannel business and both parts of the business have played their part in seeing us weather these ups and downs. Okay, great. Thanks. Thanks. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a telephone question, please signal by pressing star one. We will take our next question from Simon Bowler of Numis. Please go ahead. Morning, Simon. Good morning. I was wondering if we just kind of touch on the Nordic market actually a little bit, if that would be okay. Firstly, just in terms of their kind of growth margins have fallen a reasonable amount year-on-year. Channel shift doesn't look to have actually kind of stepped up sequentially much year-on-year. So I'm just wondering, can you talk a little bit around what you're seeing in terms of whether it's kind of competitive or other dynamics that are impacting growth margin and how we should think about that going forward. And then similarly, on that market, kind of market share shape looks to have kind of dropped back at a reasonable amount kind of year-on-year. What are you seeing there in terms of kind of competitive action? Let me give you a big picture answer to that, Simon, and then Bruce can dig into it a bit more. I mean, the big picture on Nordics is that this is a big, growing, profitable part of the group, you know, and a relatively rare example of a U.K. retailer with such a large and successful part of the group. Last year, the Nordics posted exceptional market share gains in an unusual competitive environment. To a certain extent, that has normalized, and we've held on to those two-year gains while seeing it drop back a bit year on year. That's the big picture on the market point. Bruce, you might want to build on that. Yeah. In terms of your question on Nordic margin dilution, I guess it's exactly what we reflected at the Capital Markets Day, where based on the shift of channel to more online. We are expecting some dilution in margin. The other key factor is that we do have some extra supply chain costs in terms of getting ahead of stock availability, and that is having an impact on our margin. Okay. Those kind of supply chain costs in the Nordics are more pronounced than they are in the U.K.? Because obviously U.K. hasn't kind of seen that same shape of gross margin. No. There is a similar level of impact in both markets. If anything, I would say slightly higher in the U.K. as we faced into some of the warehouse and driver issues. Within the U.K., those margin dilutions have been offset by the positive channel shifts that we've seen back towards stores. That's why it isn't quite as obvious. Okay. Okay, thanks. If I can just quickly center on the mobile part of the business. I may have got this wrong. It looks like on the sales you're down kind of 20%-25% year-on-year, which is actually kind of a bit ahead of where I thought we were gonna land this year, at least. Are you kind of still on track for kind of divisional losses, even though you don't report it that way, of somewhere around GBP 50 million and then breakeven into next year? Is that still the way that you're thinking about that part of the business? Yeah, I mean, Simon, I think we reiterate going forward, we're not going to separately talk about the mobile business. Our vision of a smaller but moving towards a profitable part of the business is exactly where we're aiming, and our goal, our expectation is still to get the business to profitability by the end of this financial year. Okay, thank you. I guess, Simon, I'm interested to build on that a second. It obviously makes less and less sense to break this out as a separate category the more that we integrate it as part of one business, which is the path that we're on, and we're nicely on track to do that. As Bruce points out, that is seeing us on track to achieve what we said we'd do, which is to get it to profitability during the course of this financial year. Obviously, not for the full financial year. Yeah. Thank you. We will take our next question from Adam Tomlinson of Liberum. Please go ahead. Morning. Morning, Adam. Morning. Three questions if I can. Just in terms of current trading, can you maybe just talk a little bit more about the relative performance of stores and, linked to that, just where you're in terms of delivery times for those ordering online, where those sit at the moment versus where you'd like to be. And if those are extended, I guess you've got the benefit of customers can come in and can collect from your 300 or so stores. Just around that relative performance there would be helpful. Second question, just on stock levels. You mentioned being 15% higher year-on-year. Maybe just a bit of color around the profile of that stock. Appreciate there's some availability issues with some of the more in-demand categories. Just how you're holding up there and that stock profile. Thirdly, around the Customers for Life, you mentioned some stats and more color you could give around that, post the focus you gave on that at the Capital Markets Day. That would be helpful as well, please. Gosh, quite a lot there, Adam. Let me crack into it. On the current trading, well, stores have reopened well since the pandemic restrictions. Obviously, you've seen the over 50% of sales that they accounted for in the first half of the financial year. We'll say a little bit more about peak trading at our update in January. It's been a broad-based success story when it comes to gaining market share over the period of the first half and the gaining of market share that we've seen since that's in large part mitigated this softened market that we've alerted to. I mean, our delivery times, we keep a very close eye on the competitiveness of our delivery proposition, and we're at least matching the best in the market when it comes to the options and our performance against those options, which explains why customer satisfaction with our delivery is substantially improved year on year. You asked about stock levels. I suppose the short way of explaining this is it's good stock. We're pleased to have 15% more stock in the business than this time last year, because it's one of the enablers of those market share gains that we're flagging. We're not flagging the need for any kind of fire sale in January. We'll have a normal sale period in January because we've bought well, and we've still got good stock in the business in the crucial remaining trading weeks before Christmas. Finally, your question on Customers for Life. Thank you for asking that because I always enjoy talking about it. I think the picture is as we said at the Capital Markets Day, just with a few updated numbers. We have many customers who we can talk to more in more valuable ways to gain share of wallet and to make them stickier as well as more valuable. On the many customers who we can talk to more in more valuable ways, I mean, the Nordics customer club, for example, is now up to 6.3 million members, up 47% year-on-year. Yesterday, since you asked, the Currys Perks that our equivalent club in the U.K. passed 10 million members, which isn't bad going for something that launched only in October. We're quietly quite pleased with how that's developing. When it comes to the other foundations of more loyal customers who are likelier to return, you'll remember that credit was one thing that we spoke about being important there. A credit customer is 71% likelier to come back and shop with us in the next 12 months than a non-credit customer, so our progress there is important, and we have made progress. Our credit sales are 35% up year-on-year, and our adoption rate's got to 12.4% now, which is 90 basis points up year-on-year. We're quite pleased with how that's progressing and there's more to come because obviously we land two important new platforms during calendar 2022, which we're on track to land, both of which will help further growth of credit new customers as well as the greater utilization of unutilized facilities amongst existing customers, which is a substantial opportunity of over GBP 4 billion, as you'll remember. Finally, on other services, you'll remember that our services you can bucket into helping customers not just choose and walk out with a box, but helping them afford them, which is the credit part, but also get started with their tech, that give their tech longer life and get the most out of it. The longer life part in particular is something you're gonna hear a lot more about during the remainder of this financial year. We see this as really fertile ground for us. We intend to become every bit as famous for helping give customers existing technology longer life as we are famous for helping them choose lots of shiny new kit. With our strength in trade-in, in warranty, insurance, repair and recycling, this area is as important for us commercially as it is important for us to be seen as a good citizen on sustainability grounds. For us, purpose and profit go hand in hand as we believe they have to. We think this is going to be another reason for customers to prefer Currys, to continue the market share gains that we've seen, to continue the NPS climbing that we've seen, and continue our foothold on that 30% share of wallet that's the big upside opportunity for us with existing customers. Great. That's very helpful. Thanks a lot. Thank you. We will take our next question from Andrew Porteous of HSBC. Please go ahead. Morning, Andrew. Hi, Andrew. Don't know if you're still on mute. Molly, we seem to have lost Andrew. There you go. Sorry, I'm back. Sorry. I was on mute. There he is. Yeah, sorry about that. Thanks for taking the questions. Just a couple from me. When you're talking about softer trading at the moment, could you perhaps just give us a bit more color about what you're seeing and what sort of you've seen in sort of customer behavior that's driven that comment? Whether you think any of it has to do with you guys going a little bit earlier on Black Friday this year. It felt like you were perhaps one of the more aggressive players out there in the market. That was the main one for me, to be honest. Well, let me start with that, Andrew. Just to reiterate, when you used the phrase softer trading. What we flagged is that the market has softened and we've gained share in that market. That's been something that we've seen in recent weeks in the run-up to Christmas since the end of the first half. Now, two things there. We flagged the market share gains of 70 basis points in the first half, and we're now saying that those market share gains have continued. Of course, a big enabler of that has been the market-leading product availability that we've talked about. As to what's behind that, I think actually rather the reverse. I mean, the fact that our relationships with suppliers allowed us to go out with a very compelling deal set for customers right the way through this important period, and do so in a way that allowed us to keep gross margins stable and allowed us to keep our discipline on promotion so that we can stand behind the commitment of GBP 160 million of full year profit, even with the bumps in demand and supply. I think it's been helpful for us to have had such a compelling deal set to put in front of customers during the Black Friday period. As to, you know, the fundamental drivers of whatever market softness we end up seeing for the period, we'll come back and talk a bit more about in January. Clearly the current uncertainty around Omicron and the associated government restrictions and the mood music that goes with that isn't helpful for consumer confidence. You know, how much impact that has in the scheme of things, as I say, we'll say a bit more about in January. Thanks a lot. Just when you're talking about confidence over that GBP 160 million, I mean, with H1 out the way, with Black Friday out the way now, just how, I guess how confident are you around that GBP 160 million? I mean, it doesn't feel like there are that many bumps left in the road to year-end to sort of cope with. Well, Andrew, we wouldn't be talking about it if we weren't confident in it, as you might imagine. Look, we've, I mean, we've worked hard to build a stronger business here, a business that can ride out these inevitable ups and downs in the short term. Everything that we've been doing over the past years, never mind this year, you know, with a greater strategic clarity, a simpler, more focused business to get 75% of the transformation behind us, to make sure that colleagues and customers are satisfied and increasingly happy, which gives us confidence in long-term progress, but financially much better shape that we've got the business in, both in terms of growth and gross margin stability and cost discipline and free cash flow generation as well as on top of a much stronger balance sheet, with the growing number one omnichannel specialist business model that we enjoy and that we've substantially built on during the course of the year. All of these things have built this stronger business that we've got and allow us to maintain the stable growth margins, the cost discipline and strong cash flow generation that to go along with the market share gains that we're flagging. It's not a, it's a long answer to how we're confident because it's everything. It's everything that we've been working on over the past few years, and it's everything that we're seeing right now in stable growth margins and cost discipline that allow us to build on the market share gains to stay on track for the GBP 160 million. Thanks a lot. Just one thing that, Andrew, I think I mentioned this before, but just to make sure no one misses it. Staying on track for the GBP 160 million does not assume any improvement in the current market. If you want to, you know, assume a degree of prudence in that, you can. That's very helpful. Thank you very much. We will take our next question from Warwick Okines of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Morning, Warwick. Thank you. Morning. A couple of questions on costs, please, if I may. The first is, have the marketing costs in the U.K. over peak compared with the costs two years ago? You know, have you been able to reduce marketing costs as you've moved to one brand and built customer relationships? That's the first one. Then the second one is, are you still on track for the GBP 25 million of Goods Not for Resale savings this year? Or does your profit guidance assume that you do more in this area? I'll let Bruce give a quantitative answer as far as we're going to those questions, Bruce. Warwick, sorry. But let me give you a sort of a qualitative one, first of all, on the marketing side. I think there's a couple of things that we've talked about today that are relevant to that. I mean, the first is the big picture that I'll refer you back to what we said at the CMD. That, to an unusual extent, we can achieve our ambitions through existing customers. The fact that we've got 80% of U.K. households who are regular customers and that our prize is share of wallet gain among those customers rather than the uncertainty and the expense of new customer recruitment. The fact that we understand the drivers of loyalty, of repeat spend amongst those existing customers better than ever. We talked about the likelihood-to-return measure that we're increasingly managing the business to, and the fact that things like our omnichannel model, cross-category shopping, more frequent shopping from the range expansion, and particularly credit and other services all serve to increase the likelihood to return, the stickiness and the repeat shopping of those existing customers. All of those things, you know, bear down on marketing costs, everything else being equal. That's the first point. More specifically, I think we flagged in the statement that to an unusual degree and to an increasing degree, our digital marketing costs are not paid for, and there's some detail in the statement that you'll find out. Bruce, do you want to build on that? Yeah. I suppose a couple of points on the marketing component. First of all, we have increased our marketing spend during the first half, focused on the relaunch of the brand, the launch of the Currys brand. That is a step forward, certainly year on year and year on two years that we wouldn't anticipate continuing. In terms of the movement to one brand, will that give us savings? Well, certainly that's not our proposal. What we want to do is to use having a single brand to make our advertising and our marketing more effective. I think that's the key point. In terms of the savings on goods and services not for resale, absolutely, we're on target to achieve the GBP 25 million that we set out at the Capital Markets Day. Brilliant. Thanks very much. Thank you. We will take our next question from Simon Bowler of Numis. Please go ahead. Hello again, Simon. Hello again. Sorry, a couple of follow-ups. The first one may be something you want to refer to January, but just in terms of that kind of softening demand, is that just a U.K. phenomenon or are you kind of talking across each of your markets? Is there any color that you can offer in terms of category trends within that? Simon, I think, to be frank, we're gonna come back in January and talk about peak trading, more generally. When we've been talking about the softness, we have been talking specifically about the U.K. Can we come back and we'll do the same on product categories in January. Okay, great. Thank you. Then two other kind of slightly more modeling based ones. One, the net debt slide that there wasn't too much kind of further inflow from that in the first half of this year. Should we be expecting that to step up in the second half and beyond? Or do you expect it to kind of stabilize around current levels, given your ongoing momentum? No, you're right. The net debt fell by a small amount between year-end and the half year, but we're not expecting a significant movement in the second half. Okay, cool. Is that then true thereafter? Is this kind of a run rate level of that net debt to be. There's gonna be a gradual reduction, I would say, over the next two to three years. It's considering the major drop-offs that you've seen over the course of the last couple of years, I think your modeling should assume that it's relatively stable. Okay. Understood. Final one, sorry, was just on the GBP 300 million cost savings that you had set out, which were off, I believe, the FY 2021 base, how much of that falls into this fiscal year? Obviously GBP 25 million from the Goods Not for Resale, but in terms of the other elements of that, how much of that is in this year's base of that gross GBP 300 million? Without giving you specific numbers, I would say that the majority is FY 2023 and FY 2024. There clearly have been substantial cost savings as we've simplified and reduced our mobile business. Work has been going on consistently to deliver savings across our IT infrastructure. There's been big step changes that I described at the Capital Markets Day in relation to supply chain. Those are delivering. When we were talking about that GBP 300 specifically, there are some savings this year, but that was more of a forward-looking statement. Okay. Thank you. We will take our next question from John Guy of Jefferies. Please go ahead. Oh, hi, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. Alex, you mentioned you've got 15% more stock. Could you maybe elaborate or break out where you have more stock? Is it in video gaming, TVs, white goods? Could you just be a little bit more specific in terms of you know, where stock is highest? And if you've seen any change in consumer replacement cycles, say from this year compared to 2019? That's my first question. And I've got a follow-up, please. Thanks. Morning, John. I mean, the short answer on stock is that I answered before that it's good stock. We're not anticipating the need for a big clearance because we've been reasonably successful at getting in the stuff that customers want to buy, and that's pretty broad-based. I mean, we've seen in appliances, for example, you know, range cookers and American style fridge freezers do pretty well, and we've been well stocked with those as people have got themselves ready for a family Christmas. We've had good stock of coffee, which has been good in the small appliances space, both pod machines and bean to cup have been selling well. We've had good stock in floor care, you know, brands like Dyson and Shark. We've got good access to those. In mobile, the stock that we've secured has been important. In Google Pixel 6, in Samsung Galaxy A12, in Apple iPhone 13, we've had good stock of the new launches. In computing, gaming, obviously, as I've mentioned before, has been a standout category that saw us grow 49% year-over-year in the first half. We always want more. We've had good stock of things like Nintendo Switch consoles that have enabled that growth as we continue to tap into that trend that keeps on giving. We've had good stock in VR tech and virtual reality technology is arguably the breakout niche story of this peak trading period. That's increasingly heading into the mainstream, and so again, with the stock that we've had of Oculus Quest has been important there. Within TV, the supersizing trends carried on, so 75-inch+ and high quality TVs like OLEDs have been. We've had decent supply of those. Headphones, Apple supply's been a bit tighter right the way across the market, but we've got, you know, a more than our fair share of AirPods and within wearables Apple Watch has done well. Smart fitness, health, and beauty, I mean, I could go on. I suppose the point is, John, that we've got a good broad-based range of stock in that 15% up year-on-year that's enabled the market share gains that we've talked about. Great, you haven't seen any change in the way consumers are looking to replace product? That replacement cycle timeframe really hasn't changed much over the course of the last two years? No. We might say a bit more about this in January, but I mean, the big picture of a market that's in the first half was up to 20% larger, year-over-year. One of the drivers of that has been a faster replacement cycle, which goes along with more usage and greater appreciation of what new tech can do. No, we're not flagging a change in that. Great. If I could have one follow-up actually, please. Just on, you know, how much now of your sales are being driven by credit, has there been any big change in 2020 compared to 2019? Maybe that's one for Bruce. Also, can you disclose what percentage of warranties are now as a percentage of sales in the first half of this year compared to 2019? Thank you. Yes. Hi, John. I mean, we don't share the percentages of either credit penetration or service adoption rates. What we have seen is a step forward in terms of the quality of sales that we've been making. That's particularly been true online. I think we talked about that during the Capital Markets Day as we look to level up our channels. That's probably as far as I'd want to go. Thank you very much. We will take our next question from Edward Blair of Liberum. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. The question's already been asked actually. It was about the skewing of products, whether there had been any material skewing of products. As you said, it'll be something you'll address in January. The question's already been asked. Thank you. That's all. We will take our next question from Nick Coulter of Citi. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Hi, Nick. Hi, good morning. Just a quick one on the buyback, please. Could you remind us when that starts and if we should necessarily expect it to be evenly applied through next year or if you have any discretion? Thank you. Yeah. Hi, Nick. As we described at the Capital Markets Day, our intention is to start the buyback as soon as we come out of the close period in January, and that is still our plan. In terms of how that's going to be phased, we're going to balance it, if you remember, so that the payments we make in the buyback is matching to the pension contribution of GBP 78 million a year. Our expectation based on our dividend will be that the buyback over the course of the next 12 months will be more back-end loaded to the later six months. Okay, great. It has to be in line with the timing of the pension payments. Well, no. In essence, what we're focused on is creating a consistent flow to all of our stakeholders, and therefore we're looking to balance the cash flows to the pension scheme and to shareholders at a consistent level. The maths basically means that there's a slightly larger amount in the second six months than in the first six months. Okay, it's a cash management. Okay, fine. Thank you. As a quick reminder, if you wish to ask a telephone question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We will take our next question from Kartik Kumar of Artemis. Please go ahead. Hi, Alex. I was just wondering if you could comment- Hi, Kartik. On the Nordics profitability a bit further. The part I didn't quite understand is, to what extent are the investments in the systems, et cetera, bringing down profitability and overall, was that performance in line with your internal expectations? I'm sorry, Kartik, I did miss the beginning of your question. Were you talking specifically about Nordic? Yes, just about Nordics. I'm just saying in the Nordics, it looks like there were some external factors hitting gross margin and then internal, effectively, investments that hit OpEx. I was just wondering if you could comment on that and how overall it compared to your own expectations. Yeah. No, absolutely. The Nordic business in terms of its overall EBIT returns is pretty much bang on where we expected it to be. I talked just briefly a moment ago in terms of gross margins. Some of that has been shift in channel, and some of it has been higher levels of supply chain costs that have resulted in the 40 basis points dilution in gross margin. In terms of cost ratios, there are a few points within that. You're right. Going live with our new system, our next generation retail website, and systems have got a period of double running during the first half that won't continue on a full year basis. There's also some one-offs within our costs, so for example, a relatively small amount of government funding that we received within the Nordics during the first half last year that hasn't been repeated this year. Broadly, our costs are in line with where we expected them to be. Great. Thank you. At this time, we have not received any further telephone questions. I would like to hand the conference back to Alex Baldock for any additional or closing remarks. Thanks. By the way, John, coming back to one of your previous questions, to give you a fuller answer, we do actually break out the credit adoption rates. We don't talk about other services as yet, but the credit sales are up 35% year on year, and the adoption rate has got to 12.4%, which is up 90 basis points year on year and sees us nicely on track to meet the commitment that we've made of 16% penetration by FY 2024. You know, we might even do better than that. Just to give you a fuller answer to your question earlier. Thank you all for your time this morning, and we're, as I say, pleased with the results. We're pleased that they underline the progress that we're making longer term. Yes, there are some short-term bumps in demand and supply, but we're navigating those pretty well and remain on track both for our in-year performance commitments but also for the longer term. We look forward to getting back to work on that right away. The one thing I would leave you with while I'm talking to an audience of high net worth individuals shortly before Christmas, I did mention that we've got lots of good stock left, as we do, and there are some cracking deals left on currys.co.uk or in your local store, and I would encourage you to gratify your nearest and dearest with some of the amazing tech that we have to offer. As I say, some really good deals going. I would encourage you to fill your boots. Many thanks for your time. Bye-bye. This will conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.