Great. Thank you all for being here. And Nik, thank you for taking the time to be with us today. It's been a bit of a rollercoaster week at Diageo. It's been a rollercoaster 14 months ago. Indeed. We'll come on to trading, but I just want to start with the CEO update we had yesterday, and can I just start by asking how you're doing and how you're feeling about the appointment of Sir. Dave Lewis as CEO? I think there's a two-part question there. How am I feeling? And how am I feeling about Dave? How am I feeling? I'm feeling good. Obviously, I went through my own cycle of trying to understand the selection. But listen, I didn't come into Diageo with the aspiration to be CEO. It kind of all happened very quickly, as I said, a rollercoaster 14 months. So I've been, in some ways, just honored that the board and the leadership team really embraced me in that interim CEO role. But then moving to the next part of the question, which is Dave, I think it's fantastic, right? I think the board was clearly looking for someone who had experience being a CEO and leading a transformation, because clearly we needed transformation at Diageo, and I've talked about that. And also someone who has great brand and marketing experience. And Dave has a ton of that from his time at Unilever. So I think it seems to be a really good match in terms of what the company needs from an angle of the here and now. Got it. What sort of interactions have you had with him over the last few days? Limited, as you would imagine, because this was all just announced on Monday morning. But obviously, I had a preview of that. We did have a chance to talk on Friday and then did have a chance to meet in person on Sunday, which was great because we got to spend some time together for him to, for us both to get to know each other a little bit, but more importantly, also talk about what my views are in terms of the state of the business, where we are from a perspective of sharpening the strategy, where are we on the people issues, how do we think about the culture of the organization, how do we think about portfolio strategy, some of the work that I've been doing since I've come into role of Interim CEO. And then we talked a little bit about Accelerate as well, right, which was a program that we launched, which obviously has multiple facets to it in terms of a cost savings target, but ultimately about simplifying and driving the business closer to the consumer and customer, but also simplifying and being clear in terms of the roles and responsibilities of the center versus the region versus the market, et cetera. But then also an element of how we think about A&P spend and allocation of resources in the best possible way with a returns lens and focus, with a focus around where we're allocating disproportionately towards growth. And how do we also drive an approach of more with less, right, in terms of A&P? And then ultimately also around the whole element around managing the balance sheet and where we are from a leverage perspective. We've committed, obviously, organically and through disposals to be able to get that down well within range by no later than F28. I think he was giving updates on all of those elements, which was good. I'm sure we'll have multiple interactions over the course of the next weeks before he officially starts up on Jan 1. Got it. And I guess the announcement yesterday, does that pause anything that might be in motion from a disposal standpoint or from a strategic pivot? I know you and the team have done a lot of work in the last four months, but. Absolutely nothing on the disposal standpoint. We continue in terms of what we had already targeted. There's still work that we're doing on broader portfolio approach as we think forward, but that doesn't necessarily mean disposals. It just might mean how we want to think about our brand growth framework and where do we want to grow, build, deprioritize, for instance. That's much more around, again, allocation of resources, right? I think that's ongoing work, but nothing in terms of what we've indicated from a disposal perspective of non-core assets and nothing in terms of slowing down with the work that we're doing on sharpening of the strategy. In fact, the board has been very clear that that's all in the right direction. I mean, clearly, in all fairness, the new CEO coming in, he needs to be a part of that, but we wouldn't be slowing down the work or changing any of our approach in terms of what we'll continue to do. Got it. Maybe just digging into the business and starting with the U.S., it feels like there's been quite a sharp deterioration in September and October across beverage alcohol, not just spirits. What do you think is driving that? I mean, the consumer was already weak. Is it just another leg down, or is there anything else you're seeing in the category? So I mean, I think clearly, as you said, it's across TBA, but within that, just to be clear, there's pockets of growth that are still happening, right? I think the difference has probably been where the biggest pocket of growth was happening across the tequila category. That's seen a slowdown, the category. I think there is also then an element of downtrading that's happening within the category as well. So there's a slowdown in the category and there's some downtrading that's happening within that category and others. And I think that's largely being driven by what I think now is coming through more evidently in terms of some of that inflation from the tariffs, right? Because that's clearly causing a shelf price increase and/or further stress on what was already a stretched consumer wallet, right? So it then comes down to choices that you're going to be making, right? Clearly, the TBA category as a whole is probably the highest from a discretionary spend perspective, even though the level of spend as a percentage of the disposable income has stayed fairly constant, right? But it's just getting less for more. And that's the theme across all staples, right? So I think that's what's ended up happening. For us specifically within the category, remember, we've had outsized growth when you look at the tequila category, right? With Casamigos and then with Casamigos slowing down for a variety of different reasons, right? A lot of those self-inflicted. The Don Julio growth and Don Julio growth and Reposado in particular has been great. And then Don Julio growth in pack variants has been great, right? So I just had someone coveting that 1942 Mini. I mean, that's really been growing at an extraordinary rate, or even the 375s, right? So for us specifically within the tequila category, there's two things that have happened. Clearly, when you're growing that much higher than the rest of the market, right? You've got your competitors who are definitely not sitting on the sidelines and trying to attack. So that's a separate angle. We are lapping a lot of that size extension and that restocking that was happening because of the extraordinary growth. I would say to you that's somewhere between 60%-70% of that element of that slowdown. The other circa 30% is that general category weakness and then downtrading within the category, right? So I think what's ended up happening is both our brands typically play within the ultra premium pricing segment, right? And you were having some of that downtrading happening into super premium. Today, it's even going into price tiers of premium, right? Because you've got some of our competitors that are heavily discounting both in terms of depth and frequency. And what might have been a price point of $25.99 has now come down to $19.99. And if you think about where we were playing, we were starting up at about $34.99, right? So if you've clearly got an affordability issue and a cash outlay issue, there's still an element of what you can do with small packs, but people are just downtrading and going to a lower variant. The other piece that, again, is happening, which is quite interesting, and this is where you see pockets of growth because RTDs continue to grow, right, within spirits. What we're picking up from some of our markets within the U.S. that are strong tequila growth, so let's say Texas, for instance, you're finding that people are downtrading, not just downtrading in terms of buying $19.99, they're downtrading as in like buying RTDs and using the tequila as a chaser, right? So they're still getting their spirit through the RTDs, but then actually using that as a chaser. And that's purely, again, a symptom of affordability, right? Clearly, we're not going to play that game in terms of discounting our prime brands into those types of levels. Where we haven't been strong enough is how well are we using some of our super premium brands, like an Astral, for instance, to be able to go up against that? Because the classic piece should be, how do you actually use a tiering strategy within your portfolio? So Don Julio being at 100, well, then is Casamigos at a circa 80% index to that. And depending on where you're competing and fighting is an Astral at a 50% index to that, for instance, right? Or a 40 or a 60, depending on what you're playing. And again, being very targeted when you think about consumer and occasion and outlet through which they're buying that. So that's what's happening in that. So we appreciate there's been a lot of cyclical headwinds this year. But as you've done work on the category and started to understand what might be structurally changing going forward, and I think you've picked up on the last few months' moderation maybe being more of a structural theme you're doing a bit more thinking about. But what are the implications of that in terms of volume for the category? So firstly, I hate the word structural and cyclical because I think it's been so overused ever since I got here. And one of the first things I tried to do was move away from even cyclical to talk about, to your point, I think it's more macroeconomic driven, stress on the consumer wallet, right? And clearly at that point, at some point, that's going to come back. So for me, that still appears to be the largest part of what we're seeing. Again, I don't like the word structural because I think structural kind of just indicates there's a big regulatory change that's just going to drive down in a very quick way the consumption of a product, right? So I think to the point around moderation, for me, as I see it as a trend that's been around for several years, I think that trend is accelerating. Now, is that trend accelerating because people are getting more conscious around wearing an Oura Ring and how well do I sleep when I've had a drink, whether it's around getting more conscious around just quantity of alcohol that I'm drinking, what am I putting into my body? So ABVs become important, format sizes become important. So that's an element. There's an element of moderation that just says, I think about, I'm more mindful about when I consume. So I'm thinking about it from an angle of, am I drinking versus five days a week, am I now very clear, I'm only drinking on the weekends, or am I the type that thinks of moderation by saying I do Dry January and then the rest of the 11 months I can be back at my normal type of levels? There's things of zebra striping, there's things of semi-skimmed, all kinds of things that people are experimenting with in terms of how they think about that. So I think that moderation theme is accelerating as opposed to, in my mind, again, that word structural, right? And that moderation theme, if it's accelerating, part of it could also be linked to macroeconomics. So I might be moderating because I just don't have enough money to spend. So when I do spend it, I'm obviously drinking more judiciously or I'm drinking better because I'm also conscious of what am I putting into my body, et cetera, et cetera, right? So, there's so much interlinkage that I think we just have to step back and say, well, for whatever reason, if people are moderating, what can we offer them to have a breadth of portfolio, both in terms of choices and at price packs and pack formats that address those, right? As well as actually the liquid, right? So, I think we've done a very good job with what we call the full strength of the 0.0. Well, there clearly is a role for mid-strength, for example, right? Have we done enough in terms of variance within even RTDs and convenience? So, you've got a lot of different variants here of just even Johnnie Walker. Johnnie Walker, Ruby, for instance, is one that we've only launched in Australia. I wouldn't see us taking this globally quite yet because that's just a very well-developed RTD market where you need to have new entrants, and it's a large dark spirits drink category. Because remember, like a Jack and Coke or Jim Beam and Coke, et cetera, have been very strong there. A Johnnie Walker Blonde is a way to address both moderation and a changing consumer need, right, so younger generations are coming in earlier into spirits through RTDs, well, Blonde is very much a mixable Scotch that we've launched because it plays well into cocktail culture, well into an RTD offering, and then it attracts the younger generation as well as more female skewed, right, so it addresses that, but then you can go into a slightly higher offering of RTS, right, so people are looking for convenience. People are looking for more of that great tasting liquid, but in a package that is convenient, but also gives them clarity around ABV and what am I drinking and how much am I drinking, right? So this is a great example of things that we're doing that actually sell at a great price point that are addressing those themes of changing consumer needs and occasions for which we just need to have an appropriate range of choice of beverages in terms of flavors, brands, package formats, price points, ABVs. So for sure, there seems to be a real pivot towards RTDs. I think the old Diageo had a very different philosophy. And I understand you've done a lot of work in six of the big markets. Where are you on that journey and when does this become more tangible in Diageo's financial performance, right? Is it a H2 story? Is it a 27 story? I think RTDs today are around 5% of the business, but if you're executing well, what does success look like? Is it double digit? So RTDs today, when you look at both spirit space and FMBs, are probably about 7%-8% of our business, right? I think in some ways, Diageo, and I think a lot of the spirits companies have been a bit schizophrenic in terms of not wanting to play there for a variety of different reasons. And the major one really being margin percentage diluted, right? Because instead of selling core spirit bottle, you're actually selling an RTD, which is lower margin. I think that's what's allowed for the explosion in that growth and some of these newer players and new-to-world brands coming in. There was also an element initially when this was launched, and Smirnoff Ice has survived for 20 plus years, right? That it's faddy, right? And a lot of these brands come in and they grow and then they die down very quickly, particularly the new-to-world brands. Actually, again, data is showing us a couple of things. So with Smirnoff Ice, having done this in our six core markets, right? And reinvigorated the brand for the last two quarters, we've been the number one grower from a value perspective in terms of with Smirnoff Ice. For a brand that's 20 years old, right? That if you reinvigorate, right? There's a lot of history and memory and/or new people who are coming in because there's resonance with that, right? And I think for us, the big difference is when you're using a brand as opposed to a new-to-world, there's much more lasting impact because the consumer research that we now have says that if a consumer is buying into an RTD, a branded RTD, there's more of a propensity for them to buy the full bottle spirit then, right? Or order that when they go in where there's so much more linkage, right? Which I think we've lost that art of doing because of either margin percentage and/or believing these were fads, right? And given the whole moderation theme, given the way how and where people are consuming, which has moved away from the traditional formats of bars and restaurants, right? Into much more third spaces, convenience plays a big role, right? So I think all of these, whether it's RTD or RTS, plays a big role. Now, that's not to say we're suddenly making this wholesale pivot and that's all we're going to be doing, right? I think it also comes back to, I've been very clear with our teams, this is not an either/or. This is an and and an and, right? Again, it's going to depend on market and the consumer choice framework and the evolution of that category and how we have the right to win and what gives us that ability to win, not just from a brand and an innovation perspective, but a route to market, right? Distribution is critically important in these products, right? And it's distribution because all the work that we've done says 80% of the purchases are made within the minute or the hour of that choice being there, right? And typically, if you're buying it within that type of a timeframe, you also want something that's chilled and available and ready to consume, right? So I think all of those elements are what we're playing into. Sure. I think you've been bringing in more of a focus on incremental gross profit dollars to the business, perhaps moving away from a rigid gross margin percentage philosophy, but I think these products are gross margin dilutive, but are they necessarily EBIT margin dilutive? How do the economics work through the P&L? So I think firstly, there will be gross margin percentage diluted, but there will be incremental dollars that you're not playing into today, right? I think part of that, to your question around the EBIT margin, in my mind, overall for Diageo will be EBIT dollars and margin accretive over time. Dollars for sure. The margin, depending on the market and the innovation model and/or the route to market where you might need to make some investments. Because ultimately, I can have great brands and great products, but if I don't get it out there and if I don't have the right route to market or the right partners through which I prioritize that, that's not going to work, right? And that's the work that we're doing on a broader sense around how do we look at this if we look at the next five years, right? Across those six markets and where we see markets that have a big opportunity to be able to pivot towards that and use that as a big driver of incremental growth. Got it. One part of the business which continues to perform remarkably well is Guinness. Yes. You've highlighted confidence in sustaining these sorts of growth rates we're seeing for the next several years. What's driving that optimism? Maybe get a bit of color on that. And then strategically, I think you've completely ruled out disposing of Guinness, at least for the foreseeable future. But given the value of the brand arguably isn't reflected in Diageo's valuation today, are there other levers you can pull to realize value, perhaps a partial spin-off or IPO, which some analysts. You're writing the wrong notes and that's why it's not fully reflected in terms of the value of the business By talking about things that we're going to be IPOing that brand to unlock value. I think firstly to your question around levels of growth and the sustainability, I think there's both an element of incremental distribution gains that we can get in the markets where we're present today, and let's say today we're essentially a three-market Guinness business, right? It's GB, it's Ireland, and US. I think in Ireland, clearly whoever's here from Dublin and has been around Ireland, I mean, our distribution is amazing, not just in terms of on-premise, but also in terms of at home, right? Because with our Nitrosurge and the equipment that you have and what you can get in terms of a great tasting Guinness like a pour at home is incredible, right? And the penetration levels, even of something like that, are a fifth. And the household numbers are significantly higher when you think about the U.K., right? So I think there's a big element of distribution gains that we can continue to have in those markets, both the U.S. and G.B. And there's new markets in which we haven't even literally scratched the surface in terms of what we can do with Guinness. And remember, within beer, premium beer is pretty much the only part of beer that's growing, right? So that gives us the confidence around the sustainability of that growth. And part of that, again, has been driven or linked to the fact that we didn't have enough capacity. And we have more capacity coming on stream actually at the end of this calendar year. And I spent almost two hours, two and a half hours with the board last week actually talking about how we want to think about Guinness into the next phase of growth, including route to market, including partnership models, right? Because obviously the beauty of Guinness is also a bit of the challenge in that it's all brewed at St. James's Gate, right? And obviously that's very evident for those of you who haven't seen House of Guinness. But by the way, there's some great brand positioning in that. We have nothing to do with the show, just to be clear. But it is created over the last four years. The team has done an amazing job steeping this into culture and making Guinness from what was a winter drink for rugby guys into an all-year-round drink for everybody, right? So the accessibility of Guinness, right? And the experience and the elements of what people are doing in terms of how they're experimenting, right? I talked about semi-skimmed, I talked about half and half, I talked about zebra striping. Those are all things that started up actually with Guinness, right? So there's a lot that's steeped into culture. There's a lot that's been built by us really looking at building that brand end to end, right? From an angle of what's above the line and how does it actually show up at point of sale. So when you see activation, we had an investor in today who just talked about, "I wish I could get into Devonshire more often because there is literally the best pour Guinness there." And it's just hard to get in there, right? So there's that continued opportunity to build that out. And our campaign of every day is a great day for Guinness is really resonating very well. So that gives us the confidence. So I'm not sure why I would actually sell that to someone and/or IPO that business today. Clearly, there's always opportunities on the table, right? I never have anything that's linked to a sacred cow, but with the growth prospects and the opportunities that we have, I think we're still at a very nascent stage of what we can do with that. Got it. Just a quick one on cost. You came out with the Accelerate program. Yep. That's now being accelerated this year. Yes. I think a big lever, at least this year, is on A&P. Can you just walk us through where you're seeing those efficiencies and how confident are you that you're not cutting too deep, especially when we're in this kind of down cycle for the category? So where are we on that? I think there's three or four big elements of what we're doing there. So firstly, within the bucket of A&P, clearly we've talked about non-working and we've done tremendous strides even since the end of last fiscal where we moved that non-working down from circa 20 to about 15. And I think we have a continued opportunity of what we're driving out there through what we're doing through consolidation of media buying, use of AI, content creation studios that allows for much more rapid customization of campaigns using AI to actually, well, actually one of the Guinness campaigns was actually developed through AI, which was just the whole thing, right? At a fraction of the cost of what we would have spent before, right? So I think there's continued opportunities there. I think I have challenged my team because everything comes down to a percentage. They talk about this level of spend. Well, we want to get down to 10%. I'm like, 10% of what? You might be thinking 10% of $3.5 billion. I might be thinking 10% of $2.5 billion, right? Making up a number here, but it's about what's the absolute dollars that we need to spend to get the best creative content in the most efficient way with great wear in and wear out and with great ROIs, right? I clearly think we have an opportunity to bring that number further down in terms of absolute dollars, right? I think that's one I feel really good about. I think the second element is between what I call our A&P, right? Which was circa, let's say, 80% of that spend with the 20% being the non-working, right? We haven't really stepped back and optimized that on an end-to-end way. So the brand teams are working very much with media scale and reach and looking at sufficiency in one bucket. And I'm saying I want to look at end-to-end sufficiency. And if you're driving for end-to-end sufficiency, you might be allocating your spend differently and/or avoiding duplication of spend in terms of how you're doing it, right? So that actually goes back to that whole theme of I can get more for less than anything else. The third element comes back to not necessarily spending less, but being much clearer in terms of how you are allocating your dollars to where the growth is. So your returns are better. If your returns are better and you're spending more money where the growth is, well, you're going to drive more growth through that. I don't feel in any way we're making short-term compromises in terms of how we're thinking about our brands. Now, remember, a lot of this is art, not science. The beauty of how you need to work on this is how agile can you be, right? It doesn't mean if I pause for three months and I take a break, it's not like I'm trying to pause to cut the money. I'm pausing because I'm testing something. If it's not working quite as well, I can always put something back, right? As opposed to always being in this trap of saying, if I don't spend it, I'm going to lose it, right? Type of thing. So I think those are the elements that give me the confidence in terms of how I'm working with the organization to say, we can do more with less. We can do it more effectively and efficiently. We can drive a lot more through technology. And we can drive a lot more through consciously creating together as opposed to a GBT and a market doing their own separate thing. So lots of confidence there. Fantastic. Nik, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. Look forward to seeing you at the next one. Cheers. Cheers.