Good afternoon, and welcome to the Empresaria Group plc Interim Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Rhona Driggs. Good afternoon to you. Good afternoon, and thank you very much for joining us today. We're gonna start with the financial overview today. Challenging market conditions continued throughout the first half of 2024, which did impact net fee income. On a constant currency, like-for-like basis, the group reduced by 9% to GBP 25.3 million. Permanent placement was down 21%, temporary and contract was down 1%, and offshore services were down 10%. And adjusted operating profit was down 8%, constant currency, like-for-like, with reported figure down 23% to GBP 1 million, reflecting the impact of a reduction in net fee income, offset by the ongoing benefits of cost actions, which delivered year-on-year cost reductions of GBP 2.3 million. Adjusted diluted loss per share of 1.2p, reflecting the reduction in profits and the allocation of earnings to non-controlling interests. And our adjusted net debt increased to GBP 13.5 million, with headroom of GBP 10.5 million. The industry-wide weakness in demand that we experienced in late 2022 and throughout 2023 has continued through the first half of 2024. Permanent continues to be the hardest hit. Temporary has been more resilient, with pockets of growth, particularly in our commercial sector. Offshore services is feeling the impact of the wider market off the back of a record year last year. The wider IT market continues to be challenging across all our regions. We've continued to maintain tight control of our costs while protecting our core consultant base to ensure we are positioned for recovery. We've also continued to execute on our strategic objectives. As announced in March, we have completed exits from our Finland healthcare business, and in China, recently closed our China operation in the half one, with two more expected in the second half of this year. We have streamlined our management structures to strengthen our cross-selling capabilities and further reduce complexity, and moved our core operations of IT professional and healthcare into a highly scalable model with dedicated sales and delivery teams. Finally, we rolled out additional enhancements to our front office technology platform, specifically targeted at improving productivity. Now I will turn it over to Tim to go through the financial highlights. Thanks, Rhona. Rhona's covered most of the slides. Just pull out a few extra little bits. You can see here that the revenue on a constant currency, like-for-like basis, did increase by 4%, and that reflects that resilience in our temporary and contract business, and in particular, some more positive results in our lower margin, higher volume, temporary and contract businesses. Our overdraft, as Rhona said, is down GBP 2.3 million constant currency like-for-like, reflecting that benefit of those cost actions in 2023, and that is what has driven, you know, the operating profit to drop by just 8%, GBP 0.3 million, despite that fall in net fee income. Loss per share does reflect that allocation of earnings to non-controlling interests. Our central costs are down 13%, year-on-year as well. Moving on to adjusted net debt. Adjusted net debt position has increased at the half year versus December, and that's really driven by the impact of an exceptional bad debt expense that we had in Germany, which at the half year is essentially a full GBP 3 million impact for the outstanding trade debtors position at that point. Our average net debt for the first half was GBP 10.9 million. That compares to GBP 7.9 million for last year, and despite that increase in net debt, we managed to hold net finance costs at the same level as previous year. This reflects some improvements we've made in terms of cash efficiency, and by that I mean that we're, you know, getting better at offsetting our cash positions against our debt positions in various jurisdictions. Because we're in so many countries, we do have a cash position in a lot of those that don't have local facilities, and this can create some inefficiencies, but we've improved our processes to offset that as much as possible. Headroom remains strong, GBP 10.5 million. That is lower than what we had at December, but that's because those cash efficiency actions have enabled us to reduce some of our facility levels, and therefore, we've still got strong headroom and certainly sufficient to cope with any requirements we have at the moment. Just moving on to an overview of the group, and you can see that, you know, the proportions in certain buckets have changed a bit year on year. So looking at it by region, U.K. and Europe has increased as a proportion of the group, reflecting that relative strength in commercial. APAC and Americas, you know, have reduced, whereas offshore has stayed broadly level. Looking at it by service, our temp to perm ratio has increased to 68% to 32%, so that's excluding offshore. That reflects really the reduction in perm and also the resilience of temporary and contract. I mean, we do target having a 70/30 ratio, but. The driver here really has been that drop in perm rather than growth in temporary and contract. And then looking at by sector, you can see that commercial has increased as a proportion of the group, reflecting the stronger performance there. IT has reduced, and other things have remained broadly stable. Moving on to the regions. In U.K. and Europe, overall net fee income was down 5% on a constant currency, like-for-like basis. Within that, the U.K. fell by 9%, so that was in line with the wider group. Again, the pattern of perm as being most significantly hit has been reflected here, and is really driven by perm, particularly in our IT and professional businesses. Our temporary and contract has been more resilient, and we've seen some positive indications in certain places, but it remains a challenging market in the U.K. Germany and Austria results were solid. Our logistics businesses performed very strongly, and that offsets some drops in other operations in those countries, so overall, net fee income was in line with prior year, and as Rhona mentioned, we exited our healthcare operation in Finland, so those results are excluded from the like-for-like measures. Moving on to APAC, we did see a significant drop in net fee income of 25% here. However, if you strip out the effects of currency and remove our China operation that we closed during the period, our net fee income was down 12%, and actually, revenue saw a small increase, just reflecting the mix and relative resilience in temporary and contract. IT demand has been the main driver of this fall. The most significant impact has been in Japan. We've also seen reductions in Singapore and Philippines, where we also do quite a bit of IT business. Last year, really, we saw IT hit the U.K. and U.S. as the biggest amounts. This year, APAC sort of caught up in that respect, and so we've seen a more significant year-on-year drop in this region. We have seen some good progress in aviation, with net fee income increasing by more than 20%, and that really reflects our success in diversifying our revenue into engineering and permanent roles. Historically, we've been 100% doing pilots on a temporary and contract basis, so we're seeing some good success there through that diversification. Moving on to the Americas, the U.S. has been really the main driver of results, although overall net fee income was down 16% on a constant currency like-for-like basis, the U.S. was down 50%. IT, in particular, continues to be extremely challenging. We did start to see some positive momentum in healthcare as H1 progressed, but that was starting from quite a low point at the beginning of the year. That was still down year-on-year against a stronger comparator, but we are seeing some positive signs as we exit the first half and into the second half. We're hopeful that's now moving in a good direction. South America has continued to perform strongly, and we did see growth of 10% in net fee income in constant currency. Currencies have moved against us there, so that's really flat when you look at it in GBP, but we have seen that underlying growth, and profits did also grow in South America as well. Turning to offshore, offshore service had a record year last year, and that was really driven by our U.K. healthcare business, which, despite U.S. demand softening last year, our healthcare demand remained strong right towards the end of the year. Unfortunately, that did drop off at the very end of 2023, and at the start of 2024, and that's what has driven a 9% drop year-on-year in constant currency. That has now stabilized. We're not seeing any further drops, and it's the same with the U.S. We're in a very stable position. However, we're not yet seeing a significant return to growth either. We haven't lost those different clients, and so we are well- positioned, and as their demand returns, then we are well- positioned to build those seats back up and to build those temps and perms back up. We are also continuing to push other services that aren't purely driven by the recruitment side. So a back office on accounts and finance, for example, we are still seeing growth there in this period, and that's something that we're continuing to drive going forward. And back to you, Rhona. So we expect weak hiring trends to remain for the remainder of the year. Therefore, we continue to maintain tight control on costs while protecting our consultant base and making limited investments in sales teams. I'm extremely confident that with the progress we've made in reducing the complexity across the group, the operational changes we have made, and the continued focus on executing our strategic objectives, positions us well for recovery when the market returns. And now I'll hand it over for Q&A. That's great, Rhona and Tim, thank you very much indeed for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab situated on the top right corner of your screen. While the company takes a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via investor dashboard. Rhona and Tim, as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation, and Rhona and Tim, if I may now hand back to you and kindly ask you three of the questions where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you both at the end. Well, I've only seen one question, actually, rather than a number at the moment. So the question we've got is saying: "Given the first half results and the current market conditions, how confident are we in meeting the full year market expectations?" So I guess a couple of things on that. Firstly, we are historically quite second-half weighted, so particularly in some of our businesses that have performed quite well this year. So those in the commercial sector, they are quite second-half weighted because we're working with supermarkets as our end clients in a lot of cases. And what we see is that Q4 period in the run-up to Christmas is a very big profit period. And then-... Not wishing to get a little bit too technical, but we also have more bank holidays in the first half of the year in those businesses, and when there's a bank holiday, we have to pay workers, but we don't get revenue. So again, that pushes our second half results to be sort of our results to be second half weighted. So there are those factors, combined with the actions we've taken on exits and how the actions we've taken around cost, et cetera, mean we're, you know, confident with the market's forecasts that are out there. Next question I'll take is, "Since APAC and Americas have shown significant declines in net fee income, what specific challenges are you facing in these regions, and how are you addressing them differently compared to U.K. and Europe?" First of all, I think the IT market, in particular, has impacted both the results in the U.S. and Asia- Pac. In Japan, in particular, they've had a very challenged year, and they are 100% IT, and the U.S. has really struggled since the Silicon Valley Bank situation about a year and a half ago, I want to say, now going on two years and a half. We're addressing that by, again, continuing to keep ourselves in the market and continuing to drive our sales efforts and looking at diversifying. In particular in the U.S., we were heavily weighted in start-ups, you know, a year and a half ago. And now we have diversified our revenue base much more. We're also on the heels of winning some new business through some MSP providers in the U.S., so that will help us again, to that diversification point. And in Japan, we are starting to see a little bit of more positive momentum going into the second half of the year, but they were hit again, quite hard and as well as across Asia in the IT market. So it's primarily IT, which again, the wider industry is feeling as well. The next question is just asking that despite cost reductions, adjusted operating profit fell, how do we plan to balance cost control with necessary investments for future growth? I'll say firstly, it is a balance. When we're making those cost reductions, we're very careful to look to ensure we're protecting business in terms of its ability to grow and its ability to come back when that market recovers. There are still investments going on within there because, you know, we need to make sure we're investing in IT in particular, but also training and those sorts of areas which are gonna help us maximize that NFI growth as and when the market recovers. So, absolutely, it's a balancing act to make sure we get that right, but, you know, we feel we're making the right decisions on that and ensuring that we're, you know, we're not carrying more cost than we should, but we are protecting the core consultant base that will help us come back. So there's one more question here. "So given the challenging market conditions, what growth opportunities or sector do we think has the most potential for recovery and expansion in the short to medium- term? So I would say, I think offshore is going to come back extremely strong. Historically, it came back, you know, if you think back to COVID, it took quite a dip during COVID, but then within a few months, it started to rebound and rebound, and off the back of that, had a couple of record years. So I think offshore will come back extremely strong. I think IT eventually is going to stabilize and come back, and that's a continued what we consider a high growth opportunity for us in the future. As well, what we are continuing to focus on is really making sure that we have a balanced portfolio between our temporary contract business to our permanent business. So I think continuing to focus there on making sure that we're growing that proportionately on the temporary and contract side to, again, protect against what has happened in the market with the permanent placement erosion over the last year and a half. That's great, Rhona. Tim, thank you for addressing all those questions for investors today, and of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. I can see one question has popped up. Would you like to address that question, or we can leave it for another time. Hold on. Just trying to see what it is. So yes, just someone was commenting that in the previous RNS, we highlighted that. The question here is saying about commenting on the value of the sum of the parts versus the market cap of the group. I think what we did comment on in the past RNS was really pulling out the potential value of our offshore business, which you know has been extremely successful, and we've seen other transactions in the marketplace to show that those sorts of businesses can go for high multiples. I mean, that remains the case, and yes, offshore's had a more challenging 2024, but we still see immense value in that business, both now and going forward in the future. Perfect. Thank you very much, Tim, but before we redirect investors to provide you with their feedback, which one is particularly important to the company, Rhona, could I please ask you for a few closing comments? Yes. Thank you very much. I think I'd like to close by saying that we are extremely confident in our ability to continue to successfully navigate the current environment, and even more confident in our ability to capitalize quickly when the market recovers. I want to thank everybody for their time today, for joining us for the interim results presentation, and I look forward to a much more positive update in the next time we speak. Thank you very much. Perfect. Rhona, Tim, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, and also that the board can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Empresaria Group plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.