Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to today's Hays results call. At this time all participants are in a only listen mode. There will be a presentation followed by question and answer session. At which time if you wish to ask a question you will need star and one on your telephone. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today on the 18th of February 2021. Without any further delay, I would now like to hand the conference over to your presenter today, Alistair Cox. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you very much, and good morning, everybody. Welcome to our half year results. We'd obviously love to be doing this live, but for obvious reasons, here we are again presenting virtually. We will stick to the usual format, though. I'll kick off with the operating review, hand over to Paul to take us through the detailed financials and our current trading, and then I'll come back to finish with an update on our strategy. Clearly, the last six months have been completely dominated by COVID as well as our response to it. Millions of people and businesses been making every effort to get through the pandemic, and our purpose as a business to bring opportunities to people so that they can advance their own careers has been very much in the spotlight. It's obviously been an intensely busy period, and there's an awful lot to talk about. Let me pull out just three things from this slide. Firstly, despite working in what has been the worst economic and societal backdrop we’ve ever experienced, it’s incredibly rewarding to recognize that since the pandemic hit us a year ago, we’ve still placed over 200,000 people into a new job. In doing that, we’ve also helped many millions of others with advice, guidance, and training towards their next role. For example, over three-quarters of a million training courses have been undertaken on our web platforms in the last year alone. Secondly, we very deliberately protected the infrastructure and the capability in our business, we’ve not cut as deeply as our fee decline might suggest, because we think that we will need that capacity and that talent before too long. Alongside that protection, we've also started one of our biggest ever investment programs designed to build large businesses in the job categories that we think will be in the greatest demand in the future. We've also invested to ensure all our own people are equipped to work from home, and as lockdown restrictions have been prolonged, we've prioritized their own health and well-being. I think they're doing amazing work, often in very difficult conditions, but their efforts are really paying off, and I'm very proud of them. Thirdly, we're seeing the early stage of some major changes in the world of work, whether that's remote working and the opportunities that that brings, or organizations looking at ways of improving social mobility, or businesses and governments gearing up to tackle climate change. All of these shifts are opportunities for us. Recent research suggests, for example, that GBP 20 trillion of investment will be required for the world to meet Paris Agreement targets on climate change. The International Labour Organization believes that this will create 24 million new jobs in the green and sustainable economy. Now, we intend to be a leader in that space, so it's only right that we make our own contribution, and hence we're setting out the target today to be a carbon net zero business by the end of 2021. All of this means that overall, our trading has been distinctly better than we originally envisaged when we entered the pandemic nearly a year ago. After a very difficult first three months as the world adjusted to major restrictions, we've seen momentum return, particularly in the second quarter, and we delivered a financial result ahead of what we earlier thought feasible. Cash collection has also been excellent and combined with the support from our shareholders last April, this has put us into a very strong financial position. Having invested significantly in the business and given the recovery in fees and profits, it's now appropriate to return capital, and we intend to resume dividends this year, and Paul will cover the details later. I would like, however, to take this opportunity to again thank our shareholders for supporting us through these uncertain times as it's this support which has enabled us to pursue such an ambitious plan. Turning now to our financial results. The backdrop to our first half was obviously highly uncertain, especially through the summer months. Given that, I think we delivered a relatively resilient and profitable performance. Net fees declined 24% to GBP 422.8 million, and operating profit fell to GBP 25.1 million, we exceeded our earlier expectations as momentum increased in the second quarter. Given the uncertainty, we reduced costs and group headcount was down 14% year-on-year. I mentioned this was a lower reduction than our fee decline as we protected roles where we have talented people because we know they will add significant value in the future. We also put our Return to Growth investment program to work with GBP 4 million of mainly headcount investment in the first half with a further GBP 11 million due in the second half. Return to Growth covers over 20 exciting projects where we see structural growth opportunities, it's performing well. A lot of our investment is going into areas where the world will see ever greater demand, so it's reassuring to already see relative outperformance in areas such as technology and life sciences and growing market share through our Hays Talent Solutions business, which itself proved more resilient than the spot business. These are all fundamental aspects to our future growth, and we can become significantly bigger in each than we are today. Looking at cash, I think it's been a stellar performance, converting 257% of operating profit into cash and reducing our debtors days to a record low of 34. All of this, remember, was delivered when our people and all of our clients were working from home. We have seen a large unwind of our temp book, but there are positive early signs that that is now starting to reverse as we grow the number of temps, and we're in a strong cash position to be able to fund this. Let me give you some additional color on each division. We'll start at the other side of the world in Australia and New Zealand. I think in many ways the ANZ division was the standout performer. Fees fell by 23%, but strong cost control limited the operating profit decline to 42%. Temp was relatively resilient, down 18%, and perm was more difficult, down 34%. After the initial shock of the pandemic, trading showed some early signs of sequential recovery in July and August. However, we then had a strict lockdown in Victoria and that delayed further recovery, particularly in Victoria and New South Wales, which together make up half of our Australia net fees. What's encouraging, though, is that once the lockdown ended in November, we quickly saw the return of positive momentum in both temp and perm, and we exited the year with greater optimism despite the residual uncertainty. Sector-wise in Australia, Construction and Property is our largest business. That declined 29%. Accountancy and finance was also tough, down 32%. However, IT declined 18% and mining showed relative resilience, down just 10%. Across in New Zealand, fees were down 10%, but again, activity continued to rebound following the relaxation of lockdown rules in our second quarter. Overall, ANZ consultant headcount declined 19% year-on-year. Turning now to our largest country, Germany, net fees fell by 26% and profit was down 76%. The market was obviously difficult, although again, there were clear signs of improving business confidence in the second quarter and importantly, stabilization in the automotive sector. Our underlying net fee exit rate in December was -15%. That's a marked improvement on our overall first half fees. Contracting is our largest business, two-thirds of German fees. This was relatively resilient. It declined 13%, with Q2 down just 8%. Our temp business was weaker. That declined 45%. A large proportion of this was due to the underutilization of temp workers. Thankfully, temp trends have now returned to more typical levels, which Paul will cover in a moment. Germany needs more of this high skilled and flexible workforce. As the leader in this space, we'll continue to lead the way. Perm is around 15% of our German fees. That area undoubtedly had a tough period. Fees were down 34%. Overall, we're now seeing improving momentum in Germany. We restructured the business a year ago. That strengthened our position and focus, and a lot of effort has gone into managing the temp utilization issues in the first six months, but that's now largely behind us. I think Germany remains the most exciting long-term recruitment opportunity in our world, and we intend to reinforce our leadership position there. Moving now to the U.K. and Ireland. Net fees fell 27%. We made an operating loss of GBP 1 million. As elsewhere, though, we saw momentum improve through the first half, with net fees down 34% in the first quarter and down only 20% in the second quarter, and we returned to profitability in Q2. Our temp business is two-thirds of the U.K. and Ireland fees. That was down 21% and again, Q2 was down just 14%. Perm was tougher. It was down 35%, although again, we had a better second quarter. Our public sector business outperformed the private sector with fees down 12% and 34% respectively. Looking regionally, all regional performances were broadly similar to the U.K. average. At the specialism level, life sciences, IT, and healthcare were the relative outperformers, no surprise there, with fees down 3%, 5% and 7% respectively. However, accountancy and finance and Construction & Property were much tougher. Education delivered a strong rebound in the second quarter, although clearly the near-term outlook is highly impacted by school closures. Overall consultant headcount was down 20% year-on-year. Finally, our rest of the world division comprises 28 countries, and while net fees declined by 21%, we delivered a small operating profit. In Europe outside Germany, fees fell by 20% with most markets tough. There's a familiar theme as momentum improved as we exited the summer. Our largest markets of France, Belgium and Spain declined by 26%, 34% and 14% respectively. Switzerland and Russia were more resilient, down 6% and 8% respectively. Across in the Americas, the U.S. was the outperformer, fees down 13%, including Q2 down only 3%. Our U.S. large corporate accounts business performed particularly well, boosted by several contract wins as we invested there and gained share. Over in Asia, fees fell by 28% and there was a mixed bag of country fee performances. China as a whole fell by 28%, but mainland China significantly outperformed Hong Kong. Japan was tough. Fees were down 40%. Malaysia contrasted that, performed strongly, down just 2% overall. I think there's some massive structural growth opportunities across the whole of this division as markets slowly mature. We reduced headcount 16% to reflect the current circumstances. There are many areas here where we'll build much bigger businesses over time. Pulling it all together, in summary, it was a very tough half, particularly in the first quarter. However, the world is learning to adapt, just as mankind always does, and we saw improved momentum across most parts of the world in our second quarter. This allowed us to deliver a profit which we could not have predicted in July. Our people across the world deserve some major credit for their steadfastness and for taking tough decisions on cost control. Balanced with that, we've invested in many exciting new areas, and there's a palpable sense of optimism around our Return to Growth program. We've achieved a lot, I think, in the last six months. I also think there's a lot more to come. I'll now hand over to Paul for a deeper look at our financial performance as well as an overview of current trading. Thank you, Alistair, and good morning, everyone. Starting with the highlights of the financial review. Firstly, this slide provides the context to what has been a tough first half. When the pandemic hit in March 2020, the decline in our fees was comparable in scale to the 2008 global financial crisis but occurred in only six weeks rather than eight months. Of course, it impacted every country simultaneously. On this slide, we've shown the quarterly fee trends since June 2018. Prior to the pandemic, global macroeconomic conditions had been slowing for over 18 months, reflecting falling business confidence, with clients moving from reducing investment, then to cost control, and then on to cost reduction as the first half of FY 2020 progressed. As the pandemic unfolded in Q3 and Q4 FY 2020, severe restrictions and lockdowns caused the fastest fee decline in our 52-year history. The relative level of fee reduction per region in Q4 was very much linked to the severity and length of each country's lockdown. We entered FY 2021 with fees sequentially stable, and as lockdown restrictions eased in many of our main markets, client activity and fees began to show signs of modest sequential improvement in Q1. With client and candidate activity increasing, we saw substantial fee improvement in Q2, especially in November and December. Encouragingly, we've seen a uniformity of recovery across all of our major markets. To date, second and third wave lockdowns have tended to delay rather than derail the recovery. Summarizing what has been a tough but encouraging six months trading, net fees decreased by 24% on a like-for-like basis. Despite good cost control, operating profit declined by 75% to GBP 25.1 million. Importantly, this was well ahead of our initial expectations. We delivered another strong cash performance with cash from operations of GBP 64.6 million, down only 1%, driven primarily by excellent credit control. As a result, and of course, helped by equity raise in April 2020, we finished the half with our strongest ever balance sheet with net cash of GBP 380 million. Moving on to the income statement. Turnover decreased by 12%, with the difference between turnover and fees primarily due to the greater resilience of our temp business, especially in the large corporate account space. The difference between the headline and like-for-like growth rates is primarily the result of the depreciation in the average rate of exchange between sterling and the euro and Australian dollar. Overall, FX movements increased net fees and operating profit by GBP 4.1 million and GBP 1.8 million, respectively. Basic earnings per share was 0.75p, an 84% decrease versus prior year, reflecting the group's lower profit, higher tax rate, and the increase in the average number of shares in issue following our equity raise in April 2020. Alistair covered the regional trading earlier, but I will cover two technical issues. Firstly, an update on our German temp business, where as required under German law, we employ temp workers. Fees declined by 45%, with Q1 down 53% and Q2 down 36%. Overall, the decline in fees comprises three parts: a 30% fall in average temp volumes, 7% due to redundancy costs as we released 384 temps at a cost of GBP 2.9 million, and 8% due to the impact of underutilization of temps at a cost of GBP 3.3 million. Encouragingly, these costs have returned to normal levels as we exited the half. Secondly, our profits were helped by GBP 2.5 million of government assistance from around the world. As stated in October, we exited all the major government support schemes in Q1. Moving on to look at the performance of our perm and temp business. Our perm business, which comprised 38% of net fees, declined 31%, with a 30% decrease in volume and a 1% in average perm fee. Our temp business, which comprised 62% of group net fees, decreased by 19%. This comprised a volume decrease of 16%, an 80 basis point decrease in underlying temp margins, of which 30 basis points was due to the German temp issues I just explained. The remaining 50 basis points came from client mix, with relative resilience in our larger clients where the average temp fee is lower. Finally, there was a 3% increase in mixed hours, driven by relative resilience in a higher pay IT and life science specialisms. On this slide, we set out an operating profit bridge between half one FY 2020 and half one FY 2021. Starting with half one FY 2020 profit of GBP 100.1 million, we add the positive impact of exchange on profits of GBP 1.8 million and subtract the 24% decline in like-for-like fees of GBP 134.4 million explained earlier. There are four cost buckets totaling a net reduction in costs of GBP 57.6 million. First, payroll cost savings of GBP 45.1 million, comprising GBP 24 million of base pay, GBP 13 million of commissions and bonuses, and GBP 8 million of other savings. Second, overhead savings of GBP 14 million, comprising GBP 10 million of travel, GBP 3 million advertising and marketing, and GBP 1 million of other. Third, we received GBP 2.5 million of government support, which I explained earlier. Finally, as Alistair will cover, we've invested GBP 4 million in our Return to Growth program. Overall, we've appropriately reduced our cost base and ensured we protected our core infrastructure and skilled people. On exchange, our P&L is sensitive to changes in key exchange rates, namely the Australian dollar and especially the euro. The group does not undertake any P&L translation hedging arrangements. Moving on to interest and tax, the net finance charge for the year decreased to GBP 4 million, and the largest component part of this is IFRS 16 interest on lease liabilities, which is non-cash. Looking forward, we expect the net finance charge for the full year to be GBP 8 million. Turning to tax, our effective tax rate increased to 40%, driven by the geographic mix of profits and the impact of tax trading losses in certain countries. As group profits are recovering from a very low base and profits to date are predominantly in high tax jurisdictions, it is difficult to accurately forecast our ETR for FY 2021. Our current estimate is a full-year ETR of 40%. More importantly, as the group profitability returns to GBP 100 million or more, we expect the ETR will return to around the 30% rate. On this slide, we compare the balance sheet. Sorry. On this slide, we summarize the key components of our cash flow. The chart on the left details the sources of cash flow, starting with profit of GBP 25.1 million. We add back non-cash items of GBP 39.5 million, predominantly IFRS 16 property depreciation, other fixed asset depreciation and amortization, and also share-based payments. We then add a profit working capital inflow of GBP 26.7 million, which reflects strong cash collection with debtor days reducing to a record low of 34, then deduct lease payments of GBP 26.7 million. This leaves an operating cash flow of GBP 64.6 million, an excellent underlying conversion of profit into cash of 257%. From this, we paid tax of GBP 20.2 million and net interest of GBP 0.5 million, leading to free cash flow of GBP 43.9 million. On the right-hand slide, we detail how we use the cash generated. The main items were CapEx of GBP 8.8 million, pension deficit payments of GBP 8.3 million, purchase of our own shares of GBP 6.4 million at an average price of GBP 1.099 to satisfy employee-based share awards over the next two years. For the full year, we expect CapEx to be GBP 20 million. On net cash with our strong cash performance, combined of course with the proceeds from April 2020's equity raise, we ended the half with net cash of GBP 380 million. The group has in place a GBP 210 million revolving credit facility that reduces in November 2024 to GBP 170 million and expires in 2025. On this slide, we compare the balance sheet as at December and June 2020. The four main movements are firstly, a decrease in the IAS 19 pension accounting surplus to GBP 13 million, with a reduction in the discount rates partially offset by company contributions and an increase in asset values. Secondly, the decrease in working capital explained earlier. Thirdly, a reduction in the deferral of payroll taxes and VAT, as we repaid GBP 104.6 million of short-term deferral of tax payments. And finally, a decrease in provisions due to the use of restructuring provisions. Our highly cash generative business model has been the foundation for our strong track record of returning capital to shareholders over the last 20 years, including the payment of GBP 374 million in dividends for the financial years 2017 to 2019. Our priorities for free cash flow remain unchanged, namely, to fund the group's investment and development, maintain a strong balance sheet, and deliver a core dividend at a level which is sustainable, progressive, and appropriate with added special dividends in the good years. In summary, given the unprecedented impact of the global pandemic Apologies, still on dividends. The group's cash generation and working capital management have been considerably more resilient than our model scenarios at the time of our equity raise last April. We therefore intend to resume our core dividend at 3x earning cover, commencing with a single payment in FY 2021, to be declared with our full year results in August. Our target dividend cover will remain 2x-3x earnings. The board also believes that the group will be in a position over the next 18 months to return surplus capital to shareholders. The group held GBP 380 million of net cash at December 2020. Going forward, we propose to prudently increase our financial year-end cash buffer from GBP 50 million to GBP 100 million. We're also budgeting in our cash flows for an expected GBP 130 million of future working capital outflows over the next few years as our temp book rebuilds, and we see some normalization in client payment timings. This results in GBP 150 million of surplus capital as at 31st December 2020, as shown in the chart on the top right-hand corner. We intend distributing this surplus capital to shareholders via special dividends. Given the ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, the board believes it is prudent to conduct this return on a phased basis. Assuming no material deterioration in economic conditions and a continued recovery in the group's profitability, we expect to commence the repayment with a special dividend of GBP 100 million to be declared with our full year results in August 2021. We currently expect a further GBP 50 million special will be declared in the subsequent 12 months. Finally, the board intends to resume ongoing special dividends over time. Our policy for such dividends will be based on returning capital above our cash buffer at each financial year-end of GBP 100 million. Additionally, as I've just mentioned, we've also budgeted for a further GBP 100 million buffer for working capital rebuild, which will, of course, decline as our temp book grows and working capital increases over the next few years. Any ongoing special dividends will also be dependent on a return to more normal levels of profitability and a positive economic outlook. In summary, given the unprecedented impact of the global pandemic on society and the global economy, we've delivered a creditable and profitable performance in the half. We balanced managing our cost base with protecting our core infrastructure and our skilled people. We delivered a cash performance driven by continued excellent credit control. Finally, with the recovery in fees and profits accelerating in Q2, an encouraging return to work, this provides us with confidence to resume paying core dividends at our full year results in August. We've also identified GBP 150 million of surplus capital, which we intend to return to shareholders in phases via special dividends, also commencing in August. Current trading, overall, we're continuing to see gradual improvement in trading. While the new year return to work was initially slower than in prior years, temp numbers have returned to the pre-Christmas levels by early February in all of our major markets around the world, which is encouraging and consistent with normal years. As previously disclosed and consistent with all prior years, due to the timing of public holidays, there are fewer working days in our second half. This has no impact on year-over-year growth comparatives but will act as a headwind on sequential second half profit growth versus the first half, particularly in our temp and contracting business. Additionally, we expect our Return to Growth investment program will incur a further GBP 11 million investment in half two as part of the planned GBP 15 million for the full year. Including our Return to Growth plans, we expect consultant headcount will increase by 2%-4% in Q4. At a regional level, the only comment worth highlighting is to reiterate guidance we gave in January that in the U.K. we estimate school closures will have a negative fee and profit impact of circa GBP 1 million per period. With that, I'll hand you back to Alistair, who will update you on our strategy before we answer your questions. Thanks very much, Paul. Let me spend the next few minutes covering strategy and what we're doing to deliver for the longer term. Now, we've talked a lot in the past about some of the big changes that are underway in our world, what we've called megatrends, and how we're aligning our business to capitalize on those changes. If anything, COVID has accelerated these megatrends, and it's reinforced our strategy. For example, the structural attraction of non-perm and flexible working is very obvious in a world of uncertainty. We're also seeing changes in worker demographics, and people are looking at longer careers with continual upskilling as a new norm. Remote working has become an overnight necessity for most businesses worldwide. While the investment to enable this has already been incurred, businesses, I think, are only just beginning to understand and to harness the long-term potential benefits of what will likely become a new hybrid way of working. This can allow us to attract talent from wider geographical areas, create broader, deeper talent pools for our clients. Putting all of this together, they all represent opportunities for us, and our scale and our infrastructure gives us a major advantage versus, for example, in-house HR departments or small local agencies, or even our less tech-enabled competitors. Another growing megatrend across all markets is the wide spectrum of environmental and societal change. If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it's that global problems need global solutions, and every organization in the world is now asking themselves similar and complex questions ranging from decarbonization through to how to recruit in more inclusive and diverse ways. Again, we're in a unique position to help address many of these issues, and they are a new business opportunity for us. With our knowledge and our broad access to talent, for example, we can help organizations build the diverse workforces that they aspire to. We're already finding the healthcare workers and the teachers that governments and communities need as they invest in their social infrastructure. Employees themselves are looking for greater flexibility, and they increasingly want to work for purpose-led organizations that make a positive difference to the world, and again, we can help them find those roles. All of these issues require investment. Again, we already have the foundations in place, and I think Hays has a major role to play in all of this to help organizations build the workforces that they're going to need in the future. For example, we already recruit large numbers of skilled workers into low carbon and social infrastructure roles. As the global leader in construction recruitment, we now face a market where millions of new jobs will need to be created to build the infrastructure necessary to hit the Paris Agreement targets. Today, we're the leading recruiter in e-mobility skills in our German engineering business, and we're growing that capability across Europe as electric vehicles become mainstream. We have large and growing life sciences and cloud computing specialisms that help preserve life and promote sharing of technology infrastructure. We're also the leaders in public sector recruitment, helping to deliver the social infrastructure, whether that be teaching, healthcare, or social care. I think these are just a few examples that represent our existing bridgehead into this large, emerging, and very specialized market. However, there is a lot more that we can do, including building talent pools in the skills areas of tomorrow, as well as helping to upskill and retrain existing workers. I believe that our existing expertise and our global reach puts us in a unique position to make a real difference in helping organizations find scarce talent for our future, hopefully greener economy, and I look forward to reporting much more on this in the future. I mentioned our Return to Growth program earlier, so let me give you some extra color on this. Return to Growth is a bottom-up process that we started back in May 2020, when I tasked each of our businesses worldwide to identify structurally attractive, what I would call dial-moving initiatives, which could accelerate our growth once the pandemic passed. Through that process, we identified around 20 individual projects that cross all of our divisions, and common themes include, for example, scaling up our large corporate accounts business, investing in technology and life sciences, expanding our expertise in engineering. We've now agreed projects in Asia, Australia, Europe, the U.K. and in North America, and we've put in place strict reporting and governance around each investment to ensure delivery. I think progress to date has been very good. We're on track to add over 250 heads in these areas by June. However, that's just the start. It's too early yet to see the financial returns, although I'm pleased to say many of our new recruits are delivering faster than expected. Assuming success with this first wave, I fully expect us to ramp up investment further and add at least an additional 300 more people to these same projects in FY 2022, because these frankly are massive markets. We'll also start to look at new areas such as those presented by the green economy that I've just mentioned. To help bring Return to Growth to life, let me highlight a few of the projects themselves. Over in the States, our life sciences business, we've added significant investment under a key account management structure, and we've also built a dedicated recruitment fulfillment center to find the talent our clients need. The team there started from a standing start just five months ago. We've already put together an impressive list of 15 client wins. Personally, I thought we'd encounter a sales cycle of between six and 12 months, but we already have 200 live jobs, and we've built a contract run rate that is now generating north of $1.5 million in annualized fees. Similarly, in the U.S. in our cybersecurity business, we've tripled the size of the team. We've already billed over $650,000. Again, we're on track to deliver annualized fees of nearly $1.5 million. That's up threefold year-over-year. Across in the other side of the world, in China, we're doing something very similar. We're accelerating our expansion into technology and life sciences, again, through additional headcount and dedicated account teams. Remember, though, that Chinese-owned businesses dominate these fast-growing industries over there. Our long-term investment in our local Chinese management team is paying big dividends, as they are the ones who are now opening up these domestic opportunities. They've generated fees faster than our initial hopes, over a quarter of a million GBP in the first few months alone. I'm very pleased indeed that we got onto the front foot so quickly. We started these investments well before the economies recovered. Indeed, we initiated things while the world was still coming to terms with the initial lockdowns. Our financial strength through the summer gave us the freedom to pursue these options. We're doing things faster and at greater scale than we've ever done before. It's absolutely the right thing to do as we reshape our business for the future demand that we expect. Even though it's early days, we're already seeing how receptive the markets are to these new offerings. In conclusion, our markets are still impacted by the pandemic, but it's been very encouraging to see the strong progress we've made and emerging signs of positivity and movement in our key markets. Our November and December performances in particular showed how our businesses are adjusting, getting things done in new ways, and people are changing jobs even when that means doing so remotely. Hopefully, as the virus comes under greater control in the months ahead, I'm optimistic that we'll see increasing levels of activity, but obviously, we must expect a few bumps in the road ahead. However, we do have a clear strategy, one that we believe in very deeply, and we've got management teams across all of our countries who are world-class at dealing with whatever the world throws at them. Our eyes on the longer term and to do the right things, that means investing in the strongest sectors, taking market share, protecting our productive core while also appropriately managing our variable costs. Our business remains highly cash generative. Reinvestment is always our first priority for that cash, we also believe strongly in the return of surplus cash above our investment needs back to our shareholders. Hence our confidence in signaling a clear intent with our core dividend resumption and returning an additional GBP 150 million of capital to shareholders. Remember also that our philosophy for ongoing special dividends, once our profits return to normal levels, remains in place. Prior to the pandemic, we paid over GBP 374 million in core and specials in a three-year period. I think there's still chapters to write in this pandemic story, but I'm very confident in our prospects to capitalize on the opportunities our world is already presenting us as we all learn to adapt to a new way forward. With that, we'd now be delighted to take your questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen just a quick reminder if you wish to ask a telephone question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel this request, please press the hash key. Once again, its star then one to ask your question. The first question comes from the line from Rory McKenzie from UBS. Your line is open. Morning, all. It's Rory here. Three from me, please. Firstly, can you give some color on the return to work by region and if the recovery is starting to feel different kind of country to country? Secondly, Alistair, you mentioned some of the new client wins you're seeing. Obviously, activity is still depressed across clients overall. Where do you think, Hays should expect to recover structurally to become a bigger business, in particular, and what kind of client wins give you the most confidence in that? Lastly, just on the capital allocation policy, obviously determining the excess capital, you've identified the buffer should be increased from GBP 50 million to GBP 100 million. What's changed? What have you learned through the pandemic that has made you change that outlook? Is it anything about the working capital consumption of the business? Thank you. Do you want to? Shall I take the return to work first, then perhaps Alistair, you do structural growth. I'll come back and do the capital allocation. Yeah. Look, on the Return to Growth, Rory, I think one of the real interesting things about the shape of this recovery has been the uniformity and the Return to Growth has been exactly the same. In fact, it's quite hard to see any differences between the regional trends that we've shown here, and that really is the case. As we know, in December when we talked to exit rate, there was minimal differences between the regions. In here outside of the U.K. where clearly schools have been shut and therefore nearly all of the teachers that we put into schools have been unable to work, outside of that, again, there's been a strong uniformity. Australia is one of the ones that we pointed out being slightly different, and again, it was a bit slower at the start. I think one of the trends that we saw, one of the reasons, for example, that January was a little bit slower in coming back, I actually think was the combination of two things. One, the use of temps, the more uniform use of temps and the longer tenure of those temps meant a lot of temps went right the way up to Christmas, whereas previously, clients will stop temp assignments early and then bring them back in January. On the basis they'd worked right the way up to Christmas, a lot of clients encouraged those temps to actually take a couple of weeks clear off before coming back. The most important part is when we've got to early February in everywhere around the world, we're exactly where we were in mid-December. I think that's really encouraging. Hi, Rory. It's Alistair here. Just talking about the client wins. If we step back, one of our fundamental tenets of our approach going forward, that the pandemic has offered up, if you like, is an opportunity to grow market share, and you can do that for a number of reasons. Clearly, the bigger end of town with the larger organizations and the larger corporates around the world is where the lion's share of that is going on at the moment. We've very deliberately built our Hays Talent Solutions business, which is the more outsourced offering for those larger organizations. We've very deliberately invested in and built that business for more than a decade now. The way you run that business and the performance metrics, et cetera, the way you deliver your services is quite different to the Spot business as we all know. We've been very successful at growing that business over time. What we're seeing as a result of the pandemic has been some very interesting behavioral shifts. Undoubtedly, as the world went into lockdown in kind of March, April, May, June. Everybody was focused on the here and now and just getting through the cathartic shock of the restrictions that were put in place. Understandably, the appetite for organizations to go out to market and tender for new projects was somewhat muted. We have seen that starting to pick up in the more recent months, and procurement processes have noticeably accelerated or been put in place. I'm very positive about the pipeline that's building there. In the meantime, we have won a number of client wins across the world. I mentioned in the U.S. but it also applies in other geographies around the world. A lot of that is focused in the tech space. Obviously, organizations looking for high numbers of technology skill sets. We've won clients in that space. We've also won clients, again, understandably, in the life sciences sector. There has been a flight to quality. We mentioned that at the time of the equity raise. The balance sheet that we've enjoyed, continue to enjoy, has given prospective clients the confidence that we will be there for them through thick and thin. They don't need to worry about their supply chain with somebody like Hays supplying into them. We've also invested heavily into our fulfillment centers around the world. It's one thing to win client mandates, it's another thing to fill all the jobs that our clients give us. Many of those client mandates, we fill north of 90% of all of their jobs ourselves. Remember, these might be hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs. There's a real volume there, which requires us to build highly efficient centers. We have them all around the world, the most recent one being in Germany, where we're building a center in Essen to support all of the work that we're doing for our German-based clients. The way I think about market share is twofold. Are we winning new clients? The answer over the last six months is yes, absolutely. The pipeline is looking stronger by the day. The second way of growing market share is to fill more of the jobs that any client is putting out to market. Again, in some areas, we'll be doing north of 90%. In other areas, we might be doing 20% or 30% of all of their jobs. Our opportunity is to take those 20% and 30% and grow them up to 60%, 70%, 80%, which is exactly the approach we're on, hence the use of our fulfillment centers in places like Essen in Germany, in Kraków, in Auckland, in Kuala Lumpur, and most recently, over in Tampa in the States. I think the final point I'd make here is the HTS business, we've had it for decades. It's becoming a mainstream part of the business. It's north of 15% of our net fees now are delivered because of the relationships through HTS. The bigger end of town through HTS has been a more resilient part of the business than the spot business in the last six months. It was down about 9% worldwide versus the rest of the business down significantly more. I think it's shown its strategic benefit for us. Our global network around the world and our infrastructure across all geographies means that as organizations at the big end of town look for, firstly, regional, and then maybe in the future, more global support, there are very, very few organizations that can legitimately state and deliver that global support to them, and we are one of them. I think you could count the number of organizations that can legitimately make that claim on less than one hand. I think that puts us in a very strong position to serve our clients, again, as they're looking for more resilient supply chains. Coming on to the capital allocation policy. If you think of it this way, Rory, when we set out the policy that we had previously of a GBP 50 million buffer, 2x-3x cover, aiming for 3x cover where we can, and then paying specials over that GBP 50 million, we set that out on the back of the financial crisis in 2008. As we said at the time with that policy, we assumed a rerun of that financial crisis with two austerity programs. We modeled all of our business, stress tested and knew we could get through it. We've now got another fact pattern, which is a global pandemic hits instantly every single country around the world, and we have to follow on from that. The real positive lesson we've learned is twofold. One, it's not just that our credit control teams can work superbly remotely. More importantly, it's also that our clients can make payments remotely. Certainly, in areas such as councils and some other organizations, that was absolutely a difficult issue in the first two or three weeks of the crisis. Clearly, as we've gone through that, all of that is now in place. Having remodeled the business, we've simply made the decision to increase that cash buffer by GBP 50 million, so we go from GBP 50 million-GBP 100 million. No change in our working capital is driven by that. As you've seen in here, we've driven working capital performance superbly across this period of time. Therefore, with some simplicity, it also ties nicely into the fact that we raised GBP 200 million in the equity raise in April. We're keeping GBP 50 million of that to increase the buffer. As we said at that time, we're also meeting our promise of returning any surplus capital to our shareholders, and that is starting with GBP 150 million. I think the key thing on both this and the core dividend today is it is a combination of the improvement in trading as we went across Q2, both the increase in fees, the level of profitability we generated, the return to work gives us confidence in the second half of the year. All of that means it's now appropriate to set our stall out very clearly in how we intend to not just return surplus capital in this initial phase but also returning capital going forward. We are a cash-generating machine, that has always been in our DNA. That will continue going forward. Thanks, [uncertain]. That's very helpful. Thank you. The next question comes from the line from Anvesh Agrawal from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Yeah, just a couple of questions from me. Given the headcounts on the return to workload program will increase by another 300 in FY 2022, should we just assume a similar proportion of cost increase in next year or there are some obvious savings which can offset that? How should we think about the per-period cost for next year based on that? Second, looking at your bridge for special dividend of GBP 150 million. Obviously as the profits recover, some of that working capital will sort of fund itself. Is that a conservative estimate because you just could take the current cash balance and take around GBP 100 million buffer and GBP 130 million of working capital, but obviously there will be more inflows in next 18 months. If I take the second one first, because it flows naturally on from the previous answer. It's not conservative forecasting, Anvesh. It's simply saying that we've had a working capital inflow of about GBP 130 million over the last nine, 10 months. We expect to regrow our business. We expect to regrow that temp book, and therefore it made sense to keep that money, to make sure that we can then reinvest in working capital as we go across the period. I think it would have been inappropriate to have returned not just an element of capital, but also all of the working capital inflow we came in. We're still in an uncertain world. I think the real positive part of all of this is that we've got really good growth prospects. As we've gone across this six months, as we look at prospects going into the next one to two years, I think what we've all seen is outside of a couple of sectors, which clearly have been hit very hard, such as hospitality and travel, which we don't have large exposures to, we are at least seeing nearly all of our clients focused on cautious growth. The further we get away from this pandemic, the more that the recovery becomes embedded. We'd expect to see a greater demand from our clients, a greater improvement in our sequential fees, a greater increase in our temp book. The two positives is we'll have the outflow of working capital, but we've already set that aside. Anvesh, that will generate increased profitability, and then that will then lead to trading special dividends. You could see this financial year being a return of some capital and a core dividend, but the following financial year, having a combination of that final return of the capital, clearly an increasing core dividend in line with profits on three times, and a return at a suitable point to doing specials as well. When that comes, will all be dependent on the strength and the nature of that recovery, but at least phase one is really quite encouraging. Coming on the Return to Growth, there's a lot of moving parts on there. What is true is that by making the investments this year, we're well underway. Clearly, it is more second half biased, and therefore it will take another good six to 12 months before that is generating returns and profits in its own guise. It's not like we're sitting here and saying we've had GBP 15 million negative this year. On top of that, you can add GBP 20 million or GBP 25 million or GBP 30 million the following year. I don't think that's what we'd expect because we'll get some return on that first GBP 15 million. As all of these projects are going well so far, assuming that happens in the second half, we are likely to double down on that investment, we've set that out today. I think, really, if you assume a similar sort of level of investment, maybe a little bit greater, that slight increase will be offset by returns we get from the initial investment. The key driver will be sequential growth that will drive our profitability. The Return to Growth initiatives are all about strengthening what is already a really good position in those markets. We're positioned for significant growth over the next three to five years. We're determined to take the benefit. The strong financial position we're in, the strong market positions we're in, the strong management we've got, we're determined to really attack those marketplaces in the next three to five years. Yeah. No, that's very clear. Maybe if I can just ask a follow-up slightly related on the cost. At the beginning of the presentation, Alistair, you made the comment that you have not cut the cost proportionate to the fee decline and sort of protected the investment and the capability. When the fee return, should we assume that the drop-through can be better than what you had in the previous crisis, or not really? I think that's too early to tell. Historically, we've always given drop-through guidance. I think we're too early in this recovery phase. Of course, the level of growth has been quite significant so far. Well, certainly when we get to the full year, start to give some guidance which will help you going forward. I think I'd make two or three comments. Clearly, we are investing, increasing our head count. We will do that in Q3. We will do that in Q4, assuming nothing happens, and we'll do that on an increased level next year. That's all about the confidence we've got in our business, our market positions, and making sure that we've got sufficient productive capacity to enable us to grow further a year to 18 months down the line. We've got enough capacity in our business to do the next six months growth, but we want to make sure that there's no capacity constraints. Of course, that involves bringing predominantly new people into our business and training them up to make sure that we're ready for further significant organic growth in FY 2022 and FY 2023. We'll certainly give you some profit guidance when we get to year-end on drop-throughs. I think just a point I'd make Anvesh is, we have raised our ambition on the scale of businesses we intend to build in some of these future markets. The technology industry and the need for technologists across all other industries is enormous, and it's not going to go away. It's only going to get more so. Today, more than a quarter of our fees, probably more like 30% of our fees, come from the technology business. It's our largest specialism worldwide. Yet sitting here as probably today the world's largest recruiter of technology talent. There's still a massive opportunity for us to go ahead. We could have a business twice its current size, and we'd still be scratching the surface. Our ambition, we have raised our sights on our ambition. We have raised our targets, and these are businesses that, as Paul has said, over the next three, four, five years, we're just going to build because it's the right thing to do, and it reshapes the business for the future. The nice thing is we can do all three things at the same time. We can grow fees, we can grow profits, we can invest in the business, and we can drive cash flow. I think we're in for an exciting few years. Well, that is very clear. Thank you so much. Thank you. Just a quick reminder, the star and one, if you wish to ask a question, please. For the moment, last question comes from the line from Kean Marden from Jefferies. Your line is open. Thank you. Morning, all. I have three as well. Sorry. First of all, just touching on Hong Kong, where there's been quite a lot of change in the economic environment and the political framework over the last six to 18 months. That was previously quite a high possibility area for you. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are for the shape of that business in the future. Secondly, Paul, I appreciate that obviously a lot of your customers have been protected by government assistance schemes over the last 12 months. People are looking at sort of delinquency data and wondering whether that's going to pick up in 2021. Is there anything that you're monitoring, particularly in the debtor book aging at the moment around the globe that you might want to flag up at this point in time? Thirdly, I guess less travel and a smaller office footprint are tailwinds towards your net zero targets here. Are those sufficient alone to achieve that, or would you need any other practical changes in the way you do business? Maybe let me kick off with Hong Kong and China, then Paul can take the second one, and I'll come back and talk about what we're doing to save planet Earth. Hong Kong, yeah, it is difficult. I think there's no new news there. The good news in Hong Kong is we have great spirit in the team. We were just talking about it just the other day, actually, and the morale there is positive. They're up for it. There is a level of activity going on in that business, and it's an important part of the network. In the past, Kean, you're absolutely right. Hong Kong was where a lot of the money was made in our total China business while we were building the business across the other offices in the mainland, and the most recent addition being our office in Shenzhen, which we opened up about 18 months ago. I think things have turned around, though, now, and while Hong Kong is undoubtedly subdued and may well remain so from an activity standpoint for some time to come, the action has really shifted to mainland China in the last sort of year or two. The mainland China business on its own was a significant outperformer in the last six months, and our mainland China business is above where it was this time last year. It's obviously first into the downturns. This time last year, I remember standing up at this very presentation and saying, "It's too early to know the impacts of the pandemic, but we have had to close our Chinese offices." Here we are today where virtually everywhere else in the world might be closed, but our China offices are all fully open and fully staffed because the people want to be in them. The world has changed. What I'm really pleased about and what really sets us up for the future is the strength and depth of our local Chinese management team. We spent a lot of time and money and effort and attention growing that team and developing those people, many of whom have been with us for north of 10 years now. They joined us at the very beginning of the China story. They're now running the place. They're an excellent team, they're opening up that domestic market that I mentioned. Hong Kong is still an important place for us, I wouldn't expect it to suddenly come roaring back. The rest of mainland China is roaring ahead. As soon as we're out of Chinese New Year, I'd expect activity levels to remain very strong there. I'm very hopeful for it for the future. Paul? You're right to say, is there a tsunami of companies that may have difficulties coming down the pipe? We're seeing nothing so far, Kean. I think for us, being selfish and focusing on Hays, we've had the more difficult parts for us were in the March, April, and May time because there are going to be some long-standing clients that are having difficulties that didn't have access to the funds that we managed to get hold of. We made some very clear decisions about the companies we would help and sit next to across that period, and the ones that we would be stronger in our credit control collection. I think the most impressive thing across the last six, nine months, has not just been the cash collection, but the fact that the actual level of bad debts, of liquidations has been less than GBP 2 million across that period of time. I think the guys have done an incredibly good job. There's nothing that we see specific or anything sizable. For us, it's always all about construction, property, and resource and mining, and not the very large developers, but the second-tier subcontractors. There's always going to be some risk in that space. The very nature of that business is it's very well diversified. Of course, in perm, you haven't got a cash outflow, so it is less of a risk. In temp, we have very strong lines of communication, really strong management. We have a three-strike policy, in that the minute you don't make a payment, then that gets flagged up, and you'll have a discussion with one of the regional managing directors. If that happens again, then they're joined by either my U.K. FD or me. If we have anything else, we just pull the temp. I don't think in our book we're expecting to see anything material, but we don't have a high exposure to the hospitality and travel areas, which have been much more dependent on government funding. What we are seeing in pockets in the world is, of course, the various government schemes, has meant that there are some people that are perhaps on those schemes rather than necessarily coming back into the workforce. I think as those schemes start to diminish over a period of time, I think we'll actually see an improvement in some of the kind of semi-skilled areas such as C&P, et cetera. So far so good. No obvious tsunami of any receivable issues. I think the fact we're at 34 debtor days, if we'd have been situ and we'd have gone out from 38 to 44 or 45 or 49, then I think we'd be in a very different set of circumstances. Having reduced it to 34, that's a real positive. Thanks, Paul. Kean, just looking at the net zero commitment, it's absolutely the right thing to do, I believe. We're not a major polluter as an organization nor as an industry. We do produce some carbon, and the vast majority of that comes really from two sources. Firstly, heating and lighting our offices around the world. Secondly, travel, whether that's things like the cars that we use to go to work or the international travel. There's lots we can be doing to reduce both of those through internal self-help. I'll give you a few examples. Understandably, our international travel is, or I wouldn't say it's reduced. It's eliminated because nobody's been anywhere for almost a year now. Clearly, that will pick up to some extent, when the restrictions are lifted, we start to move around again. I think there will be a permanent and significant drop in international travel because we have all understood the usefulness of technology to remain in touch, and we are getting a lot done using things like video. I don't think it will come back to anything like the level it used to be. That'll be a permanent reduction. In terms of the electricity that we're using in our own office footprint, there's lots we can be doing. We've already moved the U.K. for example, to 100% renewable electricity suppliers. That's 90 of our 260 offices worldwide that we've already moved onto that basis. We're looking at things like the company car schemes around the world. We have different schemes dotted around the world. We can move away from diesel cars. We can do that pretty much immediately. We can move more rapidly towards electric vehicles and build those into our schemes. Again, all the right things to do. We've had a program underway of cutting plastic. Fair play to the U.K. team who about a year ago said, "We're going to eliminate single-use plastic across the whole of the U.K. business." We've got similar themes around the world. Lots of self-help is going on, and that will make a material difference, but it will not totally eliminate the carbon that we produce. We'll still need heating and lighting, and sometimes some people might get on a bus or a train or an airplane in the future. We will work to find if there's other ways of producing negative carbon as an offset against the positive carbon that we do produce in the future. There are two approaches to that. Number one is there are lots of partners out there that we're looking at, that we could work alongside to do meaningful work. That may require modest investment. I don't think it's going to be a huge amount of money, it is the right thing to do. Secondly, and I think more excitingly, engaging our own workforce worldwide to say, look, there's more than 10,000 of us here. I'm sure that there's a wealth of ideas across the world amongst our people, many of whom are very passionate to get involved in all of this. Let's tap into their creativity and their innovation. If they come up with great ideas, I'm sending that challenge to them today, by the way, Kean. We're open to interesting ideas, and we're open to working with people to make that happen. A combination of self-help, our own people's ideas, and working with really good organizations on a partnership basis who do this for a living, who can help us along this journey. I think it's that combination that will get us there. Great stuff. Thank you very much, both. That's very helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Kean. Thank you. At the moment, there are no further questions. Well, with that, guys, thank you very much for everybody that's joined us both online and at the live chat. We'll be around to take any questions you've got for the rest of the day, and then we'll speak to you very soon when we do the Q3 IMS. Thank you very much, and good morning. That does conclude the conference for today. Thank you all for participating. You may now dis-