Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Hargreaves Lansdown's 2022 half- year results call. Thank you for joining us this morning. I'm Chris Hill, Chief Executive. As previously announced, we've now welcomed a new Chief Financial Officer, Amy Stirling. Amy started yesterday. As she's only joined us in the second half of the year, today I'm joined on the call by James Found, Head of Investor Relations, and James will take you through our financial performance over the first half period. You will already have seen this morning we've continued to grow through the period, performing in line with expectations and driving revenue through headwinds you will all be familiar with. Over the half, we welcomed 48,000 new active clients. We added net new business of GBP 2.3 billion, with assets hitting a record GBP 141 billion. We've continued to build our position as the U.K.'s leading digital wealth management service. We now look after nearly 1.7 million clients, and we hit a new market share high of 43.3% of the D2C market. In the summer, we outlined that we expected some normalization of share trading levels, but to levels ahead of those, pre-pandemic, and we expected the impact of lower interest rates. These revenue headwinds have been offset by strong growth in platform fees, driving flat revenue overall and highlighting the continued importance of our diversified revenue streams. Later on today, we'll be hosting a Capital Markets Day to outline our plans for how we'll drive future growth from here through a strategy to redefine wealth management. To capture this opportunity, we'll be investing GBP 175 million over the next five years. We will explain this full strategic investment at the session later on, but we've already started some of this investment in H1 to begin executing on our key growth priorities, and this is reflected in our cost figures for the period. We're clear that the market opportunity is large and growing. The wealth management industry has hit an inflection point. It's ripe for disruption and HL, with its unparalleled understanding of client needs and a strong track record of leadership, is well positioned to capitalize on the opportunity. I'm really excited about sharing more about our plans later on. We'll talk about the investment we're making and how this is going to deliver strong and sustainable returns for shareholders later on this morning. For this session, we're going to focus on our most recent period of performance. I'll now hand over to James to outline more detail on this, and then we'll take questions on our first half. We will not be taking questions on future growth plans, strategy, or financial guidance, as we'll be addressing those points in the Capital Markets Day and associated Q&A later on. With that, James, over to you. Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Over the past two years, Hargreaves Lansdown has seen the most extraordinary period in its entire history. Our staff have worked relentlessly in remote and socially distanced ways, and we have experienced barely imaginable levels of client growth and activity. Throughout this period, we have maintained a relentless focus on the client, and hence we emerge from the pandemic as a stronger, larger, and more robust business. This unique period makes meaningful short-term comparatives hard to draw. I will therefore focus today on how HL has performed against our internal expectations via the 2022 guidance we provided for a post-pandemic environment. I will provide you with greater insight into the core operational performance of our business through a set of underlying profit measures. As Chris has just outlined, we are looking forward to talking to you later today about the exciting future we see ahead for HL. His CEO statement, released this morning, contains a number of forward-looking goals and targets, which will be fully explained along with our strategy later this morning in the CMD. Please do not expect us to go into detailed Q&A mode after this morning's results session. You'll have more than enough time for that later. Looking at the first half of our financial year, you can see the financial summary on this page. Revenue has been in line with our guidance. With the expected drop in share dealing volumes and the impact of the 2020 base rate changes, overall revenue is slightly down on last year. Profit before tax is down year on year by 20%. I want to focus on the underlying profits, which are in line with the board's expectations and are down 13% year-on-year. To arrive at the underlying PBT, we have added back the initial costs of our strategic investment program of GBP 12.3 million, but more of that later. Finally, our interim dividend has been increased by 3%. Again, I will touch upon the dividend policy at the end. Dropping into more detail, starting with revenue. As we predicted, share dealing volumes normalized and the 2020 interest rate cuts were free to P&L to have their maximum impact. Despite this, revenue for the first half was just 3% down at GBP 291 million, benefiting from the diverse asset classes that our clients hold and their different revenue dynamics. Note, every individual line was within the margin guidance we gave in August. I'll cover the P&L aspects of each line first and then return to margins. Funds revenue rose 21% to GBP 133 million as higher market levels and client investments from net new business raised average AUA. Shares revenue was GBP 102 million as dealing volumes settled back to new higher sustainable levels. As context, this might be lower than 2021, but it is still more than double the pre-pandemic contribution from shares. Cash revenue was GBP 11 million as guided following the 2020 interest rate cut in yield curve reductions. HL Funds revenue rose to GBP 31 million as higher asset levels were partially offset by the targeted price reductions we first spoke about last January. The other income line saw strong AUA growth from Active Savings, but revenues were similar because at current interest rate levels, we continue to price this business line for growth. Looking at stockbroking in more detail. The chart on the left shows average daily dealing levels over the past six calendar years and how this compares to our post-pandemic guidance of around 40,000 deals a day. We've given out the same guidance at our last three sets of results, and since the U.K. exited full lockdown, volumes have been consistently around this level. This consistency is encouraging despite the last six months being a relatively mundane one for market excitement. This lack of volatility probably explains why overseas volumes, which are more lucrative, fell back, and hence margins were in the lower half of the guided range. Turning to margins on the other asset classes. This slide you have seen many times before, but rather than go through each asset class in detail and waste your time, I shall stress again your key takeaway should be that all of these margins are in line with our expectations and the margin guidance we gave in August. The only line where 2022 guidance needs updating is cash. Returns have ticked up slightly since December and February's rate rises, and hence we now expect to earn 20-25 basis points this year and 40-45 basis points in FY 2023. That's assuming base rates and the yield curve remain as they are now. Note that the impact of the recent rate rises in the current year is relatively limited as we only see the full benefit of a rate rise after 13 months given the profile of term deposits we use, whereas we increase the rates we pay to clients immediately rate rises occur. In addition, many banks are still awash with liquidity, and hence they're still paying nothing or very little on easy access cash. Moving on to costs. While this was a period of post-pandemic normalization on the revenue side, on the cost side, we have had to continue investing in Hargreaves Lansdown to thrive with the scale of growth we have experienced and to capture the size of the opportunity in front of us. I said upfront that the last two years have been an extraordinary period, and those themes remain evident here. As you may have already seen from the results announcement this morning, later today at our Capital Markets Day presentation, we will be setting out a clear plan for HL's next phase of growth to redefine wealth management in the U.K. This gives rise to a strategic investment spend, some of which we have already incurred in the first half of the year. As such, we will be reporting the cost base and profit before tax on an underlying basis as well as the statutory basis going forward for the next few years. I have two slides here, one which reconciles from the full statutory cost base, which includes the initial stages of our strategic investment program to the underlying cost base. The other with the underlying costs broken out so that you can clearly assess the operational performance of the business. Firstly, we can see that to reconcile from statutory to underlying costs, we have separated out GBP 12.3 million. This relates to staff costs and professional fees for the planning and commencement of the digital technology strategy and strategic growth initiatives along with associated compliance, infrastructure, and support costs. Looking ahead, we will continue to separately identify the strategic spend plus the cost of running dual technology systems in parallel during the period of transformation. Guidance on the scale of these costs will be given later at the CMD. Secondly, underlying operating costs for the first half were GBP 127.6 million, up 14% on last year. This is broadly in line with the client growth, where the average number of clients across the period was 15% higher than in the first half of last year. The drivers of cost this period have primarily been staff costs, where average staff numbers have increased by 14%, and we have experienced salary inflation of circa 4%. The additional headcount has mainly been in Helpdesk and Operations, plus smaller increases in various support functions such as risk and compliance as the business grows and we position ourselves for the next phase of our growth plans. Marketing costs were down as we were more targeted with our client acquisition spend. In addition, we did no cashback transfer incentive in the period, whereas we did last year. For the remainder of FY 2022, we expect underlying cost growth to remain at levels similar to the first half of the year, such that FY 2022 as a whole will be circa 13% up year on year. As we execute on the strategy, this growth rate will then come down, but more of that in the CMD. Turning to profits. The two tables here show you profit before tax and earnings per share, on the left on a statutory basis and on the right on the underlying basis. Going forward, we plan to focus primarily on the underlying measure, but I've included both for completeness today. The underlying profit before tax for the first half was GBP 163.5 million, 13% below the prior year. This is in line with the board's expectations at the start of the year for the reasons I've given during my presentation. Finally, let's finish with the interim dividend. As you know, HL has a clear dividend policy with a progressive ordinary dividend centered around a 65% payout across the market cycle, and the potential for special dividends paid out of excess cash generated from earnings. The board intends to maintain this policy going forward but has issued additional guidance today about how it intends to operate this policy during our strategic program. The group has a robust balance sheet with a healthy amount of surplus capital built up over the past five years. The board is confident that this will allow HL to undertake its strategic program while maintaining a progressive ordinary dividend through FY 2022 and 2023 with 3% per annum growth. Therefore, our dividend, our interim dividend has been lifted by 3% from GBP 0.119 to GBP 0.1226 per share, and you can expect similar in terms of the final ordinary dividend. In the short term, for FY 2022 and 2023, the special dividend will be suspended, but we expect to reinstate it from FY 2024 onwards. This will in part fund the planned investment we will take you through later today at the CMD. That ends our presentation, and we can now move on to Q&A. As a final reminder, please keep your questions to the financial performance of the business and leave strategic questions and the medium-term guidance until the CMD session later. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We will pause for a moment to assemble the queue. As a reminder, participants can also submit questions through the webcast page using the Ask a Question button. We will take our first question from Nicholas Herman of Citigroup. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yes, good morning. Can you hear me all right? Yes. Morning, Nick. Morning. As tempted as I am to ask questions on the medium-term outlook, I will have three questions, please, regarding the financials and just kind of general assumptions. Firstly, deposit betas. What deposit betas are you assuming for FY 2022 and FY 2023, please? I know that you've mentioned in your interim report that a big extent of the benefit will depend on to what extent banks pass on the rate hikes. That's question one. Question two. Apologies if you missed it during the presentation, but did you comment on share activity so far this year? If not, could you do so please? Finally, just what is the regulatory capital position at the first half, at the end of the first half? I think you were at GBP 190 million at the end of FY 2021. Thank you. James, do you want to take the cash and the reg capital ones? In terms of the cash, it is difficult to say what the sort of deposit beta is. What we have seen is that banks are reluctant to pass on any of these base rate increases at the moment, particularly on the short end. It's overnight easy access cash is still largely attracting zero. I think there's one bank that we partner with that's paying anything and the rest are still paying zero. Even on the three-month or 95-day terms that we use, it's largely still earning zero. That's just a fact of life with the banks being so awash with liquidity. The other factor that we need to be aware of, and you guys as well, as we move back up in terms of base rate, is what we actually pay to our clients. Now, we are paying term deposits to all our clients now, both in the SIPP and non-SIPP accounts, the ISA and the Fund and Share Account. As the base rates keep going up, we will look to share more of that with our clients. Yes, we don't know exactly what we will pay to clients. We'll have a look at what the competition are doing and the competitive landscape to decide on that. It's quite difficult to say, Nick, exactly what the sort of deposit beta will be, but there's clearly upside here. In the next rate increase, there will be something for clients, there will be something for HL. If we get two or three rate increases out, it might be that all of that goes to the clients. You know, we'll give you more color as and when. In terms of the capital position, we had a significant surplus, GBP 180 million-190 million at the year end. We haven't put that together in a slide at the half year, but typically because of the payment of the dividends, it is still a very healthy surplus. It will be much the same within about GBP 190 million, give or take GBP 10 million probably. The last question was just about share activity this year. There's no change to the guidance we're giving, so that probably gives you more or less an indication. You know, we have got a significant share of the retail share trading market, so you know, you can see trading will be in line with, I think what you'd expect. We've had a number of volatile days. We've had a number of quiet days. You know, that's how the client base will trade. It's you know, HL does have that diversified business. We've got the cash in a rising interest rate environment. We've got the funds that build and grow over time. According to waves of activity, you've got the impact of the share trading. In terms of activity, it is in line with the guidance that we're talking about. Thank you. That's helpful. I mean, just to come back to the cash question. I mean, is there anything you can say in terms of how that might flex, depending on how much of that, how much of those rates will get passed on? Just to push you a little bit more to expand on that answer, please. Just so investors kind of have an understanding of. Well, to say, Nick, in all honesty, Yes, we've given the guidance for FY 2023, our initial guidance at 40-45 basis points. Until we get, you know, the next actual base rate rises, it's difficult to say because we make a call on that day. If we get a rate rise today, we have a committee that meets, and we'll look and we'll make an assessment of what we're going to pay our clients. We aim to be, you know, one of the top payers for interest rates to clients. Y ou've got to see what the sort of key peer group are doing out there. I think Nick also, when it comes to longer term guidance, particularly about revenue margins, you'll get more on the call later on this morning. Thank you both. The next question is coming from the line of Andrew Crean from Autonomous. Please go ahead. Good morning, all. Couple of questions. Perhaps I could ask about Active Savings. I think the forward base rate market has got base rates at about 1.5% by halfway through this year. Could you tell us when, what level of base rates you'll start charging a meaningful amount for Active Savings? I think you talked initially about up to 25 basis points. Are you able to give cash margin guidance for 2023 based on the forward rates which currently exist rather than on the current rates? Shall I take Active Savings, James, and you take cash margin guidance? It's going to be a subject you're going to be an expert on by the end of the day, given the questions on that. Andrew, on Active Savings, I'm not going specifically into exactly when the margin starts ticking up. I think, and particularly when we talk about it later on today, we've grown to about 100,000 clients using Active Savings. There's about GBP 4 billion of assets, and we've done that in a low and a falling interest rate environment. We're now moving into a rising interest rate environment. That service is in good state, and we see some significant opportunity of going on the front foot, which we're going to talk about that later on. With that we would expect to see a steady pickup in the margin. I'm not going to go any further than that. Andrew, on the cash margin, I mean, to just reiterate the point, until we see these rate rises, we don't know what the banks are going to do, what they're going to pass on, and how we will pass on some of that rate rise to our clients. It's really difficult to answer that. When we were at 75 basis points previously, going back a number of years, we were in mid-70s. I think one six-month period, we got just over 80 basis points. If we look back post the financial crisis, we had a six-month period where I think we were just over 2%. Yes, that was quite unusual times obviously, and the banks were chasing after money and were giving very good rates. Would we return to anything like, you know, 200 basis points? Yes, arguably not. I'm sure the regulator and the press and media might have a view on things if you're taking that much revenue margin from cash. There will be a ceiling at some point, but we can't tell you where that would be at the moment. Thank you. The next question is coming from the line of Bruce Hamilton from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, your line is open. Hi there. Morning, guys, and thanks for taking the question. Just on the sort of net new business. I guess, you're running below 3% in a quarter that was actually a pretty good quarter if I look at broader sort of risk appetite and fund flows for sort of traditional asset managers, say. AJ Bell, who I know is smaller, saw net new money growth at around 16%. I mean, what gives you confidence that you're going to get back to high single-digit percent, and how quickly do you think you can do that, and how important will Active Savings be within that? Thank you. Morning, Bruce. I think a couple of things. I would first thing I'd point to is the increase in market share to 43.3%. James also made a comment about us not doing a cashback, which we've done previously, in the second quarter of the year. You know, James probably also talked to the different splits that we've had, first half, second half in terms of how net new business can flow. Certainly, when you're looking against the comparatives, you know, we've obviously not got a vaccine Monday type event in there and all of that activity. All of these things do have an impact on client behavior. What I would say, though, is we are primed and ready for the tax year-end, which is always our busiest time of year. We're going into that with more clients than we've ever had before. If you haven't seen the latest Switch Your Money ON campaign, we're going to show it to you this morning anyway. We've got you know, the marketing is up and running, and we are pushing into that and c lients they do have to, and they do use their allowances as they go on. We expect a busy tax year-end season. Obviously, you've got the impact of, you know, whatever's happening in the Ukraine. You've got the cost of living and inflationary impacts on that. You know, we're primed and ready and confident as we go into the tax year-end, which is always the busiest part of the year. Just to check, that 43% market share, that I don't think includes in the market either AJ Bell or Vanguard Europe, who are growing quite fast, does it? No, it does include those. The Platforum Group has quite a wide coverage in their market share, so it definitely includes Vanguard, AJ Bell, Interactive Investor, Barclays, Fidelity, and then more. Okay. Got it. Okay, thank you. Here, everyone, just a quick reminder. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star and one on your telephone keypad. The next question is coming from the line of Gregory Simpson from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead, Sir. Your line is open. Hi. Good morning. Thank you for the presentation. Just a few from my side. The first is, could you provide an update on the asset retention rate? I think it was 91.4% for the full year 2021. I think I only saw the client retention rate in the release which did move up. That was the first. Second one on the share dealing side. Can you give any color on the proportion of activity that is overseas in nature currently? And what range has been? I think you mentioned there's been a bit of a shift in there. Just the last one is, do you have any idea on the kind of FSCS cost your kind of budgeting for the full year? Any kind of indication from the scheme at this stage? Thank you. On the overseas share dealing, Greg, it represented about 20% of our deal volumes. That's lower than we saw in H2 of the last financial year, where it got up to about 27%. You can remember January and February of 2021, that's when we had all the meme stock craze, and it really shot up. Obviously, because we get the FX margins on overseas deals, it improves the revenue line against shares. It settled back down to 20%, which is, again, significantly higher than we were seeing pre the pandemic. It's not at the sort of the peaks that we've seen in some crazy months. Then you talked about the asset retention. Asset retention, I can't remember it off the top of my head, but if it was 91.4% for the financial year, it is very close. The client retention rate had gone up. That moved to 92.7% from 92.3% in FY 2021. The asset retention was very similar year-on-year. Our final question. Yes, sorry, Gregory. The FSCS, no, we haven't got any indication at present. We wait for the online calculator to appear from the FSCS, and then we can plug in our revenue numbers and get an initial idea of what our fee will be. Given that our revenues, they go up, I'd imagine, because it's based on last year's revenues, it will be a little bit higher. I'm not aware of them, they're seeking to raise a huge increase this year. Hopeful that it will be fairly similar to what we saw last year. Great. Thank you. The next one is coming from Haley Tam from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. The line is opened. Morning, Chris. Morning, James. Hopefully this doesn't veer into future territory. Just a quick question on your fee margins. You've given us the guidance for 2023 on cash of 40-45 basis points. I appreciate that's initial guidance. I'm just trying to square this with the 42%-44% you talk about as a blended revenue margin from FY 2023 for the whole group, given, you know, we know HL Funds is above that. Is that an expectation implicitly therefore the share margin is going down significantly? Just trying to understand the moving parts. Thank you. Hayley, morning. Look, I don't want to talk about that now. We're definitely going to address this on the call later on, and it's much easier to address that in the context of our plans and how we're investing. Understood. Thank you. There are no further questions on the conference line. We will now address the questions submitted via the webcast page. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's question and answer session. I will now hand back to Chris Hill for concluding remarks. Thank you. Right. Bonnie, thank you very much. Thank you, everybody. Thanks for your questions. I can tell you as much as I was asking you to hold back on questions about what comes next, I'm itching to get up and start talking about it. Hoping to see as many of you as possible in the room, and you'll get to meet large numbers of the team. That's really important. I think it's really exciting what we've laid out today, and I'm really looking forward to talking to you later on. In the meantime, obviously, if you've got any other questions on the numbers that we put out, James and I are available throughout the day. Great. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you, Bonnie. Thank you too. Everyone, this is the end of the conference call today. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect. Enjoy the rest of your day.