Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Hargreaves Services plc investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab that's just situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please just 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 will publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet Company platform. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll, and if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from Hargreaves Services plc. Gordon, good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for everyone who's taken time to attend and listen to the Hargreaves story. Can I just encourage you that if there's any misunderstandings, anything that you do not understand from the presentation, and you don't get answers that you're happy with in the question section, please contact us. We are very keen to engage with retail investors, make sure they have a very clear picture of what the business is doing. So here we go. Let's crack into the presentation for the interim results. So, first thing is, for those of you who have known us or know the story, but just for anyone that's new, that's reading in, Hargreaves has been on a journey, and we're very much in the realize stage of that. We have three businesses, so this is very much a sum of the parts play. So it should be quite easy to get your head around the three businesses. There's a services business. That business has a number of contracts spread over a wide portfolio of industries. We'll talk about it in more, in some detail, but key theme of these is they're inflation-resistant contracts, and we've seen through the cycle when inflation was peaking over 10%, but we still delivered the profits that people expected. So that gives you the comfort of that business. I'm going to go into a bit more detail. Land, David Anderson, who's with me, will talk about that in some detail. Main points, just at high level, is remember, we do not mark-to-market account our land portfolio. It's in the historic cost. So a lot of the big flagship projects you'll see there were based on old mining sites that were held at a very low cost. Finally, the joint venture in Germany. Again, I'll give some flavor to that and what's going on there to give some visibility, helped by Steve. So just quickly take you over the page. This is the result. So look, services is having a great time doing very well. I'll give you a bit more flavor about how we see the outlook of that later in the presentation. In Hargreaves Land, by the nature of what David does, it's very sort of transactional. So you can imagine in this six months, not a lot's happened. Six months, we're just moving into, there's gonna be a lot that happens, which results in David and his team having the best year ever. Again, David will give you the explanation of what's going on, and what's leading to that, and why our confidence is so high that it's gonna be a great year. As far as HRMS is concerned, again, there's two parts to that. There's the DK Recycling, which is ring-fenced from the trading business, so that's had a challenging six months. Again, we're not concerned because the steps that have been taken to compensate means we see DK removing its profit in H2. Trading, we're expecting it to replicate very similar to what it did in H1. When you look at the business, you can see net asset of GBP 6 a share. A big thing, as you can see, nearly GBP 19 million in cash in the bank, but the big thing, the theme is this 18p of debt. So being very clear, we're very confident that this group will be able to deliver 36p per annum dividend, and that will organically grow when we continue to grow the services business. We'll explain where that step-up has taken place, but, we've done it now that it's H1 and H2, it's not the old one-third, two-thirds, but it's just 18p now and 18p later, against some detail. So without further ado, I shall hand over to Stephen Craigen, who's Group FD, who will talk you through the financial review. Thanks, Gordon. So just the usual rundown of the PNL to start with. Headline revenue has come down from GBP 160 million to GBP 110 million. However, that's mainly due to the timing of sales within Hargreaves Land. There's been several sales that have actually occurred post-period end, or we expect to do so, and that's what's really affected that number. Underlying services revenue is up 2%, which is encouraging and in line with our expectations. But the big piece of news is the significant improvement in the margin on PBT with the services. Moving from 6% margin, GBP 6.5 million, up to GBP 7.8 million or 7% margin. So what's driving that margin improvement? It's mainly two folds. One is on our earth moving business, we are significantly further into our HS2 activities, and as such, able to remove some of the risk from the contract. We've been able to recognize work at a slightly better margin. And also, our engineering services that we're providing is a higher, you know, higher skilled work and able to command a higher margin, and that's what's driving that, that number there. The next line down is our asset disposals. So for those of you who were joining in two years ago, you'll have noticed we had a one-off sale of some assets in FY 2023. Those assets obviously have not been sold again, so it's important that we strip that out, so we compare numbers like for like. Hargreaves Land has had a loss in the first half of the year. It had a profit last year. This is purely due to timing, and as Gordon mentioned, Hargreaves Land is poised to have its best year on record within the group. David will outline the confidence levels on that in a moment. On HRMS, which is our German joint venture, again, we've made a loss in the first half of the year due to the difficult conditions out there. But in a couple of slides time, I'll break that down for you to explain what's going on there, and Gordon will enlighten you on why we think that will turn a corner in the second half. Other numbers are broadly straightforward, I think, until we get down to the dividend per share, which is a significant sixfold increase from GBP 0.03 to GBP 0.18. The reason for that, ignore that rather enormous jump, is twofold. First of all, we are expecting to buy out the pension scheme in the not-too-distant future, if, in fact, I expect it to be quite imminent, and that will remove the need to spend nearly GBP 2 million a year deficit contribution payments, equating to roughly GBP 0.05 per share per annum. The other increase element is in relation to the cash returns that we're seeing now from HRMS. They sent GBP 8 million back to us at the end of the half year, and we expect levels of that to continue ongoing, and I'll outline why we think that's sustainable as well, on a future slide. So just to run through the balance sheet, I, I'll highlight where the cash is currently invested, but I will also give an overview of where our head is in terms of expectation of value around the three business streams that we have. So in terms of services, the capital employed is only GBP 9 million, very consistent with what it was at the year-end. The reason we are able to keep this so low is all of our fixed assets are secured on finance leases. So we're using the bank's money rather than investors' money or shareholders' money to do that. And the particularly impressive thing, I believe, is our very tight working capital controls that we have. You know, we've got a negative working capital of less than GBP 1 million within services. So we are being effectively paid before we have to pay a lot of our suppliers on that front. That GBP 9 million of capital employed is able to generate at least GBP 20 million of EBITDA per annum. So in terms of valuation of that business, you know, I'm sure you've got models that you would use to try and value the shares. If you apply just the standard 5x multiple to EBITDA, you're at GBP 100 million, and therefore, we're talking roughly GBP 3 a share in terms of a simplistic valuation of that business for now. In terms of land, there's obviously a significant amount of money invested into land, GBP 80 million in total. The biggest single part of that is Blindwells, which is our housing development in Scotland, outside Edinburgh, of GBP 40 million. This is a bit of an unusual one. We've invested the money into Blindwells in order to demonstrate our ability as a master developer. Now that that's happened, future schemes will be much more low capital, as we're able to negotiate option agreements, profit share arrangements, which don't require quite so high amounts of capital. We expect Blindwells to unwind in the medium term, and therefore, we expect the amount of cash held in the land to drop from, I would say, GBP 80 million down to around about GBP 20 million in due course. Much of that unwind is to do with Blindwells, but also we have cash unwind coming from the renewables, which we announced in the summer. Currently, on the balance sheet, the renewables assets are in at book cost, GBP 7 million, and we have an estimated value, sales value, third-party valuation of between GBP 27 million and GBP 28 million on, on that asset. So that's an upgrade of GBP 20 million on the cost, the book cost of those assets. So the GBP 80 million is our cost. We have not marked that, that value to market value. If you add on the upscale value from the renewables, you're at another GBP 100 million on land. Again, it's very simplistically GBP 3 a share in the land business. Then on HRMS, the big news here is that we're starting to get cash back. The repatriation of GBP 8 million in the first half has brought the capital employed down significantly, as you can see there, from GBP 76 million down to GBP 67 million. There is no intention from the board to reverse that cash flow. Previously, we had invested GBP 75 million worth of short-term loan to support additional working capital requirements in that business when the commodity cycle was hot. There's no intention from the board to do that again. This is about removing cash from that German business and being able to pull it back into our balance sheet in order to repatriate to shareholders in due course. In terms of valuation on HRMS, and Gordon will talk about his thoughts on DK, but even if we just consider that to be valued at book value, and all we get is our cash back, we're talking another GBP 2 a share in terms of valuation. So very simplistically, we've got GBP 3 in services, GBP 3 in land, and GBP 2 in HRMS. There's a GBP 8 valuation, high level, in terms of where we see the business at the moment. Cash and leasing debt broadly net out, so they certainly do by the year-end, and therefore, we sort of say we're net debt neutral. Current share price is GBP 4, growing to 8 in due course. The big question is, of course, timing of delivery on these cash receipts, and that is, that is one of the reasons for increasing the dividend to create a 9% yield based on a GBP 4 dividend, four-pound share price rather. So GBP 4 up to GBP 8 with a 9% yield. Currently, we think that's quite a compelling case, and that's why we want to, want to, want to lay that out to all of you today. The other thing I'll pick up on here is just around the pension scheme. Obviously, it was a key strategic target at year-end to remove the pension scheme. We're not quite there. It's on the balance sheet as an asset of GBP 6 million. However, it will cost no less, sorry, no more than GBP 9 million to buy the scheme out. I'm hoping that it will be significantly less. The big disconnect there is just the awkward provision for our accounting and how we have to account for it. The real... In reality, its liability is certainly no more than GBP 9 million, and we hope to buy that off certainly in quarter one this calendar year. Another key fact, just to point out, we remain free of bank debt, cash on the balance sheet, no debenture over any of our assets. In terms of the cash flow in the first half of the year, the first three columns on here are effectively an explanation of the EBITDA within the business. So we have PBT of GBP 2.7, on which GBP 1.7 was a loss of the joint ventures, which is non-cash, much like when it's been profitable, it was also non-cash and stripped out. And then we've got GBP 7 million worth of depreciation, which relates to the assets we have under the HS2 contract, but other services contracts. At GBP 7.2 million, depreciation is largely offset by the leasing payments of GBP 8 million. Very minor CapEx, let's be honest, throughout the group. And then we've also broken out within our working capital movements, the investment in Blindwells site during the year of GBP 5 million, which will unwind in the second half as we get sales completed. And then the other working capital movement, it largely reflects the GBP 8 million receipt we received from HRMS in the first half. Final piece of the jigsaw is really the dividends paid of just under GBP 6 million, which relates to the final dividend that was announced as of May 2023 financial year end. So we closed the half year on GBP 18.7 million. So just to give a bit more color on HRMS's results for the first half of the year and how that result's been made up, because you don't get too much from the annual report and accounts. So the business is in three parts, but two parts that are material are the trading business and the DK Recycling business. So the trading business has had a significant reduction in revenue, mostly driven by a reduction in volume, as a lot of the customers they work with are on short-time working, reduced shift patterns and such like. So that's resulted in a significant reduction in volumes, but also we've seen a reduction in commodity prices as well, which is taking a toll off the revenue. That has squeezed margins, and therefore, we've seen a reduction in profitability from the trading business from GBP 16.5 million, down to just under GBP 6 million. Now, one of the things I really want to point out here, because a question that will no doubt be in your minds, is around the sustainability of the additional GBP 7 million that we expect to get from Germany every year. How, how are we so certain about that? Well, the trading business and DK are ring-fenced from each other, and in the first half of the year, the HRMS trading business has done GBP 6 million PBT. This is a low point in the cycle, and even if all they're able to achieve is the same again in the second half, which we are obviously hopeful they do better than that, we're at GBP 12 million PBT. If we take tax off the top of that, we're at GBP 8.5 million, and then we are entitled to 86% of their profits, which is more than GBP 7 million per annum. So we're very confident that GBP 7 million is sustainable out to ongoing profits without any further unwind of the balance sheet. If we look at the DK, DK's revenue is down about 7%, 70 to 66 million GBP. You might expect that to come down further, given the noise about pig iron prices that have gone up dramatically. But the reason it's not down further is because of the volumes. So DK have traded a lot more volume in the current year as they've unwound some of the balance sheet, and you can see that in the inventory slide, where we've got a reduction in stock held. However, because of the significant reduction in pig iron, which has been impacted by the fact that there is no sanction, or there was no EU sanction against the importing of Russian pig iron. However, one of the major impacts and one of the major inputs into pig iron production is coke price. That is an embargoed product from Russia. We've seen a reduction in pig iron revenues and an increase in our cost base, which has actually led to a loss in the first half of the year. Gordon will talk about the reasons why we think that will turn around in the second half, and we're confident it'll be profitable in H2. The only other thing I'd pick out on this slide, really, is in the bottom left, around the exposure. As we continue to see this increased amount of cash come back from HRMS, we expect to see the exposure come down, which is a realization of the assets out there. Gordon, can I hand back to you to talk about services? Thank you, Stephen. So I think Stephen's laid out a clear picture, which hopefully everyone can get around some of the parts. So let's just dig into the three parts. So I'll, I'll cover services, Dave will then cover property, and then I'll come back on Germany to just underpin those numbers that Stephen laid out. So really, services, for those of you who know us well, but for those who don't, we work in the sectors of energy, environmental, infrastructure, and industrial, so we're not exposed to retail, one point. These are things that always need to be done. There's 60 contracts that spread over a wide cross-section. The biggest concentration is on contract on HS2, which I'll talk about in a second, but by the half year, we already have 90% of the revenue already secured. Typical operating margins of 5%. You can see on the left, we've got blue chip customers, which means we are comfortable with credit exposure. Our biggest customer is effectively the government on HS2. We've been through the inflation cycle and still delivered the profits, so you can see they have been stress-tested, our contracts, they are inflation-resistant. So that gives you the main business. You can see, we're, we're doing very well. The question on the next page that comes up is: Well, hang on, Gordon, I listened to all that, but, but HS2 is going to come to an end. I can understand you've got 59 other contracts, but, you know, HS2 is your biggest contributor, so what happens there? Really simple. HS2 has two more years left to run. We never factored in the second stage of HS2, so that wasn't an issue for us. The three contracts that we're really focused on is Lower Thames, Sizewell, and Tungsten West. Now, they're three, what I would call, irons in the fire. As HS2 slows down after the next two years, which one of these will replace it? Well, if we take them in order where I think the most chance of them replacing. First of all, is Sizewell. We're already working at Sizewell, and we have a great relationship with any earthmoving contractor there. I think we're doing a good job. I think there's a good chance of us turning that into a big long-term contract. That's one. We have to do a good job, though, to be clear. Secondly, I think in terms of opportunity, it's Tungsten West. Now, Tungsten West, you'll track as a listed entity, you'll see if you follow the publicity, that basically they're waiting for a report or a permit on noise from their processing plant. If they get the permit, the team there are very confident of raising GBP 70 million. They've already been backed by nearly GBP 5 million by LANXESS, and they are very confident of raising the extra GBP 70 million to go into production. If it goes into production, we, we have the benefit of a 10-year contract, open book, cost plus 7.5%. Revenue will be between GBP 20-25 million, so you can expect to get GBP 1.5-2 million of profit a year for those 10 years. The important point to recognize, though, is when we negotiate the contract, it is not only open book cost plus, but it's also without credit risk. So before we turn the wheel on the terms of the contract, we need to be paid. So if something went wrong in two or three years' time, we would not pick up a bad debt. So that's a key feature. Lower Thames is probably the highest risk of not coming through, and I simply put that down to if we get a change of government, this crossing may come into question, for it being in the South. Who knows? We hope not. We are well positioned, with Balfour Beatty if it goes ahead. So what I'd like to say is, look, we've got three irons in the fire. If I get one of them, you're going to be fairly consistent. If I get two, you're going to get a pickup. If I get three, I get a cherry on top of the icing on the cake. So hopefully, that gives you some comfort that the sustainability of the revenue stream in services is there. We don't need acquisitions. It's going to be organic growth, and just looking after the customer base that we have. Like I said, there's 60 contracts. Alongside that, we've been very successful with our engineering capability. These are two projects we mentioned. You'll always have 2-3—one, two, three contracts of these type running through the business as well. So on that note, I'll hand over to David, who will just talk you through the land and renewables piece. Thanks, Gordon. So, the core activity is Hargreaves Land. We effectively promote and deliver land with planning consent for house builders, industrial logistics, and retail warehouse users together with renewable energy projects. Sometimes we'll actually do the direct development of a commercial project, provided they're on a forward sale basis. Initially, we've used former mining sites, and then we've moved further into new projects, as Stephen mentioned. The new projects tend to be held on options, development agreements, most agreements, where we rarely actually own the land. We draw it down, we sell it straight through to end users and infrastructure accordingly on a forward sale basis. So again, it's moving towards the capital light model. In terms of market conditions in the first half of the year, well, obviously, it was dominated by a very strong rise in inflation, which triggered a substantial increase in interest rates. This had the result of a softening investment yields on commercial projects. We saw significant weaker demand from house builders for land, and commercial occupiers had to have it sitting on their hands. However, as we've got through towards H2, what we've seen is a significant pickup in house builder activity. All the housebuilders are now back in the market, bidding on land. Prices remain under pressure. It's clear that they're still suffering from cost inflation, but are not able to pass it on through increased house prices. But they are actively buying land, and virtually everybody's back in the market. Commercial occupiers, there, again, we've seen a significant uptick since the beginning of the year in commercial activity, and we'll see how that feeds through to actual, contracts being signed. In terms of the key events, in the first half of the year, normally in the first half of the year, we, we don't appear very heavily on the P&L side, because most of our profit events are in the second half. Last year was something of an exception. This year we're back to the sort of normal process. So in the first half, we completed, ahead of program, a 191,000 sq ft logistics unit. It's our, scheme at Unity. That was forward sold, where we essentially drew the line straight through, under option to the, the ultimate funder. We then constructed the unit via a fixed price contract with the contractor, and were paid straight through from the funder. So again, our capital deployed, and that was minimal. At Westfield, just after the half year, we completed the sale of a long lease, ground lease investment on energy waste plant. That's our Westfield site in Fife. This completed for GBP 7.6 million, the net cash proceeds, so that will appear in the second half numbers. And then evolving the same period, we exchanged contracts for the sale of a 185-unit residential plot, of GBP 4.9 million. That's conditional upon planning. We have a mandate to approve planning. We're just working our way through the actual planning agreements. They should be completed in the next month, and then that, that sale will complete again before the end of the year, at the year end. Then finally, Blindwells, we already have conditional contract, unconditional contract in place with Avant Homes for the sale of a large site at Blindwells. That will complete in the second half, having now completed all the seller's works. So again, that gives us confidence that we expect to achieve where forecasted the market for the year end. On the page on the renewables, well, we have an update on this. Previously, we had a collection of renewable assets where we had good visibility on the scale of the renewables assets, the timing of when they were going to be delivered, and therefore were able to get an external valuation by Jones Lang LaSalle of between GBP 27 million and GBP 29 million. Since then, we've now got two of the three wind farms are now operational, with the third one being under construction. Out of the six access agreements that we have, two are operational, two are under construction, and the other two are in pre-construction phase. And then we've got two battery storage schemes, which are either consented or at the moment to approve, and expect to move into construction phase in the near term. So they're on track really to the values to be realized as expected. These assets have lease terms of between 28 and 42 years, with rents linked either to fixed rates plus RPI, in the case of battery storage and solar, or they're linked to power pricing, but with annual, linked reviews. So effectively, they're annuity grade investments, and we're expecting the first tranche of these renewable assets to be going to market in FY 2025, circa about 400 MW. So probably six actual assets as a single package. So again, that will start to realize cash from that and return them back to group as we, we intended. And then, interestingly, we've significantly expanded beyond those schemes valued by Jones Lang, significantly expanded, the additional renewable opportunities, that we're now working on. So we originally expected last August, about 800 MW from the opportunities. We've got to over 2,000 now, and that is a mix of battery storage, wind assets, and solar. Time scales for those are uncertain in the main at the moment, so we're not really able to give much guidance on when they're likely to be realized. We need to get the grid connection dates confirmed and have a better understanding of when the planning will be granted. But we're talking really a window between 2027 and 2031-2032 as when they're allowed to actually land. It won't all land, but we expect the majority to, and just confirm they're outside of the GBP 27-29 million valuation that Jones Lang have already applied. Back to you, Gordon. Thanks, Stephen. Moving on to the third leg of the business, Germany. Again, Stephen's given some granularity for you, which I hope helps. Just to recap, for those who do not know the business, we effectively get 86% of the value out of this business, although we own 49.9%, which changes the accounting principle to use. We don't have control of this business, although we get 86% of the value. There's only three parts to it. Coal pulverization plant is roughly breakeven. The reason for that is it's going to source into the markets when the lignite mines close in Germany, and they haven't closed yet because of the energy crisis in Germany with the problems that's happened in Ukraine. I'll focus on the two that are real drivers at the moment. Like I said, the coal pulverization plant, just waiting for this closure of the German mines. Trading business, it trades raw materials around Germany. It's obviously been affected by the fact that Germany is technically in a recession, and they're, you know, they're working with four-day working. So that obviously has impacted on that. DK Recycling is a business that recycles waste from steel plants around Europe. And again, I'll explain that in a bit of detail in a second. So just over the page, let's talk about the trading business. Trading business is a business that's been with us for about 15 years, never lost money. The team that they are, the other shareholders, so they, they're aligned with us in terms of delivering value. What happened was, when we put these assets in, both the grinding plant and DK, it gave them more opportunities to trade, and therefore, we've seen this step up. We also said that obviously there'll be a low point, and it will come down. Typically, what we said is the extra assets we added brought the base up by about GBP 10 million, and you can see that here. At a low point, they typically make about GBP 2 million-GBP 3 million a year in the old business. So add the two together, it's sort of bottoming out at about GBP 12 million. We think it's about as bad as it gets. First half has been GBP 6 million, as Stephen said, so it's no, there's no real cyclic nature to this. Six in the first half, we think a very conservative six in the second half would give you 12, and that feeds into why we think the sustainable, the dividend effect of trading is deliverable. I would expect it to move that back up through the cycle again, but it'll be oscillating between maybe a floor of about 13, up to maybe 20. I mean, if you look at the slide, you'll see at the peak, you know, they were up at 25. So that's the trading business. The really interesting bit, and the bit I get excited about, is DK Recycling. So it's a recycling plant. For those who don't know, it takes steel dust from steel plants all over Europe that would otherwise go to landfill. Now, the dynamics that are going on here, in H1, it's first of all, let's talk about zinc. So zinc is a very cyclical product, as you can see by the graph. So what's happened is, zinc prices have fallen, and that's resulted in a number of zinc mines that produce virgin zinc, shutting and closing because they can't produce at those prices. So capacity goes down, inventory gets exhausted, prices go back up, and that's what you're seeing. And if you follow any of the zinc quotes, you'll see people are talking about that. 60% of our output is hedged, but remember, 40% is exposed to this. So as prices recover, it will go straight to the bottom line. The second point, again, Stephen touched on it, is pig iron and coke. So you can see from the graph, they always strongly correlate, which is simple to understand, because whoever's producing pig iron needs coke to produce it. So what happens in the past is that they move in sympathy. What happened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine is that the coke that came from Russia under all energy products was embargoed. So you had a shortage of coke, which drove the—you would expect, would drive the price of pig iron up. But the problem was, there wasn't an embargo on importing Russian pig iron into Europe. So what was happening was the Russians were dumping pig iron into Europe, driving down prices to get foreign exchange. Now, after some strong lobbying, the EU from January have brought in sanctions. They come in over three years, which will embargo pig iron from Russia. When that announcement was made, we saw prices start to move up, and we expect them to move up again on the back of the embargo starting to take part in January of this coming, in the current January period. A final piece, remember, we take 500,000 tons of dust a year from various steel plants around Europe. Actually, there is more dust than we can cope with, so there is a shortage of capacity. We're the only place you can deal with these type of dusts. And to give you an example, we typically do three-year contracts. They all come renewing in the December renewal, but they're staggered over three years, so not all at once. And the advantage we have is we've had to go to customers and ask for a significant increase in gate fees, those that we do for renewal. And there was a comment from one of them who was, "Well, we're not prepared to take it. We're having a hard time like you are. We'll keep the prices where they are." And I went, "Okay, that's fine. Then we'll go. We've got other customers prepared to pay the higher gate fee." And the response was, "But you can't do that to us. We've been a partner for the long term, and it'll really screw up our recycling targets if we have to put this to landfill." So we achieved an increase in price, which is above inflation, on all of the customers who came up for renewal. So I think the three drivers, why we're confident that DK will move back into profit in the H2. ESG is an important point. I just want to differentiate Hargreaves from maybe other businesses. ESG for us is not a, a box-ticking exercise. The important thing is, with ESG, it's a brand differentiator. So much is said that we've invested heavily in ESG. We appointed a new head of ESG, and you might look at me and say, "Well, why are you spending that money?" The answer is: because the customers that we are targeting put it into their weighting on awarding contracts. So it's not simply about delivering at the lowest cost, it's also about what your ESG credentials. So we believe driving ESG is giving us a brand differentiator will lead into margin improvement, and you'll see that over the next few years. So over the page, really the final bit is hopefully, we've taken you step by step through this business. There's three parts to it. Hopefully, I've reassured you that Services result is both stable and may improve, but when HS2 comes to an end, we have opportunities which I think will at least keep it where it is, if not see it grow. Please don't forget there's 60 other contracts. Obviously, you might lose one or two, but we hope to win more than we lose, so I hope to see organic growth there. One of the things that Stephen mentioned is the buyout of the pension in Q1. When that happens, that will then make services a much more saleable business in the future. And I think, you know, the multiple that, that Stephen's applied to it is very realistic. You can come up with your own view of what multiple you'd apply to that if you do a sum of the parts. That's for you to do, but, taking out the pension not only allows us to increase the dividend because we don't have to spend GBP 2 million into pension, it also, I think, makes services a much more saleable business in the future if ever anyone wants to buy it. Land, like I said, please remember, it's all in a historic cost. I make no excuse for the fact that we have all these assets to do that are all coal mining pedigree. We invested a lot of money to prove what we could do, and I'm fortunate that David joined us from Henry Boot and has helped deliver that value. But now we're moving to a much more capital light model, typically, let's say GBP 20 million invested, and therefore, you'll see the liberation of that money. The other thing to remember is renewables. As David said, and we've said in the statement, we're going to market in the financial year ending 2025 with the first tranche. Tranches are always bigger than GBP 10 million in size. Quite the size of that tranche, we're not clear quite yet, but it's gonna be going to market in FY 2025. That That is a statement for you, and also, it's gonna be bigger than GBP 10 million, and therefore, that will release cash. Part of this GBP 27 million we're talking about, but please remember, without any value on it today, is the other renewables coming down the track. So hopefully you can get comfortable because the land isn't mark to market, it's a historic cost. So even if we get book and renewables, then I hope we'll deliver a profit off that land because it is relatively cheap in our books, so I think that's outside that. In Germany, you can value that as you want. I think if I was valuing Germany, I would look at the trading business and say, "Okay, I'm going to apply a book," because there's a lot of very competent individuals, but it is those individuals that hold the value. DK is a much more interesting proposition. It's in the recycling space, and you can look at the sustainable EBITDA and come to a conclusion and apply your own multiple. But I think recovering the book value on HRMS is not a difficult stretch for anyone to get their heads around. So I think that shows you where, with the money from Germany, the money from services, and the removal of the potential seeds, why it's very easy to see you've got the sustainable dividend of GBP 0.36, which allows you to sit there and say, "Right, at a share price of X, I've got GBP 0.36 coming, and if I do the sum of the parts, there's all this other money coming to me, so I can sit and wait while Gordon and his team executes the delivery of value on these other assets." Just over the page, what I hope reassures you is we have a very strong board. Roger McDowell, a lot of you will know, very experienced Chairman. We also have our largest shareholder, Harwood Capital, represented on the board in Nick Mills, which represents nearly 30% of the shares. I personally still own 8% of the group, so again, I think, shareholders and ourselves are very well aligned with the board. We have a very strong balance sheet. You know, there is no bank debt, as we've said. So again, we don't have to. In this next 3-5 years, when we execute all of this, deliver real value for you all, if something happens, we're not in a hurry. So we, we know the time value of money, so we won't hold on to something, trying to optimize it against time value of money. But at the same point of view, we won't be pushed into a corner that we have to sell anything on the cheap. My job and my team's job has been to prove to you, I hope, that this is a sustainable dividend. There's a lot of hidden intrinsic value here. You can see the forward pipeline and the way we're going, and I think it's a very simple business now for people to understand, with three businesses that each can easily be valued. So on that note, I would like to close and open for questions. Perfect. Gordon, David, Stephen, if I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab that's situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. But just while the team take a few moments to review those questions that were submitted already, 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 your investor dashboard. Guys, as you can see there in the Q&A tab, we have received a number of questions, from investors throughout your presentation this afternoon. Thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. Stephen, if I may, sir, just hand over to you to chair the questions, and if I could just ask you to read them out, and then give your responses where it's appropriate to do so, and then I'll pick up from you at the end. Thank you. Of course. Thank you. So, we had one pre-submitted question, which was: Could you provide a thorough revenue and profit forecast for the following two years and the one just ended? I think, unfortunately, we're not allowed to provide explicit forecasts under listing rules. However, what I would say to the individual who's raised the question and also all of the people on the call, I would like to direct you towards the Walbrook PR website. In their investor section, they have a two-page document outlining sort of the key points around Hargreaves, and included within there is some high-level guidance around the questions that you've just asked. So hopefully, that resolves the question. If you're not able to find it, please email Walbrook PR, and they should be able to point you in the right direction. Second question from Sam: When you are paying GBP 0.36 a year in dividend, do you expect the net asset value per share to increase or decrease over the coming years? I think I'll take that one. In terms of the net asset value, I would expect to reduce if we are paying a dividend that is greater than our earnings per share. At that point, we would be removing value out of the balance sheet. The forecasts that we're seeing so far, GBP 0.36 per share, is less than our forecasted EPS. Therefore, I don't expect the NAV of the group's balance sheet to reduce in the coming years as we pay GBP 0.36 per year. If anything, it should, it should increase because our profits should outweigh the dividend we're paying out. Next question is from Mark. I think, Gordon, this one's possibly for you. What needs to happen before the tender is issued on Sizewell C, presumably for the main works? Yeah, well, as you can imagine, with all these types of issues, it's held up with the government. But if you follow the press on Sizewell C, you see there's been more money released to push the project on. We are actually there working as we speak, but it is a government decision. But again, if you follow the press, so I point you towards that, you'll see that, you know, spades have to be in the ground quite soon, in the next couple of years. But we're, we're at the mercy of government. But remember, HS2, as I said before, has two more years left to run, so we're comfortable with that timescale. Thank you. Next question, I think is the one for you as well, Gordon, from Lawrence. Will all sizable new contract wins come with built-in inflation protection, or would the company opt for a flat fee-type proposal in order to win business? That's a very good question. Thank you for that. Sorry I missed that because, we've been talking to shareholders, today. While I'm Chief Executive, we will not go for fixed price contracts as a policy. I think you're all well aware of, of the disasters that have happened in the construction sector, where people have chased revenue and entered into these fixed price contracts. It's a recipe for disaster. I'd rather come to you and say, "Look, revenue's down, because of this, because we couldn't find the right type of contracts." So as a shareholder, I'm very aligned in making sure that we never take fixed price contracts. It's a potential recipe for disaster. Thank you. That's clear. David, I think this one's for you, from Mark. Are there any issues with grid connections for planned wind farms and or battery storage schemes? Yeah, there are always issues with grid connections. They're entirely reliant on grid connections. Until the grid connection is available, then effectively, a renewables project can't progress. It's effectively the first thing that any renewables developer looks at. They get a fairly rapid indication of what capacity is available and when it will be available. That then really starts the ball rolling. So all the ones that we're involved in, which have been valued by agents, like, they have grid connections, they have contracted grid connections with precise dates when they're going to be available, and effectively, the procurement of the development, the renewable developments, it works back from that date. So we have good visibility on when these things are gonna happen. The future schemes we talked about, they are based on an early expectation that the grid connections will be available at certain times, which has been given by the grid. One or two actually do strangely enough, already have grid connections secured, and have gone through the route of securing the grid connection before they actually go, and find a suitable site. But as I say, it's all reliant on grid connections. It is getting better. I think it's fair to say, but it is a slow process, and it's quite a technical process, both in, is a grid connection available, and also the size of that grid connection, which then starts to dictate the size of individual renewables projects. Thank you, David. This one's for you, Gordon, from Richard. I think it probably depends, is maybe that's what I'd like answered. How many competitors are typically bidding on the 60+ contracts we have in the services? Oh, wow! That's a difficult one to call. You know, I would say, you know, you're typically 3-5 as real contenders to give you an idea. And I think over the 60 spread, you know, we've done very well. We've organically grown. You might lose one or two, but then hopefully you gain three or four. That's really how I would look at it. Thank you. And then the final question we've got on here from Bob. What could get in the way of you realizing a GBP 8 share price? That's a very good question, Bob. Uh, thank you. We've tried to lay out, you know, we can't tell you that it'll be a GBP 8 share price. What we're trying to say to you is, "Look, this is how we've laid out the value." So let's look at services, because the share price will always be dictated by the market, and it's not up to us to tell you how to value our business. It's just to lay the breadcrumbs for you to make your own decision. But look at services. Stephen's laid out a case to say, why wouldn't you value it at 5x EBITDA? You may use four, you may use six, you may use eight. Land, again, you know, we're saying that all David has to do is recover book. His issue will be he, he should do better than that if he's got land at low cost, but it's just around the parcels of land becoming available. So turning that 80 down into 20 will probably take David five years, because some of our sites are very big, for instance, Blindwells. But we can't... There's a big demand for housing. We can't see any reason to think it won't happen, because there's a big demand for, for the land. It's just getting the price for it. And then finally, on Germany, you know, you value Germany. That's the one where I think, you know, at the moment, we've talked about just recovering book. If you were to ask me where I can really shift the dial, I think if we can get DK really spinning well through a cycle, I think that's where there's a load of hidden value. So look, those are where the things are. We're very focused. We should be able to do it in five years as a term of target, but I want to do it quicker, because time value of money. Great. And we've had an added time question come in from Sam, which I can take up. When do you expect the pension fund issue to be resolved? Sam, I would say very, very soon. I'm expecting it certainly before the end of quarter one this calendar year. And I'm hopeful of being able to... You know, we will make a separate announcement on this when it is concluded, along with obviously how much it has indeed cost in the end. Confident it will be less than the GBP 9 million that we've stated. But yeah, I'm expecting to make an announcement within not too distant future, weeks, hopefully. So with that, I will hand back to Jake. Jake, yeah. Just, just so I would like to say to everyone, thank you for taking the time. It's really important as a company, we believe in engaging with retail shareholders. I think, before we did this work with IMC, I think retail shareholders were a little bit neglected on one side. We want to engage with you. We're here. We want to treat you just like the big fund managers, so you get exactly the same information. So if after this, there is questions at any time through the year, you know, we respect you, so therefore, please feel free to drop us an email, and we'll try and respond on anything that we possibly can. We don't want anyone to not know what the case is very clearly. So yes, with that final note, I'm happy to hand back to our MC to close. Perfect. Gordon, Stephen, David, thank you very much indeed for being so generous with your time and addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this afternoon. And of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we will, of course, make these available to you immediately after the presentation has ended, just for you to review, to then add any additional responses where it's appropriate to do so, and we'll publish all those responses out on the platform. Gordon, I was just going to ask you for some closing comments, sir, but I think you may have just well delivered those. So, if it's okay, what I will do is I'll redirect those on the call for their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself, and the company. So can I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can really better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Hargreaves Services plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session, so good evening to you all.