Welcome to the 2023 half year results presentation for Ibstock plc. As you've just seen, we've taken the bold step to unify our business under a single, powerful one Ibstock brand. I'm really excited about the potential that this provides. I'll say more about it later in the presentation. To those of you joining in person today, again, in the iStudio, thank you for joining. For those of you dialing in, welcome, and thank you. With me today as normal is our CFO, Chris McLeish. Turning to the agenda, after initial overview, Chris will walk us through the financials and cover divisional performance. Then I'll provide a market update and talk about the progress we've made operationally and strategically as a business over the last six months. Having covered the outlook, Chris and I will be very happy to take your questions. Turning first to the overview, I'm pleased to report a resilient performance for the period, despite a more subdued market backdrop. Overall, performance was marginally ahead of our expectations at the beginning of the year, with the adjusted EBITDA of GBP 63 million reflecting a disciplined approach to pricing, an intense focus on cost and capacity, and the benefit from the absorption of fixed cost as we built inventories back to more comfortable levels. Delivering this level of performance in the challenging market conditions we experienced is a testament to the skill and dedication of everyone across our business, and I'd like to pay tribute to the teams who've delivered performance while continuing to drive our strategic agenda. Considering this performance, given our confidence in the prospects of the business, we've declared an interim dividend of GBP 3.4, a 3% increase on the prior year. After spending around GBP 24 million on growth investments in the six-month period and investing in finished good inventories as we built back from historically low levels, our balance sheet remains strong, with leverage at about 0.7x. During the first half, we took a series of steps to reduce costs across the business, including the difficult but necessary decision to propose the closure of our Ravenhead brick factory. Looking forward, the group is committed to the actions necessary to balance capacity to demand. Our major growth investments all remain on track, with the majority of capital now invested in the core clay redevelopments of our Atlas and Aldridge factories. As we look forwards, recent macroeconomic events have introduced greater uncertainty into the outlook. However, I'm pleased to say that our expectations for the full year remain unchanged, and that we retain a strong conviction in the medium-term outlook. With that, let me hand over to Chris to take us through the financials. Thanks, Joe, and good morning. Turning to cover the financial summary. Revenues of GBP 223 million represented a reduction of 14% on last year, driven by a significant reduction in sales volumes. U.K. domestic brick deliveries in the five months to May reduced to by 31% compared to the prior year, and our volume performance in the residential product categories reflected a similar trend. Adjusted EBITDA reduced by around 11% to GBP 63 million. I will provide more detail on the divisional margin drivers later in the presentation, but overall group margins improved by 90 basis points to 28.2%. Performance in the current period included the benefit from property disposals of around GBP 1.5 million in the clay division. Adjusted earnings per share of GBP 0.09 were around 20% below the level of GBP 11.3 reported in the prior year period. With a continuing focus on cash management, our balance sheet remains strong, with leverage at 0.7x. Our capital employed, our Return on Capital Employed remained broadly in line with the prior year at 19.6%. Moving to revenue, we set out on this slide the progression of group revenue compared to the comparative period in 2022. Clay revenues reduced by around 13% and included around GBP 6 million from futures. This performance reflected materially lower sales volumes, in line with trends experienced across the broader domestic market. Despite the more subdued market environment, selling prices remained firm, meaning that the division achieved a pricing benefit relative to the comparative period. In concrete, revenues reduced by 17%, with a similar volume impact within the residential product categories. Our infrastructure business was more resilient, with volumes remaining broadly in line with the comparative period. Firm prices also provided a benefit to the concrete division. Turning now to cover divisional financial performance, starting with clay. The clay division delivered robust performance, driven by good operational execution. With market demand being more subdued, we took the opportunity to build inventories back from the historically low levels of recent years. We also initiated a number of steps to reduce cost, which, combined with the benefit of fixed cost absorption, delivered a very good unit cost performance, and Joe will talk more about this later in the presentation. The clay division experienced meaningful cost inflation compared to the equivalent period in 2022 in both the fixed and variable cost categories. Unit variable costs increased, including the impact of energy hedges entered into in the prior year, although softer spot prices in half one helped to limit the scale of this increase. As I mentioned earlier, the division benefited from a small property gain, which contributed to the EBITDA margins, which increased by just under 100 basis points. We also report the activities of the Futures business within this segment, and the adjusted EBITDA of GBP 57 million included GBP 2 million of operating cost relating to research, innovation, and commercial capability within Futures. The trading businesses of Futures performed in line with our expectations. The proposal to close our Ravenhead brick factory led to the recognition of an exceptional charge of GBP 10.7 million in the first half. The cash element of this, GBP 1.5 million, is expected to be settled over the next nine months or so. Turning to cover concrete. The concrete division also performed well with the breadth of end market exposure supporting good performance and an increased EBITDA margin percentage, which grew from just over 15% to almost 18%. Infrastructure, which represented over 15% of the division's revenue this period, with rail products in particular being a source of growth in both sales volume and value terms. Our concrete factory network performed well, delivering a fixed cost absorption benefit as inventories were built. As with clay, we took a number of actions to reduce fixed cost across the division. Turning to cover working capital. We continue to focus on working capital efficiency, and as you can see on this slide, made further progress in reducing receivables, with DSO now down to 52 days compared to 67 days a year ago. We took the opportunity to strengthen our inventory position, increasing finished goods inventories from around two months, normalized forward sales, to around three months by the end of the first half. I would expect finished goods inventories to stabilize during the second half of the year. Moving to cash flow. During the period, the business invested around GBP 40 million in working capital. Around half of this amount was the typical seasonal build, reflecting higher mid-year activity levels, which I would expect to reverse during the second half. The other half was an increase in inventory levels, which will support service levels and the continued displacement of imported product moving forwards. We also continued to invest in fixed capital, with around GBP 33 million deployed in the period. Sustaining expenditure amounted to around GBP 9 million, with a balance of GBP 24 million relating to the redevelopment of the Atlas and Aldridge factories, investment in brick slips, and several other smaller growth projects. Having completed our pensions buy-in at the end of the 2022 year, we stopped making cash contributions to the group pension plan this year. Cash tax payments of GBP 3 million were marginally above the comparative period, but below the level I guided to at the start of the year, as the Chancellor's announcement of continued accelerated write-downs on qualifying capital expenditure means we will claim cash tax deduction for the majority of our CapEx this year. Moving to the balance sheet. With the stronger trading performance, timing of capital expenditure weighted slightly towards the second half and lower cash tax payments, closing net debt at the end of June was better than our expectations at GBP 89 million. At 0.7x, leverage remains at the lower end of our target range. This position continues to afford us real strategic optionality as we think about both investment and shareholder returns. Turning to focus on our debt financing. As a reminder, we took actions in 2021 to lock in interest rates on our core debt in the form of GBP 100 million of private placement notes at a fixed coupon, averaging 2.19% for periods up to 2033. Whilst I expect us to draw some amounts under the GBP 125 million revolving credit facility, which sits on top of this private placement, the core debt provides good insulation against the current prevailing interest rate environment, which enabled us to hold cash interest costs broadly in line with the prior year period. Before I hand back to Joe, I would like to briefly update the moving parts of technical guidance for the 2023 year. We expect to manage capacity tightly in the second half to ensure production is aligned with market conditions. I therefore expect inventory levels to stabilize, accordingly, I expect a moderation in EBITDA margins in both clay and concrete, as the benefit from fixed cost absorption recognized in half one does not recur. On energy, we have locked in the vast majority of gas and power for half two, with cover at around 85%. For the FY 2024 year, we have around one-third covered, with this cover weighted towards the early part of the year. As we set out in March, we expect to recognize futures and other research operating costs of GBP 5 million, in line with 2022. Underlying depreciation is expected to be around GBP 30 million, as I guided back in March. Underlying interest expense for the full year is expected to remain broadly in line with 2022, the underlying effective tax rate is expected to be around 24%, reflecting the increased U.K. corporation tax rate and a reduction in the P&L benefit from the U.K. tax super deduction. On cash, our guidance on capital expenditure remains in line with the view that I set out in March: GBP 20 million of sustaining spend and GBP 55 million of growth, principally on Atlas, Aldridge, and Slips. Cash tax is now expected to be lower than our initial expectations, as the Chancellor announced a continuation of the accelerated tax write-downs in the spring budget. With that, let me pass back to Joe. Thanks, Chris. Turning first to an update on our markets. The recent moves in interest rates and the consequent impact on mortgage lending have clearly caused greater levels of caution across the construction sector, with activity levels likely to remain subdued in the near term. Based on the most recent, recent CPA data, we now expect private housing starts to be 25% down in the year. RMI is also subdued at about 11% down. At a granular level, the picture is more nuanced, with higher levels of resilience in some parts of the market and the positive development of increased plots in the ground during the second quarter, presenting at least the potential for more rapid recovery when the market improves. Our larger house building customers have well-capitalized balance sheets, and they continue to work through their forward order books. Whilst we navigate this more subdued market environment, our business is well-positioned and primed for recovery. As expected, brick imports have been displaced by domestic stocks, with the year-on-year production reduction imports of over 40% in the first months of the year. We've now built back inventory levels to ensure that we can support customer service, we continue to benefit from our lower cost, efficient network of assets. Our revenue base continues to diversify, including growth outside of residential markets, providing some countercyclical protection, particularly mid- to high-rise in infrastructure markets. Overall, I'm confident in our ability to respond to market conditions as we navigate the months ahead. Against this market backdrop, I'd like to briefly cover the actions we've taken during the last six months to manage capacity and cost. As a market leader and long-term business, our stewardship decisions focus on the need to create long-term value for our stakeholders, and this requires us to balance the need to take urgent and decisive action in periods of lower activity, with the need to ensure we're well-positioned to respond as activity levels recover. As we did in the pandemic in 2020, we took a number of actions to reduce fixed cost in the first half, which was central to delivering our performance. As well as investing in inventory, as Chris outlined earlier, we instituted discretionary cost freezes, redeployed labor to third-party sustaining and maintenance activities, implemented factory shutdowns with mandatory holiday periods, and took action to reduce headcount across both factory and overhead areas of the business. Towards the end of the half, we also took the decision to propose the closure of our Ravenhead brick factory in the northwest of England, which is one of our higher cost sites. Subject to consultation, this will reduce network capacity by around 40 million bricks. We remain vigilant on costs, and we'll take any further action necessary to ensure that our capacity is aligned with market demand. Looking through the current subdued backdrop, our conviction in the medium-term fundamentals remains firmly intact. The structural undersupply of new housing in the U.K. continues to be an acute challenge, with cross-party political commitment to addressing this. Whilst consumer sentiment is clearly more cautious, unemployment levels in the U.K. remain low, a key difference to previous cycles. Recent developments in inflation data are positive and support the views of some commentators who expect the interest rates and mortgage rates to come down over the next 12 months. Crucially, we believe that the trends causing a shift in U.K. construction markets will accelerate over the next one to two years, with customers needing more urgent solutions to address regulatory change, such as environmental targets. We're also focused on building a more diversified business, able to benefit from further opportunities available in underrepresented markets such as the mid-to-high-rise and retrofit sectors. Even in more challenging market conditions, you can see Ibstock has unique qualities that enable us to deliver strong returns and set a foundation for more growth. The strength of the Ibstock brand and market leadership across a number of categories in the building envelope has driven deep customer relationships for generations. Within that, adapt the diverse range of products provides a premium to support industry-leading margins, and our operational footprint of 40 facilities and unrivaled clear reserves give us proximity to markets and the optionality to manage capacity in a flexible and agile way. I'm proud that we're emerging as a leader in ESG, and as I mentioned back in March, integrating sustainability across our organization supports our cost base and value for our customers for more sustainable products. I'll say a little bit more about ESG later. Our cash generation provides a great platform for growth, diversification, and shareholder returns. Over the last five years, despite the continued uncertainty and macroeconomic challenges, our business has built strength and resilience. We've invested in operational efficiencies, asset enhancement, and automation, and it's down to our operational strategy and greater capability in our teams over this period that's enabled the performance we've shared with you today. Overall, I believe this strong platform for growth will continue to set us apart in the years ahead. With that, I'll now step through some of the progress we've made against our sustain, innovate, and grow pillars as we continue to push forward on our operational strategy. We continue to make strong progress on our ESG 2030 ambitions, and you can see the detail in our latest sustainability report, which has just been published, this week. This highlights performance in all three strategic areas, from addressing climate change, progressing reductions in carbon and water, manufacturing materials for life, which is focused on construction waste and the sustainable content of our products, and finally, improving lives, which is related to the social impact of our business. I'm particularly pleased with the development of our health, safety, and well-being culture, which we've more than halved our accident frequency rates over recent years. Factory network performance has continued to progress with predictive maintenance and a broader focus on asset reliability, key to delivering the efficient and low-cost production I've mentioned. Across our enterprise, we've a powerful offer of products and services, but this has not always been visible to our customers. As you saw at the start of this presentation, in the first half of the year, we took an important step by launching a stronger, unified One Ibstock brand, along with supporting digital tools, making it easier than ever for our customers to access the full building product range and solutions that we have. This is enabling us to capture commercial synergies and align our commercial teams much more closely. We've continued also to target selective M&A to accelerate our growth, and during the first half, we made a small but strategic acquisition in our rail business, purchasing a company engaged in the manufacture of innovative railway platform solutions, and this now provides the lowest carbon product on the market today. We also continued to make progress on all of our organic growth projects. I'm delighted to say that we're close to commissioning our new wire-cut brick capacity at Atlas and Aldridge in the West Midlands. Atlas will produce the U.K.'s first externally verified carbon-neutral brick and will increase our annual network capacity by over 100 million bricks to support our long-term growth. The project is a pathfinder for more sustainable manufacturing processes to be scaled across the group-wide estate on our journey to net zero. We're making good progress on operational and strategic side with Ibstock Futures. The new innovation hub at Power Park near Walsall is fully operational, and with a capacity to grow, this creates a scalable platform for the diversification I've mentioned. Our brick slips investments at Knaresborough, West Yorkshire, are also progressing well. The automated cutting line, generating capacity for up to 17 million slips per year, is on track to commission from the end of this year, whilst the larger slip system factory, producing up to 30 million bricks, slips a year, will be from the end of 2024, is now well underway. You may recall that we revised and upgraded the factory design to incorporate more advanced and efficient technology, having concluded contracts with our OEM partners, we're confident that this will give us a real advantage in this fast-growing product category. Moving on, we've made further progress over the last six months to unlock value from our unrivaled clay reserves. We're now running industrial trials over the next six months to manufacture lightweight aggregates from expanded clay, we've concluded favorably the material testing of our relevant clay reserves for calcining. Having done this, we'll be running trials with experts to produce calcined clay. During the first half, we also completed a pilot project to fire bricks using synthetic gas derived from waste, and are now in advanced discussions with our strategic partner to commission these assets at one of our brick factories. Our continuing investment in people is key to our growth plans as well. Our employee engagement initiative, The Ibstock Story, is a powerful cultural catalyst, ensuring that everyone feels valued and clear on the contributions they can make to our business success. As you can see, we continue to place considerable focus on driving strategy, and I'm proud of the way that our team, teams of people are driving this together with the operational delivery. By way of reminder, you can also see here the medium-term targets, which we set out in March, and we believe that our growth strategy will translate into significant earnings, delivering attractive returns for our shareholders into the future. I'm not going to go through these targets in detail, but I would make the point that we delivered margin and return performance in the first half, substantially in line with our ambitions, even though market activity levels were materially lower than those back in 2021 when we set out these targets. Through the ongoing execution of our operational strategy and with the incremental benefit of the capital investment program, we remain confident in the medium-term outlook and remain committed to our medium-term financial targets. Before I conclude this section of the update, I'd like to just briefly cover the balance sheet and provide some perspectives on what we think about capital allocation over the medium term. With the majority of the capital related to our organic investment programs now in the ground, with inventory levels built back to more comfortable levels, and with leverage remaining at the lower end of our stated range, we have significant capacity to put to work in the service of growth and further value creation for shareholders. We're well positioned to accelerate our strategic progress through the growing investment pipeline and have the capacity to take advantage of any of the opportunities created by the current market backdrop within the framework of our disciplined and dynamic capital allocation policy. To summarize, we've delivered a resilient performance for the period, with margins ahead of the prior year period, despite a material reduction in sales volumes. We remain very focused on managing cost, and we're committed to taking the actions required to managing capacity and aligning it with market conditions. Our capital investment programs remain firmly on track with our new low-cost, efficient, and sustainable capacity at Atlas and Aldridge online from the end of the year. Our balance sheet continues to afford us significant strategic optionality to accelerate growth and give additional capital return to shareholders. We remain confident in our medium-term financial targets, and while the economic developments have created increased uncertainty in the outlook, we remain confident in our ability to respond to the conditions in the balance of the year. The board's expectations, as we've said, for the full year, are therefore unchanged. With that, Chris and I will be happy to take your questions. As normal, for the record, I'd be grateful if you could state your name and institution when asking your question. Hi, this is Lewis Roxburgh from Investec. Three questions from me. Just firstly, curious just as to your visibility on consumer destocking and whether you see any headwinds come through into the next year as that piece evolves. Secondly, imports. How do you see the competitive landscape at the moment under these market conditions? And thirdly, you just touched on building back inventory levels. Has this piece been fully completed, and do you have a particular target that you're aiming for? Thank you. Great. I'll take the first two, and, Chris, if you take the last one, please. I mean, what we're seeing now with inventory levels, it's kind of moved from the customer sites back into the manufacturing yards. We think that most of the destocking is probably being done now. I think house builders and merchants are very focused on, on their inventory levels. They know that lead times are shorter, and therefore, they can order and not have to have excess stock. That's definitely the balance there now. I mean, remember that the historically, brick inventory levels were at an all-time low, so we're getting somewhere back to where, you know, normalized levels, but we're not back to certainly anywhere near the highs, and, we're, we're in much more comfortable levels. I think imports, certainly you've seen about a 45% decline in imports this year- to- date versus about a 30% down on the market. Clearly, the customers, not only the economics of imports, but also the fact that customers want local, local product, which is more, you know, guaranteed, certain, and has its own sustainability benefits for Scope 3 and travel and distances and so on, is playing out, and we'd expect that to continue to unwind. Inventory? Yeah, just in terms of our own inventory levels, you know, we, we typically look to manage inventory levels to be in line with the historic average, sort of call it three to 3.5 months of forward sales on a normalized basis. We're at that level now. We feel comfortable with where inventory levels are, and, you know, certainly during the course of the second half, we'd expect to manage capacity in order to match demand. Therefore, we, we expect inventory levels to stabilize, and that would be the, the sort of go-forward expectation more broadly as we advance. Hello, thank you. Christian Maher from Numis. Two for me. First of all, the guidance applies quite a significant decline in EBITDA in the second half. Could you just help the, the bridge on that? I assume that sort of volume year-on-year is, is less bad because the, the customer destocking eases, the, the drop-through to profit from that volume is higher because of the manufacturing inefficiencies not repeating, and then sort of net price, would we expect that to be positive to absolute EBITDA in H2? Just when anything else, just sort of that, that, that bridge. Then the second one, obviously, you sort of point to potential shareholder or incremental shareholder returns. What would you need to see to, to action that, and, and is there sort of any sort of timing around that that we should think about? Thank you. Sure. Let me take the first one, Joe, and I'll let you deal with the second. In terms of the, the shape of this year, you're right. I mean, we anticipate a result which will be skewed towards the first half. The principal driver of that is a supply side factor, which is about the way that we've built inventory. If you think about actions to run the factory very, very hard, you get very good levels of variable cost performance, and you also get high levels of fixed cost absorption. Typically, if you build back a month's worth of inventory in the course of a six-month period, you're deferring a significant proportion of the fixed cost in that period into the balance sheet. In clay, that was worth around GBP 8 million in the first half. We don't expect that to reverse, but neither do we expect it to occur, as we expect inventories to be flat. That's, that's predominantly the driver of that shape. In terms of market, we're not banking on, and we don't anticipate a meaningful recovery from a demand perspective in the second half. Therefore, assuming, in absolute terms, volumes to be pretty flat. As you rightly say, given that we'll be annualizing a slightly softer second half from last year, that will show a positive trend in terms of the comp, but actually from a, from an absolute volume perspective, not, not banking on meaningful recovery. I think the other, the sort of third leg of this, Christian, which is just worth noting, is that as you are running the factories at slightly lower levels of throughput, your variable cost efficiency comes down a little bit as well. You can't turn the kilns off for 10% or 20% of the time, and therefore, things like energy efficiency are relatively lower, which also has a modest detrimental impact on margins. I think those are the sort of three moving parts. As Joe said, we're confident that the business can respond to the market conditions that it finds in the second half of the year, and we're clear that we're standing behind the guidance that we've put in the market already. Yeah, Christian, and you know that the cash generation of Ibstock and the balance sheet, notwithstanding the slightly more cautious market that we've got, you know, we do have optionality. A lot of our capital is in the ground now, on the organic projects, and while we do have a focus on some M&A to diverse, continue to diversify and, and invest into our Futures and, and other, other parts of our business. I think you've seen in the past that the capital allocation sort of framework that we've got affords us to, the ability to returns back to shareholders through buybacks or through special dividends, and we've done that since I've been here. We've done quite a lot of that. I think we, we manage that in a dynamic way. If there isn't something right around the corner, an M&A, for example, then, then that's when we look to, you know, give the cash back to shareholders. At the current undervalued share price, I'd say, a very, very good opportunity. I think Priyal was next, then we go to Gregor. Thank you. Priyal Woolf here from Jefferies. I think I've got three. So the first one is just on Ravenhead. So here it feels like most of the benefits will probably come, well, become more apparent in 2024, given you're still going through the consultation process, et cetera. Which means you must have a fairly strong view on a base case assumption for demand in 2024 if you've decided to take this decision. I just wondered if you could give us any insight into those demand assumptions for 2024, which drove that decision. Second question, is just to do with, I suppose the higher... Well, you've mentioned it's a higher cost facility. Is this potentially just a pull forward of mothballing that you would have done anyway at some point to do some sort of efficiency improvements whilst it's down? The last question is to do with the synthetic gas point. Does this bring any cost benefits, or actually, is it just about surety of supply and less volatility in those energy costs? I 'll take those ones then. Yeah, I mean, in terms of, as Chris said, we're not banking on any demand in the second half year improving. CPA's got market demand improving by mid-single digits next year, and we think that's probably the central thesis that we're, we're working on. Not necessarily a big rush back, although I, I've been in this job six years now, and I have seen things be quite dynamic, so hopefully we will get a faster return. At this stage, we're looking at a, not a significant, but more of a modest increase. The issue is also that we've got inventory that we're, we're building, we can't keep building inventory, and we have Atlas coming on stream. That, that's part of the, the, the thesis of, of any major investment. You know, the approach often when you're running, you know, portfolio reviews like this with assets is you look to invest in, in new projects in the downturns, and they come back through, and then you have to look at how you consolidate older assets and sometimes use, you know, those assets and redeploy them in other ways. That's normally our approach, and, and it's what we've been doing over the last, you know, sort of 10 years or so. Synthetic gas is really exciting. Gasification gives a lot of opportunities, you know, not only on security of supply, but also on, on potentially on cost, but it depends where the gas price is. We 've got some assumptions based on, you know, a moderated gas price. We've also got optionality because, you know, if you think about the amount of waste in the U.K., the amount of plastic blue bin waste that can be processed, for example, that, that waste commands a gate fee, and that's also potentially a revenue source coming in. We think this is a very exciting proposition. We're not gonna go flying with it yet because we need to test it in full operational pilot. Gasification of, of waste through pyrolysis has been done for many years, and we've just found a way of doing it with, with bricks now. We're very excited about it. We're not just focusing on that as our only bet. We've also been working, as others have been working, on hydrogen. We 've done two successful hydrogen trials, and there's a lot of work going on in the government or there's a lot of funding available for hydrogen at the moment on trials. We're kind of keeping a parallel process going there. Gregor? Thank you. Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. A few questions then. Some, just on pricing, obviously, it's been, been resilient. I think maybe at least one of your competitors is very higher gas price, the other one probably lower. I, I guess I wonder, kind of as things normalize into next year, everybody's gonna buy at the same price. What do you, what do you think pricing will do? Do you think it will hold, or do you think you'll have to give some back? That's the first question. Second question is just on your volume capacity. If you could just remind us, if we think about this year as a whole and then thinking about the, the plant shutdown and then the ramp-up of Atlas, what's kind of the volume recovery potential, I guess, right, from the, for as the network nowadays stands? That's just theoretically, I guess. I suppose sort of coming back to 2024, the sort of building blocks, I mean, it sounds like, I guess you'll have the headwind from the fixed cost absorption. You just booked in half one, so GBP 8 million-ish. There's the interplay between the shutdown and the ramp-up. If you could just tell us what you think that that could be, the sort of just 1-for-1 cash cost saving that you get from ramping up the new plant and whether it's gonna be enough, I guess, to offset that fixed cost point that you're gonna be, I suppose, lapping next year. Thank you. Okay. Chris, should I take pricing and you take capacity and cost? Yeah. W e've I think the, the, the backdrop is our customers understand that our costs have increased in year-on-year, even from this year from last year, we've, we've had both fixed and variable costs with gas price increases. You know, gas prices are up sort of, you know, certainly into the mid, the double-digits. We're, we're we still haven't got the gas prices fully bought out for next year, so we're gonna have to see how that manages. I think, for me, one thing I'll, I'll mention is, we will remain very firm on pricing. I think the it's not just around variable and fixed cost, it's also about the capital that we've invested into this business, to have a, a much better supplied industry for our customers, and I think they appreciate that. You know, we're, we're gonna be very firm on pricing, and I wouldn't expect pricing to erode. That's what I say. I can't really comment on competitors, but. Then capacity costs? Yeah, so capacity, Gregor, I mean, in terms of 2022, you know, the network was operating at, at very high levels of, of utilization, so that, that essentially kind of constitutes the, the baseline, if you want to think of it like that. Sales volume's down 30% in the first half. They'll moderate a little bit because of the nature of the, the half one, half two skew in the comparative, but it's pretty clear that, you know, we'll have meaningful levels of, of unutilized capacity, all other things being equal. The two things that will come on during the course of this year, first one we've talked about, Ravenhead. We're going through that consultation at the moment, but that would account for around 5% of capacity. Then the other actions that we talked about, this is shift structures, this is looking at headcount, this is redeploying labor, factory shutdowns, all of that amounts to around 5%. Put those two things together, that's starting to bring the factory network back into reasonably high levels of utilization. As we go forward, you rightly say we've got Atlas coming on. That will be ramping up through the course of next year, so you don't get 100 million bricks there, but that will bring extra capacity on. I think, you know, the challenge that is in front of us is: how do we manage the fixed cost load of the business as we navigate through the next 12 months? To some extent, that will be a function of the market activity that we see. We'll continue to do the right things at the right times. We've managed through this before, and I think taking actions to make sure that we continue to operate the network in an efficient way towards the top end of utilization will be, will be critical. In terms of the fixed cost absorption piece and the, and the mitigation of that, as you rightly say, that GBP 8 million that I referenced in clay doesn't recur in the second half, and on the assumption that we keep inventories relatively flat, won't recur next year. Atlas, you'll remember that we talked about an incremental EBITDA once we're operating at full capacity of around GBP 18 million, and we talked about around a third of that being available to access in the 2024 year. Now, that comprised two elements. The first piece was incremental volume that's afforded by Atlas, and the second piece is beneficial cost arbitrage by bringing capacity on at the, the bottom of the cost curve. Of that GBP 6 million that I referenced as being available to access next year, probably around 0.5 of that will accrue to us by virtue of the, the cost point that, that Atlas will give. It won't be sufficient to offset the non-recurrence of that fixed cost absorption. There will be other actions that we'll take, if necessary, to manage the fixed cost load of the business as we go forward. Thank you. I think there was a question here, and then we'll go to Sam after that. Thank you. Harry [from] Redburn. I think three or possibly four questions, if possible. Firstly, just on sort of the top line, I think the data out this morning from the government, I think, had deliveries only down 15% in June, year-on-year, which obviously is quite an improvement from the first sort of five months. Is that, I guess, an example of the trend we've gone through June, and maybe whether you've seen that yourselves, and I guess a comment on possibly that's continued into July? Sort of more current trading, is that a structural thing or is it more around the fact. I know there's this Part L in the house building side of things that's meant there's maybe been a bit more sort of building on the ground to get ahead of the regulations, but anything you can sort of tell us there? Secondly, just on the cost inflation side again, and I think you said you've got a third hedged for next year. It just reminds me, but is that a normal sort of level of hedging at this time in the year for the sort of next year, or whether you're leaving the door open a bit more for sort of spot prices and what you think around there? I know it's only a third, but maybe directionally, what that third is sort of on, on this year. Then two, just more technical questions: the contribution from that small acquisition you did, and maybe just the rollover impact, if any, from last year. I don't know what that was. Possibly at the sort of the top line or EBITDA, and then also what production levels did year-on-year in the first half as well. Yeah. Okay. I mean, you take the last three, Chris. T op line trading, you know, we have seen modest improvements. The, the, the first two months of the year were pretty grim, and we have seen improvements, and, June was relatively strong. you know, I, I think people talk about starts and plots in the ground and technical starts to, to beat Part L, but, we've definitely seen some of that in Q2, but that doesn't necessarily manifest itself into completions where a lot of bricks go in. The flooring business has been all right, in, in those two quarters, but, that hasn't really given a lot of extra benefit to the, the, the completion. I think there were more. There were lots of plots in the ground ready to go, definitely. I think current trading has improved, but then you had this, you know, second bit of caution that was injected into the market with the interest rates and the, you know, surprise around inflation. I think that's causing people to be cautious at the moment, and we'll, we'll see how get through August and see how, how things look into September. You've, I mean, you've seen some of the commentary from Jennie Daly, Taylor Wimpey were out this morning, and, you know, a little bit quieter in July, which is normal, but actually, sales reservation rates were, were fairly, fairly strong for the first part of the year, ramping up. Last two? Okay, I'll take the, the other three, Harry. Thanks for those. In terms of energy cover, you're right, around a third covered for next year. That is lower than we have taken historically. The approach that we've taken has been really to, to focus on, you know, to what extent we believe there is a risk premium, a forward risk premium in the forward curve that doesn't justify the fundamentals that we see. We took a view last year, and, and at this point, we were around sort of 50% covered for the 2023 year. You know, we, we ramped that up as we went through, but ultimately, what we saw was, as we got to the delivery month, we saw that risk drop out. you know, that's there is a, a central thesis that we hold that, again, when you look at the, the forward curve into 2024 now, you actually see summer 2024 being more expensive than January, February, March, which really, you know, when you think about the conditions that normally drive fundamental demand for gas, that doesn't support that forward price. We continue to monitor it very closely. We are somewhat shorter than we would otherwise be, but I think, you know, the, the approach that we've taken is to be very clear around the logic for that and to continually report to our shareholders where we are in terms of a cover percentage. When you look at the shape of that cover, it is front-end loaded, as I said. Whilst we talk about being a third covered, we're in that sort of 75%-80% cover for the first quarter, which really is, you know, the winter is where the, the greatest potential variability comes. We feel good about the level of cover as we look forward on a, a sort of nine to 12-month forward view. You talked about the, the small acquisition, so within the infrastructure space, this is a great small business. I mean, it's, it was GBP 1 million-GBP 2 million consideration, so it's not a huge acquisition, and it was funded out of the, the CapEx number that, that we, we've quoted. In terms of its incremental impact to EBITDA, it will register next year, but it won't be transformational, so you shouldn't expect a huge bump. It's just, it's symptomatic of our belief that the infrastructure business is a great business with some of those countercyclical characteristics that Joe alluded to. You know, it's a, it's a part of the business that lends itself to high levels of innovation and working with customers to reduce carbon to deliver a differentiated product. It is a, it's an attractive part of the concrete portfolio, and as, as we said in the presentation, it has had a modest accretive impact on margins within concrete because of the growth that we've been able to deliver from it. I think your final point was around utilization of the network in the first half. You know, you can, you can back solve, essentially, knowing that volume, sales volume's down sort of in line with market. Market was down 30%. We built a month's worth of inventory, so therefore, the factory network was running somewhere around 10% below where it would've been in the equivalent, equivalent period in 2022. Okay, I think we may have some questions. Sam. Oh, Sam, sorry. Yeah, just, I've got two that are kind of interrelated, actually. On, on Ravenhead, you said it's your, your least efficient plant. Can you give us an idea of how less efficient it is relative to the median plant, and what does the second least efficient plant, assuming Ravenhead does get, does get closed, look like? Then on the distribution of capacity across the business in terms of the concentration of your sites and, what percentage of your bricks are manufactured by your, your bigger factories and the flexibility you have, and particularly, what does that mean for your ability to kind of scale down and ramp up volumes if, if things recover, say, in the next, next six to nine months, and the brick industry sees a faster recovery than it otherwise would because of the slabs in the ground post-Part L? How quickly can you guys kind of continue to refill the inventory hopper that you've, that you've built? Okay, Sam. Actually, I didn't say it was our least efficient factory. I think when you look at these decisions, and we have to be a bit sensitive 'cause we're still in consultation, but we look at a whole host of different factors: costs, products. It's, it really is more complex than just. There's geographical, there's quarry reserves, there's what you can do with land. There's a whole raft of different things. Yeah, it's difficult. I mean, one of the things that about this marketplace that makes me feel a little bit sad is that, you know, we've still got in the U.K. under capacity, potentially, and so we have to manage these, these spiky times like this, where I'd much prefer to keep things going. We do have up further optionality. We've got optionality. I think the way we look at that, as Chris probably alluded to, in COVID, for example, you look at mothballing, you look at shift shift patterns that you can take out, you look at maintenance periods, where we've, we've done a lot of investment in the downturn, which is paying back, you know, dividends now. That 's how we look at it, but it's much more complicated than just looking at a certain cost. You know, Ibstock is probably a bit more blessed with a wider footprint, and more optionality than, than, than perhaps others. We've got, you know, 20 brick sites, with a, with a range of very bespoke, small, handmade factories, very, you know, old, bespoke factories, to the most modern factories. We are, we are quite blessed with that, so we have that optionality. Okay, we don't have any questions from the, the, the webcam, so I think if there's no other questions, and given the fact that it's getting warmer and warmer in here, we'll, we'll call it a day. Thanks very much for coming. I mean, as I said, you know what, it is a, a challenging market backdrop, no doubt about that, but I think we're really, you've seen that we're quite resilient, and we've got a lot of exciting optionality in the future. Thanks very much for coming today, and, see you soon.