Well, good morning everyone, and welcome to the Lookers 2021 full year results and strategic priorities update call. I'm Mark Raban, CEO. I'm joined today by Oliver Laird, our CFO, and Duncan McPhee, our Chief Operating Officer. It's a great pleasure, in particular, to have Oliver with us for his maiden results presentation. It's been fantastic to welcome him to the board, and after only a few months, he is having a very positive impact on the business. With the delivery of a record 2021, further platform strengthening, and a strong balance sheet, we remain focused on delivering against our strategic priorities. Our agenda this morning is self-explanatory. I will give an overview of the key highlights, followed by an update on our strategic progress. Oliver will lead the financial review. Duncan will take us through the operational highlights. We'll wrap up with a summary and then be happy to take your questions. Well, as you are aware, the last two years has presented a number of challenges for the group, including both dealing with the global pandemic and the group's own historic legacy issues. With these issues behind us, I enter my third year as CEO, confident that we have the right strategy, a refreshed and energized team, excellent OEM relationships, and the financial firepower to create substantial future value for all our stakeholders. Standing back, let's take stock of where we are. Firstly, and very importantly, in 2021, we delivered a record financial performance. PBT GBP 90 million, net cash GBP 3 million, and property equivalent to GBP 0.78 per share. In addition, we recently completed the selective sale and leaseback of a freehold property in Battersea for GBP 28 million, adding further balance sheet strength. The appointment of Oliver as CFO and Ian Bull as Chairman completes the senior board team restructuring. Both of them bring highly relevant experience to the group at a key moment in our development. We are also delighted to announce the appointment today of Deborah Sherry as Non-Executive Director, who brings to the board an absolute wealth of technology and digital skills. Given the strength of our performance and in line with the group's corporate responsibility agenda, the board took the decision to repay all of 2021 government CJRS receipts and COVID grants, which together amount to GBP 6 million. This, of course, is reflected in the 2021 full year reported numbers. We're delighted to be recommencing dividends and are recommending a full year dividend of GBP 0.025 per share. We absolutely recognize the importance to shareholders of a progressive dividend policy, and this is reflected in the new capital allocation framework that Oliver will outline in his section. Throughout 2021, we continued to focus on driving our operational performance. Despite significant COVID and supply-related disruption, we delivered robust revenue growth across all core revenue streams. In addition to strong market tailwinds, margin and working capital benefited from a number of self-help measures. From a strategic perspective, we are clear on our growth priority areas and as you will hear shortly, are making good progress. Our controls and governance journey continues, and we remain absolutely committed to delivering transparent and positive customer interactions. I'm delighted to report that strong trading momentum has continued into Q1 this year. All revenue streams have proved resilient, margin has remained strong and at 2021 levels, which when combined with ongoing cost disciplines, has driven PBT comfortably ahead of the same quarter last year. Now, despite this strong performance and a positive order bank, the group faces significant cost headwinds, continued supply restrictions, and now ongoing geopolitical uncertainty. Against this background, the board believes it is right to remain cautious about the outlook for the remainder of the year, but we remain confident in our current forecasts. In January this year, we published the conclusions of a comprehensive review of the group and its strategic growth opportunities. The outcome was a new set of priorities which build on the group's already strong market position, excellent brand partner relationships, and valuable property estate. It is clear that the sector is at an exciting and key inflection point, and our refreshed priorities position us well to capitalize on the change and opportunities that lie ahead, maximizing what we already have within the group, but also exploring some exciting new areas for growth. We are already progressing with a number of these opportunities and are taking a prudent approach, only investing where we see sensible returns and all within a sustainable capital allocation framework. Firstly, our ambition is to become the U.K.'s leading integrated automotive retail and services group, with the customer and multiple lifetime customer touchpoints at the heart of everything we do. We will monitor and track our progress on this journey with reference to a balanced performance scorecard, including OEM composite performance data, customer satisfaction and retention metrics, financial performance, of course, colleague engagement, and importantly, our ESG commitments. As you can see from the slide, we have six strategic priority areas. Over recent months, we have developed project plans for each priority and allocated dedicated resource to the delivery and execution of the plan. It is clear from our analysis that efficiency, productivity and cost control will become increasingly important to delivering long-term sustainable returns as OEMs and their franchise and agency partners seek to reduce overall distribution costs that are no longer sustainable. For these reasons, operational optimization or driving our core business remains the absolute cornerstone of the group strategy. As you will see from this slide, we have five specific opportunity areas which we are focused on, which together will drive up revenue and profitability, and Duncan will cover these in his section. Leveraging technology and digitization opportunities remains a key priority for the group and also acts as a key enabler for our operational optimization agenda. Over recent years, much work has been done on standardizing the group's technology platform, which started from a very fragmented position. A number of rapid enhancements were also rolled out in response to the challenges of the pandemic. The group's key technology priority remains the harmonization of its dealer management systems. Over two-thirds of the group's dealerships now operate on a standard dealer management system, with the remainder due for completion by early 2023. This will be an absolutely significant milestone for the group, facilitating greater level of control, central oversight and performance management. Consumer behaviors changed significantly and permanently during the global pandemic. While some customers seek a pure online experience, the majority expect a hybrid omni-channel model which puts them in control. In this regard, I'm pleased to announce that we have recently entered a partnership with the U.S. cloud-based software provider, Salesforce, to embark on a complete sales transformation of our organization. In a nutshell, this will provide our customers with a truly seamless omni-channel experience, moving between offline and online channels as they wish. The system will, in addition, bring the full benefits of third-party integration and materially improved CRM and analytics, as well as reducing our operating costs through greater efficiency and bigger elements of customer self-service. The implementation costs, as you will see, will be approximately GBP 6 million across 2022 and 2023, and it is expected to be completed towards the back end of 2023. The group deeply values all its OEM relationships, and we are proud to represent 32 brand partners in attractive locations. Following a period of consolidation and restructuring in which we closed 27 dealerships, the time is now right for us to turn our attention to smaller infill acquisition growth opportunities. We have a number of live OEM-sponsored opportunities in discussion, but we will only acquire businesses where the brand, location and financials make sense. We're also really excited about the opportunity of working with a number of new EV entrants who we are in active discussions with. I'm delighted to announce that we've also agreed to expand our very successful relationship with Polestar and plan to open another site for them in Glasgow during Q4. This partnership has provided us with a really good understanding of the opportunities of pure EV retailing on an agency basis. Now, as OEMs continue to pursue more standardization, control and transparency of the customer journey, some but not all, are actively pursuing a switch to the agency fulfillment model. Where this is the case, we are working constructively to support the achievement of this goal. Whilst this will inevitably require some adjustments to our operating model, it is important to say that we see this as a major profitable opportunity. We already have significant experience of successfully operating a number of profitable agency-based models. The key strength of the group remains our significant freehold estate, which enables us to respond quickly and effectively to portfolio development requirements as the landscape develops over coming years. Of course, lastly, all our OEM expansion opportunities will be viewed through the lens of strict capital allocation principles, which Oliver will outline shortly. The U.K. used car market, at approximately 7.5 million transactions per year, represents a really significant opportunity. The group has a core franchise position in used car retailing. The market is being challenged by well-funded new entrants who are converging towards a common omni-channel position. With a market share of under 2%, the group will seek to protect and grow its position in this market. This will primarily be driven through optimizing our core franchised used vehicle business and continuing to develop our existing 11 standalone multi-franchise used car centers. To support existing investments, the group has developed its new used car cube concept and is currently searching for two 5-acre sites, together with a number of regional click and collect points. The concept is centered around a scaled physical used vehicle display, typically around 400 vehicles, together with multi-franchise servicing and cosmetic repair facilities, specialist EV experience center, public EV charging infrastructure, and a leisure/hospitality offering. As you can see, CapEx is expected to be in the range of GBP 15 million-GBP 20 million over 2022 and 2023, which we believe has the possibility of generating attractive financial returns from multiple revenue streams. Clearly, this trial gives us the opportunity to roll out further following proof of concept. As electrification gathers momentum, this will present both opportunity and challenges for after-sales revenues. Following a review of its after-sales operation, the board has identified a significant opportunity in the cosmetic repair market, which as you can see, covers minor dents, scuffs, scratching, and alloy wheel repairs. Over recent years, this market has shown strong growth, and it's dominated by local independents, and very importantly, not impacted by the switch to an electric powertrain. Given the scale of our used vehicle operations, we have a high internal demand for such services. Our current approach to fulfilling this is fragmented, with the use of third-party local providers, resulting in significant external revenue leakage. In this regard, we have identified capacity for 50 fixed sites and 20 mobile solutions to be in place by the end of 2023. Our initial focus, as I said, will be on our own internal refurbishment work, but we see that growing quickly to provide both a fixed and mobile B2C solution. We expect CapEx to be approximately GBP 9 million over 2022-2024, and we see a full year PBT contribution of approximately GBP 5 million by 2024. We've already recruited a new management team to drive this exciting initiative. Our final strategic priority, leveraging corporate leasing and fleet. Now, despite the current new car supply shortages, the board believes that the corporate leasing and fleet markets continue to offer long-term sustainable growth opportunities. As you'll see from this slide, the group currently runs three independent leasing companies, all successful in their own right, with a combined fleet size of approximately 12,000 vehicles. We are in the process of combining these businesses under the umbrella brand of Lookers Vehicle Solutions, which will enable a single point of customer interface underpinned by multiple product offerings. We are also integrating our leasing businesses much more closely with our retail operations. By doing this, we will ensure all vehicle purchases and de-fleets are facilitated internally, minimizing any margin leakage. We also see hard synergistic benefits as these businesses work more closely together. We see Lookers Vehicle Solutions as an ideal platform to bring new products to market and leverage these across our corporate client base. We are currently working to roll out a new subscription offering as this market gathers momentum. To complete these exciting developments in our leasing business, we are also making significant changes to our fleet sales operations, consolidating and centralizing local and regional operations to ensure that we are appropriately leveraging scale and have a coordinated approach to all our customers. That concludes my review of our strategic priorities. I will now pass to Oliver for his financial overview. Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to be here as part of the great team at Lookers and to be presenting my first set of financial results for the group as Chief Financial Officer. I have been really impressed by everyone I've met across the business, and I have visited many of our fantastic dealerships in great locations. I'm going to give you some more detail on a great set of results, a fantastic platform with net funds and a much stronger balance sheet, giving us great flexibility to invest for the future. I'm gonna talk you through how we are going to improve and future-proof the business with our capital allocation policy and provide returns for shareholders with our dividend policy. Let's move on to the full year results. Like our peers, the business has been materially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This was particularly acute in the first half of 2021, where a third national lockdown in January, February, and March led to dealership closures throughout the entirety of quarter one. The group acted quickly and built further upon the operational enhancements it commenced in 2020. We continued to develop our omni-channel customer journey and improve efficiency in all of our after-sales service lines. Through these actions, we've been able to increase revenues for the year by 9.5% to GBP 4.1 billion, with good growth across our new vehicles, used vehicles, and after-sales revenue streams. Gross profit year on year saw an increase of approximately 26%, rising from GBP 411 million to GBP 516 million. This represents a gross margin increase of over 170 basis points. The majority of the increase was driven by our 222 basis points improvement in used car margins from 6.6% to 8.8%. While revenue growth in our leasing businesses was adversely impacted by vehicle supply constraints, these businesses contributed strongly to our story of growth in our gross profits. Duncan will provide more detail on the improvements later in the presentation. Operating expenses remain well controlled and in line with the increase in trading volumes and revenue. Excluding government support and non-underlying items, operating expenses were slightly ahead of the previous year. Underlying profit before tax for the period was GBP 90.1 million. As noted at the half year, our non-underlying items are notably reduced from those incurred in 2020, which included significant levels of restructuring, professional fees, and impairments. During the year, we undertook an exercise to refine and improve our IFRS 16 calculation models. As part of this, we highlighted a number of errors in the calculations of the previous year, and overall, these adjustments increased the previously reported profit loss for the 2020 financial year by GBP 0.5 million. We have corrected these errors, and in doing so, have recorded prior year adjustments. These adjustments are explained fully in the notes to today's financial statements. We have continued to focus on strengthening our balance sheet and I'll now go into more detail in the next slide. The backbone of the group's balance sheet continues to be its property portfolio. As of the year-end, we had GBP 303 million of property assets. By having a clear focus on the operational management of our inventory, we've seen our stock reduce from GBP 655 million at the end of 2020 to GBP 512 million at the end of 2021. It was particularly pleasing to see the improvement in our consignment stock management and a reduction in consignment stock to GBP 182 million at the end of 2021 from GBP 382 million in the previous year. We have moved quickly to drive forward our strategic priorities. By doing so, we have seen our capital expenditure grow to GBP 70 million. Of this, over GBP 3 million was spent on developing our omni-channel capabilities and improving the customer journey. Our IT expenditure will grow in 2022 and 2023 as we build out our data analytics framework and align our systems more closely with those of our OEM partners. Over the past 12 months, shareholder equity has increased by GBP 87 million, which includes the impact of the GBP 90 million of underlying profit before tax delivered over this period. This demonstrates the scale of the opportunity ahead. We have seen an improvement in the group's cash position during 2021 with net funds at the end of the year of GBP 3 million. This compares to a net debt position of GBP 40.7 million at the end of 2020. The movement in the period reflects the impact of our excellent operational performance, working capital initiatives, capital allocation policy, and our restructuring activities. I'll provide further insights into our capital allocation policy on the following slide. The group remained highly cash generative during the period, and the improvement in net funds over the prior year of GBP 43.7 million includes GBP 103 million of cash generated from operations and GBP 168 million of EBITDA. In May, we agreed a new revolving credit facility of GBP 150 million with our banking club. Given the strong cash generation of the group, we voluntarily reduced this further in January 2022 to GBP 95 million. We believe that this provides the group with the right level of working capital facility to support the business in the medium term. While there remains uncertainty around wider macroeconomic issues such as inflation and the crisis in Ukraine, our current expectations are that we will remain net cash positive over the short- to medium-term horizon. Capital allocation is a central pillar to the group's decision-making process. The group's objective is to maximize long-term shareholder returns through the disciplined deployment of cash generated. We will continue to invest in the business in order to grow revenues and profit. In addition, we will maintain a strong balance sheet with low levels of gearing, and the group will use long-term debt to manage the business through the retail cycle. The board will invest in capital assets to support demand in our chosen markets. Capital expenditure will include maintenance capital expenditure in the range of GBP 10 million-GBP 50 million per annum. We intend to pay a regular dividend to shareholders with a policy of progressively growing dividends through the business cycle. The target dividend cover will be 3.5x -4.5x earnings per share for the financial year 2022 onwards. The group is committed to maintaining an efficient balance sheet with net debt in the range of ±0.5x EBITDA, depending on working capital requirements. In addition, we will continue to prioritize stocking funding to finance inventory and target a stocking funding ratio of eligible vehicles in the range of 85%-95%. As a group, we will regularly review the capital allocation policy and medium-term investment requirements, and we return excess capital to shareholders when appropriate. To summarize, we have generated a record underlying profit before tax of over GBP 90 million, despite the challenges of COVID and growing inflationary pressures, and underlying earnings per share grew to GBP 0.20. We have seen revenue growth across all streams, and our gross profit margin has increased to approximately 13%, driven by the performance of the used car market and our working capital initiatives. We exited the period with net funds of GBP 3 million, an improvement of GBP 43 million since the end of 2020. The balance sheet has been strengthened and the sale and leaseback of our Battersea property post year-end is a testament to the high quality of the group's property portfolio. All of this leaves us in an excellent financial position to seize upon the many opportunities ahead and deal with the continuing market uncertainties the business is currently facing. I'm now going to hand over to Duncan, who will talk you through our operational highlights and provide further detail on our strategic priorities. Thanks, Oliver. Hi, everyone, my name is Duncan McPhee, Chief Operating Officer here at Lookers. Mark referred to our record performance in 2021, which we're all very pleased with. I'd like to take you through some of the key operational highlights from the year, and then I'll touch on the key drivers to unlock the potential within operational optimization. If I start with new vehicles, during the course of 2021, we experienced yet another unpredictable new vehicle market. The restricted supply of semiconductors caused by COVID-19 impacted all of our OEM partners, some more than others. As can be seen in the table, Lookers performed broadly in line with the overall market, achieving a growth of 3.9% versus the SMMT of 4.1%. We outperformed the new retail market by over 2%, which was driven by a targeted approach towards the most profitable channel being new retail. While we underperformed in the new fleet car market, this was to be expected, given our deliberate and more selective approach towards sustainable and profitable business within this segment. We've made great progress in driving sales of pure battery electric vehicles. In 2021, we grew BEV sales by 63% from the prior year, meaning 16% of our total new vehicle sales were pure BEV, compared to the market that had a mix of 11.6%. Order takers remained very strong throughout the course of last year, and because of this, we have entered 2022 with a record new vehicle order bank in both retail and fleet channels. I'd like to thank our OEM partners for their supportive and collaborative approach towards navigating a way through the various supply and COVID-related challenges of 2021. 2021 was definitely the year of the used vehicle. From April last year, we witnessed unprecedented increases in used vehicle values, average selling prices, and used vehicle gross margin. cap hpi reported an average increase in used vehicle values of almost 30% between April and December. Auto trader reported that selling prices increased by just over 30% in December 2021 when compared to the same point in the prior year. Older vehicles have been a tremendous source of income in both our sales and aftersales departments, and we have more to do to fully maximize the potential here. Overall, used gross profit improved by 52.9% year-over-year, and gross margin reached a record high of 8.8%, some 222 basis points ahead of 2020. During the last two years, we've taken a number of actions to improve our operational controls, stock turn, and stock aging profile, and we have made several improvements to our online offering. We partnered with a new image supplier which dramatically improved our online presentation standards, and we launched Click & Drive, which gave our customers the ability to reserve or buy online. We launched Click & Sell, a portal where customers can sell their vehicle to us. This has been a great source of topping up used stock, generating more used vehicle opportunities. These actions have had a material impact on the improvement we've seen in margin, but clearly complemented by a very strong market. Our home delivery vans went fully operational towards the end of last year, adding to our omni-channel offering. The customer feedback has been fantastic. In aftersales, we weren't quite sure what to expect from 2021, given that lockdowns from 2020 had thrown out the normal visit frequency of our customers. I have to say that our performance has been very resilient. Overall, aftersales revenue grew by 11.8%, and gross profit improved by 10.7%. Our gross profit percentage was slightly down, mainly due to the increased cost of labor. Retail labor sales grew by 10%, which was pleasing given that this area of the business had been a real focus for the group. We did this by enhancing our aftersales contact strategy, which generated more retail opportunities for our service departments. We digitized the aftersales customer experience through introducing integrated online booking, online self check-in and a digital vehicle progress tracker for customers to keep themselves updated on the progress of their vehicle, all of which vastly enhanced the customer experience and importantly, really improved business efficiency. Overall part sales were up 17% year-on-year, driven by improved trade parts sales performance. Demand for skilled labor remains very high, and retention of our skilled aftersales colleagues is vital. We introduced new pay plans during 2021, which are better in structure and reward, and just as important, the new pay plans drive the right behaviors. We also have a scheme in place to encourage our technician workforce to become EV accredited, which is clearly important for the evolution of our business. Over 25% of our technicians are now fully EV qualified. Equally, we are determined to continue to bring new talent into our business. Our apprenticeship scheme has been running throughout the pandemic, a real strength for the group. In 2021, we took on 189 apprentices, and this year, 208 apprentices are ready to start their career with Lookers. This, for me, a COO of the group, is a really important slide. Lookers is a great business, but it is important that we continue to make it better. In particular, we have to be obsessed about controlling cost, and we have to be committed to improving profit and the customer experience. Operational optimization does exactly this, and there are five key component parts to it. This is a busy slide, but let me walk you around the wheel, starting with the green bubble at the top to improve our finance penetration on used cars and finance renewal rates. On cost, leveraging of scale benefits in all procurement areas. The third area is around tighter working capital and inventory control. The orange bubble at the bottom left is all about improving our penetration of the older vehicle opportunity in aftersales. The final bubble relates to inquiry management and ultimately selling more vehicles. There is more detail in the slide, but there are a couple of areas that I'd like to pick out. For finance penetration, every 1% improvement is worth around GBP 500,000 of gross profit. A simpler and more transparent process for our customers is already helping in this area. On procurement, we have recently appointed someone to head up this important function. Phil happens to come from Boohoo, and he hasn't wasted any time in beginning to add real value, and we expect material savings to be made in this area. On inventory control and general working capital, we have recently launched a new fleet management system, and we have rationalized our fleet relationships to focus on sustainable and profitable business. On aftersales, although electrification is seen as a risk to revenue, there is a very big, very real, very long tail of opportunity with internal combustion engine vehicles. The franchise dealer network haven't been particularly good at retaining customers with older vehicles, but we have a plan. We've continued to focus on selling service maintenance plans, and we have significantly increased our focus on the sale of used warranty products. Previously, we had a complex offering of warranty products, so we have simplified and rationalized our offering, making used warranty simpler for our colleagues to talk about and easier for our customers to understand, and we are realigning the pricing to offer great value. We have improved our warranty penetration in used vehicles by around 10%, but the ambition is to further improve this performance. We have also been working with IHS Markit, who are part of S&P Global, to further improve customer retention and aftersales. IHS have been helping us to improve our predictive aftersales marketing through better and more efficient use of data, flexible loyalty scoring, enabling adaptive marketing, lead qualification and prioritization. We've been working with IHS in some of our businesses over the past 18 months, and we've seen a 49% uplift in lead conversion during that time. We now plan to roll this out across the rest of the group. We've continued to digitize our aftersales customer experience. We've introduced integrated and online aftersales payment options, and most recently, we've run a successful pilot on digital job cards, which has driven huge business efficiency and really enhanced the customer experience. Lastly, the final element is inquiry management and lead conversion. Every 1% in lead conversion equates to around an additional 5,000 customer orders, so this has to be a key focus area for our team. To help improve this, we have dramatically simplified our sales process and brought real transparency to make the car buying experience an easy one. We launched Click & Drive, our online offering, where customers can reserve their vehicle and apply for finance online. In late 2021, we further developed Click & Drive to become fully transactional. Customers can now place an order on the vehicle of choice and pay for it all online. Having a truly omni-channel offering is a key enabler to improving lead conversion. Lastly, to help us optimize all of the key focus areas, we have invested in strengthening our learning and development team, who have introduced a number of new training programs. Let me talk briefly about ESG. Over the past two years, our approach to all things governance has greatly improved. As we know, ESG is for today and for the future, and to tackle key issues such as climate change, human rights and supply chains, diversity and fairness across workforces, and much more. CEM POWER CONSULTANCY were appointed in late 2021 to help us develop our ESG initiatives. They have just completed a materiality assessment. The results will help us focus on our priorities. A key one is managing the battery electric vehicle transition. We now have EV charging installed within the majority of our business, and we have just electrified a recently refurbished head office with 12 11-KW charge points, supported by a 50-KW solar structure. We have now launched a BEV salary sacrifice scheme, which has been designed to encourage our colleagues to go electric. In the lead-up to COP26 in 2021, we partnered with Autotrader and the Carbon Literacy Project to develop and launch a new automotive carbon literacy toolkit. This has been designed to support businesses and individuals in their journey towards reducing their carbon footprint by making the adoption of carbon literacy faster and easier to achieve. We will be launching carbon literacy training across the group to increase colleagues' awareness on how they can make better decisions to reduce their carbon footprint, both in the workplace and also in their daily lives. We are committed to put over 400 colleagues through this program in 2022, and we continue to focus on reducing energy, water, and waste across the group. We have much to do, but ESG will be firmly aligned with our business strategy moving forward to make sure that the group plays its part to improve long-term global outcomes for society and the environment. I'll pass you back over to Mark. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Duncan. Just before we conclude our presentation this morning, I would just like to give you a short summary. 2021 has been a record year for us, both in terms of profitability and getting ourselves to a cash positive position, which I'm really pleased about. We've also, as you've heard, done a considerable amount of work on further platform strengthening. Oliver's taken you through the capital allocation policy, and hopefully you've got a good sense that we are using efficient and effective methodologies in controlling our investments moving forward. We have continued trading momentum in Q1 this year, and as I said at the start, our profit is comfortably ahead of last year. We must be cautious of the supply and cost headwinds which we are continuing to face. Our balance sheet has strengthened significantly during the year and remains underpinned by our strong freehold asset backing. In summary, I believe the group is now extremely well positioned at this key inflection point of the market to maximize our growth opportunities moving forward. Thank you very much for listening.
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