Good day, and welcome to the Marks & Spencer Analyst Call. This meeting is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to hand the call over to Archie Norman. Please go ahead. Morning, everybody, and welcome. I know some of you have probably been up all night, and Stuart is very disappointed to be knocked off the front page this morning. But we do have a good set of results today. Stuart's going to contextualize that and explain how much further we have to go. So before we come on to the Q&A, Stuart, you're going to give us a short introduction. A short, long introduction, Jeremy. Well, good morning, everyone, a nd I should say a special good morning to some of our competitors, including Tesco on the call. So welcome. In the room, I've got Jeremy, our CFO, because we've just done the media call and I've answered nearly all the questions, Jeremy's going to take a lead on this call. He's still got two calls left in him as our CFO. But joking aside, we have got Fraser and Helen here, who are on hand afterwards, of course, to take any other detailed questions. I just want to take a few moments on where we are as a business, the progress we've made, and, of course, as Archie has just alluded to, what's left to do because there's a lot over the coming years. The good news is that our continued investment in quality, value, and innovation in our food business, and quality, value, and style investment in our clothing business is paying off. Profit before tax and adjusting items was up 17% at GBP 407.8 million. This halved. We've served more customers than ever before as we've become more relevant to more people more of the time. Our rolling 12-month customer numbers is now 32.5 million. We've delivered growth in sales, both volume and value, plus market share growth, and we've obviously improved our profitability, our return on capital, while reducing our net debt. Our structural cost reduction program's on track. We've delivered GBP 16 million of savings in this half, and we've mitigated the effects so far on cost inflation. So I think the easy thing for me to say is that these are good results. But in the spirit of being positively dissatisfied, there is, of course, so much more to do a nd that is what energizes us because there's opportunity. All these opportunities equal future growth. Let me touch on food quickly. Our food sales were up 8%, like-for-like, up 7.5%. Food has now outperformed the market for four consecutive years. Our operating margins was up 100 basis points at 5.1%, benefiting from that volume growth. We are seeing the beginnings of a virtuous circle. Our investment in quality is driving sales, in turn driving volume, and that helps us to consistently and continuously invest in value. Our lead on quality has again extended. Our value perception is the strongest it's been in over a decade. Whilst availability has improved to over 95%, we know there is much more to do, especially to get ahead of our volume growth, because we want to give our customers the best availability, the best choice, and reduce the out-of-stocks. Fixing the backbone of food plays a critical part in delivering our growth plans. Of course, we're making good progress with much more to do. Our forecast ordering system is now live in 90% of the range, and that will be completed by March. Alex and the team are building long-term agreements with strategic partners who are supporting our category transformations. We're investing in capacity, as I say, to get ahead of this volume growth and to continue the momentum. With Gist, we can now build on the benefits of the integration and now start to upgrade and expand our network capacity. So my summary for food: good progress, we're on track, always aiming higher, and gearing up for a very busy Christmas. In clothing and home, the overall categories of sales have increased by 4.7%, like-for-like up 5.3%, delivered a margin of 12%. That was down 40 basis points on last year, really reflecting on investment in digital and online. Clothing has also outperformed the market now for the past few years. We've taken big strides forward in terms of style, helped by deeper buying on seasonal products and also successful collaborations like Sienna Miller a nd our lead on quality and value has been supported by strong full-price sales in a very promotional market. So good progress, but we know we have so much more ahead of us. Firstly, online grew 11% in this half, supported by the digital customer experience investment, but we really want to step on when it comes to proposition, availability, improved ranges, and fulfilment. We also want to reimagine our website and app experience and not just incrementally improve it. So with online, we need to really accelerate the pace of change because we're still keeping to our target of 50% of our clothing and home business will be online. The second thing I'd call out is I think there's still a big opportunity across beauty and home. We, of course, have exited furniture, but we need to take bigger steps forward, and there's a bigger opportunity over the medium term with better styled products, but also more volume and value and a better online proposition when it comes to home and beauty. Also in the supply chain, we're beginning to embed some changes, but we are just at the very start when it comes to our new planning platform, and that's a few years of work ahead of us. Good progress in clothing, lots of opportunity ahead. On international, obviously, the results are disappointing. For us, more or less expected, but sales are down 10%, really driven by India and a softer clothing and home order book. As a result, the operating profit margin in international is 4.7%. I still think there are reasons to be confident for the future. We've got to reset our strategic partnerships with our franchise partners and face into the challenges actually in India. But we've got good control of stock now, and I think this provides future growth in the medium to longer term. When it comes to store rotation, just to touch on this, along with our other strategic programs, we haven't quite delivered our Five-in-three plan, and we're not really on track to deliver it. So therefore, not been as fast as I would have liked. But recently, we have got some momentum. We've got a pipeline of 70 stores and actually just recently an acquisition of 10 major sites, giving us future stores in high-quality, high-growth locations, which will open in the years ahead. We opened five new food halls and four renewals in this half. Our food renewals are, of course, the larger formats, enabling our customers to do a full M&S shop. We opened two new full-line stores in Dundee and Washington Galleries. Both are trading way ahead of our expectations. The small store in Battersea, I don't want to get too distracted by, is the first of its kind. We'll open it before Christmas. It's an 8,000 sq ft clothing store, and we're already doing well in our food store in Battersea. We do have two new full-line renewal stores: Bristol Cribbs Causeway and Leicester Fosse Park. When we think about building the M&S we need to be, there are a few key things to call out. The first is digital technology. Under new leadership, we've now got a very clear plan, a grip on our D&T infrastructure. We know the progress over the past few years has been slow, and we want to accelerate the pace of change. Rachel's landed incredibly well, and we're very confident in our three-year plan on D&T. We also talk a lot about high-performance culture, but we think it's critical to this phase of the transformation. We're very focused on simplifying our operations, getting even closer to customers and colleagues than ever before. We have a lot of good programs and routines and rituals on how we're embedding a new, faster culture in M&S. O f course, the foundation of the transformation is a disciplined approach to capital allocation and investment. We're making good progress, delivering paybacks ahead of our hurdle rates. We've increased our return on capital employed to 15%, and we've maintained a strong balance sheet. We're declaring an interim dividend of 1.0p, which is a third of last year's final dividend. As I just finally finish and close with outlook, last week's budget and long-term impact on M&S, our suppliers and customers, is a bit uncertain, but for us, I don't want to get too distracted by it. We've got a clear plan, and we've got to focus on what's in our control. We're very committed to quality, but just as committed to providing excellent, trusted everyday value. Trading in the first five weeks of this second half continues to show momentum in food. In clothing, it's been a bit softer as a result of warmer weather at the moment for this autumn-winter, but we still remain on track, and I'm very confident we'll make progress in this second half. We're very well set up for Christmas. I think we've got the best Christmas food range I've seen in my six and a half years at M&S, and definitely a more stylish seasonal clothing offer. We know customers are looking forward to celebrating Christmas with M&S this year. So, of course, I'd like to thank colleagues for everything they've done and everything we're about to deliver, but really thanking our customers, including all of you on the call, because I hope you are all shopping with us a nd if you're not, I really would ask you to shop with us over this Christmas, including those of you from Tesco on the call. So my summary: progress made, still lots to do, but lots of opportunity ahead for future growth. I'll hand back to Archie for questions. Thank you, Stuart. That's great, and so I think the essential message is that these are good results, but we shouldn't be getting carried away. There's a lot more to do. Now, let's take some questions. If I may ask you, let's take one question at a time because otherwise we'll forget what you asked and o f course, you'll come back for a follow-up. If I don't introduce you, please introduce yourself and tell us everything you think we should know. Let's start with Izabel Dobreva from Morgan Stanley. Isabel. Hello. Good morning. My first question is on the supply chain improvements that you outlined, so the new forecasting system in food and the planning platform in C&H. Could you give us a sense of how much volume you're putting through these new systems as of the first half so that we can understand how much further upside and opportunity remains, and also whether you have any early observations on improvements in availability and shrink as a result? Isabel, thank you. I'll take that. It's quite a brief answer, to be honest. In food, the FOA forecast ordering allocation system is now 90% of the range. It will be 100% of the range by the time we get to the end of this financial year. Actually, availability on that 90% of the range has improved by 1%. Waste is a bit higher. It's not material. It's slight. S tock loss is slightly less overall than last year. I think the work Alex and the team have done has been brilliant when it comes to this program a nd it's a system we've been working at, as you know now, for over four years. So there's good news and good learnings, and we're on track. Nothing much else to report on food. In clothing, we're at the very early stages. The first module is going to be implemented in the second half of this year. It will be on a few products. This is a multi-year, i.e., three-year program. So there isn't really much to report, but I would say when we have the Capital Markets Event, Richard will talk about the plan for this second half and how we're going to roll this out category by category. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks, Izabel. Okay. There were one or two rares for newcomers to our show, unlike me, of course. So I thought we should move to Monique Pollard. Monique, good morning. Morning. Monique from Citi here. Right. I'll stick to the brief with one question. Given the likely U.S. election result, I was just keen to understand the FX impact of a dollar strength. So when I try and calculate it, I think that about 1% U.S. dollar strength maybe hits the clothing and home growth margin about 40 basis points. I just want to understand if that is roughly right, and then if you could give us some indication of how much you are hedged and bought in clothing and home for the second half of this year and into next year, please. Okay. Got it, Monique. Very good question. L uckily, Jeremy is here with me. Thank you, Monique. So we buy around about $1.5 billion of clothing or $1.5 billion in dollars, in clothing dollars. So 1% movement through the math is $15 million. We are fully hedged, effectively, for the current year, an average of 1.25, slightly better rate in the second half at 1.26 versus 1.24 in H1. W e are over 2/3. So we're 68% hedged for next year at $1.28. So we've seen today a strengthening in the dollar to the extent of about a cent. We'll obviously keep a very close eye on it. It can move all over the place in terms of interest rates and relative interest rates in the U.K.. So I think it's early to call how the Trump vote will work its way through on both sides of the Atlantic, but obviously, we're keeping a close eye on it. But we're pretty well hedged for, well, we're very well hedged for this year, and we're pretty well hedged for the year ahead. Very helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Monique. Okay. Jonathan Pritchard from Peel Hunt. Morning. You talk about your style credentials having improved with the customer. Could I just check that that's across all age groups, across all demographics, and across genders, I suppose? But is it across the board, that style credential getting better? Yes. Jonathan, sorry. It's a very good question because yes. In clothing, we've definitely attracted in some of our recent campaigns a slightly younger customer, especially as our style perception improves. So we've seen growth in all customer demographics. In food, we've also seen the same. We've had growth in all demographics, including our core customers and different age ranges and customer segments. The most encouraging one in food is to call out young families. We've seen an increase in our market share in young families of about 21%. In actual terms of market share, it's still small, but it's pretty good. So pre-families are up, young families are up, middle families, older families, and older dependents is how we classify it. So yes. Just on clothing, I can't remember the number, but there is about a one percentage point change in under-35s shopping in M&S in this half as well, so growth across the range. Very interesting. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jonathan. Richard Chamberlain from RBC. Richard? Yeah. Morning, Archie. Morning, guys. Well done on the strong numbers. I just had a question on clothing online, please. I sort of had quite a big step up in Q2. What do you think drove that pickup? T hen, I guess, linked to that, what was the impact on the financials and the clothing and home margin from the furniture exit in the period, please? Thanks. I'll let Jeremy chip in as well on furniture, etc. I think there's a couple of things online. As you say, we saw a step up in Q2. Some of that was weather-driven as well. That happened in our core clothing stores and online. There's a couple of things to call out when it's in terms of online mix. Our profitability, as in gross margin, was really because we invested in digital and data investment. Some of that investment in app experience, web experience, we paused last year, and we then put that investment into this half as well. So online margin, you would have seen is down by about 220 basis points despite a strong sales growth. Furniture, there was an impact of about GBP 45 million of sales in furniture, which was about GBP 10 million lower than the previous year. So there's a headwind there, and for all furniture, around about GBP 10 million. So we sold GBP 45 million at lower margin. We're now out of GBP 42 million furniture. I think the key thing, Richard, for us online, there is some good news because we have seen new customers engage with us online. We've increased the amount of brands as well as online. We've seen a big increase in Click and Collect as well. So there is some good news. We've upgraded the imagery, the page speed, the functionality like add-to-bag. I think my summary is, though, we see a much bigger opportunity when we really improve our proposition and availability. They're the two big things that we're very focused on this half, but also ongoing. I think when you have a strong performance, it comes through all the channels, and that's what's happened. But what Stuart's saying is we've got a long way to go online. A long way. Okay. Thank you, Richard. Shall we go to Warwick, Warwick Okines at BNP? You there, Warwick? Thanks, Archie. Yeah. Good morning, everyone. So you talked about increasing your customer base to 32.5 million on a 12-month rolling basis. So just wondering that sort of within that, have you seen an increase in the number of customers cross-shopping both food and C&H? Has that number increased, or are you still seeing two quite separate shopping missions? Not really. I mean, it's a good question because we have about 11 million both customers shopping in food. We haven't seen a big difference in the two. But let me take that away because if we look at food, we know our numbers. The cross-shopping number, I can't remember. So could I come back to you on that? This is hard to remember, the geometry of our business. The majority of the stores are food-only stores where there isn't any clothing. So there isn't the opportunity to cross-shop. The cross-shopping question, which I don't think I can answer, is in stores that are full-line stores, how many people shop for food and clothing? It's normally 40% of that number, and I don't think it's changed. I just want to be about that. But it's in those minority stores. So cross-shopping is nice to have, but it's not central to the strategy. Yeah. Warwick, I'll come back. I think it's still about 40, but we're just seeing it's changed. It's a good question. Okay. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Warwick. Shall we go to Kate Calvert at Investec? Good morning, everyone. On the video presentation, you mentioned you had to go harder at structural cost savings. What projects do you need to land to achieve your GBP 500 million target and perhaps have to be done before you unlock the next sort of level? Do you have to do the full installation of this forecasting and planning system in both businesses and h ow much of the store rotation program do you think you need to do? Let me give a quick check on the source. I was going to say, actually, on the previous answer, Kate, I actually think there's an opportunity as we land these systems to go harder again. We're actually going to have a conversation with the team tomorrow now that we've got Rachel on board and we're building the backbone of the IT. Some of the cost savings out of the Clothing & Home are assumed in the 500. What we've got less of there is some of the end-to-end pieces into the stores, I think, which is an opportunity to go at. There's further opportunity, I think, for productivity in stores. There's certainly opportunity in the supply chain. One of the things we mentioned in the RNS is, and again, it'll be an area of focus for us over the next two or three years, is given where colleague wage and cost is going and the NI increases that we've seen, looking for further capital investment, I think, to unlock productivity. For example, automation in our food supply chain depots is an obvious area to go and look. We're not reliant on the systems being executed totally for the savings, but I think there's further opportunity there when we've landed the system there. That's probably three or four years out. We're well on track with the 500. We deliver 240. We'd like to push on and deliver more, if we can. I think it's in the nature of our business that the issues are for the opportunity. So as Stuart has said, our supply chain, particularly on both sides, both businesses, the supply chain is, well, it's pretty much as it would have been several years ago, 20 years ago. So there's a huge opportunity there. Nobody else delivers clothing and home into the store in quite the way we do a nd that means there's a lot of store labor involved in processing product, which is worth noting. We did increase our target last year from 400 - 500. So I think we're on track. D&T is the big one, big enabler, getting rid of legacy systems as well. I think that all big retailers had this issue, maybe we more than most, but of legacy systems, systems you thought were installed years ago and were fit for purpose are now turned out to be not right for the future. So you'll see a big investment in technology, and all of that will come through, hopefully, in productivity and performance. There's more of a Capital Markets Event next week. Exactly. A lso on store rotation. Remember, store rotation is a big productivity program for closing older, so legacy stores and investing in stores that achieve a much higher rate of sales, so. Okay. Do you want to come back on that, Stuart? So, if I think I've understood correctly that you don't need the complete installation of the forecast and planning systems to get to the 500? Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Cool. I can conclude. The food one is largely complete anyway. So the food is 90% in stores. We don't need the clothing home in store to deliver 500. That's actually right. Yeah. No problem at all. Good. We would like it. Okay. Thank you, Kate. We'll go to Adam Cochrane at Deutsche Bank and then the great Clive Black from Shore Capital. Thanks, guys. Not from Tesco, sadly, but just to Deutsche Bank. In terms of the OpEx, would you be able to describe how the moving parts of OpEx evolved in the first half in terms of what was the underlying increase in OpEx costs? What was that offset by in terms of cost savings a nd then how much did you reinvest in terms of other initiatives that you were adding on to the cost base? T hen what does that look like in the sort of percentage increases as we look into the second half? Thanks. That's a very complicated question. I can certainly answer part of it. So in terms of cost savings, we delivered GBP 60 million of savings. You'll see from the bridges in the RNS, you can work out what the cost investments are in terms of operating costs within food and clothing and home. Our cost investments were slightly weighted to the first half relative to the second half. We expect further GBP 60 million of cost savings in the second half. The point I've made, though, in relation to cost is you'll see it in both the bridges, the clothing home and food, particularly in food. The fantastic volume growth we got in food meant we got real leverage from that cost investment. So overall in food, we improved net operating margin by one percentage point despite price increases by inflation of around 1.2%. So the way we look at the model is the cost savings help mitigate the cost investment, but actually it's the volume leverage that's helping drive the profitability, particularly in food. In terms of the underlying cost inflation, what would that number look like on the cost base? The underlying cost of living cost inflation, I think, cost inflation is about GBP 130 million for the year. Our cost savings are slightly below cost inflation. It's about GBP 130 million for the year a nd that's mainly cost of living costs in terms of the living wage increases. Okay. You said at one time we just. Partially offsetting it, but not quite with the cost out. When you talk about the remodeled stores, which are part of the costs, both new stores and any refurbishments, are they delivering a materially different operating cost structure, or is it more just the fact that you have higher sales densities in those stores which makes them more efficient? It's both, really. So if you're in Liverpool Church Street on nine stores, it's massively unproductive. You're having to walk 10 minutes to go to the loo. Loading the stores is very difficult. Only one of the lifts works. So you get real productivity from the efficiency of having a two-story floor store with food mainly on one store and clothing home only on the other. But clearly, the sales densities help a lot. You look at the Devon stores we took last year. We're looking at 30% or 40% less space and significant increases in sales per sq ft. So it is a bit of both, and as Archie said, the other piece is we are concentrating more of our sales into less stores. So you're also getting efficiencies from supply chain and the requirement to service the stores as well. So there's all kinds of scale economies going on there. So it's a bit of both. So operating negative stores is expensive in that respect a nd it's not just the operating costs. It's also the main brand. It's the main vendor. In every new or renewal store, we're seeing a much higher profit contribution versus the older store, of course. Higher sales densities plus better operating savings. So that's giving us a higher contribution per square foot. You'll see in the RNS all the paybacks. The newer stores always give a slightly better payback than a full-time renewal, of course. That's more, a nd the only thing we're slightly guilty of, Clive, which we're working on is in those first couple of months of a new or renewal store, the costs tend to be a bit higher in waste, etc., but then they level out and we see improvements after a few months in. So, Adam, if you're saying the new stores are fundamentally different cost model, it's quite difficult to say that's the case. They just are a flexible modern store that delivers higher sales per foot. So yeah. A long way to go. I think we're ahead of not Clive. I think that's a good one. This is Clive Black. I'll let him have a go now. Okay. Shall we go on to Clive? Clive, welcome. Thank you, Archie. You've been on the side watching this. No, I had a good night's sleep. At my age, you need it. Every little helps when you get to my age, as they say, for our friends at Tesco. So conscious of the Capital Markets Event, but on the investor video and Stuart's opening remarks, you touched on the digital and technology appointment. Y ou've also talked about how important this is going forward around a number of answers to today's this morning's questions. I just wondered, to bring that together, what more effective digital and technology means for the firm over what timescale? P erhaps just to add something that hasn't been touched upon today, what it may mean for personalization and loyalty, which has been talked about an awful lot over the last four years, but maybe hasn't progressed either. Thank you. I'll touch on a few things, Clive. It's a good question. I don't know how much we've talked about loyalty, but just to nip that one in the bud first. I know I said when I took over as CEO that we need to rethink Sparks a nd we were too obsessed with getting more customers onto Sparks without really reviewing the program itself. O f course, the competition paid a lot of attention to loyalty pricing a nd in our early work, it was very, very clear that our customers said, "We'd much rather have what they called honest pricing, everyday pricing." So we ruled out following anyone when it comes to different pricing models with loyalty. What we also knew, though, was we weren't really capturing the data. There's a careful balance when it comes to loyalty on the data you collect and how you use it, how personal it should be. We knew that loyalty for us, with having nearly 20 million customers filing it, was a big opportunity if we were to get it right. We didn't want to rush it. You can definitely say we haven't rushed it because we've only really started this program six months ago. Where we are now on Sparks, we've done small things like getting more integrity on the data. That's quite a lengthy process because you're asking customers on what they want to opt in or opt out on. We're starting to think how we use that online especially and how we tailor on the online personalization journey. We're also launching things. We did Baby Club. It was a first step of how does this work a nd we had 100,000 customers sign up to Baby Club within two weeks. So a lot of our work at the moment is in the background on technology, on the data and the digital experience and what we're thinking about, a nd I would say there'll be news in around six months, probably at the year-end, in what we're really thinking about in terms of our loyalty program. But there's small things happening. When it comes to D&T, obviously, our D&T spend is around GBP 500 million when you look at the overall spend a nd we know that's a big investment. We've got, that's OpEx and CapEx, of course a nd we know we have a big opportunity. Our technology is outdated, very complex. The cost base is high, lacks agility. What Rachel has done with all of us around ExCo now is we have gone through the three-year transformation programs across all the different businesses. We've gone through all the enablers around tech investment, whether it's Stockley Park exit, whether it's cyber and IT, all those different things. We've gone through all the systems, the new planning systems, for example, in clothing and home. We've mapped out now the next three years of how all of the D and the T needs to underpin all the business transformation plans. Whether it's data or whether it's digital or whether it's IT, we now have a much clearer plan. Rachel will be on stage to talk all of you through that at the Capital Markets Event. I think we're in a much better place. The ExCo leadership and knowledge around this has also improved immensely since Rachel's joined. So I think we'll start to see some wins over the next 12 months. Archie, just by way of a quick follow-up, is your international business totally compatible with the core at the moment a nd does it require additional work in terms of the D&T arena? No, that's a good question. Look, there's support D&T need to provide on international, but really the core of international is about reworking our partnership agreements. When you take a step back, Clive, international, if you exclude Republic of Ireland, hasn't really grown in 10 years, and what we've been unraveling with our franchise partners is how do we provide an environment for growth. We've looked at the arrangements with our franchise partners, and we've looked at the performance in markets. We were doing this 12 months ago, and we knew we need to recontract with those franchise partners for more of a win-win, so we're both aligned to growth, so there's an unraveling of international. There's some challenging in some of the markets, India being the biggest one, and really, our plan is to take the best of the U.K., take it internationally. I don't want to rush this. Mark has got time. I've said to him, "Never mind the short term for 12 months. Let's restructure this for growth in the medium term." So it's a bit more really. D&T is a small element of it in some of the systems, but this is really about partnerships. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Jeremy. Thanks. N ow, time's marching on. I want to get people in. So we'll try and move to the rapid-fire stage of the meeting. I'm not looking at you as YouTube. So yeah, everybody's in. Anyway, Yashraj Rajani, I wanted to welcome you to the M&S show and love to hear what you have to say. Yeah. Thank you so much for the welcome and congratulations on this morning's results. Just a quick one from my end on online margins, please. So as you called out in your remarks earlier, there's been a decline given your investments in the first half. How should we think about this going in the second half a nd more specifically, I mean, as you add more SKUs with the partner brand side of things, how accretive or dilutive will this be b ecause as you clearly said, this is coming with more customers and more growth? Thank you. Hi, Yashraj. Yeah. So some of that, those investments were one-off. Some of it was relating to promoting our furniture through. Some of it was an investment in the offer. So I would say half of that has been more structural and half of it to come out. Thank you. Thank you, Yashraj. C ritchlow from Berenberg. Thanks. Good morning. So we've heard a lot about growth potential and investment this morning. I'm just wondering if you see the sort of multi-year need for investment, sort of changing the profile of M&S in terms of how investors see it. So M&S used to be a cash machine. Is it a completely different animal now, or do you think we'll get back to that? I think we're a completely different business, but we're a business that's investing in the key growth strategies but with real discipline. If you think about our strategies, supply chain, store rotation, D&T, there are some really big chunky strategies here that we are facing into probably for the first time in 20 years that is going to require investment. At the same time, disciplined investment. Last year, we paused some of our spend in D&T because we wanted to be absolutely convinced every pound we put in, we were going to get a return on. So we're clearer. We're clear on our plan a nd of course, at the heart of all this is growing volume and growing cash. We will cover more of that on the capital markets day, won't we? No, but wae're here for growth. W e're doing things that now probably are really for paying off in five, 10 years' time. T hat's the right thing to do. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Anne. James Anstead from Barclays. Yes. Just one then. So question on CapEx. There's kind of clear guidance for net CapEx of GBP 500 million this year, but there's also a slightly, well, potentially ambiguous comment around scope for increase in FY25. How should we interpret that? A s that a pointer to CapEx continuing to move up a bit into next year? A s an associated question, you've mentioned that it's going to be very difficult to do five years' worth of store transformations in three. But are you confident you're still on track to do five years in five? I'll do the first bit, and I'll let Stuart pick up the five years in five. So, James, we'll talk a lot more about this next week, b ut the key focus for the capital allocation is generate cash a nd I think we're doing well on that. I think, given how well the store investments are going, we would want to look at potentially increasing the envelope. We'll come to that in the FY26 guidance when we get to the prelims. But we'll talk more about our medium-term view for what we're going to do with our cash, what we need to invest in maintenance and maintain the business, and what we'd like to do in terms of investment. It won't be radically different to where we're at, but I think increasing the envelope to contingency investment business is where we want to be. James, very good question. Jeremy's answered the CapEx one. I mean, on stores, I think the quick answer is yes. I started out with this ambition. Our plan is unchanged. 180 full-line stores. It might be 180-185, 420 food stores by FY28. I think we could just scrape there. The biggest challenge on this is finding the right sites. I have to be honest with you. We declined more stores than we accept because it's very easy just to get carried away thinking, "This is good space. Let's do it to hit the number." But actually, it's about the quality, not the quantity. So our property approval committees are very robust a nd that means sometimes that might challenge the actual 420 number in food. But we've now got a good pipeline. I think I called out the 70 approved stores with rotation. I also have to be honest. At one point, I was accelerating the closures, but I realized that if I did that, that might also give property an easy way out. So the challenge is accelerate the closures, but find me the new store at the same time. So that means the five into three was compromised. But look, I think we're on track. We'll talk about it next week. Don't forget, if I think about future growth, even at the end of this financial year, only 25% of our estate will be new or renewed a nd they're growing very well, double-digit comp growth, more profitability, etc. If you imagine in the next few years, half of the estate, a few years after that, 75%-78% of the estate, I think it's good growth opportunities for the next five years. That's helpful. Okay. Thanks, James. Okay. We're coming to the end now unless any other hands shoot up. So let's go to Georgina Johanan from J.P. Morgan. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Can you just update on your view on your strategy in clothing and home with regards to third-party brands, please? I think you seem to be talking about that a little bit less than historically. So just keen to hear your view there, please. No, good question. I mean, we haven't really talked about it, but I mean, there is some good news. Our partner brand sales are up 40% a nd in sales terms, that's about GBP 120 million, roughly. I think what we're really focused on is quality brands. That means some brands are coming off. More brands are then being added in replace. In the half, we added 17 more brands, including brands like Spanx and Under Armour. So we're very focused on what we call the tier one. Importantly, those brand sales are growing, but over half of those baskets with one of those partner brands do have an M&S product in a nd that's really important. The other thing I would say is we have to invest in the onboarding and the systems around D&T in this space as well. So we've got 216 brands. Some are coming off. 17 added. Good sales performance. Half the baskets with M&S product. It does require a bit more investment in technology. Thank you so much. Thanks, Georgina. Now, we've got one last bid, and so we'll take Paul Rossington from HSBC, and then I go to draw a line. Paul. Good morning. Good morning. Well done today. Just a quick question. I'm sure you've run the numbers, but are you able to say what you expect the National Insurance impact to be on your wage bill into next year? I know you'll speak to accelerated cost savings, etc., but have you actually got an idea of what the absolute incremental number is going to be? Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Well, quickly, not so much on the wage bill because that's what we'll decide next year, b ut if you just break it down, the National Insurance contribution, whether it's the increase or the threshold change, is GBP 60 million of added cost. So that's a headwind. W hen we think about the living wage stroke pay review, that's another 60 headwind. So we'll work that through next year, b ut overall, it's about 120 with both those things added. Thank you very much. Sorry for two ending up questions. Boring technical one. Sorry. No, it's well made, and it's very topical. Thank you, Paul. Appreciate it. Okay. We're going to draw a line there. There is just obviously a lot more we could talk about. There is the investor day next week, so we're going to a lot more depth. I think what you'll see is Stuart's title for strategy, Reshaping the Future of M&S. That is what it's about. Of course, with some good performance, but there's an enormous amount of reshaping still to come. That's what makes it exciting. Look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, everyone. Please shop with us at M&S.