Good afternoon and welcome to the Ramsdens Holdings PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Peter Kenyon, CEO. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon. Thank you. Well, let's go through the presentation and yes, we're very happy to take questions as they occur. A bit of background of who we are. 158 stores that are ours, and we have two franchise stores. We're headquartered in Middlesbrough, have just over 800 staff. Key services, foreign currency. This is currently if you want to go to Dubai, we'll sell you the dirhams, or if you're going to Benidorm, we'll sell you euros. Pawnbroking is a small sum loan secured on an asset of jewelry or a watch with ourselves. Typically over six months. 85%+ repay their loans. Average loan under GBP 300. Retail jewelry. This is the sale of new jewelry and secondhand jewelry that we have bought from customers. The purchase of precious metals is if we buy unwanted jewelry from you and we melt it for its intrinsic value, that is the purchase of precious metals. You can see a map of where our stores are in the U.K. We're pretty solid across Scotland and South Wales and the Northeast. Lots of gaps in the northwest, certainly in the Midlands. We have a smattering of new stores that are in the south southeast there. We also can see there a pie chart of where we get our income from. It's a reasonably balanced chart. Foreign currency is our biggest service at only 33%. Trustpilot ratings are very positive. You know, we're very proud of our five stars. We try to look after the customer. give you a quick overview of the income streams and a bit more detail about them. Foreign currency is about 95% where we sell currency to a holidaymaker and 5% where we buy it back from a customer or a holidaymaker in the UK. Mainly euros that we sell. 85% will be euros, 10% will be dollars, 5% everything else. That's long term averages. Currently, the dollar sales are slightly lower than that, and Turkish is taking up some of that slack. Average selling margin about 3% across all currencies. Average buying margin about 10%. You can see there average transaction values. You can see how many transactions we generally do. We have a small element of FX payments going through a joint venture with TorFX. We have a new multicurrency card, 14 currencies, launching later this summer. You'll be able to swap between currencies. There'll be an app. It'll do all the good stuff that you would expect it to do. Retail jewelry explains sale of new and secondhand, including the premium watches. We come back to how that's performing later on. We've shared some ATVs there. We've got a growing online operation that's going fantastically well and how many transactions we do a year. Next page, there's an overview on pawnbroking, which if you like giving you a quick overview of what that is, and just highlight some statistics there for people who are interested in that. Then really the same for purchase of precious metals. I've rattled through that because I think most people know who we are and what we do and are probably more interested in what's the story been over the last six months. You know, the headlines are exceptionally positive. We would say in one respect that the like for likes were a bit soft because of Omicron going back to November 2020. FX was a bit off the pace because of that. You know, we've done particularly well with jewelry retailing and you'll see a graph that we'll present of how good that has been. Loan book is growing, and there's good reasons for that. We've increased the dividend by 22%. There's a lot of positive noises there, and a positive message that we want to give for how we've done. We've continued our what we would call is a simple growth strategy. We've got the four pillars of how we're gonna grow the business, and we're making progress across all those four areas. Looking at our key income streams. First off, I'll explain the graph in the bottom left-hand corner. The right-hand bar is the last 12 months. So that's H1 this year and H2 last year. It gives you like an idea of where the 12-month run rate is. The rest of them are all 12-month periods, but there is a gap of six months, which was the prime COVID period when the stores were closed. So there's like, you know, that doesn't have really much relevance now that it's really 2021. It just shows you where we were with that income stream in that period of time. Usual statistics in the top left-hand corner that we've sort of shared before. In a change to, if you've seen one of our presentations previously, we've this time talked about opportunities and challenges. What I'll do is just quickly sort of run through those, what our thoughts are, and give a summary of where we think we are on a look-forward basis. Positive news about summer holidays this year, not necessarily back at pre-COVID levels, so therefore there should be some more positivity to come in future years. Reduced competition on the high street. We know that travel agents have been closing their doors, in particular TUI and Hays have had, you know, more stores close. We have, you know, talked about a diversified pie chart of where we get our income, but all those income streams are shared across the cost base. We can, if we want to be price competitive, we can be price competitive. We have that as a positive for us. We have a growing awareness of our service. Some people, believe it or not, don't know we do foreign currency, and we have to work hard at that. We also want to make sure customers become our ambassadors to tell others where they've got a great deal for their foreign currency. In terms of online, we have an umbrella site, Ramsdens for Cash, in which you can go to that site and then go off to it to do jewelry, or you can stay on that site for foreign currency, pawnbroking, gold buying, or if you want to seek out a bit of information about the business or the careers page. We think, you know, it's a bit of a mixed match. We can't really concentrate on SEO. If we want to do pay-per-click, it's very difficult to do it because it hasn't got a focus. What we have in test currently, and will launch this month, is a new website for Ramsdens Currency. We think that will allow us to grow this income stream as we move forward. Then the last one, which if you notice has got a plus or a minus next to it, is the cash to card. If you think of COVID and the change in customer behavior during COVID with people using cash less and using cards more, that U.K. behavior, it has now happened. Yet people are still going on holiday, they're still taking cash from us, and they do that as a means of budgeting, or they do it as a means of safety that when they get to a strange destination, they know that they've got cash in their pocket, come what may. Once they've been there, they can, you know, they know where they can use the cards or whatever. We don't think cash is going anywhere soon, you know, any eroding anywhere soon. People will still take cash on holiday. We have our own new card launching, that'll launch hopefully at the end of July. Please don't hold me to that, even though I've given you a date. It hasn't gone into test yet, but it is with a leading supplier in this industry. White label for Ramsdens. Got a few Ramsdens things within it, but that will launch July hopefully. All in all those things, our summary is we would expect our volumes to increase as we move forward. We might see a little, sorry, margin pressure in some locations where some competitors might be price competitive for a period of time, but we can defend against that. We're seeing a little bit in the current H2, but it's only a little bit. Our margins are a lot higher than they were pre-COVID in pawnbroking, where the loan book has increased 29% year-on-year. Again, let's have a look at the graph in the bottom left-hand corner. What you will notice that the last 12 months is still not as high as our peak period in the 12 months to March 2020 for income generation or gross profit. But the interest income lags the growth in the loan book. If you, again, look at the top left-hand chart, you'll see that the gross profit was GBP 4.8 million for H1 in this financial year. Therefore, we should be at GBP 9.6, which would put us at a record level of income if that holds for the second half of the year, which obviously it should do with a growing loan book and steady interest rates. We're in a good position, if you like, starting the period. How will it move forward? Well, the cost of living crisis is just a label that creates demand for borrowing. Customers are borrowing for a need, whereas in good times they might be borrowing for a want because they've got the confidence, they're going out more, or they might want, you know, new clothes, whatever that reason to borrow a small sum is. Whatever the economic conditions, we think people would borrow and need our services. What the real driver, one of the real drivers is if you want to borrow GBP 200, your options are a lot lower now than they used to be. We're attracting people from, you know, who previously would have used home collected credit, may have used an internet supplier. We're seeing, you know, numbers of customers who are using our services, first time customers coming to us. Their numbers are pretty steady and consistently week in, week out, the attraction of new customers. It's about 90% repeat customers now and about 10% new, whereas that used to be 92% and 8%. More new customers on a weekly basis. In terms of repayment rates, the customer base, the majority or well over 80% are employed. As we know, you know, the UK economy, there's a lot more people that are in employment as opposed to out of employment. Our service, our pawnbroking redemption rates, we profile this on a monthly basis. Our month one repayments are consistent with where they've been in recent months, recent years, and back to pre-COVID. Similarly, our non-redeemed rate, the people who don't pay us back, again, that is very consistent on a three-month average basis, and as it has been for, you know, months really, apart from the period post-COVID where the repayment rates were even better because people couldn't spend, you know, the cash that they had. Pawnbroking in a good place. Sterling gold price, it's a strong sterling gold price at the moment. That helps if the customer doesn't repay their loan. We have two disposition routes. One is to melt it for its intrinsic value. Second thing is to retail it in our shops. Consumer awareness of the pawnbroking service is growing. As we know, pawnbroking is a very niche market. Only 2% of the U.K. population use a pawnbroker. Hopefully, that is growing, if you like, with that lack of supply of alternative providers. Geographic expansion, we have shared in the notes at the back that I ran through quite quickly. Our median loan value across the U.K. is 170 GBP. Now, while we only have a limited number of southern stores, that median value for just those southern stores is 250 GBP. We're able to lend more to a customer against their gold. It's the demographics of the customer. It's seeing more 14 karat, seeing more 22 karat gold, so we can lend a higher sum. In terms of loan-to-value, we're pretty consistent at around 66% on plain gold of the gold price. Nothing's changed in our policies. New website to come, Ramsdens Pawnbrokers, in 2023. Then we can do SEO, as I mentioned, about the currency site. Same will happen with pawnbroking. We have major legislation through the FCA at the moment with Consumer Duty. That applies to us as well as banks and investment companies. We're ready for it. It's increased burden, administration burden, but no real change to how we operate the business. We're comfortable where we are, where we're at with that. This regulation is a barrier to entry for people coming into the industry. It's also a reason why some people are leaving the industry. We've made an acquisition in April in Bexleyheath, and regulation was one of the reasons that he wanted to leave the industry and retire. A bit of age and a bit of, you know what? I just don't want to deal with this regulation anymore. Summary, you know, we think our demand for our service will continue to grow in coming months, certainly through 2023 and into 2024, given that economic climate and the competitive landscape for small sum loans. Positivity around pawnbroking, despite being up 29% year-on-year. Into jewelry. Retail, 32% year-on-year. Again, have a look at the graph in the bottom left-hand corner. What we're very proud to draw out is that increasing revenue line for both in-store and online and in total. That's all been driven by self-help against the headwinds of the economic conditions. You can see in the bottom chart the split of the last 12 months retail revenue mix. We've got premium watches at 38%, pre-owned jewelry 31, and new jewelry at 31. Premium watches has been the fastest growing sector from a revenue perspective. The margins that we are achieving in each of those segments is consistent where it has been on a long run basis, or where we've had a little bit of price inflation on the supply side, and we've been able to pass that on to the customer. In the top right-hand picture, you can see that our displays are quite modular. Now, that is in between about 75-80 stores currently. We're continuing to roll that out across the estate. That standardizes our windows. That's important, and I probably should draw it out now with staff training and development of new staff. Pre-COVID, 14% of our staff had less than 12 months experience. Currently, that's 30%. We've got a lot of new staff within the business, and yet we've still delivered these fantastic results over the last 6 months. That's testament to the teamwork of the experienced staff helping out the new staff that we have, and also a testament to the great systems that we have that are intuitive and, you know, because they're bespoke and built for our own business, you know, they help the staff members in-store. We have momentum. We've been investing in that staff training. We've been investing in the stock levels. We've been investing in how we present the staff. We've been investing in the retail website, and that is what has driven this momentum for us. We think that momentum will carry us forward going forward. We don't see our retail falling back, if you like. I would like to continue growing at 32% a year, but we, you know, we've got a bigger number now to grow up on. We still think we can maintain momentum in our retail. Our last key service is the purchase of precious metals. Again, bottom graph shows that apart from a one-off scrapping exercise in 2020, you know, this is now again at record levels for Ramsdens. Again, positivity around this service. The sterling gold price is high. Not really gonna expect that to fall with Russia, Ukraine, U.S. and China and, you know, just where the world is generally. Cost of living crisis does bring some customers to us to sell their gold, but really it's an awareness. It's making people aware of what the value is of that unworn jewelry that's at home in a box, in a drawer that might be damaged. You know, sell it and use the cash for something else. We're gonna have, again, a specific website. In the short to medium term, you know, we're expecting this service to continue at the levels that we're at. Again, you know, a good positive message of where we're at with that. That then leads into the financials, and I'll hand over to Martin. Thanks, Peter. You know, I think the 6-month period's been a real success with some excellent performance from there. There's a mix of those segments that Peter mentioned. Some of them have been in a recovery phase, so you know, you've seen FX in particular coming back rather than seeing you know, record levels of trade for the business. Others like retail have been particularly strong right throughout the pandemic. Therefore, you know, some of that growth is fantastic growth from a difficult you know, a real growth level based on where we've been, whereas there's a recovery in others. Certainly the 33% growth you can see across all 4 segments there is consistent really across all the key numbers. Gross profit's grown slightly smaller, so that's about 30% growth, and that's really a couple of those margin movements in the mix of services. Peter mentioned in retail, for instance, the premium watch part of that is growing faster. As we sell more watches, that's a higher ticket price, but typically, you know, that's a lower percentage margin. While the cash margin is very strong, the percentage margin is smaller. You'll see that dilution there into jewelry retail where the overall margin is falling back slightly. That's not pressure on the individual margins within retail, it's more of a mix of what we're selling. Gross profit, you know, most of that revenue falling through to gross profit. The biggest cost in our business is people. As Peter again mentioned, you know, the recruitment that we've had to do over the last probably 18 months in recovering from COVID has seen, you know, some of those vacancies where when the business, if you like, wasn't trading as much due to that, you know, restriction in travel and the furlough, and people, I guess, making lifestyle choices to change career, which is seen across a lot of retailers. We've actually taken quite a long time to work through those vacancies. The number of people in the business has increased in the six months, certainly based on against last year. Also the cost of people has been going up as well. That's the biggest inflationary pressure into our business is the cost of people. You know, we pay the real living wage, so it's about a 10% increase of people at the bottom end in terms of their, you know, their salary increase, and obviously there's more people as well. It's about two-thirds of the admin cost increase in the six months against last year is actually a people cost increase. The rest of the costs are very, very benign. You know, we've had a fixed deal for our electric for a long time, so we've not seen any difference in that. It's a relatively small cost for us, anywhere around GBP 300,000-GBP 400,000. Our rents have been, you know, relatively consistent as well. We had the opportunity to make some savings on renewals, but typically, we take the flexibility so that we can, you know, we're not tied into stores for a long time. Our average term to a break, for instance, is around about 18 months. If you like, we sacrificed a bit of potential rent saving to keep that flexibility. What you'll see there is GBP 3.7 million of profit coming through in the six months, so that's a step forward from the last year of GBP 2.2. Now just to remind you know, we are a seasonal business, in the second half of the year, the travel segment, the FX comes through much stronger. You can see last year we made GBP 8.2, 8.3 million. It's about a GBP 6 million profit in H2 last year. The profit for the year, you know, we've said in April, shortly after our year end, we'd expect to see that no less than GBP 9.5 million. You know, we can start from a great position here in terms of momentum, for the services we have and the business back now making strong profits, as strong cash generation as we've done in the past. Sorry. Just moving on to the cash flow statement. You know, the message we've always given historically is this business and the profit we make turns into cash. When you open a store, you pay the CapEx. There's very little other than small incremental investments in working capital. All the profit comes through later as cash. Historically, our strategy has been about half of that cash profit that we make, we reinvest to grow the business. We buy, for instance, you know, 8-12 stores would normally be our strategy. The other half we pay out as dividends. You know, that cash generation is seasonal like the business is. In H2, a lot of that cash comes in through the FX profits. You know, the CapEx and the dividend payments really are the biggest cash out that you see. In the first half of the year, we've paid GBP 2 million pound dividend, which is the final dividend from FY 2022. You can see we spent about GBP 1.5 million of CapEx, and that's bought us 6 new stores and 3 relocations. That strategy with the dividend is crudely 50%. Certainly what you see is as we grow the profits, it normally lags that slightly. The dividend increase in the first half of the year has been 22%, so we've declared a 3.3 pence dividend. You know, that progression that we see, that staircase if you like, of profit growth that we see should see the dividend continue to be progressive. If we jump forward to the balance sheet, what we have as a business is we've got very, very strong current assets. The business keeps growing its net assets because that profitability and return profit in the business and growing the new stores, net assets continues to grow. We've put a lot of investment into stock in the last few years, not necessarily in the six months that we've just seen, but certainly if you go back through FY 2022, we stepped forward the inventory in the business. That inventory is made up of those three types of jewelry that we sell. We've got pre-owned stock where we buy that from the public, and typically that's valued at cost, which is normally less than the intrinsic value of the metal. That's a very, very strong asset class. We then buy, you know, wholesale jewelry. Again, the metal cost of that jewelry is a big part of the cost of that. It's probably 80% in some cases and 20% manufacture cost. Again, it's a very strong asset. Then the rest of that is premium watches, which again, if we can't sell them through retail, we could always sell them back through wholesale. There's a real, you know, strong GBP 23.3 million of asset there. Actually, we can flex that upwards and downwards quite quickly with confidence knowing that, you know, the value of those assets is very strong. Trade and receivables is the asset-backed pawnbroking lending, and we've continued to see that grow in the six months. As Peter said, that growth in the lending will then give us that income over the coming months as well. A strong balance sheet, and what we've had is, you know, this RCF facility that we've had now for since we listed, which is a GBP 10 million facility where we can use that to actually fund the FX swing in the business. The FX that we hold in the tills is very seasonal. In the winter, we might hold GBP 4-5 million of FX in the stores. In the summer, we increase that, as the volumes increase, and that swings to probably around GBP 9-10 million. We use that RCF to fund the difference in that stock and the difference in the cash cycle around it. Not only do you need more FX in the till, it also takes longer then for the cash we receive for those FX sales to get back through to the bank, as well. That GBP 5 million swing in FX is probably more like GBP 7 or 8 million swing in real working cash flow for the FX season. That's the balance sheet, and we move on to the strategy that we've had now for, you know, certainly since we listed. It's been very consistent. You've got four key segments to this. As Peter said at the start, you know, we're managing to execute on all four. One of them is to just make the stores we have do better, you know. Retail's been a big part of that. Growing the retail in the existing stores and growing the other services as well. And what we see here is, you know, all four segments are in a real good place. Foreign currency is not back to pre-COVID volume, albeit we are back to pre-COVID commissions now. You know, airlines have spoken very, you know, bullishly, I guess, about bookings for the summer, so we look forward with optimism for that. We got paw brokering at, you know, our lending, our record loan book at the end of March. We continue to see momentum as there's lack of alternative credit providers in the market. We see positivity for pawn brokering. Then retail jewelry, that momentum should carry us forward again with strong optimism. The gold price is helping gold buying, particularly in the second half of H1, so that again gives us optimism looking forward. We will relocate probably another two stores in the second half of the year. What a relocation does actually is, you know, we, I mean, we've got some stores on the fringes of a high street or it's been off-pitch in a town, and moving that to be a prime location really steps forward your retail jewelry and your foreign currency because they're products where you need people walking past the front door because it's very much a footfall product. Whereas typically for the other services, the customer would come and find the business, especially for pawnbroking, for instance. Those relocations will help also drive some growth from the existing stores. The next leg of the strategy is to have just have more stores, you know. We've got a very profitable model. We've got 158 stores. There are a lot of places we can open a Ramsdens store. We've got stores in small towns, and we've got some, you know, stores in big cities. When you look at the U.K., we've, you know, you look at the map of where our stores are, we've got a lot of opportunity. We would not run out of places to be able to put stores. So that is not a limiting factor. It's really about the pace of what, you know, how many do we open? And that's typically driven by the operational challenge of, you know, embedding the new people, embedding the systems and trying to open stores where, you know, around stores you already have. If you open a store in the next town along, you actually can use, you can leverage the staff out of the local store and that just helps, you know, train the staff, it helps them deliver the right service and also you get less staff turnover if you do it on a more gradual level. If you go and open, you know, if we open 20 stores in the Southeast, for instance, in one go, that would be a lot harder to manage. That growth, you can see there the six stores that we've opened, three pretty much in the North and three in the South, and that balance just helps us manage that operationally. We put in here the model that we use, if you like, for the profitability hurdle for a new store. It costs us around GBP 300,000 in cash to open a store, and that's about half of that for CapEx and the other half for the working capital of the store. Now, that working capital does include the cash FX that you need to put in to trade the FX segment. You know, that's very easy to take back out. For instance, it's not a commitment of cash that is lost. Really we often look at payback on the CapEx rather than the full cash that we have to put in. Certainly from a profitability point of view, the stores become profitable very quickly. That year one loss that we showed there of GBP 20,000, a lot of that actually is pre-opening cost. You've got to pay the rent, you've got to have the staff probably at least a month, maybe two months before to train them. You know, we've got that profitability growing and the run rate profitability growing within the first year. Often new stores actually make profit in year one, especially when, you know, you've got a really good successful start. Whereas, you know, as a cohort, if you like, the 158 that we do have, that if we ignore the brand new ones, we've got very few loss-making stores. If you've got one mature store that loses money, it doesn't lose very much money. There's a very, very strong performance across the board for the stores. That isn't the case where we're carrying a lot of poor performing stores. On to the third leg of the strategy, which is to grow online. We've got, you know, a retail website, which we separated out from the rest of our website some time ago now, has really gone from strength to strength. We've got, you know, a dedicated jewelry website. We've invested more and more in, you know, the quality of the product that goes on there. The way we take the photographs, you know, the amount of stock on there. The platform that we sit the website on, it's had a refresh in the six months, and you can see, you know, we've had really, really strong results. We manage not just the revenue of the online business, we manage the profitability as well. The profit graph would actually be very positive as well. While we are investing more, for instance, in advertising by pay-per-click, and that investment probably was GBP 20,000 a month, if you go back a year, it's probably more like GBP 50,000 a month in recent months. That's actually profitable. You know, that's coming through in terms of profitable growth, not just, if you like, buying revenue for the sake of it. We do manage that on a profitable level. That success we've had for retail actually is why we're looking at taking the other products and following the same model. Currency is getting its own website, and that will help people who land on that website. It'll help conversion as they know, you know, they can see very clearly what the website is about, and we'll follow that through with pawnbroking and metal buying as well. That's our online strategy, which is going very, very well. The last leg of the strategy is something will come up. You know, we look here, we bought a business in April. If you remember last year, we bought a business in Boscombe. There are a lot of independent pawnbroking businesses, and there's a lot of them in the south. As we've moved south, particularly it actually gives us an opportunity now to bolt on some of these one-store pawnbroking businesses. It's hard to push the timing on acquisitions. You know, people generally will be looking to exit when they retire. There's a lot of good independent businesses in the sector. You know, we typically will pick some up as and when they're looking to exit the market. We underpin everything with our ESG strategy. You know, we've got a very sustainable business model. We take in pre-owned jewelry that people no longer want, and we refurbish and resell the best jewelry back out. The stuff that we can't resell, we actually melt back down, and that gold then would be used in the process to make more jewelry. It's a very sustainable theme. We also, you know, we try and do as much as we can in terms of energy and recycle and the education in taking that into everything we do. There'll be a lot more disclosure and KPIs, et cetera, in our annual report this year, given the upcoming TCFD and, you know, the focus that businesses have now in terms of that reporting to explain, if you like, our carbon footprint. We work really hard. You know, we are very much a community business. You know, we're supporting our local communities. The services that we offer are very much aimed at supporting the community and the social impact of the business is really important. One of the key things for us on that front is our own staff. We work really hard to make sure that we engage with our staff. We've got a very strong staff engagement, and we've got a new staff engagement survey going out in the next month. You know, I think the results we've had historically are very, very good. We, you know, we've got that high bar or higher bar, if you like, than the minimum wage. We actually pay everybody at least the real living wage. We do our bit, you know, in terms of charities and trying to support the communities that we're in. In terms of governance, you know, we're a very, very regulated business. You know, we're FCA regulated. We're a money service business for foreign currency. You know, we're AIM listed. We're part of the QCA, so we follow their code. You know, we do everything that we think we can. We work really hard to be the best we can be. We've refreshed the board in the year, so in the six months Karen Ingham has joined us. She's got a fantastic background. She came from Expedia. She's also got FCA knowledge from her work with the Newcastle Building Society. Karen's already, you know, offered a lot of support and advice, and I think she's gonna be a great addition to the team. That's, if you like, underpins everything we do. I'll just pass back to Peter for a quick summary. In summary, we're in a good position. We've had a good half year. All of our key core income streams are performing well. We have a strong balance sheet. We've got good cash generation. We're optimistic and confident, hence a 22% increase in the dividend. We have opened six new stores that are going really well. We have a good strong pipeline to grow the estate. You know, the start of H2 is going well. You know, we're very confident of the future and in a good position. I won't go through the appendices, but there's the mugshots of both Peter and I. Sorry, Martin and I. There's also a page on the lease estate. The average term to a break date in our lease portfolio is about 18 months. If we do need to relocate stores because towns have shifted, or we do have stores that are maybe not giving us the return that we want, we can get out of various leases. That's it. That's the presentation. I'll hand back and Peter, Martin, thank you very much for your presentation this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab situated on the top right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. Could I please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where it's appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Right. Okay. So how are you performing in the Southeast so far? What is the opportunity in the region? The three new stores in Chatham that's been open 18 months now. Very pleased with retail across all four stores is going fantastic. Pawnbroking, a little bit mixed across the four stores. That's, you know, if the competition do their job well, it'll be hard and take us time to convert customers to Ramsdens, but we're here for the long haul. Foreign currency, again, mixed response. Mixed, from average probably to very good. We're very happy with how the Southeast has gone. There are lots of opportunities for us to expand further, but we have to go at the right pace for operational reasons. Lots of new staff, higher staff turnover. We wanna get it right. We wanna be here for long term, make sure our customer service is as good as it is. Next question. What is behind the growth of the retail division? I think I probably covered that up. There's a lot of self-help in terms of the investment in stock, investment in staff training, investment in the way that we present it, and the online activities and how we promote the online. It's been a journey. I think I've covered that one off. Have you seen any changes in customer trends across pawnbroking? Different types of customers using the service, different amounts borrowed, different types of items pawned. Across the UK, not. Like I said, we talked about the diversity in the customer that we see a bit more 14-carat and 22-carat in the South, but it's very early days. The customers are from all walks of life, from, you know, we lend GBP 20 to put food on the table. We have lent GBP 30,000 for a deposit for a Ferrari. Our highest loan currently is over GBP 100,000. So, you know, we've got a wide range of lending here across our customers from all walks of life. Will people still be going on summer holidays this year? Do you expect them to take less cash with them? People still going on holiday? Yes, all the holiday makers, holiday companies, travel, airlines are all positive about summer bookings. So yes, we do expect people to go on holiday. Do you expect them to take less cash with them? No. The average transaction value is up on pre-COVID levels. You know, we're positive about that as well. Next question. Is competition in the pawnbroking sector declining? Do you see further M&A opportunities? I wouldn't necessarily say it's declining. There's obviously ones and twos that are coming out of the sector, but both ourselves and H&T are growing their store estate. Not massively, but you know, decent numbers probably greater than the people who are leaving the industry. I wouldn't say it's declining. Yes, I probably do see M&A opportunities coming, but nothing transformational. It'll all be, you know, incremental business that we're well happy. If it's attractive at the right price, that is better than opening a store ourselves. We actually do carefully consider all applications, acquisitions on that basis. Next one. How does loan-to-value ratio as at 31 March 2023 compare to September 2022 and March 2022? Exceptionally similar. Our credit risk, credit lending, loan-to-values, all have been consistent for years now. We fluctuate between 60% and 66%. Gold price is slightly higher at the moment, so we're probably 62.5% of the gold price. About 40% of the secondhand retail value for plain gold. If you take a Rolex watch, it depends on the model. If it's an older, less popular model, we'll probably lend 50% of the retail price. If it's a you know a sports model that is much sought after, we'll go 70% of the secondhand retail price because I also know the customer's gonna come back for it. No change in our lending policies. As of the eighth of June, how many different high street banks does Ramsdens bank accounts with? Because this will help us assess any banking risk. Three, Yorkshire, Lloyds, and Barclays. Those were the pre-submitted questions. Stephen has asked, "Can you add some color to the caption headed less competition?" It depends, I suppose, on what service that is. I think if you talk about travel, there are less travel bureaus. Hays have closed about 100, TUI have closed about 100 stores, so that's taking competition away. In the retail environment, you know, we know that H. Samuel are closing some stores. We know that Warren James have closed some stores, and we also know that some independents have left the market. That's what I'm saying competition. If I haven't answered it, Stephen, have another go and ask another question. How long does it take to get a new store up to speed? Stephen has asked. Well, that's the graph on the page within the presentation. Page 17. That's the hurdle that we give ourselves. If we have a store and we have a look at it, and the area manager doesn't think or that what they put forward doesn't pass that test, the store does not get opened. It depends what you call up to speed. Our average store profitability is north of year three, and obviously stores mature as they age. How quick depends really on the mix of income streams. We have pie charts for what we expect a new store to look at, and I think I get every single one wrong as we move forward because you're always surprised at which services go a bit quicker than others. Like I've explained, the ones in the southeast, retail has gone off like a train. Stephen has asked again, "Comment on cost of the ventures, i.e. online card for FX, please." Well, our investment, if you like, in the card program is less than GBP 100,000, if that helps. Online, the websites are not that expensive, and obviously we've got the cash resources to do that. Colin has asked, "Commercial property is having a bad time at this point in the cycle. Are you finding it easier to find new locations at good price in preferred locations?" It's a mix, Colin. Some towns where the locations are very sought after, there is no negotiation in the rent, and you understand it, and you're in competition for those units. That's obviously, you know, in some locations, that's exactly where we want to be. We want to be where the customer is shopping. We want to be where the footfall is. I also get offered stores. I got offered one this month, well last month in May. 5-year deal, 2.5 years rent-free. We haven't taken up on that offer because it isn't that good. It is a mix, but we want to be where the footfall is, where there's a nucleus of returning shoppers. Pavel has said, "Congratulations on an excellent set of results." Thank you, Pavel. "Do you have any indication of the possible upcoming Labour government planning to impose crackdowns on pawnbroking or further regulating payday lending?" Well, I don't care about payday lending 'cause I don't do it. Do I think they're gonna crack down further on pawnbroking? One, Labour have to win the election. Two, no, I don't. I think the FCA, who are our regulator, understand pawnbroking. Pawnbroking is centuries old. You can either go to the Medici family in the fourteen hundreds or the Chinese pre-Christ. Which, it's a simple service, complaints are very low, and it's a much sought-after service for customers, and it is highly regulated. What we would like any government to do is crack down on illegal lenders. Hope I've answered your question. Peter has asked, "Do you have a staff training school? Is training done in-store or web, or web-based?" It's a mix of all of that. I don't have a training school, perhaps. I do have four training centers that are above stores. We do training in-store on the job. I have area managers and assistant area managers that can give one-to-one training to the staff, in all sorts of, you know, the basics when they first come in, to, you know, really detailed stuff with hand, you know, handheld courses on watches and diamonds on what to look for, et cetera. Web-based, yes. We have an e-learning platform that we use, and we use that as a mix of regulatory courses or courses that are more read and understand as opposed to practical. We have a full mix of that. Jonty has asked, "Inventory per store for jewelry looks to be around GBP 144K, which is up on past reporting periods. Presume some of this is inflation?" A little bit. "What are the risks of an inventory markdown if economy takes a further downturn, especially in the case of watches which have the lowest margins?" Our retail has momentum. How is momentum, Jonty. I'm not expecting any need to mark down our products to get them away. You know, we've been able to cope with price inflation, put the prices up a little bit, and maintain our margins. I have a more optimistic view, but obviously I'm not naive. We are aware of the economy, but working hard. We've got momentum. A great value for money proposition for customers. Hopefully I don't have to do what you've suggested. I think the other thing with watches as well is it's the fastest moving product in our retail division. While, you know, watches are high value, equally they're very desirable, and they sell very quickly. Historically, that was probably about six months. As we've increased the stock, we've probably drawn that out slightly as part of that increase, but certainly, you know, it's not as hard to sell a watch as it is for instance, a diamond, which would be, you know, over a year's stock turn. Certainly, the risk is a lot lower than you might think, given the actual turn in the stock is actually quite fast. While diamonds do turn more slower, they have the highest margins, so the return on capital of holding them is, you know, in line with other products. Lawrence has asked, could there be a mix of share buyback and increasing dividends in the near term, given the share price currently, or is increasing dividends the focus going forward? No intentions to do any share buyback. We want to, you know, grow the business, as Martin explained. Roughly 50% out in dividend, 50% invested in the business. That would be the holy grail that we want to work to. Very conscious of the tax rate. It's been mixed this year at a hybrid and then full 25% next. We want to increase the pound value of our dividends paid out and get closer to that 50% over the next two years. That's the last question. Peter, Martin, thank you, and I think you've addressed all those questions you can for investors, and of course, the company will review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments? Well, we've got one question on other interest rates. Base rate movement's gonna affect our future interest rates. Not really, you know, we're a bottom-end. A GBP 100 loan is 9.9% per month. Moving interest rates from 3% to 4% doesn't affect what we charge customers. The summary comments, you know, what we went before. We've got a good business. We've had a recovery now through COVID. I hope that I'm no longer talking about that in the future, that it is a thing of the past and lessons we have learned. We can go back to what we would call a staircase. We increase profit, and we increase dividends, and we do that in a structured, carefully thought out, you know, well-diversified, safe way. You know, that's what Ramsdens is about, and we're back to hopefully delivering that. You know, we've been on the market six years. I know hopefully we can continue to grow over the next six years and beyond. Peter, Martin, thank you for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Ramsdens Holdings PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.