Hello, and welcome to the RM PLC 2022 half year results presentation. My name is Alex, and I'll be coordinating the call today. If you'd like to ask a question at the end of the presentation, you can press star one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, you may press star two. If you're joining us via the webcast today, you can use the Q&A tab located above the slides. I will now pass over to your host, Neil Martin, Chief Executive Officer, to begin. Neil, over to you. Thank you, Alex. Hello, and welcome to RM's interim results for 2022. Thank you for taking the time to join us. My name is Neil Martin, RM's Chief Executive, and I'm very pleased to be joined on this webcast this morning by our new interim Chief Financial Officer, Emmanuel Walter, who joined recently. Emmanuel joins us with excellent experience, and I'll ask him to introduce himself when I hand over. The agenda I'll run through today, I'll give an overview of the first half. Emmanuel will then take you through the first half financials, and I will conclude with a section on strategy and outlook before Steven from Headland joins us, and we open up for questions. Starting with the 2022 H1 overview. We grew revenues in the period by 4% on the prior year. This resulted from good growth in our assessments and resources divisions, which more than offset a decline in our technology division, where we've outlined the need for a wider turnaround. We're also seeing a strengthening revenue development in key areas which will support our longer-term plans. However, profitability fell in the period, reflecting the weaker performance in the technology division, impacts related to some challenges experienced in our IT change program and the negative impacts of high inflation, most notably in elevated international freight costs and resources. As mentioned, aspects in our IT implementation program in the resources division have been problematic and caused delayed shipments at period end and drove inefficiencies which elevated costs. This is now stable and throughput is building ahead of the new school term. However, this experience has resulted in the need to de-risk and extend the implementation timeline, which will require additional costs through to completion in 2023. As a result, net debt was elevated at the period end of GBP 41.5 million. Responding to this, we've agreed revised debt leverage covenants with our banks for May and November this year. While we recognize the importance of the dividend, we've decided to prioritize balance sheet prudence while we have elevated debt levels and will not be paying an interim dividend at this stage. We've not taken this decision lightly and remain committed to a sustainable dividend policy, and the position will be reviewed again ahead of the preliminary results. Looking at the wider market context, the macroeconomic backdrop is challenging for all markets at the moment, and despite its relative resilience, the education market is not immune to the economic headwinds. School funding is increasing, but the backdrop of increased salaries, energy costs and inflation will create near-term budget challenges for schools. That said, the underlying market drivers of digital maturity and changing buyer behavior in education continues to strengthen, and we are seeing positive sales momentum which will support the longer-term path to sustainable growth. I will now hand over to Emmanuel to take you through the financial summary. Thank you, Neil. I'm very pleased to have been given the opportunity to join RM plc a month ago and take the role of interim chief financial officer. I have more than 25 years of international experience in Europe and Asia. I've held various senior financial positions with multinationals and as group CFO for four listed companies specializing in the TMT as well as engineering sectors. Moving on then to look at our financial overview. Revenue grew 4% to GBP 100 million, with good growth in the resources and assessment division more than offsetting the decline in RM Technology. This also reflects the impact of some revenues moving into H2 as challenges associated with the IT implementation caused sales dispatch delays. The program challenges alongside inflationary pressures impacting the wider financial performance, with adjusted operating profit decreasing by GBP 3.6 million- GBP 5 million. Adjusted diluted EPS decreased to GBP 0.04. Net debt at the end of the first half of 2022 at GBP 41.5 million was GBP 31 million higher than at the same time last year, with the increase driven by ongoing investment in our IT program and the return of normal seasonal working capital outflows following COVID disruption. As a reminder, we have a GBP 70 million revolving credit facility in place, which we continue to use to fund those investments. On the next slide, we bridge our GBP 4.3 million revenue movement versus 2021. In RM Resources, revenue increased GBP 3.4 million- GBP 51.6 million, driven by strong international and curriculum brand growth, both of which recorded record levels. Underlying growth was stronger as it was offset by some delayed shipment due to our IT program implementation. Revenue growth in our assessment business of GBP 2.7 million- GBP 18.2 million results from 2022 being the first full exam series since 2019. In our technology business, revenue declined GBP 1.9 million- GBP 30.4 million, which is mostly driven by reduced hardware sales, which were seasonally high in 2021. Pipeline development is strengthening with the new contract wins across the group. On the next slide, we bridge profit movement versus 2021. Profit reduced in our resources business by GBP 1.6 million, with revenue growth offset by GBP 1 million of inbound freight cost inflation and elevated warehousing, distribution and packaging expenditure associated with the IT implementation. In our assessment business, profit declined GBP 0.5 million, which improved revenues from exams offset by the absence of one-time benefits in 2021 and higher short-term delivery costs associated with software development and hosting. Technology divisional profit reduction of GBP 2 million reflects lower revenues compounded by the impact of inflation and higher service delivery costs as the business transition under new leadership. The following slide shows the divisional revenue and profit splits. I do not intend to go through the variances again in detail, but this highlights revenue increases in both the resources and assessment divisions, as well as a profit decline being focused within the resources and technology divisions. On this slide, we set out the key component of our income statement. Focusing specifically on the items below adjusted operating profit, interest was GBP 0.8 million for the first half and comprise the cost of servicing our debt facility together with the finance costs associated to our defined benefits pension schemes. Adjusted profit before tax was GBP 4.2 million, down GBP 3.8 million from GBP 8 million in the prior year. Tax in the period was GBP 0.8 million, and the adjusted effective tax rate or ETR was 20%. Lastly, post-tax adjusted items were GBP 9.3 million, which is an increase of GBP 5 million versus 2021. GBP 6.1 million of these items relate to costs incurred in respect of our new IT platform implementation, which is with an additional GBP 2.3 million from dual running costs associated with the implementation. The remaining GBP 0.8 million is amortization and acquisition of intangible assets. After deducting adjusted items, we report after tax a loss of GBP 5.9 million. On the following slide, we take a look at the key driver of our cash flow, focusing on items below adjusted operating profit. Non-cash items are mainly depreciation and amortization, with 2021 and 2019 at reduced levels due to one-off benefits from provision releases and share-based payments. Moving to working capital, the first half of the financial year is normally a working capital outflow period for the group, with inventory purchases ahead of the second half peak selling and the majority of the cash inflow from examination also coming in the second half, and 2022 has seen a return of that seasonality versus 2021. This result in the adjusted cash generated from operations outflow of GBP 3.6 million in the first half, which is GBP 12.4 million adverse to 2021. Also, more aligned to the GBP 1.2 million outflow in 2019, the last normalized working capital movement period. Normal financing and investment outflow come next, including business as usual CapEx, pension contribution, interest, tax, and dividends, which are in line with 2021 and GBP 4.7 million below 2019, mostly due to investment being focused on our IT change program in 2022. This result in adjusted cash outflow of GBP 11.4 million for the first half before adjusting items, which was GBP 2.3 million better than 2019. We then deduct the GBP 11.8 million cash impact of adjusted items, which are mainly IT program related, to arrive at a cash outflow for the period of GBP 23.2 million, leaving net debt at GBP 41.5 million. I think it's important to note again here that our cash outflow was driven by continued spend on our two investment programs and a normalized level of working capital outflows. In terms of guidance, we extended the program timeline, and in conjunction with the continued review of the completion roadmap, we expect spend to remain elevated through to program completion in 2023. Moving on to pension. Our IAS nineteen pension position improved by GBP 8.3 million from the end of November 2021, increasing the surpluses from GBP 30.4 million- GBP 38.97 million. The improvement was driven primarily by an increase of 1.9% in the discount rate, which is based on corporate yields, but partially offset by reduced scheme asset valuation. We also concluded the latest triennial valuation in the first half of 2022, with the scheme deficit reducing from GBP 46.5 million-GBP 21.6 million. The deficit recovery payments of GBP 4.4 million per annum will continue to the end of 2024 before reducing to GBP 1.2 million until the end of 2026, where recovery payments cease. I'll now hand back to you, Neil. Thank you, Emmanuel. In February, I outlined our approach to taking RM forward. This addressed the market opportunity emerging post-COVID, the need to reset the strategy and have a transition phase which focused on key enablers to unlock growth, which would subsequently enable us to build a sustainably growing business with strong cash generation. This was the slide I presented, so let me update you on our progress in these areas. The market changes on which we set our path continue to strengthen. The long-term growth in the use of technology in education will continue, and the Department for Education matures. Along that theme, we believe that assessment will ultimately be fully digital, and we echo the view of others in the sector that it is now a matter of when, not if. We are seeing engagement building post-COVID and have broadened the target segments on which we focus. Importantly, in our core English schools market, procurement is changing and schools are aggregating into school groups or trusts. The government has also clarified its position on this and wants all schools to become academies now that are part of a group of schools of at least 10 by 2030. These mid-sized buying groups are the key target market for our technology division, and we estimate that 70% of English schools will be in this category by the 2030 deadline, which covers around 14,000 schools. Finally, the pandemic has shone a light on critical elements of education where RM has strength, such as the STEM curriculum and early years development, with governments around the world investing in additional funding to mitigate learning loss as a result of COVID. We also outlined that to deliver on the opportunities we needed to go through a 2-year transition phase. The focus of this was to set out a longer term strategy and direction, structure the business alongside the market opportunity, which required us to change the divisional structure, which we've now done. We also said we would bring in new leadership, which has seen us make changes to the executive team in the last 6 months. Finally, upgrade systems and processes from our legacy IT infrastructure to a new group-wide IT platform, which moved into its implementation phase in the second quarter of this year. As you've heard, this is the area of transition that is proving most challenging. Our implementation and resources did not progress to plan and has taken time to remediate. As previously outlined, we now have a grip on this and the new system is stable and performance continues to be improving, and it's now critical that we reflect on the learnings to build assurance. Although this was the most complex of our end-to-end implementations in the program, with many of the challenges flowing through to the warehouse operation, we are focused on de-risking subsequent employments. That said, the program remains a critical building block to establish a platform on which to build RM's improved service delivery, efficiency and propositions. We are committed to completing this successfully to create the right foundation for the business to scale and ensure a smooth delivery from this point forward. Let me move on to talk about the status of each of the divisions, which are at different stages of development and focus. Starting with RM Resources. Clearly, this has been at the forefront of the IT delivery in the first half in its Consortium brand. If we put that to one side, the underlying progress is positive. It is the market leader and has strong brand alignment with a focus on post-COVID lost learning, particularly in its strength areas of STEM curriculum and early years development. The growth opportunities come from leveraging its channel strength in the U.K., where 90% of primary schools buy from Resources, but our share of wallet can be enhanced through improving digital channels which will come through from our new IT platform. Also, 20% of revenues currently come from international markets, where we expect growth to be stronger than in the U.K. As you can see, year-to-date progress has been positive in these areas with international and our curriculum specialist brand TTS recording record periods. The focus going forward is to complete the implementation of the IT platform across both brands, which will unlock digital channel benefits and deliver efficiencies from a consolidated automated warehouse. There is also a need to improve our logistics and supply chain approach, and as this has had the greatest impact on margins with container rates at high multiples to what they were pre-pandemic. We have maintained product margins well despite the inflationary backdrop and put in new solutions, for example, following Brexit, to enable more effective movement in and out of Europe. We know that we're behind where we wanted to be in mitigating these wider logistics challenges, particularly international freight. Moving on to RM Assessment. The market opportunities here are material as the assessment market looks at digital options in the wake of COVID. We, like many, believe that the future of assessment is fully digital. In the first half of this year, we've seen progress in our sales pipeline after COVID disruption, with much of it coming from our focus on new target segments, including our first customer in higher education. I'm afraid to say these contracts are smaller than our traditional large school exam contracts, which continue to lag the change in the wider market. It does demonstrate the opportunity to build out from our core market. Moving forward, we plan to ensure our products are engineered to scale to ensure that some of the elevated development and support costs to date which have impacted margins are managed as we broaden our reach. Also, as a business with long-term contractual relationships, we have a reasonable indexation coverage and good revenue visibility. However, we will need to carefully manage our cost base still as inflation continues to impact and we have limited options to move costs outside our contractual framework. With some areas of inflation exceeding that indexation, such as our support from our organization in India. The focus is also to develop our go-to-market capability, as now is the time to optimize customer acquisition through an important period in the sector and ensure our product roadmap is aligned to the opportunities that are emerging. Finally, RM Technology. This is an important market which is going to undergo significant change as the running of schools moves to academy school groups who will need to consider their technology strategy more carefully in the future. Although we are the leading provider of managed services in this sector, there is an opportunity to improve and turn around the division to lead in a marketplace where we anticipate good growth potential in the coming years. Historically, we've been strong in running large local authority programs, but as the market fragmented and customer contracts became smaller and shorter, we haven't adapted commercially to leverage as effectively as we would like. As the market starts to reaggregate, we've now appointed a new managing director with excellent pedigree in cloud and managed services to lead our transition. We're still strong in the larger school group customers that are coming to market, including winning the largest infrastructure deal in the sector in the first half of this year. The opportunity is material, but it will take time to improve our systems, processes, and commercial structure to create greater client stickiness, improving margins, and to build out the managed service offering and digital maturity journey for schools. The inflation backdrop is challenging also in this area, as there are a greater number of short-term contracts with small customers. The transition opportunity will be about more broadly improving commercial management and margin focus alongside customer retention. Now, I've spoken a lot about transition here, which needs to be done as we need to address the near-term focus and opportunities that exist. Looking further out, I wanted to take a moment to remind us of our ambition to deliver sustainable growth in an important and resilient market, as it is both realistic and material. It is realistic because we have leading customer reach and channel strength in each of the markets in which we operate, which itself creates further development opportunities in the future. It is material because the market is changing in a way that benefits the positions that RM hold. It will deliver consistent mid-single digit revenue growth and improved operating leverage from a double-digit margin position. In summary, near-term funding, although increasing, is likely to be challenging for our customers managing their budgets, which will need to be observed carefully, particularly in RM Resources and with single school customers. That said, the underlying market drivers continue to strengthen for us around the theme of digital maturity and education. We are progressing through our transition phase to build a better and more scalable business. Through transition, profit conversion will remain subdued versus our aspirations as we turn around the technology division, manage a challenging economic backdrop for ourselves and our customers, and deliver a complex IT implementation. We hold leading market positions that are showing signs of strengthened sales momentum in relatively resilient markets, which will undergo significant change and require the expertise and value that RM can bring. Thank you, everybody. I'll now pass back to Steven to open the Q&A. Thank you, Neil. We're just gonna take some questions from the webcast platform first, then I'll hand over to Alex, the host on the conference call for anything telephone line. The first question I've got here is, Neil, looking at the transition, could you provide an updated view as to when you expect to have that transition completed by? Yeah. In February, we laid out a transition period of two years, and we're still planning to complete the transition in that period. We've made good progress in changing the divisional structures to align to the market opportunity, and we've brought in new executive leadership in the first half of this year with great expertise and capacity that creates. Clearly, the challenges through transition have been associated with the IT roadmap and some of the complexity we had in implementing Resources. This is the most complex of the implementations as it moves all the way through order fulfillment, finance and operations, CRM, through to warehouse management and automated warehouse system. There are other elements of the implementation that are going better. We are putting in ServiceNow in our technology division at the moment. I think it is critical that the system is now stable. We have a grip on the program. Throughput through the warehouse is where we wanted it to be after a period of not having that up to speed. I think it's an important point now that we ensure that we take stock of our learnings through this period and ensure that we de-risk the remainder of the program and deliver successfully and smoothly without disruption to our customers, which will elongate the period with which we deliver the timeline. The benefits are material when we come out of the other side, and we still expect to complete in that initial two-year transition phase. Although we will have some slightly delayed transition benefits coming through, we still expect to be through the material works of our transition period in the two years we laid out in February. Thank you, Neil. The next question and sort of linked to the sort of thing, but diving into more detail on one area is, how should we think about the resourcing plans of the overall, change strategy across the business? Have those senior roles been filled? Is there still likely staff change that needs to be worked through? I think, like all of these, the key focus to begin with was to change the divisional structure. We split the assessment and technology divisions into two, which were previously running under single management. The key there for us was to ensure that we had the right leadership in each of the divisions. We brought in a new managing director who joined us in April in the technology division, who brings excellent experience. I think it's fair to say in the last 6 or 7 years we haven't had a managing director from that managed service and cloud environment. The appointment of this managing director, I'm extremely pleased about. We now have a new chief people officer, a new customer and strategy director, and a new chief financial officer in Emmanuel Walter. I think the executive team, we are now very confident that that is a strong team and able to deliver the transition. You know, a few of those have joined in the last six months, and they will want to take stock of the transition activities they have ahead of them, and ensure that we have the right team, the right plans, the right progress. But I'm confident that we've made a good job in the last six to nine months of building an executive team to take us through transition. Thank you. In terms of, I've got two on inflation, if that's all right. The first one is a slightly broader one, which is, it's a topic you've touched on and one that dominates the news at the moment. Could you just talk through, spend a bit more time talking through the pressures you're seeing and how you're responding to that, please? Yeah. Clearly inflationary impacts are across all of our organization, and they're certainly greater than we anticipated in February. I think probably to bring the right context around what we're doing and how it impacts us is we kind of need to go through division by division. If I start by assessment. Assessment is a business that has a number of long-term contracts. We have good indexation coverage across those contracts. We have some that are up for renewal in the next 18 months, and therefore that debate will form part of that broader discussion. I think what it does mean having these long-term contracts which give us good revenue visibility is that therefore broader inflation discussions are more difficult because they're tied into a broader dynamic. We do have some aspects of that. We are seeing, for example, our costs in India are running ahead of U.K. inflation, which is where most of our contracts are indexed. We will have to continue to manage what is a very good indexation coverage. We'll have to continue to manage how those flow through into our margins. I think if we look at resources, we have managed our product margin well, and that we've seen that remain stable. I think the challenge that we've had is the significant increase in international freight costs, which are sort of threefold what they were pre-pandemic. If you look at things like China sea freights, where we bring in a number of our own intellectual property that we develop ourselves, you've seen a sort of tenfold increase of that in the last year. Given the market is as price elastic as it is, I think it's been challenging for us to put all of our cost increases onto customers, and therefore some of our margins have had to dilute, particularly around that international freight area, where costs in the first half are up GBP 1 million on what they were in the first half of last year. We have to continue to work on that. We are working on solutions to address that. We're not as far forward as I would have liked, but it is an area that we have to be mindful of balancing, pushing all of this margin pressure onto customers and the elasticity with our customers who are budget challenged and who will regularly check prices across competitive set. I think in our technology it's more of a mixed picture. Around a quarter of our revenues in the period are more transactional, so hardware sales and the like, and therefore those are transactional, and you can manage the price on those as it unfolds. In our services part of the business, which is another 30%-40% of the revenues, then we have some longer term contracts that are index linked. There is a bit of an element of these where recent contracts in the last few years looked to mitigate the impacts of inflation around outsourcing and put that back onto suppliers who needed to manage that to compete in that space. We have some of those services contracts that are not inflation impacted, and we will look to manage those as best we can. Some of them on the more strategic customers, we're trying to, at each renewal, look at the opportunity to move from, you know, a very historic view of how outsourcing is, which is, you know, take our services and pay them back to us to more of a platform-led opportunity. Where we can get into those conversations with some of those more strategic customers, we can actually reduce the cost to our customers and manage inflation and continue to develop our margins. I think part of the challenge of that is where we've got a number of those smaller school customers on shorter contracts who, looking at a view of managing that inflation backdrop, may decide either to take that service back in-house or look to a more local provider who's less strategic. We have a number of those small contracts that have built in the last few years as the market changed, and that will be where the challenge of balancing customer retention and inflation management puts some of that transition burden and margin dilution on this technology division as we turn it around. I think that gives you a spectrum of what we have across the piece. Clearly, we're looking at all of our pricing opportunities, our cost opportunities as we progress through this. I think, you know, it is a challenging backdrop and our customers, we need to observe carefully as their budgets will be challenged on this as they have fixed revenue. It's worth noting school funding is increasing 3%-4% in the year ahead. I think that will be surpassed by some of the inflation challenges that the market are likely to impose on them, including salaries, fixed starting salaries for the new entrants into teaching, and energy and broader inflation costs. Thanks, Neil. That covered sort of the second one on inflation. Just next question I'll take just for now is one about the business roadmap. The question is, the three divisions have separate drivers and their own roadmaps and timelines for growth. Is the group still getting material benefits of keeping all divisions under one roof? Sort of interested in general thoughts on M&A disposals near and longer term, keeping an eye on the balance sheet. Yeah. I think, you know, we often have in a number of places common customers. I think as education becomes more digital in its nature, I think some more of the synergies across the group start to become apparent. You know, I think that we have a business in Resources which is planning to really digitally lead in its digital channels to customers. We have our own technology that has an extremely strong, you know, sales force needed to deliver a sales-led opportunity rather than a marketing-led opportunity in the main, which will be very focused on what we see as a building level of multi-academy trust. I think therefore, there are opportunities in the future to leverage the value of the assets in some of these areas that each of them bring. I think, you know, what we are is that if you look at our Resources business, it's clearly the channel aggregator in Resources with the strongest customer reach. I think if you look at Technology, it sees itself there as the real go-to access to schools in the use of technology and strategy around technology in schools. I think as Assessment evolves, clearly our customers are assessment providers, so awarding bodies for school exams, universities, professional awarding bodies. I think we're also starting to see larger school groups looking at Assessment differently. Therefore, there are assets across each of the areas that I think we will start to see the value of the assets each of them bring, being able to be shared more broadly as education becomes more digital. That said, you know, there is a clear go-to-market that is distinct to each of these businesses, and I think the opportunities are more in the back end. I do think also as we progress through the strategy, you know, I wouldn't say that, you know, there wouldn't be small assets that we see as opportunities. I think the core of where we are and the channel strength that we have in each of the markets across the three divisions is something that remains very relevant to who we are as an organization and is very clear to our strategy going forward, as I believe there are opportunities in the U.K. and internationally, a number of those areas for each of those three divisions to accelerate. Thank you, Neil. Next question is just a bit more detail, if it's okay, on the IT systems and the program there. The question is, what have been the main issues that have caused a delay to the sort of rollout and development, and what lessons are being learned? Thanks. I think the implementation in the Resources division, as I mentioned previously, was very complex. It was about putting in front-end ordering, flowing through to finance and operations, with a supplier portal, going through to warehouse management system and then into our automated warehouse facility. The initial go-live was positive, and the system worked. I think as we started to increase throughput post go-live, then certain challenges started to manifest themselves, which meant that we struggled to get our throughput up to the levels that we had anticipated. A lot of that was around how data moved into the warehouse, and how our systems and processes enabled us to all of that to flow through. I think there's been an element of us simplifying some of the things that we've done in that implementation and ensuring that we scale effectively and make that process as easily for all of the people working through the end-to-end system to be able to adapt to the new processes and tools. We do now have the throughput up to where we wanted it to be. It's taken us longer than we had wanted. I think that the lessons we have learned through that period are a lot around the change process that runs alongside a system implementation and ensuring that all of the people go on that journey fully. I think that where we apply our best people and our resources probably has needed a greater level of resource commitment to the task as we got through into that pre- and post-go-live period. Certainly, that's the bit that's enabled us now to get the system to where we want it to be. I think that's an element that we reflect on as we move through. Clearly, the next phase, which will be we now have the system within Resources that other elements of Resources will be migrated to, and therefore a lot of the technical process and system challenges we have ironed out as we have gone through this more difficult than we had hoped for transition of the Consortium brand, and we've learned a lot through that period. As I mentioned, we have started to implement ServiceNow, which is a critical platform, for our proposition in the technology division. That is in rollout. I just think that we need to therefore make sure that as we think about de-risking the plan, we ensure that we're delivering those elements of the plan that deliver the greatest value first. We do that in a timeline, and a change mechanism that ensures a smooth delivery from here on. Great. Thank you. I know that we're tight on time, so I'm gonna hand back to you, Neil. In terms of anyone that's asked a question that we haven't had time to ask, we'll make sure that those are picked up offline. Neil, can I hand back to you to wrap up the call, please? Of course. Thank you, Steven. I'd just like to thank everybody for joining today. If you have any further questions or if there's any questions that we haven't been able to answer through the process today, please don't hesitate to get in touch with ourselves or with Steven and the team at Headland. Thank you very much, everybody. Have a good day.