Good morning and welcome to Robert Walters' Q1 trading update call. We are joined this morning by Toby Fowlston, Chief Executive Officer, and Jonathan Solesbury, Interim Chief Financial Officer. If you would like to ask a question during today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the call over to Toby. Please go ahead. Morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our first quarter trading update call. I'm Toby Fowlston, Chief Executive of Robert Walters. Since our full year results in March, we announced the departure of David Bower as CFO. David made a great contribution his three years with the business, and I know many others at Robert Walters will join me in wishing him well in his retirement. I'm joined today in London by Jonathan Solesbury, our new Interim CFO. This is just day 11 for Jonathan, but he's already begun to make a very valuable contribution, drawing on his considerable experience leading finance functions in international businesses. On that note, I'll hand over to Jonathan now, who will make a few remarks regarding performance at the group level before I return to touch on trading in our service lines and the wider market backdrop as we exited the first quarter. Thank you very much, Toby, and good morning, everybody. I've received a really warm welcome in my first couple of weeks with the business, and the strength of the culture has really been evident from day one. Let's turn to Group trading during the first quarter where, as you're accustomed to and unless otherwise stated, all percentage movements in net fees are in constant currency terms. Group net fees in quarter one were 2% down year-on-year in line with the Board's expectations and a clear sequential improvement versus the trend seen throughout 2025. Whilst elements of our specialist recruitment portfolio do remain tough, we saw a notable step-up in the proportion of the specialist recruitment portfolio in growth during the first quarter, with the countries in growth representing half of specialist recruitment net fees, which was up from a fifth in the second half of 2025. Furthermore, it was great to see our recruitment outsourcing business return to growth for the first time since late 2022. Turning to productivity, headcount, and costs, we saw a third consecutive quarter of growth in the critical metric of perm placements per perm fee earner per month, which grew 6% on the prior year. Within this, it was particularly pleasing to see certain markets drive higher perm placements year-on-year, despite a lower fee earner headcount. Consistent with our aim, as mentioned at the full-year results last month, of improving the quality of growth, earner headcount continued to be closely managed and was up 3% on the prior quarter. Meanwhile, total headcount was flat quarter-on-quarter. With respect to operating costs, we saw further progress during the quarter with the underlying cost rate per month below GBP 23.5 million. Turning to the balance sheet, period-end net cash was over GBP 20 million, in line with the Board's expectations. The first quarter outflow reflected the typical seasonal profile, driven by the payment of fee earner annual bonuses. For reference, I note the quantum of outflow at GBP 6 million compared to the GBP 11 million outflow in the first quarter of the prior year. You will know from the Full Year results in March that measures to optimize cash levels in the Group continue to be a key focus, and I'm looking forward to further progressing these very clear plans at pace. Let me hand you back to Toby, who will take you through trading in our service lines as well as the wider market backdrop. Thanks, Jonathan. Let's look at our specialist recruitment business across each of our four geographic regions before turning to recruitment outsourcing. Asia Pacific specialist recruitment net fees were up 4% year-on-year in quarter one. Japan, our single largest market, returned to growth in the quarter, up 13%, with a better performance seen in perm driven by higher productivity. You'll recall we implemented actions in Japan towards the back end of last year to improve our perm performance, and it's pleasing to see these beginning to bear fruit, and disciplined focus will, of course, continue. In Australia and New Zealand, there was further momentum in temp volumes, and indeed, quarter 1 finished with volumes at the highest level since quarter 1 2024 and quarter 2 2024 respectively. This drove growth in net fees of 12% in New Zealand, whilst the softer perm performance in Australia, where it is a larger proportion of the mix, meant fees were down 7% on prior year. Fees were up 2% in Greater China, whilst a 7% decline in Southeast Asia, which was a blend of mixed performance at the country level. Turning to Europe, net fees were down 16% in the first quarter, and it's fair to say Northern Europe in particular remains the region of our global business where hiring market conditions are still comparatively tough. As a reminder, the backdrop in Northern Europe of late has been one where a mix of regulatory and macro factors have contributed to uncertainty for hiring organizations. In France, quarter 1 net fees were down 21%, sequentially stable against the second half of 2025. Meanwhile, there was sequential improvement in the Netherlands, excuse me, with fees down 10%, driven by a notably better performance in perm. However, in Belgium, our first quarter performance was weaker than expected, with fees down 36%, and we have work to do there. In Spain, where we saw growth emerge through the second half of 2025, there was further momentum with fees up 13%. For reference, our Spanish business is over 90% perm. Turning briefly to the U.K., net fees were up 1% in the first quarter. At our Full Year results last month, we noted how external indicators of labor demand in the U.K., notably job vacancies, have been stabilizing month-to-month for a little while. We've seen this continue. In the Rest of the World segment, net fees were down 16%. However, excluding Brazil, Canada and the U.S. West Coast, all offices which we closed last year, net fees were down just 3% on a like-to-like basis. In the Middle East, where fees declined 15%, our performance clearly came against the backdrop of geopolitical tension, albeit it was a more moderate rate of decline than seen in the fourth quarter of 2025. Meanwhile, in the Americas, which comprises our U.S., Mexico and Chile operations, fees were up 11%. Turning then to our recruitment outsourcing business. Fees were up 13% in the first quarter, with that business returning to growth for the first time since late 2022. Performance with retained clients, which comprise well over 90% of the book, was again resilient, and we also saw a very good contribution from a perm volume hiring contract expansion, which we announced late last year. Our consultancy offering also saw continued momentum in the quarter, driven by public sector clients. A good start to the year for our outsourcing business and testament to all the hard work our people there have put in over the last few years. Turning then to consider the market backdrop and how we're looking out over the rest of the year, as Jonathan mentioned a few moments ago, our first quarter trading was in line with our expectations. We remain encouraged that the momentum that we saw in the second half of last year in the U.K., Spain, and New Zealand continued into the first quarter. Of course, it was great to see Japan, our largest market, return to growth, meaning that four out of our top eight markets were in growth during the first quarter. More widely, with 50% now of our specialist recruitment portfolio in growth during the first quarter, growth clearly broadened out compared to the second half of last year, where just 20% of the portfolio was in growth. Now, it's important to say we haven't really witnessed a material uptick in new job flow year-on-year, but we do see some four years now since the peak of the post-COVID job surge, a bit of incrementally greater resolve among both clients and candidates to get recruitment processes over the line. We continue to remain laser-focused on working our sales funnels smartly and giving great service to our clients and candidates, and we believe this is seeing us take share in certain markets. The growth we've seen in some markets is clearly not yet universal, with Northern Europe in particular remaining tough. Whilst the hiring market in the Middle East conflict appears to remain at this point limited to the region itself, we do remain mindful of potential macro impacts down the line should the tensions become protracted. Taking all that into account, our guidance for 2026 Group net fees remains unchanged. We will continue to remain focused on those factors in our control, and we feel the Group is increasingly well-positioned to take advantage of the opportunities we have ahead, given the Total Talent Solutions offering we are building out. With that said, Jonathan and I would be happy to take any of your questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for a brief moment. Thank you. We will now take our first question from Tom Callan of Investec. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thanks. Morning, chaps. Hope you're both well. Just one from me. Clearly an encouraging uptick there in placement volumes year-on-year. I just wondered if you could remind us as to the sort of economic impact behind that in a steady market, i.e., what that increase potentially means in the context of incremental NFI and maybe also EBIT, if you assume a typical drop-through. Thanks. Yeah, sure. I'll take that question. Thanks, Tom. Yeah. Obviously, really pleasing to see the volume productivity has gone up. That's now our third consecutive quarter. Obviously, it's good to see certain markets driving that placement growth as well, particularly in most cases with fewer fee earners. If we just go back last year, perm placements per fee earner per month in 2025, we're tracking around 0.84. Again, just as a reference point, that sits against an average pre-COVID of about one. As you may recall, we did see it sort of tick up to about 1.2 during the post-COVID surge. I think as we step back from all of that, we recognize that we still have headroom capacity to grow from where we are today. I think if we looked at a 10% uplift in that volume productivity metric alone, and again, just to be clear, that is just perm in specialist recruitment, that would drive probably north of GBP 10 million worth of net fees. Now, clearly there is a larger benefit if that uplift is also reflected in temp. You might recall, when we did the CMD, we talked about both the impact of perm and temp benefits. Hence it was a larger number we discussed then. I think in terms of EBIT, look, on the basis that headcount remains flat, then there's no reason why we shouldn't see a drop through of around 70% to 80%. That's really helpful. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Steve Woolf of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thanks. Morning, gents. A couple from me. I'm interested in the comments that you said there about this greater resolve for client and candidates to get deals done, which obviously is slightly contrary to what we've been hearing certainly from some of your peers, which said that the time to hire has become more protracted, more interviews, less confidence in decision making, a wait and see approach. Just any sort of info you can give around there as number one. Secondly, the U.K., again, you're clearly going against the trend in the strong performance there. Any improvements? To your comment about external indicators being sort of either holding their own, as it were, the job vacancies number has continued to drop a little bit over the last three months. Just thoughts on that one. Finally on headcounts, you put a little bit extra there on fee earners, at this point. Just wondering, managing that natural attrition and selective investment, where that might have gone into. Thanks, appreciate it. it. I've waffled here. Yeah. That's all right. Okay, Steve. I'll start with the fee earners firstly. We are very focused clearly on productivity gains. If I go back to the point I made on the placements per head per fee earner, we know we've got capacity. Now, clearly that performance differs in different markets. In some markets we're tracking well over one placement per head, and selectively we are going to be looking and have looked at where we can build in headcount when we feel we're at capacity. Other markets, clearly we're tracking well behind that. We are very focused on where we can maximize that capacity and productivity gains. The U.K. itself, as you know, look, we made a change in leadership a couple of years ago. I think the team have done a very good job. The reality is that obviously there are still challenges in that market in the U.K. If we step back, we took some decisions to rationalize our office footprint. We operate really in three core cities now in the U.K., and I think we are consciously really focused on those disciplines and sectors that we believe there are gains to be had. Specifically legal, accountancy, and technology are obviously three of those. It just goes back to real discipline on sales funnel, proximity to clients and candidates. Appreciate obviously AI, automation, et cetera, but again, relationships and the ability to influence is so critical. Despite the job volumes, and I appreciate some of the numbers that have come out, we believe that there is still opportunity in the U.K., so we're going to continue to really focus on that. In terms of greater resolve, look, I think it's probably anecdotally what we're seeing at the moment is, and again, it is very different in different markets. There's no question perhaps in Northern Europe, for example, there is a little bit more pain there, perhaps in other markets. Equally, I get a sense in some of our markets now that candidates, they're starting to want to make the move now. I think a lot of this is driven, as we all know, by candidate churn and candidate movement. If we just step back, there are a lot of people who entered into the job market in that post-COVID surge, which is now three, coming up four years ago. They've been through that three-four-year cycle in their roles. Equally, the markets in which we tend to operate, and again, it is at that more sort of mid- to senior-level, and it is in those core white-collar professional service areas. I believe there is increasingly a bit more of an appetite now for candidates to start to move. I don't have the data yet to support this, but also in some markets, the U.K. being a good one with the cost of living increasing, that in itself may well in turn mean that people need to look at a higher base salary to accommodate that, which of course means moving jobs potentially. Thanks. That is great. Thank you very much, Toby. Thank you once again. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. There are currently no further questions in the queue. Okay. Thank you very much, everybody. Thanks for all your time, and I look forward to seeing you all soon. All the best. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.