The clock on the wall says it's 9:30 A.M., so let's kick off. Welcome to all of you who are here at the Stock Exchange today, as well as all of those of you who are either watching or listening online. Today we're going to take you through Shaftesbury's results for six months, ending 31st of March 2022. As ever, I'm joined today by Chris Ward, our Chief Financial Officer, and Tom Welton and Simon Quayle, our Executive Property Directors. The agenda today, our standard format. After the introduction, Chris will run through the results and finance. I'll provide you with an operational update, some words about sustainability and end up with an outlook. That will be followed by a Q&A session. Obviously those of you in the room can ask a question, the roving mics will be available. If you're dialing in online, you can either submit a question in writing, or there'll be an opportunity for you to have your moment in the limelight by speaking to us all. First of all, some housekeeping. I've not been told there's a fire alarm drill today, so if the fire alarm does go off, I suggest you follow me out the door rapidly. I would ask you all to put your phones on silent or no buzzing or whatever, which would help us presenters. Perhaps more importantly, I do have to remind you that as you will all be aware, on the seventh of May, we released an announcement under Rule 2.4 of the Takeover Code, confirming that we are in advanced discussions regarding a possible all-share merger between Shaftesbury and CapCo, which puts us in a formal offer period under the Takeover Code. Discussions are continuing, and there is no certainty that an offer will be made. In the meantime, we are heavily restricted as to what we can say under the rules of the Takeover Code. Please bear with us, as we will not be able to provide any material new information or express any significant new opinion on the potential transactions. Please accept our apologies in advance as we do have to respect these limitations, and as a result, won't be taking any questions regarding the possible merger. I suppose at this point, I should also apologize for the fact, we're unable to do our normal meet and greet this morning, and there's no teas and coffees. Don't think we've suddenly come over all stingy at Shaftesbury. That's really not quite our style. Moving on, what are we going to talk about today? Clearly, the recovery, the rebound in the West End economy, which we talked about last November in our year-end results, has continued. It's really nice to be standing here talking about very positive news, probably the most upbeat news we've had since November 2019 when pandemic was not even on anybody's agenda. We've seen an improvement across all key metrics over the last six months. In terms of our results, much improved earnings, interim dividend and tangible net asset value. That comes out of leasing activity, high level, returning to normal levels of occupancy, rent collection income, and rental value growth. These are all positive things. We will talk later on about some of the headwinds that we're all very conscious of. Really just before I turn the page, two bits of news that I wondered really whether I'd ever get to announce them really. First of all, after many years, we've acquired the interest we've always sought in 92 to 104 Berwick Street. That's been a bit of a saga, and I'll remind you of that later on. Of course, wonder of wonders, the Elizabeth line has started its service today, though complete coincidence. Shaftesbury arranges lots of things, but not that. So early days yet, it's the line's running in the central section today, and it won't be till really spring of 2023 that we see a full service running. This is all positive. In terms of the resilience of the West End, well, it's useful to reflect that two years ago, we were in our first lockdown, not realizing how much worse things were going to get before they got better. This time last year, we were in the very early stages of recovery in the government's roadmap, having endured probably a month of freezing cold temperatures and torrential rain as we all sat outside restaurants wondering why we were sitting there. No cinemas, no theaters, limited sporting events, queuing up to get in shops. We forget these things very quickly, and it's a measure of the rebound in the West End that we're now returning to what we always thought was the most important feature for our occupiers, a seven-day week economy, really strong domestic footfall. The return of international visitors now, which are very evident if you walk around the streets, and I, for one, will never complain about tourists who don't seem to know where they're going, when I'm in a hurry. Our occupiers are now reporting turnover at levels above 2019. This is all positive news. People are back, they're spending money, and this has really spurred on the recovery in occupier confidence. Now, those occupiers, you know, they've, they had their own issues to deal with, but they're obviously cognizant of the fact that the West End has bounced back so quickly and they want to be in the busiest locations. Our occupancy levels, as Chris will explain shortly, returning now to our long-term trend. The strong leasing activity over the period, the momentum there has been maintained. This is all looking very positive. At that point, with all the good news, I'll hand over to Chris. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Brian. Well, he said everything I was gonna say. The headlines, as Brian said, you know, it's great to be here talking about good things again. Interesting, the more I look at our charts and things, the more it kinda feels like it did before pandemic hit. The real headlines here, net property income up 55% at GBP 41.1 million. Actually, EPRA earnings 4.1p against 0.6p last year. As we said at year-end, we started to use a Covid-adjusted EPRA earnings to strip out the non-cash effects that were happening through giving waivers of rent to tenants. The Covid earnings, if you look at them, 4.8p against -2.9p last year, is a big swing in sort of cash income, if you like. Interim dividend 4.8p, which is double last year's interim dividend, covered by EPRA earnings, Covid-adjusted earnings. The portfolios we announced in, feels like three years ago, but it's probably three weeks ago, 3.3 billion, up 7.5% like-for-like over the period, and 13.1% like-for-like over 12 months. The LTVs decreased a little bit, 23% because the value's gone up. Our NTA per share, GBP 6.79, up 9.7% over six months and 16.5% over 12 months. If you put that together with dividends paid, our total accounting return's 10.3% over six months and 17.6% over 12 months. The headlines on the income statement. As I said, net property income's up GBP 41.1 million. That doesn't really tell the whole story. Rental income is up 11.5% like-for-like, which just reflects the improved occupancy, and the end of rental support for tenants. Rent collection is improving, 95% now. I think when we announced in November, we were probably like 80%, and it's growing. Omicron had a limited impact, not much, but it was limited. There was a small impact. We're seeing it improve, and we expect further recovery of arrears as well as current rent going up. Actually, a really key feature is that tenant risk has decreased because trading conditions are good. So our provisions have really reduced. We're at GBP 2.2 million in provisions in the H1 against GBP 10.6 million in the H1 of last year, and seven.something million in the H2 of last year. You can see that's really coming down. As things improve further, I think they'll come down more. We should get to a point where we're not talking about provisions. Property costs have come down a bit, and I'll talk about those in a moment. I mean, actually, in the profit and loss account, the really big thing is the swing, year-on-year swing in the revaluation with this year up GBP 227 million, last year down GBP 330 million. The year-on-year sort of swing, if you like, is five, nearly GBP 560 million, over half a billion. Talked about EPRA earnings and Covid-adjusted earnings. Just to remind you, Covid-adjusted earnings is basically just stripping out the amortization of income that we accrued when we were actually waiving income. Kind of weird accounting stuff. A bit of context, I think, before we sort of look a bit more detail. As Brian said, we're seeing you know, really quite good operating conditions. There's strong interest across all of our uses. Leasing momentum's continuing and our vacancy's trending down. As you can see in this chart, I mean, it sort of spiked up in September 2020 and March 2021 and then started coming down. 4.7% at the end of March, now 3.7%, so it's come down another percentage point since. We're really getting back to sort of frictional levels of vacancy, which is what we expected. Of course, with lower vacancy and really great demand, we're getting a return of supply and demand tension in the pricing. We can see that in our letting activity. We did GBP 18.9 million of leasing transactions in the H1. Really healthy increases. If you take commercial lettings, for example, GBP 13.3 million. It's up 6% against the RVs last September. Rent reviews at just over GBP 3 million, 18% up against what we were getting before on those rents. Residential lettings, just a couple of million GBP, but it's still 6% up on the previous rents. Actually, since that momentum's continuing, as I said, with vacancy going down another%. We've done a load of lettings since March. It's sort of GBP 5.7 million of lettings. That's all really, really good stuff. I just wanted to set the context really for what's happening in the income statement. There's kind of two sides to this chart. I'll just walk through the waterfall, and then I'll have a look at the right-hand side of the chart afterwards. I mean, this is such a strange position because I'm comparing here six months to March now, against six months to March last year. Last year, there was only seven weeks of trading in six months, so it's a slightly odd situation. Anyway, I'll sort of mention what it looked like against the H2 of last year as I go through this. The key thing's really the first three bars, or the second, third and fourth bar actually, which is all about the net property income. The rental income up GBP 5.6 million against H1 last year. The provisions down massively GBP 8.4 million, and a reduction in our property costs. If I just go through those, rental income up 11.5% like-for-like. It's really strange. That's just gross rental income. There was all sorts of things happening in lease incentives, which we can then see on the right-hand side, and I'll come back to that in a minute. On the property costs, we've got kind of two things happening. We've reduced our irrecoverable costs. They've gone down. We're recovering more of our service charge. We've got less vacancy costs. But going against those, we've got more activity happening, 'cause we scaled back our activity during the pandemic, and so there's more marketing happening now. There's more property management costs and things like that. But put the two together, still GBP 0.6 million better than last year. Actually, the numbers we're at in the H1 are pretty in line with the H2 of last year. Admin costs. We sort of disclosed at the end of the year that our admin costs have gone up. We hired a number of people in the team, we strengthened the depth of talent in our team last year, so you see the full year impact of that coming through now. There's a prospect that perhaps some share options might vest, which was not something we were thinking about a year ago, and bonus charges, and that's really what's happened to our admin costs. In fact, our admin costs in the H1 are a little bit lower than they were for the H2 of last year. Finance costs GBP 0.4 million better because we did some refinancing last year, paid down our RCFs. Longmartin up a little bit, and that's actually just the little mini version of everything that's happening on the left-hand side of this chart. It's just better conditions. Its rent collection's like 99%. The vacancy's going, there's lettings and all of that. No, rental support, it's all of the same things. What you have is COVID. You have EPRA earnings up GBP 13.5 million year-on-year. But actually, what, as we said, we were trying to strip out the effect of the accounting effect of waivers, which was spreading the cost over a number of years. We would give, let someone not pay rent for a quarter, we would have to recognize some income, and then that would amortize over a period of years. You can really see this on the right-hand side of the chart. If you look at the purple bars, you've got EPRA earnings going from GBP 2.1 million in the H1 of last year, up to GBP 11.2 million H2 of last year, then up to GBP 15.6 million in the H1 of this year. You sort of see a gradual increase, well, actually quite a steep increase. Actually, if we hadn't, if we could have just cash accounted for waivers, i.e. not recognize income, the numbers you can see on the orange chart, on the orange bars, are very, very different. Last year, we wouldn't have had positive EPRA earnings. We'd have had a big loss. Then you see it sort of growing into the H2 of last year, and then much, much higher now. That's all about lease incentives. The difference between EPRA earnings and Covid-adjusted earnings is all about lease incentives, and those lease incentives being the waivers that we gave. Actually, as I suppose, that the orange chart really shows how the operating conditions have improved from being, you know, pretty horrible in the H1 of last year to being pretty positive now. Moving on to the valuation. As I say, we pre-announced this. Valuation up 7.5%, really driven by the strength of the occupier market, but also improved investor sentiment. We've seen rental values growing 6.4%. There was a small yield overall. Yield decreased six basis points. We're looking at the. I'll come on to sort of a bit more detail underneath this, but actually just in very high-level terms, we've now recovered 36% of the nearly 27% pandemic decline in the valuation. We're now at -17% against pre-pandemic levels. On ERVs, we've almost recovered half of the pandemic decline. We're now just 7% behind September 2019. I think Longmartin is interesting 'cause we've talked for a long time about retail decline in Longmartin. I mean, it's interesting, within the GBP 173 million, only GBP 20 million is retail. It's got a lot of offices in the scheme. Anyway, we've seen growth across all the uses this time. The rental values in retail have stabilized, which is good news. There's a bit of growth overall, 4% like-for-like ERV growth, and actually 4% like-for-like valuation growth. It's the ERV is driving the valuation. The yield hasn't really changed. Just looking at the wholly owned portfolio. This is a simplistic way of looking at what's happened in the half. We've got ERVs have grown. Just looking at the commercial ERVs here, because residential ERVs don't affect the residential value, they're just valued on a vacant possession basis. Five point 7% commercial like-for-like growth on ERVs growth across all uses and as I said, that's all about supply, demand, and tension in pricing. That's added GBP 146 million to the valuation. Overall six basis points yield compression has added GBP 87 million. We're still 39 basis points above September 2019, but we're in a very different world to September 2019. The other thing of note is that we, the valuers have been providing for rental concessions to be given to tenants starting in, I don't know, September 2020, I guess, and their provisions sort of fell over time. At September, they were nearly GBP 11 million, and they've just released that. Now we're not giving concessions to tenants, so that's added GBP 11 million to the valuation. Just looking at the uses, I mean, every use has grown in the half, really strong. Hospitality and leisure, that's up 7.8% like-for-like. We've seen 6.4% ERV growth, albeit that we're now actually just 6.4% below September 2019 levels. Cap rates came in a little bit, 13 basis points on average. Retail up 7.1%, 5.9% was ERV growth. Retail ERVs are still 16% below September 2019, and cap rates were broadly stable. Offices great demand, particularly for the best space and the best locations. ERV growth 4%. We're now on offices on a like-for-like basis above September 2019. Cap rates compressed 21 basis points. On residential, I mean, residential is really astonishing. You know, we have 630 flats. Generally, pre-COVID, we'd have six flats empty at any time. We found that it went up to, I don't know, 180 flats or something in the middle of COVID. It was completely uncharted territory for us. We now have very little. We have, I think we have three flats at the end of March. We've got four flats available today. Generally, things are letting within days. Really strong, as you, I mean, you'll all know that the residential market's been really strong. This is not just us, it's the West End. The values have grown 6.4%. Interestingly, rental values, even though that doesn't feed into the valuation, rental values went up over 11% in, you know, nearly 12% in six months, and reversed all of the decline in rental values in six months. It's astonishing, really. Average capital value of our flats, 1,500 GBP, so they're not swanky flats. These are not the 2,500 GBP a foot flats, but they are really popular. Just onto the balance sheet. NTA, as I said, 9. Well nearly 10% up, all driven by the revaluation, and that added 60p. The difference in NTA over the half was 60p, that's all the revaluation. EPRA earnings 4.1p, and the dividend for last year was 4. Well, 4p. They kind of just offset each other. It's all about the revaluation and the balance sheet. Finally, just turning to the other side of the balance sheet. Our net debt is pretty stable, actually, over the half. It's interesting looking at, sort of looking at the chart at the bottom here. Operating, we had operating cash inflow of GBP 22 million. If I look at last year, that was GBP 25 million more than we had in the H1 of last year, and GBP 10 million more than we had in the H2 of last year. That really shows how things have improved, this cash flow. Forget all the nonsense accounting, this is cash. Net portfolio investment GBP 60 million, all about CapEx. Acquisitions were largely offset by disposals in the half, so it's all about acquisitions, all about CapEx. You might remember that when we got waivers from our lenders during the pandemic, we gave them some deposits to hold as security. We got GBP 2 million of those back during the half, and actually just after the end of the half, we got the remaining GBP 12 million back. We're now compliant with all our covenants, and some. The other thing in net debt is we paid out a dividend for the full year. We had at the end of March 276 million of sort of liquidity, which was made up of 204 million of cash, 100 million undrawn facility. At that point, we had 28 million of commitments, which you can see in the small print in one of the notes to the accounts. If you net all those down, you get to GBP 276 million of available resources. That's before we bought Berwick Street, which was 27 and a half million GBP excluding purchase costs. Our earliest maturity on debt is the RCF, GBP 100 million. We've had some initial sort of vague discussions on refinancing that, so we'll turn our attention to that. LTV we've talked about, and we're compliant with all our debt covenants. That's it really. It's a good set of results. Balance sheet's looking great. Yeah. That's it. I'll pass back to Brian. Thank you, Chris. I'll now take you through an update on operations. I think we've said quite a lot already, so I'll go through this quite quickly. I would just remind everybody that we are, again, just talking about the real center of the dartboard in the West End. That's where the footfall and activity is and, you know, that's the attraction for other people coming, and that's also attracting occupier interest. Moving on to hospitality and leisure. Yes, there was some disturbance because of Omicron for seven weeks over Christmas and New Year. As I say, this is very much events were deferred, not canceled, so it was a big catch up in the subsequent months. Now we're looking at in April, and we do collect an awful lot of turnover data these days for both our hospitality and retail tenants. On average, businesses are reporting on a nominal basis, not inflation adjusted, 9% above pre-COVID levels, so that's quite an achievement. Occupier demand, as Chris said, remains very strong. We've got in hospitality, very little space to let. There is still no shortage of equity backing for new ventures, but generally favoring those who have got the most resilient locations, the busiest areas, and also operators with a track record as well. So I think that's the sweet spot for finding equity backing. Lots of successes, we said, in the lettings. You know, we were seeing lettings and renewals 7.5, just over 7.5% above September last year ERVs. A very good performance. As ever, we like to give you a literally a taste of what's on offer in some of the villages, some of the new things that are coming along. I'm pleased to say my colleague Julia's managed to get me a table at Lisboeta up in Charlotte Street on Friday evening, so I shall report back, and that's a bit of, that's like gold dust. Over in Neal Street in Covent Garden, we've got the Patate, which is French burgers. Whoever thought you could do Boeuf Bourguignon in a burger? The French seem to have worked it out. Really another interesting one is, so, you know, overseas interest, Nightjar in Carnaby Street. It's a very. They've got a great model which works really well in Shoreditch. It's about cocktails and live music, so really on trend at the moment. These are the businesses that really want to be in these really cool locations. Moving on to retail. Well, we did say previously retail was probably slower to catch up with hospitality, but it's certainly got some momentum behind it now. The strong occupier interest, as I said, and that's continuing, and it's a mixture of international and domestic, so lots of international retailers still see London as the place where they want to be. They may be making their first foray into Europe, but London's the first stopping off point. It's odd to say that store profitability is key, but the reality of retailers these days is that they're not in a sort of scattergun approach where they want representation. They're not going to have lots of units, but those they do have really got to perform, so they are looking at these really phenomenally busy locations in the center of the West End, but also affordable space. While retail continues to change, retailers, the savvy ones, they're not stuck in a time warp. They're always moving on. Business formal is somewhat less prevalent than it used to be, and you know, I think if you look at the four of us, I don't think Tie Rack will ever get much trade out of us. We're not in that world. They're pivoting now to sort of work wear fashion, the sort of clothes that you feel comfortable with working in the office as well as wearing, using them in your own time. This trend towards more ethical retailing, whether it's in jewelry or clothing, is stronger than ever. Lots of interesting dynamics there, but these new ideas will always find a home in the West End. A good letting performance there as well over the period. We have 17 smaller shops available, eight of those are let on a short-term basis where we're trialing new ideas. This constant change and churn, I think, in retail is going to be with us. But the important thing is that the demand is there, and the basis on which we're letting out is back to the more traditional model of contracted rents rather than large elements of turnover or any elements of turnover, really. That's a sign of a market really moving back in the landlord's favor. Some interesting retailers coming along. Gilly Hicks on the top left-hand corner there is out of the Hollister stable, and just in case you're wondering, they do do men's clothing as well. We've got Dai, D-A-I, over in Covent Garden, and that's quite interesting. That's a B Corp-certified brand, and it's high-performance womenswear for high-performing women. It's those sort of business clothes that you just feel comfortable in all through the day. Lots of interesting ideas coming up, and it's, that's what we need to keep refreshing our areas. That's what brings in the punters. Moving on to offices. Just to remind you've heard a lot from the big office developers over the last week or two. Our office offer is very different, and if you break down our office suites that we got, there are about 170 that are under 1,000 sq ft in size with an average rent of about GBP 57. We have 130 in the range 1,000-5,000 sq ft. That's sort of mid-range for us, about 68 GBP/sq ft. Then we've got 11,500 sq ft which, well, I have to say in some of the schemes that are talked about these days will get you a couple of broom cupboards, was about 74 GBP/sq ft. Modest size space, modest size rents, modest rent. The demand is very good. People are back looking for office space. Obviously, how they use office space is going to be different now. We've done a survey of our office occupiers. You know, perhaps in contrast to where we are in the City of London, most of those small businesses are back in the office at least three to four days a week. Some are doing five. They all say quite openly that the key to getting staff back is the local amenity. When you're in the office, there's something to do when you leave the office. That's always been the secret of the West End. It's not just a dull location. Many are still working out their long-term strategies, but there's a clear preference for flexibility in the way they take space. They want it well-appointed and say location, location is really important. Our fitted product, Assemble, is going really well, and we are about to launch a leasing package for those small offices which will provide even more flexibility through having an inclusive leasing arrangement. Again, it's we are deeply facing up to the competition that the serviced office providers represent. A busy time, lots going on and lots of improving on the offer that we have in offices. Moving on to residential, as Chris said, it's been a remarkable recovery. Two years ago, people were talking about the death of city centers, and nobody would ever come here. Well, now you couldn't get a flat even if you wanted to come and live here. It's not just us, it's across all of the West End. Of course, with full occupancy comes rental tension, so we're seeing a good recovery in rents there as well. Just three apartments available to let, and you know, we used to think half a dozen was the norm. Well, we're probably doing even better than that at the moment. Our scheme at 72 Broadwick Street, we're having our first foray into trying furnished apartments. This one, probably on a quite grand scale with a concierge, but some great loft-style apartments in that building being furnished in conjunction with Soho Home. Sorry, I've forgot to move on to the slide. There you go. There's a nice interior shot, a very nice Shaftesbury flat. Say, the residential market has really bounced back probably most strongly. Moving on to schemes. Confidence is back at Shaftesbury. Obviously, we, during the difficult years, we were somewhat defensive and, not starting any schemes other than by exception. Now we can see there's demand for space, so we are actively now going out to secure vacant possession. You know, not every business has bounced back as well as others. Some are getting ready to move on anyway. It's accelerating that progress, that change in the tenant line-up to accelerate some of our schemes. That means refurbishing space, repurposing, reconfiguring, but most importantly, improving environmental performance. At the 31st of March, we had schemes on the go of about 108,000 sq ft. But that represents some 50 individual schemes, so a vast range of activity there. CapEx in the period of about just over GBP 16.5 million. There's a couple of images there of two of our larger schemes, five to seven Carnaby Street. We're effectively reconstructing the top part of the building, so as ever with Shaftesbury, retaining as much of the original structure as possible, and adding on a sixth floor. The fourth and fifth floors get rebuilt. A new sixth floor with terracing at the back. The scheme at the bottom, two-four Kingly Street, is taking three buildings, effectively knocking them together. It's a scheme we thought about for probably the last 25 years since we bought Carnaby, but the key to unlocking this was the one building that we didn't own on Kingly Street, which we managed to buy in during the lockdown period. We're gonna create an office-led scheme there, so really good quality office in the upper floors. One taking three ground floor restaurants and knocking them into two, and the larger one of those has been pre-let, so that's very promising. Lots going on across the portfolio now, and I think you'll see more activity, I think. Just while we're talking about it as well, we haven't forgotten about public realm. Our Seven Dials traffic scheme, which is being trialed by Camden Council, is looking very promising, so we hope that's gonna be made permanent once the trial period has ended, and it'll be like open up an opportunity to have conversations with Camden about replacing some of the worn out carriageways. We're continuing our discussions with Westminster City Council on, and local residents on, how we can improve the eastern entrance into Carnaby Street. This is an important route along Broadwick Street from the Dean Street Crossrail station. Those discussions are continuing and, you know, we'd like to expect to see some progress there. Just talking about 72 Broadwick Street. Well, this is one of our larger schemes, probably one of our largest in our history. Another classic example of how you can take a very tired 1970s office building. You don't have to knock it down. You can do an awful lot to it to give it a much longer, useful economic life and create some great space at the same time. Practical completion is imminent. As we said in the announcement, Equinox have decided to not now proceed with the gym that they were going to put in floors two and three, so those will revert to office use. Don't make any comment about the office market, because I think you've heard a lot from other people recently that the, there's long-term strength here, you know, possibly a supply shortage building up over the next couple of years. So that's well-timed. The fourth floor offices were let, we announced that a few weeks ago, as a single letting. First floor office is being fitted out as a sort of immediate occupation type offer. The 15 apartments upstairs we're about to market, and I'm sure will go very well because they're certainly gonna be the best quality product I think we've ever produced. Then in the basement, the hospitality space there is under offer. We have to go in for some planning and licensing in the next couple of months, but it could, if we succeed in securing what we want, it'd be another great evening live music venue. That's very popular at the moment. With all of our schemes, you know, we're targeting the highest BREEAM rating we can get and putting in lots of sustainability features. Moving on to acquisitions. Five smaller buildings bought during the period. These are infills within the clusters, pretty much our bread and butter. We have finally secured, and it's been a very long saga, our interest in 90 to 104 Berwick Street, which is actually a key block of the south end of Berwick Street. It's been a long saga, and I won't bore you with its long history. Well, we've now purchased a 200-year lease on the ground floor and basement retail and potentially restaurant space. We've purchased it for a capital sum. There's no gearing on the lease, so all income reverts to us. It's about 15, just over 15.5 thousand sq ft of space with a potential for just over 3.5 thousand sq ft suitable for hospitality use. The picture looks very nice, but the developer didn't actually put in any shop fronts or any basic fitting to the units. The way the market works these days, you're expected as a landlord to provide some of the basics, including shop front. We're gonna be white boxing those units over the next few months at an approximate cost of GBP 2.6 million, and then press on with our marketing plans. You know, people ask us, you know, "What are your plans for Berwick Street?" Well, it is always Soho's local high street. That's how it's always been known, and we will respect its traditions when we go through our letting process. Generally, I would say, there's been quite a lot of activity to buy. It's a little bit quieter at the moment. You could say the confidence that people are seeing across the West End now means that some owners are more likely to hang on to what they own and reinvest and relet. Although there are headwinds ahead, obviously for all of us, but particularly those individual owners. They might have a little shock when they realize how much construction costs have gone up. For them, the challenges of dealing with environmental issues, performance issues, may make them think twice. While it seems a little quieter at the moment, we do expect more stock to start appearing on the market. Then finally, we did sell in just the Q1 of the financial year two non-core buildings, which were produced a rather healthy surplus over book value. Quickly moving on to sustainability. Well, you'll recall that last November, we relaunched our refreshed sustainability strategy, and announced our net zero carbon commitment for 2030 and 2025 for our own Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Our business has always focused on reuse and repurposing of buildings. In our 30, nearly 36 years, we've hardly knocked anything down. The secret is to take these envelopes of space and keep them relevant, refurbish them, work on, extend them where you can. These days, coupled with some very ambitious environmental and amenity improvements. That's the starting point for the business. In terms of the higher standards we have to meet, well, you know, we've had a rolling program for, well, the last 10 years as any performance standards came along. We should carry on doing that. We think the additional cost in meeting these new, more stringent standards will be relatively modest. If you think our starting point is a low CapEx business, you know, spending about 1% per annum of our gross property value on CapEx means that the returns for shareholders will continue, are very good. The net returns are very good. Engagement with the local community gets evermore important. Of course, we now have a new labor administration at Westminster City Council. Interesting, they've set out a manifesto. You know, we've long worked with a labor council in Camden. We get on absolutely fine with them. We find that there's lots of alignment already to the approach we have. I think there's a mantra within Westminster at the moment that development should not be the default option, and it's refurbishing that they want to see more of. There are a lot of disadvantaged communities in Westminster, and we've always helped out there. We're big supporters of the Young Westminster Foundation and the Young Camden Foundation. You know, we are heavily engaged in our local community. Another request is that, you know, the offer of the West End stays unique and something a bit special. Again, you know, that's what we've always tried to do here, create a differentiated product. Actually, the photographs you can see there, we've sort of gone to town on the greening here. It is actually the atrium in the middle of 72 Broadwick Street. It looks like some sort of tropical jungle. Just while Simon's taking care of the watering there. Moving on now, just in summary, thinking about the outlook. Well, I think we're all more conscious than ever of this very complex macro-level challenges we have ahead. The list becomes longer by the day. I won't go through them all, but these things are real, and nobody yet quite knows how they're going to play out. We sit here in the middle of one of the world's great cities, and I think, from experience, you can say London and the West End are never completely sheltered from these headwinds. But they do have a particular appeal and dynamic economies, which should provide a degree of protection against the uncertain times that lie ahead. There are very few other locations that have this unique mix of features that makes that possible. I know I've been around a long time, but I can tell you, we've seen some of the ups and downs in my working career. You go back to the 1970s of three-day weeks, power cuts. We came that close to petrol rationing. The U.K. was the first country to ever go to the IMF for a bailout. That's how bad it got. The recession of the early 1990s was when we, as a business, recognized the resilience of the West End. We had activity across the U.K., but actually the strength of the West End we could see in that very severe downturn was where we should be investing. Dot-com bubble came and went in 2000. The global financial crisis didn't have any operational impact on the West End whatsoever. It was very different, obviously, to what we've been through over the last two years of operational challenge. But actually the recovery there in terms of confidence was really very strong. Within two years of the depth of the crisis, we were probably back to where we were before in terms of property values. That's about the only thing that was affected. As we sit here and think about the outlook, domestic footfall remains very strong. The Elizabeth line opening today is a great positive for the West End. I think over the last period of recovery since last summer, people have rediscovered the West End and all it has to offer, and I don't think that love of the West End is gonna go away anytime soon. As we said before, people are not working in the office five days a week and having long commutes are probably coming back at the weekend because they have more flexibility in their working life. You know, why wouldn't you bring the kids back or the family back for a great day out in the West End? Elizabeth line will have an impact on that. It will make the West End much more accessible, but we're not expecting any sort of overnight sensation here. People have got to get used to it. The full service doesn't start running till next year, but long term, it is gonna be an absolute boon for the West End. As I said before, international travelers are coming back. All of this is underpinning our demand for our space, the busiest locations, and those footfall-reliant businesses. You know, it is a really important location, as we're finding for office occupiers as well. If you want your staff back and happy, this is the place you want to be. People love living in the West End as well, as long as you're reasonably young and don't need a good night's sleep like some of us oldies do. Looking back, we took some very decisive and difficult actions in response to the pandemic, but it's enabled our locations to bounce back quickly. That's what it was all about, supporting our tenants through the most unprecedented of times, making sure we could open up with the lights on and the streets busy, because busy attracts busy. That's the reality of life. I do think coming out of this as well, our reputation for responsible long-term stewardship, very patient and consistent curation of our areas to deliver something really special and something distinctive is an important factor in shaping businesses choosing to come to our locations and choosing to be a Shaftesbury occupier. At this point, I would just like to thank all the team and all of our advisors who have made so much of this possible. We went through some very difficult times, but we came through it. We didn't sit back and let it happen. We've always been proactive and never, ever complacent. This working together is really what Shaftesbury is all about, working with our advisors. It's not just the people at Shaftesbury. We have a wide range of advisors we've been with for much of our 32-36-year history have been an important part of the business. Perhaps I would say in summary that in a way, Shaftesbury isn't any of us, it's all of us. That's really what makes a difference at Shaftesbury. Absolutely enthusiastic, committed people, and I'm grateful to have a team like that. Just to sum up on this happy note, confidence is back. Growth is already providing this really firm foundation to the return to long-term prosperity. Nobody knows what the months and years ahead hold. It's, you know, it's probably not going to be the clear run we're all hoping for post-COVID. We in the West End are in a really good place to carry on as we have done before. Thank you very much, everybody. We'll now move to questions and answers. Can I just say that, I won't remind everybody about the restrictions that we have, but you know, just save your breath. Don't bother asking me things I can't possibly answer. That's what my mother used to say to me, "Save the breath, your breath for the day you need it." We'll also be taking some questions submitted via the webcast, and that can be done in writing. We'll read out the questions, and you can also do them yourself if you want to dial in. The floor is yours now. Max? Hiya. Max from Numis. Just a quick question on slide 34. I know you kind of alluded a little bit to it in terms of where the ERV is now versus September 2019. I know there's a degree of different things that go into that and the buildup of that, and particularly don't want to kind of anchor to September 2019. With the discussions that you're having with valuers, is the expectation that if you continue to recover at the pace you're going right now, that kind of 6.9% ERV should kind of recover back to that sort of September 2019 levels within the sort of next six months? Is that the kind of discussions, or do you think it will take longer for that to come through? Well, I think we've always rather avoided at Shaftesbury making forecasts. For us, it's about the delivery. The valuers will have their own view about where ERVs are. We can provide the evidence, they draw the conclusions, similarly with valuations. I can't really comment on that. We just focus on the day-to-day operations. Okay, thanks. Any other questions in the room? Can't see any hands up. Simon, do we have some? No questions for the webcast. No questions for the webcast. No. No written questions. Would anybody like to speak out there in the ether? No? Well, silence. There we are. Just for once, we've left you speechless with a little bit of help from the takeover code. Well, I won't detain you any longer. I know it's a very busy day for all of you. Thank you for your time today. As I said at the outset, it's really great to be announcing some good news. I can just remind you now there's lots of good things coming up across the West End over the next few months. We're getting into this busy summer season. The Jubilee weekend is gonna get off to a fantastic start. The, you know, the world's gonna be looking at the West End and all the things that are going on over the next few weeks. What a brilliant advert for international travel, that is. We've got lots of events coming up. The Carnaby Street Eat, the Soho Food Feast. Soho Food Feast that actually supports the Soho Parish Primary School, so look out for that. Really good cause. Soho Fashion Market, Carnaby Summer Festival in Carnaby. Something called Culture Shock in Seven Dials. I'm not quite sure what that is. Lots of events going on in Chinatown. We're back to doing what we were normally doing. It's good to be able to invite you all back and if you are coming back, I would just remind you to bring your credit card because we still need your money. At the same time, tours will continue throughout the summer, chaperoned as appropriate. If you want to come and see what's going on, then please do come and see us. Thank you very much for your time today, and have a great summer. Thank you.