Good morning, everyone. I'm Carl Cowling, Group CEO, and I'm here with Robert Moorhead, our Group CFO and COO. Thank you for joining us this morning. It's great to see you, those of you who are here in person, and welcome to everyone who's dialed in. As usual, we'll give you an update on our performance for the six months ending the 28th of February, 2022, and we'll also run through the highlights and important strategic tenders we've won in travel, both in the U.K. and overseas. In a moment, I'll hand over to Robert, who'll take you through the numbers, including a brief update on current trading, and I will then take you through the operational performance of the business, and we'll end with your questions. Before handing over to Robert, then a quick overview from me and turning to slide three. Over the past two years, the clear focus of the management team has been to ensure that we successfully navigated the pandemic, and today's set of results demonstrates what we've achieved. This is thanks to the focus and efforts of the team, which I'm sincerely grateful for. At the same time, we've taken advantage of many opportunities which will underpin the growth path of the next few years, and I'll go into the detail of this throughout the presentation. During the half, we've seen a strong rebound in profitability and we're on track to deliver meaningful profit for the full year. This has been supported by good recovery across all our travel markets, growth in passenger numbers, and a strong performance over Easter. We have a very focused plan across the group around increasing conversion and driving average transaction value. This continues to deliver double-digit increases in average transaction values versus pre-pandemic across our markets. Importantly, this is holding firm as passenger numbers return. In travel, we've successfully opened over 50 stores since the beginning of the financial year, and we have a pipeline of over 125 new store tender wins. We've seen a good recovery in North America, and we continue to see significant opportunities to grow our business there, which I'll come onto later in the presentation. We are well-positioned to benefit from the return in passenger numbers and to capitalize on new opportunities. I'll now hand over to Robert to take you through the numbers. Good morning, everyone. Let's start off with the group financial summary. All the numbers that I'm gonna refer to here are pre-IFRS 16, and there's some bridges to IFRS 16 in the appendix. As our recovery continues, we saw a much improved performance in revenue and profit in the first half compared to 2021, and our revenue in the half was back to 81% of the six-month period to February 2020. Total group revenue at GBP 608 million was 45% better than 2021. Headline profit for the half was GBP 14 million compared to a loss of GBP 19 million last year, with both travel and High Street delivering profit in the first half. EPS too was positive at 6.9p. Free cash flow in the half was an outflow of GBP 29 million, reflecting the additional CapEx and investment in the half, and I'll come onto that later. We finished the half with cash on deposit of GBP 65 million and available liquidity facilities of GBP 250 million. Turning first to revenue. On slide six, you can see that total group revenue was GBP 608 million, significantly ahead of last year, driven by the recovery in travel. Looking at first at travel and the three divisions there. In the U.K., revenue was GBP 189 million, up 139% on 2021, with hospitals the best performing channel, but with air and rail showing a steady recovery, which has continued into the spring as restrictions have been lifted. North America continues to perform well, given its high level of domestic and leisure passengers, and was up 111% on last year. In the rest of the world, like the U.K., we're seeing a steady improvement. Here, revenue was up 106%, led by the recovery in Europe. That meant total travel sales for the period were GBP 338 million, up 125% on 2021. High Street generated sales of GBP 270 million, in line with last year. The business has performed as we expected during the half. Turning now to the shape of the recovery in revenue in travel. This chart shows the monthly performance versus 2019 from April 2021 through to April 2022. The travel business has continued to improve compared to 2019 as restrictions have lifted. While Omicron led to a small dip down, particularly in December and January, the travel business has recovered strongly. In the U.K., the orange line in this chart, we've seen a steady recovery over the last 12 months, including InMotion. The U.K. was at 90% of 2019 in March and reached 102% in April, showing the strength of the recovery in air and rail and the benefits of our additional business wins, particularly the rollout of InMotion in the U.K.. Hospitals continue to perform well. Our North American business, the blue line, saw the earliest pickup, given 85% of passengers are domestic. We continue to see improvements in TSA data, which was down 10% to 2019 at the end of March. Las Vegas, too, saw a pickup in leisure visitors. Recent occupancy rates have been good, especially at the weekend. A number of conferences and trade fairs, as well as shows and sporting events, are now regularly taking place. In the rest of the world, the green line shows the pickup led by Europe, where we are now seeing encouraging sales, particularly at tourist airports. Australia too is now seeing improvements as restrictions have been lifted there. Turning to the income statement now on slide eight. The half saw a return to profit with headline profit before tax at GBP 14 million, compared to a loss of GBP 19 million last year. The trading businesses delivered a GBP 40 million improvement in profit compared to 2021. Travel delivered a profit of GBP 10 million compared to a loss of GBP 28 million last year. We saw a step forward in profit in all divisions of travel as government restrictions were progressively eased. In the U.K., profit improved by GBP 22 million- GBP 3 million, driven by the recovery in sales and stronger margins. North America too returned to profit in the half with a swing of GBP 11 million to a profit of GBP 8 million. Like the U.K., this was driven by sales and improved margins. In the rest of the world, likewise, we saw a good improvement and a swing of GBP 5 million benefiting from an improving performance, particularly in Europe. As the revenue of the business recovers, the operational fixed cost impact will result in an improvement in profitability. High Street delivered a profit of GBP 26 million. As expected, an increase of GBP 2 million on the prior year, which included GBP 17 million of government support from rates. The benefits of the restructuring undertaken during the pandemic and our continued focus on all cost lines, for example, rent, drove this performance. The business is on track to deliver around GBP 41 million of cost savings in the year. Overall, group profit from trading operations was GBP 36 million. Financing costs at GBP 12 million includes non-cash amortization costs of GBP 4 million relating to the convertible, which, let me remind you, has a fixed coupon of 1.625%. We expect the full year financing charge to be approximately GBP 25 million, with the cash costs around GBP 10 million lower than that. That left headline profit before tax at GBP 14 million. Let's turn now to cash on slide nine. Overall, free cash outflow in the half was, as expected, GBP 29 million. There are two key stories here. First, we generated GBP 55 million of operating cash flows as the business returned to profit in the half. Second, the continued investment in growing the business. CapEx in the half was GBP 38 million, reflecting the new store openings. We opened 44 new stores, including a further 11 in North America and 18 of the 28 InMotion stores we now have open in the U.K.. We anticipate the full year CapEx spend to be around GBP 110 million, and that includes the additional spend from winning the 31 stores in Spain. We then had a working capital outflow, which was primarily the investment to launch InMotion in the U.K. and also in the recovering travel business. Looking now at our net debt on slide 10. Net debt at the end of the half was GBP 336 million, reflecting an overall outflow in the period of GBP 45 million. Of this, GBP 29 million was the free cash flow. We then had GBP 8 million of cash outflow on non-underlying items, which mainly relates to the restructuring announced in the summer of 2021 in High Street and is now complete. Other includes the non-cash convertible bond accretion. You'll remember the bond is bifurcated into an equity and debt element, where the debt element accretes to par over the life of the bond. This is around GBP 8 million per annum. That left us with a net debt at the end of February of GBP 336 million and with a good amount of cash of which GBP 65 million was on deposit. Let me just remind you of our financing arrangements which give us the capacity to invest. We have the GBP 327 million convertible bond, bank debt of GBP 133 million, and the undrawn RCF of GBP 250 million, a total of GBP 710 million. Our capital allocation policy remains unchanged. Investing in CapEx where returns are ahead of our cost of capital, the reestablishing of a dividend for our shareholders, undertaking attractive value-creating acquisitions in strong and growing markets, and returning surplus cash to shareholders by way of share buybacks. In normalized conditions, we have a leverage target of between 0.75x and 1.25x EBITDA. I'll now hand back to Carl to talk about the operational performance. Thank you, Robert. Let's start with travel, which as you know, is the core of our business. Before I go into the operational performance, I thought it'd be helpful to run through our key areas of focus across the wider travel business. Turning to slide 12. Now, I know you've heard this before, but let me just reiterate that these are the key drivers that are gonna deliver sustainable growth. The first pillar of the strategy focuses on increasing the quantity and quality of our space. This includes our ability to develop and evolve different formats. We've opened over 50 stores since the beginning of the financial year. As you've heard, we have over 125 more already won and yet to open. The second pillar focuses on increasing ATV and conversion. This is done through actively re-engineering our ranges, and we've seen a double-digit increase across all channels. Thirdly, category development, where we broadened our categories such as health and beauty and electricals and developed our premium food ranges. The final pillar, of course, focuses on cost and cash management, particularly as we look to invest for the future. As I go through the presentation, you will see that these initiatives are integral to each channel and territory. Turning now to our U.K. travel business on slide 14. As I've said, we've seen a strong recovery since the peak of the Omicron variant. While there are still some uncertainties in the broader global economy, we're optimistic about recovery for travel in the U.K.. There is pent-up demand for leisure travel, particularly over the summer and school holidays. This was evident over the February half-term holiday, and more recently over Easter. In addition, tour operators have seen a sharp increase in holiday bookings for 2022 versus pre-COVID levels, which is really encouraging. As you would expect, we have a robust plan in place for this summer to maximize these opportunities. Across our other channels, our U.K. hospital business is our second-largest channel behind air, and provides us with significant growth opportunities in terms of increasing our space and improving the retail provision within hospitals. In rail, leisure travel continues to increase with strong weekend performances and sales back to 84% of pre-pandemic levels. What is really pleasing is that our ATV growth across all channels is holding firm as passenger numbers recover. Turning now to our performance on slide 15. On the screen you can see the table which clearly shows the improving trends we're seeing in the U.K.. In air, you can see a significant improvement from the first half's performance into Q3 as restrictions have been lifted. In hospitals, as restrictions were eased with more visitors and elective surgeries taking place, we have also seen an increase in sales, with sales now at 98% of pre-pandemic levels. In rail, it's a similar story with an increase in passenger numbers, and this has accelerated more recently with a stronger Easter performance. Looking ahead, we expect these trends to continue across all of our channels. Turning now to slide 16. As I said at the beginning, throughout the pandemic, we've not lost sight of our good retail disciplines. Space management and our ongoing focus on format development has continued to drive significant opportunities across all our channels, and it demonstrates how we're constantly evolving and responding to the ever-changing needs of both passengers and landlords. Across our larger stores, we are identifying opportunities where we can reposition our traditional format of news, books, and convenience stores to a unique one-stop travel essentials format. What we mean by this is extending our categories such as health and beauty, tech, food to go, and pharmacy products to provide customers with all their travel retail needs under one roof. Customers like it's good for us as it increases ATV and spend per passenger, and landlords also like it as it increases the GBP per sq ft of selling space. We now have this format open in four airports, including Heathrow Terminal Two, Gatwick and Manchester, as well as Euston Station. Customer and landlord feedback has been very positive. Turning now to slide 17. On the screen you can see the category data from our one-stop shop store at Heathrow Terminal two, and how the store format has evolved since 2019 through to today. The dark blue section clearly shows how we've increased the space and significantly increased the sales of new categories such as health and beauty. By developing our format in this way, we've created a strong proposition for customers, increased penetration, grown our ATV and spend per passenger, improved our margins, and created a format with strong economics for landlords. Turning now to our new InMotion stores in U.K. airports on slide 18. You'll remember that we bought the InMotion business back in 2018, and at that time, we knew there were good growth opportunities for this business, both within and outside of the U.S. Despite the pandemic, we haven't sat still, and we have now successfully opened 28 of the stores won last summer in U.K. airports. This now positions us as the market-leading technology retailer in travel locations globally. These stores combine the learnings and expertise from the U.S., as well as the results of extensive customer research in the U.K. to provide a first-class customer service experience and a combination of premium products from brands such as Apple, Bose, Sony and Samsung, as well as an extensive range of tech accessories. Tech accessories is a strong growth market, and early indication would suggest that our annual sales will be ahead of our original forecast of GBP 80 million. Turning now to our hospital and rail business on slide 19. As I've said before, the hospital channel is an important channel for us and is the second largest in revenue behind air. It's a robust market, and there are plenty more opportunities for us to continue to grow our space and improve the retail provision. It's a great example of how we continue to innovate with a strong proposition tailored to each location and trust, and a broad suite of brands including M&S, Costa Coffee, and the Post Office. Looking ahead, we have a good pipeline of opportunities where we can see scope for at least one of our three formats in up to 200 further hospitals. Turning to rail is an attractive channel for us with around 1.7 billion passengers pre-pandemic. We're seeing an encouraging return of leisure passengers with leisure and weekend passengers recovering the fastest, which is helping drive our ATV growth. We know from our segmentation and return on space analysis that it's this customer segment which is most valuable to us. We also continue to invest here in new formats and in new opportunities to meet customer needs. During the period, we successfully opened our first one-stop shop format in rail at Euston Station. This has been very well received by passengers with strong sales. In addition, we've opened a new standalone bookshop at Edinburgh Station and our first rail store with a combined M&S food offer in Bristol. Turning now to a quick summary on U.K. travel on slide 20. We've made good progress since the start of the financial year, with 30 new store openings in the U.K., and we're on track to open a further 15 stores in the second half. Some of you may remember that we're also the exclusive retail partner for GRIDSERVE's electric forecourt, and we were pleased to open our second outlet this month. While it's still early days, we see good opportunities with this format going forward. Continued good progress, and we are now set up well with strong customer and landlord propositions tailored to each location and channel. We continue to focus on customer conversion and driving ATV, and we're delivering good results, so lots still to go for. Turning now to slide 22 in our North American business. North America is a very attractive travel retail market. It's the largest in the world, valued pre-COVID at $3.2 billion. It now represents around 50% of our international store estate, and there are significant opportunities for us to grow this business further, which I'll come onto. In terms of the recovery, the U.S. is a robust market, and despite economic headwinds, passenger data shows a consistent and steady recovery. It's important to remember that 85% of U.S. air travel is domestic. Total revenue in March was at 104% compared to 2019 levels, and we're confident in a strong performance as the recovery continues with more new business wins. We've also implemented a number of our core skills and travel retail disciplines from the U.K. to the U.S. market to drive ATV and higher sales, and we're seeing some really positive results. Given the similar customer dynamic and high footfall environments to our U.K. travel business, we remain in a good position to apply our expertise here. Our resorts business in Las Vegas has proven extremely resilient, with an encouraging recovery driven by new conference centers and events attracting more visitors. Turning now to slide 23 in our new store pipeline. During the period, we've continued with our strong track record of winning tenders. When we acquired MRG in 2019, it operated from 56 stores in airports and 111 resort stores, mostly in Las Vegas. Looking ahead to 2024, we expect this to increase significantly with 63 stores already won and due to open over the next three years. Similarly, with InMotion, we now have 115 stores trading, and we have already won a further nine stores. On the graph, you can see the projected CapEx requirement for each financial year. Of course, these numbers and forecasts do not include any further tender wins, which should only serve to strengthen the portfolio. As we've seen many times before, the U.S. is the largest market in the world for travel retail. On the screen, we've pulled out the top 25 airports, and you can see from the data and dark blue section of the graph how many stores we have either open or have won in each of these locations, versus the total number of stores in the airport dedicated to our categories. If you take the world's largest airport as an example, Atlanta, we have only 17 stores currently out of a possible 119 news and specialty stores within this airport. This gives you an idea of the scale of the opportunity available within just one airport, and we expect a significant amount of business to come to the market over the medium term. Similarly, across the top 50 airports, MRG are only currently represented in 20 of the top 50, with InMotion represented in many more. This again gives us huge scope with MRG to win additional space in these locations going forward, particularly given the existing relationships with InMotion. We see significant growth prospects for our U.S. business given our very small market share of around 13%. Turning now to the next slide and a new store opening. In fact, our first WHSmith branded store in North America on slide 25. This store opened at LaGuardia Airport back in January and launched using Amazon's Just Walk Out technology. This is our first store globally to launch this technology, and both customer and landlord feedback has been very positive. This format enables passengers to travel through the airport with a quick and easy checkout-free shopping experience. While it's still relatively early days, we're pleased with the performance of the store. Turning now to an update on the rest of the world on slide 27. Now, outside of the U.S., WHSmith has a very low market share of the international travel retail market. As a result, there is significant opportunity to grow our footprint in new and existing territories through NBC and technology tenders using our three economic models of directly run JV and franchise. Similar to the U.K. and the U.S., we had a good pipeline of new business wins prior to the pandemic, and we are pleased to have kept up that momentum. During the half, we have successfully opened 12 new stores across Australia, Europe, and the Middle East, and we've continued to win new business in key locations such as Spain, which I'll come onto, a further six stores in Australia, and additional stores in Sweden and Malaysia. In addition, we've also won a further seven InMotion stores at Dublin, Milan, and Stockholm airports, taking the total number of stores outside of the U.K. and the U.S. to 11. As we have done in the U.K., we focus on areas within our control, including driving ATV and increasing conversion, as well as developing our formats, and we're seeing good results. We've also brought our expertise and skills from the U.S. to our other territories such as Australia and Europe, where we've opened new stores with a unique sense of place and localization. This has been extremely well received by landlords and passengers. We continue to build on areas where we've already won stores, for example, in Spain, which I'll come onto now. During the half, we won a significant and highly competitive tender in Spain comprising 31 additional directly run stores, now making us the market leader in Spanish airports and taking the total number of stores we operate there to over 50. This is a great example of how we entered a key territory some six years ago with a single store in Alicante and have since grown our presence, leveraged our assets, and created a platform for us to continue to grow even further. We know, for example, there is more opportunities to go for, not just in the NBC markets, but also the electricals market under the InMotion brand. This recent tender win includes a combination of existing contracts and significant new wins in locations including Madrid, Barcelona, Majorca, and Ibiza. Before I move on to the high street business, let me just do a quick recap on travel on the next slide. As we've emerged from the Omicron variant, we've seen a good recovery across all of our travel markets, and we're now operationally stronger than prior to the pandemic. While there are still some headwinds, we're cautiously optimistic, and like most industry commentators, we believe that passenger numbers will only fully recover by 2024. Meanwhile, we remain very well-placed to benefit as the recovery continues. We have a robust plan in place to drive ATV and increased conversion. We have a very strong pipeline of new space across all our channels and territories, totaling over 125 new stores, 2021 and 2022 to open over the next three years, with the majority in North America. As you've heard, we see good opportunities with our one-stop-shop format. We have also successfully launched InMotion into the U.K. and Europe, and we're now the number one technology retailer in travel locations globally. We expect further good growth opportunities across all of our channels. Turning now to the high street on slide 31. Our high street strategy will be familiar to many of you, but it's worth reiterating as well as some of the actions we're taking. Our forensic focus on space management remains, as do our third-party partnerships such as the Post Office and new partnerships such as Legami and Tinc for stationery. In terms of category management, we continue to adapt, and we've launched new ranges relevant to each location and in towns where competitors have closed. We're also trying to reduce retail selling space in our larger stores. This reduces complexity, stock and running costs, and early results are very encouraging. As you would expect, we have also increased our investment and focus on whsmith.co.uk, and we're seeing good growth through investing in the site. This includes improving customer conversion and product presentation, broadening our approach to marketing, and investing in fulfillment using our Swindon distribution center. All of this has enabled us to have a credible multi-channel offer for our customers. As you would expect, cost efficiency remains a key part of the strategy. Turning to the next slide. Starting with the market, and it changed significantly during the pandemic, footfall remains down around 20% on the U.K. high street, while the online market has continued to grow. There's been a clear shift in the last two years, which without the pandemic, would probably have taken around six- seven years. We've acted quickly to this changing market in a number of ways. Firstly, by restructuring the cost base to reduce costs, but also increase the level of flexibility in our business model. This, for example, covers labor costs in stores, head offices, and the distribution centers. We've reviewed our categories and extended them where appropriate to ensure we have greater relevance in this market and where competitors have closed. New categories include working from home ranges, tech accessories, and we've increased our range of cards where competition has weakened. In addition, we've launched a trial with Deliveroo across 10 of our high street stores, offering customers access to 600 WHSmith products on demand direct to their door through Deliveroo in as little as 20 minutes. As usual, we've worked particularly hard at managing costs, so turning to the next slide. We're on track to deliver savings of GBP 41 million in the year. These savings come from right across the business, including rent reductions at lease end of around 50%, as well as logistics and supply chain efficiencies. As many of you know, we've worked hard over the past 10 years to create a very flexible lease portfolio in the high street with short leases where our average lease length is now only around wo years. This has set us up very well to respond quickly to changing market conditions. We have around 450 leases due to expire over the next three years. Given this rolling program of lease renewals, we therefore have further opportunities to renegotiate our occupation costs going forward and expect rent reductions to remain a key component of our future cost reduction strategy. Even with years of savings, the high street cost base is still substantial, and we continue to see opportunities for further savings. Going forward with the strategy we have in place and the actions we've taken means that the cash flow and profits of this business are robust and sustainable. Turning now to Funky Pigeon on the next slide. Before I go into the performance, let me just give you a quick update on the cybersecurity incident we announced last week. I'm pleased to say that while the investigation is still ongoing, we're in the process of getting the site live. As we said in our statement last week, we do not expect this incident to have a material impact on the financial position of the group. Turning to the performance, and as you know, the online greetings card market has seen considerable growth for a number of years. The market for greetings cards in the U.K. is substantial, estimated at around GBP 1.6 billion, with online penetration currently estimated at around 15%, with forecasts suggesting that penetration will grow to around 20% by 2024. While the pandemic clearly accelerated the growth of online shopping, it's still apparent that this is an under-penetrated market with plenty of opportunity to develop this business further still. Following a very strong COVID year, Funky Pigeon delivered revenue of GBP 21 million. As with many online retailers, as we anniversary the lockdowns, the sales and EBITDA will be lower this year as expected, and we continue to invest in the business. However, we see plenty of opportunity to grow. During the period, we strengthened the management team significantly with a number of senior hires. We developed the Funky Pigeon app and invested in platform enhancements, extended our gifting ranges, and following a very successful Mother's Day, we have seen an increase in flower orders. We have also extended the fulfillment capability to meet demand with a new production facility in Swindon, leveraging our group assets. We are really pleased with the performance of our next day delivery service, seven days a week, which we received very positive customer feedback. We see plenty of opportunity to further grow this business. Turning to the next slide. I'm pleased to say that during the period, we were only one of 12 retailers worldwide to be included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices. This is the second year we've been included. In addition, we are currently the highest performing specialty retailer in Morningstar's ESG Sustainalytics Benchmark. As you would expect, our ultimate goal is to be net zero by 2050 at the latest. We recognize we can't do this alone, and so we're collaborating with our suppliers, our landlords and customers to walk towards this goal. We continue to focus on more environmentally responsible sourcing practices, and we've redesigned and removed plastic packaging from our seasonal ranges wherever possible. Finally, we continue to champion children's literacy through our partnership with the National Literacy Trust by donating books and additional funds to ensure we support children across the U.K. who most need our support. Turning to the final slide to summarize. Looking ahead, the group is well-positioned for further growth. We are operationally stronger than prior to the pandemic. We've won some significant new business across the globe. We have a very strong pipeline of over 125 store openings across the next three years. We've seen a strong rebound in profitability, and the board is confident in the outlook for the group. The growth opportunities for travel are substantial, and we now have a highly successful global technology business InMotion, which is successfully launched outside of the U.S. into seven countries. We continue to invest in new stores and develop new formats, such as our one-stop shop for travel essentials. We are a resilient, innovative and financially strong group. Despite the uncertainties in the broader global economy, we remain confident that we're well-positioned to emerge stronger as the recovery continues. As I said at the beginning, we expect to return to meaningful profitability in the current financial year. That's it from me. Thank you. We'll take your questions, starting off with those of you who are in the room. Good morning, it's Jonathan Pritchard from Peel Hunt. Two if I can. In the States, I think you've been very bullish about the pitch book abilities of Marshall's. The competition must be smelling the coffee a little bit with the fact that the bespoke solutions are really coming in favor. Have you seen much of an improvement? Well, you don't know what the pitch book looks like, but the opposition response, have you seen any developments there to make life a bit tougher for MRG? Or are you confident that there's still a lot of clear water between, as I say, your pitch book and everyone else's? Secondly, just really a history lesson, perhaps for us in terms of, you know, you talk a lot about ATV and you talk a lot about conversion, but intuitively, you would think that lower consumer confidence makes that more difficult. So how has ATV and conversion progress developed in the past at times when the consumer wasn't quite so confident? Okay. I'll take both of those then. In the U.S., I think if anything, there's more air between us and our nearest competitors. I think when MRG were pitching for stores, two, three, four years ago, they were pitching stores on a promise. Now, when they're out there tendering, they're able to show landlords a great collection of stores they've implemented. The store concepts they've implemented in San Francisco, in LaGuardia Airport, where you've got all of these walk-through stores, they're able to show landlords, "This is what we can implement, and these are the results." I think if anything, our pitch is more authentic and stronger now. The other thing that MRG have that the competition don't have is they operate quite a few of the retail categories vertically. They actually source and retail souvenirs, fashion, clothing, all of the different categories that we operate. The two main competitors in America, they need to find third parties to help them. That's still in place. I think we've got the advantage over being able to put everything under one roof without having to utilize other brands. I think we're able to demonstrate our execution ability. I think those two things probably give us clearer air at the moment. In terms of the second question around ATV, really what we've done is we've broadened our category range in all stores. At the most extreme, you've got Heathrow Terminal two, where you've got, you know, a huge range of health and beauty and tech accessories and pharmacy. In all of our stores, we've expanded health and beauty and tech accessories. Customers want that. In a travel environment, they wanna be able to pick up products quickly and easily and go through the till. We find that when you put essentials categories together, there's this cross-fertilization between those categories. All the evidence suggests that's gonna hold. Actually, if anything, I think as things get busier, it's more likely to hold 'cause people aren't wanting to go into another shop and perhaps queue at a till. We're pretty confident. When we've seen the quite frenetic travel at Easter, where you know, the airports have been very busy, if anything, we've seen a slight tick up in our ATV, not a reduction. We feel very confident that we're gonna hold on to our ATV. Managing Director of Travel U.K., Andrew Harrison, he's very confident. Good morning. Just wanted to ask, obviously, there's a bit of sector consolidation going on. I mean, how do you think about participating in it or where that's focused, either in the U.S. or Europe? Secondly, MAGs. Given the strong travel recovery, are you expecting MAGs to rebase this year, or how do you expect that to progress going forward? Do you wanna do the sector consolidation, Robert? I'll take the MAGs. I mean, I know as much as probably you do. Well, I've read it in the press. I mean, I guess Dufry and Autogrill, if they get together, that means they have a huge amount of the U.S. market. How landlords will react to that, who knows? We've got plenty to get on with ourselves. We've got over 125 stores to open. There's plenty more opportunity in our markets. We're focusing on what we're doing at the moment. That's where our energies are. In terms of minimum guarantees, most of our minimum guarantees now are linked to passengers. As passengers return, obviously those minimum guarantees go up. But obviously having a business where our penetration's increased, our conversion has increased, and our ATV has increased, leaves us in a pretty strong position when we're linked to passengers. Morning, Kate Calvert from Investec. Three questions from me. The first one is on the potential for your one-stop travel essentials format in the U.K.. What is the potential beyond the current four that you have? And also, do you have one of these one-stop travel essentials within your Spanish wins? Could we be seeing one opening in Spain in the near future? The second question is on the U.K.. I think you've got about 45-odd stores which are hibernated at the moment. Are there any costs associated with those at the moment in the P&L? And the third question is on InMotion. You comment that you feel you'll be ahead of the original GBP 80 million sales guidance. How far ahead do you think you might end up? Worth a try. I'll take the first one, and I'll pass to you for two and three. The one-stop shop potential, I think there's huge potential. And I tell you for why. Customers really like it. Customers like to have all of essentials under one roof. It makes a lot of sense to them to be able to pick up everything and go to one till. Obviously, it's good for us because we're getting more trade, but very importantly, the economics are very strong for landlords. The sum of the parts is greater. By putting essentials together, you get that cross-fertilization from one category to another, so the overall sales go up. The landlord therefore effectively gets more rent, but from less space, and they're able to use the space that's freed up for fashion retail or for food and beverage. It's a very strong argument for landlords. We've got the store at Heathrow Terminal two. We're operating this in Gatwick. We're doing, we've got a big health and beauty rollout at Manchester Airport. Euston Station is really exciting. If you haven't seen our Euston station store, I really would urge you to go there. It's something to behold. It's probably a little bit smaller than this room. It's on track. It'll take GBP 15 million, and the economics per square meter are intense. I was there recently. There were four of us, and we had to constantly move around the store. It was the middle of the day. There's so many customers coming in and out. I think we've really proved the concept in air, and I think we've really proved the concept in rail. I feel very ambitious for the rollout of the one-stop shop format. Robert, what about these hibernated stores? The hibernated stores, Kate. There are some costs, but they're not material. Things like holding onto store managers, holding onto key supervisors and people who can operate the stores is something that we made a decision to do right at the beginning of the pandemic. When the stores reopen, we would have the right people in the right place to make sure we open them efficiently, quickly, and we're able to operate them as soon as we could. Those costs are still there. But those are probably the main ones, but they're just not really material. In terms of InMotion, I'd be disappointed if we haven't moved that 80 towards 90. Thank you. Can I just come back on the first question? With the Spanish wins, are any of those Oh, sorry. Um. Well, we do have some health and beauty ranges within the stores, but the Spanish stores are all very small. It's very traditional. We're sort of sticking to our knitting a bit there because ideally, even in Madrid, the typical store would be a 1/3 the size of this room. It's very difficult to bring all of those categories in. When we talk to international landlords, we always use the Heathrow example. We're constantly talking to them about, "This is what we could do. Why don't we try and do a wider range of categories for you? This is how the economics work." We'd like to think that we will take this format abroad. Good morning. It's Warwick Okines from BNP Paribas Exane. Two questions, please. Firstly, Carl, on ATVs, could you just tell us whether ATVs are double digit versus pre-pandemic in all three of the U.K. channels? Secondly, Robert, you'd be disappointed if I didn't ask you about U.K. costs in the high street business. You've increased the cost saving from GBP 35 million-GBP 41 million. Why are you not more optimistic about profits in the second half of this year? Perhaps you could just confirm whether the outer year cost savings are unchanged from the guidance you gave at the full year? ATV is double digit in all three channels. Thank you. In terms of the outer year, there's no change. I think the profits in the second half are pretty close to what we said they were gonna be, except for the impact of Funky Pigeon. The High Street profits themselves in the second half, no change to where we were expecting them to be, back in November. I suppose, Robert, just, so what I mean is really where have those extra cost savings. Oh, where they come from. come from and where have they gone? Yeah. Given that you've hedged energy out to next year, where is that extra GBP 6 million gone? Some of that is the variable cost relating to the e-commerce businesses. You're seeing some of the sales are slightly lower than we had hoped in some of the e-commerce businesses as the markets normalize, and the variable costs will come down accordingly. That's the main driver of it. We're still seeing some savings coming through from rents and rates. All that side of things is still coming through nicely. Very clear. Thank you. Morning, Owen Shirley from Berenberg. If I could sort of ask one more on ATV to start with. I know you're not gonna kind of give us numbers, but has the pace of growth in ATV changed over the last year versus 2019? Secondly, on the big increase in momentum in travel wins in North America, are there any sticking points still remaining? Is there anything in your pitch book that you would like to make better? I guess a third sort of related question, is F&B important at all to you, or do you think it's important to landlords? Thanks. Well, in terms of ATV, we're sort of holding it, really. I mean, as I said, if anything, we saw a slight uptick at Easter because as it got busier and people were rushing through departure lounges, even before we consolidated some of the categories, 30% of people come into a WH Smith. As we put more categories into our stores, we are always gonna be the beneficiary there. If as things get busier, I think we feel very confident to at least hold on to our ATV growth. In terms of North America, in terms of categories, I think we are. You're right to look at food. The pre-packaged food within our stores and the food offer is poor compared to what we do over here. The previous MD of the U.K. travel division is running North America now, and we're gonna put in a lot of disciplines around our food offering, how we do coffee, how we bring all of that together. And of course, we're always looking at, you know, different ways and different categories and how we might improve our retail footprint. In terms of any sticking points in North America, you know, the only challenges that we see, that myself and Robert have, like, dealing with the team are growing pains because we are growing so fast over there, and we have so many new stores to open. The things that we're doing over there, we're improving the bench strength of the team because it's a business that is doubling in size effectively. Just to follow up on the sort of, you know, restaurants. Well, at the moment, we're focusing on winning retail tenders. We're not looking to move into F&B. You know, it's always a market that we'll look at, but I think we've got enough on our plates at the moment winning retail stores. Morning. Morning. Richard Taylor from Barclays. Richard, how you doing? I've got two questions, please. Firstly, on the 125 sites you've now got in the hopper, can you give us an idea of the quality of these sites? You know, is the revenue per site fully recovered, better, worse, in line with the existing sites? Is the profitability, again, better, worse or similar? Secondly, I think you do quite a bit of sourcing in the Far East and China. Do you see any issues at the moment, or do you anticipate any issues, given the lockdowns over there at the moment with your supply chain? Thank you. Do you want to take the first one, and I'll take the second? In a fully recovered world, the quality would be as good, possibly better, than we've had. We're winning some really good business. In terms of profitability, again, broadly, the same as where they were beforehand. The only one I just might mention is Spain, where we won the 31 stores. That is a significant tender. It was highly competed, and the margins that we'll get from that are pretty much average that we would get from the rest of the world part of the business. Everywhere else, where everything else is pretty much as it was beforehand. In terms of sourcing in the Far East, given the issues that everybody experienced last Christmas, we've been very proactive this year. Let me give you, all of our back-to-school stock is already on the water. Everything's either here in Britain or is on its way. All of our Christmas ranges have now been signed off and are in production. Some of them, well, perhaps a good chunk of them will hit by midsummer. The action we've taken is to pull everything forward because I think my view is that it will be increasingly more difficult to get products out of China, because with all the lockdown restrictions happening, there's gonna be a slowdown. I think we've moved pretty fast. We don't have any ranging decisions now to make in the Far East for Christmas. Everything's done, everything's signed off, and it's either on its way or it's being produced and then on its way. Yeah. Tony Shiret from Panmure Gordon. I was sort of interested to know whether there are any sort of changes you've made in the way you operate in travel during the pandemic that are gonna actually give you lasting benefits post-pandemic. You know, for example, labor percentage of sales in the U.S., sort of structural things you might have done, whether there is a Potential for a sort of greater level of profitability, coming out this side of the pandemic. Okay. Well, I mean, the first thing we've done in travel obviously is change our commercial mix, so we have a higher ATV and a better penetration. The commercial economics of what happens per passenger has changed fundamentally for travel and will remain there. In terms of our labor force, as we've grown back our labor and across the summer, we're gonna be employing an extra nearly 1,000 people in the U.K. alone in our travel business. We will have more part-timers. If you fast-forward it, I don't know, a couple of years, the proportion of part-time to full-time will be much higher than it was pre-pandemic, and that gives us a lot more flexibility. With the same labor costs we can flex up and have more people at peak times during the week and at holidays and flex it back down, and that will give us some benefits. In the U.S., we're introducing self-checkouts. Self-checkouts, American consumers like them. Now they experience them in supermarkets. Bizarrely, you just don't get them in airports. We've done a couple of trials, and it's been well-received. We know from what we've done in the U.K., there's a lot of efficiencies through self-checkouts. We have quite a big rollout program over the next 12 months about putting those self-checkouts in because labor costs have gone up quite significantly in the U.S., but we think we can probably more than offset that by bringing in self-checkouts. Thanks. Richard Chamberlain, RBC. Yeah, I guess linked to that, guys, what sort of staff cost inflation are you seeing at the moment then in travel given the very sort of tight labor market? Is it, has it gone up broadly in line with the living wage? The second one I guess, a slightly longer term question, how do you see your sort of longer run earning power now for the group as a whole? I mean, I guess we've got high street footfall down you mentioned. You've got rail presumably impacted by work from home, hybrid working, et cetera, but equally a stronger travel pipeline, all the stuff you've done on the cost base, et cetera, during the pandemic. I mean, can we assume that the sort of pro forma EBIT level in two-three years' time is at least as high as pre-pandemic levels? I'll do number one. Not an easy question. I'll do number one, and then I'll, my partner can do number two. Oh, the span. In terms of labor costs, I mean, it dramatically varies across the world, and then within countries, it varies. In America, there has been quite a bit of labor inflation, and it changes quite dramatically by state. You know, we've moved quite fast. Of course, you know, it's awkward getting to airports, parking. It's awkward hours. You do have to be on the money there. We have moved. It's not still without its issues, but we're coping well. In the rest of our markets, I would say we're in a good position. You know, we're a good employer. People, we have kind of a very loyal store base. We have good opportunities for staff in terms of advancement. I think we're coping better than most. When I look particularly at airports, you know, there's a number of F&B retailers having to close early, shut shops because they just haven't got the people to man them. We're not in that position. That said, we're not complacent. You know, there's a lot of people that we need to attract and bring in over the summer. We are thinking more disproportionately around engagement and what we do around retention than we probably ever done before. Okay. I would say we're in a pretty strong position. Mm-hmm. In terms of looking out, Richard, compared to pre-pandemic, the group has changed shape quite significantly. Mm-hmm. It's already by far the biggest part of the business. In a recovered world, it will become an increasing part. It'll become a bigger and bigger part. Mm-hmm of the business. In terms of EBIT margins, when I think about travel, broadly the same as pre-pandemic. Again, the makeup is very different, and I'll just walk you through how I think about it. In terms of the U.K., our goal is to get back to the same EBIT margins as we had pre-pandemic, and those were the market leading EBIT margins of around 17%. Mm-hmm. Since pre-pandemic, we've now won InMotion. InMotion is profitable, a very nice business, generates lots of cash and profit but at a lower margin. Yeah. That will dilute the U.K. EBIT by around 100 basis points. Then we had the rest of the world pre-pandemic that was generating margins of around 7%. That should increase, not significantly, but it should increase. We should see some Mm-hmm Accretion through there. We have the North American business. The North American business should be generating EBITs in low teens and a bigger part of the business, so more than what's pre-pandemic, and international will be a bigger part of the business pre-pandemic. You put all that together and all that complex. Yeah where the divisions were, you get broadly back, in my mind, to where we were pre-pandemic for the total travel business but with a business that has got far greater opportunities to grow. Mm-hmm has much higher volumes than it had pre-pandemic. Got it. Okay. Thank you. How good was that answer, Richard? That's a good answer. Great. Morning, it's Harry Gowers from J.P. Morgan. I've got a couple if I can. First one on Funky Pigeon. It's obviously coming up against tough comps, but maybe is it finding it a bit tougher versus expectations at the start of the year? If you could give us anything in terms of where the business could get to financially over the next couple of years? On Spain, understand you knocked the incumbent off their perch, so maybe you could give us some flavor for how you managed it? Are there any examples of some significant tenders coming up, where the competitive dynamics are similarly favorable? Just on U.K. rail, if you could talk about any trends in terms of passenger mix, ATV and outlook. I mean, is 85%-90% of 2019 maybe the new normal? Thanks. Okay. In terms of Funky Pigeon, I think when it comes to the online markets, I think everybody is sort of suffering versus last year. The card market is still robust. I think our expectations for Funky Pigeon over the next few years are still very strong. You know, we're in the process of investing in a new app, in a new technology stack for the business. We've got a really sort of strengthened team in place. I think there's lots of opportunity for further penetration within the card market. We think for the sort of medium long term, we're in a strong position, kind of annoying having a cyberattack, which has sort of, you know, hits us for a few weeks and clearly we need to come back from that strongly. I think we feel pretty confident in the outlook over the next couple of years. In terms of Spain, you're right, it was a very intense tender. It was us versus Lagardère versus Hudson, and as you rightly say, we did knock them off their perches. We have stores that are more productive. We have stores that, you know, when we take over stores, we deliver more GBP per sq ft than our competitors. We have a better assortment of products, and we have stronger operations, I would say. You know, we find increasingly that we're more able to win tenders when we come up against them in our traditional categories. I think this is the culmination of some of that. There's quite a lot of tenders going on in Europe at the moment, as we're part of several active tenders, both within our traditional categories and within electrical. I think we feel pretty confident in the outlook when it comes to our new store pipeline. In terms of rail, I mean, in terms of commuters, it'll be many years, won't it, before it gets back to 2019 levels. For us, I'm not sure that matters. Our share of those rush hour pinch points was tiny. I said earlier that sort of 30% of people who go airside go into WH Smith. At a rush hour at 7:30 A.M. is something like 0.1% of people will go into a WH Smith. People just put their heads down and want to get through a station. You probably know from your own kind of actions in a sort of rush hour, you're not going around browsing in shops. Our passengers in rail tend to be sort of the more, you know, the longer destinations, the leisure customer, the family, people rushing in to get lunch. Actually, the profile of our sales is quite evenly spread throughout the day. Leisure passengers have come back, you know, at a huge rate in London. You know, we have really strong weekend travel sales in travel. Even if passengers overall remain at sort of, you know, below 2019 levels, I think we'd be confident that our sales will be at and above 2019 levels. Hi. Mark Allen from Deutsche Bank. Just two quick questions. I guess, thinking about the rest of the world division outside of Europe, given trend seems to be for less globalization rather than more, has your thinking changed at all around the growth opportunities, I guess, from the rest of the world division? Then just in terms of the Spanish kind of concessions, has there been a greater focus, I guess, around price? Have you seen concession fees there sort of materially increasing versus where they were previously? Thank you. Well, in terms of the rest of the world outside of Europe, the recovery has been slower, but the recovery has been slower because of COVID restrictions and because of vaccinations in a number of countries and travel restrictions. We are seeing quite a fast recovery now. It's just behind Europe. Australia's opened up. Singapore has started to open up really in the last couple of months. I mean, up until two months ago, it effectively was still down more than 90%. You know, it's improved by about 25%-30% across the last two months. I think there's still plenty of opportunities in the rest of the world. There's nothing to suggest that the recovery won't happen, and there'll still be opportunities in Asia and the Middle East. Of course, we have relatively small shares there. Particularly when it comes to our sort of new brands like InMotion, I think there will be quite a bit of opportunity. In Spain, in terms of the price, it is a highly competitive tender. I mean, the Spanish tender process is, you know, it's a public opening of envelopes, and he who puts the most money on the table wins. It's as simple as that. From that point of view, you know, the margins are always gonna be, you know, challenging. We think we're in a good place. We understand the market really well because we've already got 18 stores there. I think we understand the economics well, and we understand kind of our proposition versus our competitors. Sorry. Say it again. Sorry that you haven't necessarily seen that trend move outside of Spain. No. in terms of pricing becoming No. More aggressive? Thank you. No. Thankfully. Are there any questions on the telephone that we should go to? Sounds very old-fashioned. Thank you. The telephone. Sorry. Hello. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press Star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, please press Star followed by one. We will pause briefly as questions are registered. It's not you. It's the timeline. Say it's over. No. Finish it. There are no questions registered at this time, so I'd like to pass the conference back to the floor. Thank you. Well, I think I'll wrap up. Thank you, everyone. Thanks for coming. Good to see you all, and see you again in six months' time, hopefully.