Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Almost to the day 12 months ago, we announced the completion of the acquisition of CP Kelco, and I'm delighted by the progress we've made integrating the two businesses over the last year. Today, we have three key messages for you. Firstly, we are stronger together. We've made good progress delivering the benefits of the combination. There's real excitement in the new team about the future potential of our business. The power of the combination is driving high levels of customer engagement. With our deeper product portfolio and leading reformulation capabilities, we have a compelling solutions offering which meets growing consumer demand for healthier, more nutritious, and sustainable food and drink. I saw this firsthand in Mexico two weeks ago, both in the new solutions our teams are creating for customers locally and in the kind of discussions we had with one of the leading dairy businesses in the country. Our second key message is that a slowdown in market demand, notably in North America, is impacting our current performance. This is both disappointing and frustrating given the progress we're making elsewhere in the business. Thirdly, as a result of this, we are taking decisive actions to drive top-line growth, stronger performance, and position the business for an upturn in demand. Let me start by looking at the first of those three key messages. Our expanded product portfolio and stronger technical capabilities are driving high levels of customer engagement. Over the last six months, we have had over 4,000 interactions with customers globally through a range of different channels across online meetings, innovation days, workshops, and prototype tasting sessions. During these interactions, we've seen a significant increase in the number of customers engaged on technical issues. In fact, we've held technical discussions with over 250 more customers in the first half than this time last year. All these activities have helped to increase the value of our new business pipeline to $420 million. $175 million of new projects have been added to the pipeline in the last six months. One of the main reasons for the high levels of customer engagement is the significantly expanded formulation and solutions offering of the combined business. In the last six months, with the inclusion of CP Kelco's portfolio, revenue from new products increased by 55% to GBP 166 million. New product revenue increased by 7% on a like-for-like basis, with a particularly strong performance from the Mouthfeel platform, which saw double-digit growth. This reflects the strength of the combined portfolio and increased capabilities. The inclusion of CP Kelco's portfolio and the technical solutions of both businesses increased solutions-based revenue from new business wins to 39%. On a like-for-like basis, this increased from 20% to 22%. Investment in innovation and solution selling, with the inclusion of CP Kelco's investment, increased by 68%, or 4% on a like-for-like basis. Innovation is the lifeblood of any business, and the strength and quality of our pipeline is very encouraging. We said we would deliver targeted revenue synergies of 10% of CP Kelco's revenue, or around $70 million by the end of the 2029 financial year, and we are tracking ahead of the plan. Cross-selling, which is the sale of CP Kelco's ingredients and solutions to Tate & Lyle customers and vice versa, is a key part of how we're delivering these synergies. While it's still early days, we are making good progress. The risk-adjusted value of our cross-selling pipeline stood at around $60 million at the end of the first half. This growth is broad-based, with each region's cross-selling pipeline increasing by more than 85% in the second quarter. To support cross-selling across the business, we have rolled out global training programs for our commercial and technical teams, and we have also revised our sales incentive scheme to directly incentivize cross-selling. This is having a positive impact with some early customer successes, particularly for Mouthfeel solutions. Let me give you a few examples. In the U.S., an existing large customer wanted to improve the Mouthfeel experience of its high-protein shakes. We would have struggled to deliver this in the past, but with the technical support of our new CP Kelco colleagues, we've produced a solution based on gelling gum, which, in the words of the customer, provided a mouthfeel experience that no one else in the industry could offer. In Australia, another existing Tate & Lyle customer told us it was looking for better functionality when including dried fruit pieces in its granola bars. In response, we developed a pectin-based solution, which not only provided the desired functionality a mouthfeel customer wanted, but also reduced cost. Back in the US, and now looking at a CP Kelco customer, a well-known dairy manufacturer is now working with us on developing a wide range of solutions. The customer was initially only interested in formulation support for a high-protein yogurt dessert, but after having seen firsthand the breadth of our technical expertise across both businesses, more projects have entered the pipeline for products such as nutritional shakes, ice cream, and dairy-based drinks. Finally, to Spain, where we are developing a solution for a former CP Kelco customer to fiber-fortify its range of gummies and make them sugar-free. We have only been able to do this because CP Kelco was a trusted supplier, and the customer can see the combined offering provides a much better offering for them than before. This gives me confidence that despite the current slowdown in market demand, the fundamental growth drivers of our business remain strong and continue to offer significant growth opportunities. These include societal trends such as population growth and the heightened awareness of the link between diet and health. Food industry trends also offer opportunities, whether for the reformulation of ultra-processed food to improve their nutritional content to the increasing demand for sugar and calorie reduction and fortification with fiber and protein. The power of the combination also offers growth opportunities, with its expanded customer offering, increased customer access, and enlarged presence in the fast-growing markets of Asia, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. In summary, then, it's clear from what customers are telling us and from the growth in our pipeline we have a highly compelling solutions offering. We are stronger together, and our leading expertise in sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification means we are very well positioned to meet growing consumer demand for healthier, more nutritious, and sustainable food and drink. While we are making strong progress setting the business up for future growth, in the near term, we are operating in a challenging economic environment, and this brings me to our second key message for today: how a slowdown in market demand is impacting our current performance. Before I hand over to Sarah to talk through the financial results, I want to look at the overall market context. In simple terms, in the Americas, volume was lower than we expected. In Europe, Middle East, and Africa, we saw competitive pricing, and in Asia-Pacific, we delivered good profit performance despite muted market demand. To put a bit more color on this, let's look at the U.S. market in a little more detail. After an extended period of weak consumer confidence, we came into the financial year expecting to see some improvements in market demand. As we outlined in our pre-close statement a month ago, this improvement has not materialized. Instead, we saw a slowdown in demand as the first half progressed, notably over the last two months. On the screen are two charts showing Nielsen data for the US food and beverage market in our key categories over the last 12 and 3 months, respectively. These show that in our largest market, volume has declined over the last 12 months and that in the last 3 months, this decline has accelerated as pricing increased. With consumer confidence remaining low, we expect the US market to remain subdued in the near term. I will come back later to talk about the actions we are taking to drive top-line growth and improve performance, but for now, I will hand over to Sarah to talk through the financial results, Sarah. Thank you, Nick. Before I talk through the numbers, I would like to reiterate Nick's message of how we are already demonstrating the power of the combination. We are delivering cost synergies and productivity ahead of our commitment. Our new business pipeline has strengthened to $420 million, and we are taking decisive action to fuel our top-line growth. Now turning to the numbers, please keep three things in mind. Firstly, I will focus on adjusted measures and items with percentage growth or in constant currency. Secondly, comparators are pro forma unless they indicate otherwise, as if the acquisition of CP Kelco had completed on 1 April 2024. Thirdly, given that ingredients in both the Tate & Lyle and CP Kelco portfolios are sold in volumes that differ greatly in value, in analyzing drivers of revenue change, we have combined the effects of volume and mix in line with industry best practice. More details are available in our disclosures. I will refer to this simply as volume. Looking first at the financial highlights, on a strategy basis, including the impact of the acquisition of CP Kelco, revenue was 32% higher and EBITDA was 24% higher. On an adjusted basis, as Nick explained, a slowdown in market demand led to 3% lower revenue, and we delivered EBITDA of GBP 215 million, some 6% lower. Adjusted earnings per share were GBP 21.30. We delivered GBP 98 million of free cash flow, with cash conversion of 71%, broadly in line with our long-term target. On a rolling 12-month basis, following the recent acquisition of CP Kelco, return on capital employed was 8.2%. This chart shows the main drivers of lower revenue. Softer market demand and tariffs impacted revenue by GBP 22 million. We invested GBP 10 million of revenue into the market through lower pricing, mainly in Europe. Overall, revenue was 3% lower in constant currency. While no longer a reporting segment, Sucralose performed well, with revenue broadly in line with a strong comparative period. I'd also like to highlight that revenue from the CP Kelco portfolio also continued to grow. Looking ahead, while the geopolitical environment remains uncertain, given the level of tariffs currently in force, we expect to see further impact in the second half due to the additional tariffs brought into effect late in August on imports from Brazil into the US. Moving on to EBITDA, which was 6% lower. EBITDA decreased as a result of softer market demand, investment in price, and the impact of tariffs, net of its mitigation. This was offset by the positive impact of strong cost discipline, net of investments in growth, and the early benefit of cost synergies. The recovery of CP Kelco portfolio continues, delivering margin improvement in the first half in addition to revenue growth. Our EBITDA margin at 21% remains attractive and well-positioned compared to our specialty ingredient peers. Turning now to the performance of our geographic segments. In the Americas, revenue was 2% lower and EBITDA 7% lower. While pricing was slightly higher, volume was lower as the slowdown in market demand led to customers ordering less than expected. In the U.S., revenue was broadly flat. We saw lower demand in each of our core categories, notably beverage, bakery, and snacks. Market demand in Latin America was mixed, with steady demand in Brazil, softer demand in Mexico. In Europe, Middle East, and Africa, revenue decreased by 6% and EBITDA by 16%. Volume and pricing were both lower. We came into the year expecting lower pricing, reflecting our decision to invest some price back into the market in customer framework agreements for the 2025 calendar year. Performance across our core categories varied, with higher demand in dairy and lower demand in soup, sauces and dressings, and bakery and snacks. Asia-Pacific delivered a robust performance, with revenue in line despite tariff pressures, and EBITDA was up 19%. Overall, demand was slightly stronger, with good demand in China, especially in the beverage and bakery and snacks categories, and in North Asia. However, this underlying demand was offset by the effect of tariffs across the region. We continue to work closely with our customers to meet their supply needs. Turning to other lines on the income statement, on exceptional items, net pre-tax exceptional charges were GBP 17 million. This included a GBP 20 million charge for integration costs, reflecting our strong cost synergy delivery, and a GBP 10 million non-cash charge from the buyout of a US pension scheme as we continued to de-risk our pension exposure. This was partially offset by a GBP 20 million provision release related to decommissioning costs at our former tapioca facility in Thailand. We sold this business in half, and as part of the sale agreement, these costs will no longer be incurred. The adjusted effective tax rate was 24.4%. As we stated in May, this increase is due to CP Kelco's operations being located in higher tax jurisdictions. We now expect the adjusted effective tax rate in the 2026 financial year to be in the range of 24%-25%. I'm pleased to report that the board has declared an interim dividend of GBP 0.066 per share, an increase of GBP 0.002 per share. This is in line with our approach of paying interim dividends equivalent to one-third of the prior year's full-year dividend. Turning now to free cash flow, for which comparators are, as we reported a year ago. Overall, adjusted free cash flow was GBP 98 million, GBP 29 million lower than a very strong comparative. EBITDA was GBP 27 million higher. Net working capital increased by GBP 37 million as we built higher inventory to mitigate the impact of tariffs on our supply chain and to support customer supply continuity while we manage the optimization of capacity in our US manufacturing facilities. Capital expenditure was GBP 5 million higher at GBP 55 million. For the 2026 financial year, we expect capital expenditure to be towards the lower end of the GBP 120-140 million range. Net interest increased by GBP 20 million, reflecting higher borrowings following the acquisition. Our balance sheet remains strong. Long-term debt financing is in place with a competitive mix of fixed and floating interest rates and with a well-balanced range of maturities running out to 2037. We are targeting long-term leverage to be between 1-2.5 times net debt to EBITDA, and our leverage stands at 2.3 times currently. Net debt at end September was GBP 952 million. At the end of October, we entered a $180 million two-year term loan facility in Druitt Down. These funds were used to repay an expiring $180 million US private placement fixed rate note at its maturity. We continue to have strong liquidity with access to nearly GBP 1 billion through cash in hand and a committed and undrawn revolving credit facility. We are well-positioned to continue to invest in the business. I now hand back to Nick. Thank you, Sarah. Moving now to our third key message for today: the actions we are taking to drive top-line growth and stronger performance. These actions are focused on four priorities. The first is targeted investment to accelerate customer wins in key growth areas. The second is delivering the benefits of the CP Kelco combination. The third is to accelerate productivity across the enlarged group. Lastly, to continue to strengthen our balance sheet and deliver shareholder returns through clear capital allocation priorities. We are also making some organizational changes to support these priorities. Let's start with the first priority. We are making a series of targeted investments to ensure we have the insights, capabilities, resources, and tools we need to win with our customers in key categories and subcategories of growth. I'll cover these in a bit more detail. It starts with segmenting our new global customer base in a very granular way. As a new business with a significantly expanded portfolio and solutions offering, we want to ensure that we are targeting higher growth subcategories and working with those customers who value our solutions and formulation expertise the most. This will help us prioritize the deployment of our commercial and technical resources and our investments in innovation. As I said earlier, we increased investment in innovation and solution selling by 4% on a like-for-like basis in the first half. We will continue to invest to strengthen our customer-facing capabilities in the second half in areas such as applications, sensory, nutrition science, and process developments. This investment will be aligned with the work we are doing on customer segmentation to ensure we are building capabilities that directly support areas of growth. We are also accelerating the rollout of our solutions chassis program. Initially focusing on mouthfeel. As a brief reminder, a formulation chassis is the base framework or foundational piece of technical knowledge within a given solution. Developed by a global team, chassis toolkits are then tailored by our regional teams to meet consumers' local tastes. As we explained at a capital markets day in July, mouthfeel is critical to deliver a successful reformulation, and the combination has created a leadership position in mouthfeel for Tate & Lyle. We are seeing very strong interest from customers for mouthfeel solutions, and so we're ramping up our program. Ten new mouthfeel chassis have already been launched, and a further ten are in development. Recent customer wins using mouthfeel chassis include a solution for a customer in the U.S. using a base of pectin and starch to create a high-protein yogurt, and a solution for a customer in Europe for a low-fat, egg-no-egg mayonnaise using a base of citrus fiber, xanthan gum, and starch. Once again, demonstrating the power of the combination. With consumer trends changing all the time, it's more important than ever that we work collaboratively with our customers to develop the ingredient solutions they need. Our chassis approach for solutions allows us to meet our customer requirements faster and more efficiently. We are investing around $10 million in new technology and digital tools to support the effectiveness of our customer-facing teams. Part of this is a $3 million investment in building a new generative AI tool for our sales and technical teams. This tool will give our teams the ability to search our broad technical and scientific libraries to provide faster and deeper insights into how to solve customer formulation challenges. In short, when we are with a customer, we want this tool to eliminate the phrase, "We'll get back to you," so that we can always say, "Let me show you." This tool is currently being piloted with the rollout due to take place over the next 12 months. We also continue to invest in Alfie, our first-of-its-kind automated laboratory for ingredient experimentation in Singapore. These investments include developing advanced AI predictive algorithms to help us better model customers' formulation requirements and develop line extensions more quickly. Customer collaboration on Alfie continues to be strong. Our pipeline of projects is ahead of our business plan, and the first customer product directly created by Alfie has now been launched in China. Moving now to the second action we are taking to drive top-line growth, which is to continue to deliver the benefits of the CP Kelco combination. In addition to cross-selling, another key driver of revenue synergies is moving targeted CP Kelco customers to a direct service model. By way of a reminder, over half of CP Kelco's revenue currently comes from distribution partners. We have started the migration process and expect that around 10% of the revenue from CP Kelco's portfolio will have moved in-house by the end of the 2026 financial year. This will allow us direct access to these customers and significantly increase our ability to create growth opportunities with them. This process will also enable us to concentrate our remaining distribution business with our stronger partners and to migrate smaller accounts to them. We are seeing a positive response from customers to this approach. I'm now going to hand back to Sarah to talk about cost synergies and our other two priority actions. Thank you, Nick. I'm pleased to report that the CP Kelco integration continues to go well, reinforcing our confidence that we will deliver the cost and revenue synergies we have set out. On cost synergies, we have delivered $30 million in run rate savings as of 30 September 2025, and now expect to exceed our target of $50 million by the end of the 2027 financial year. As planned, our financial results will increasingly benefit from the realization of cost synergies in the second half. Moving now to our third action, which is to increase productivity across the enlarged group. In addition to the delivery of cost synergies, I'm pleased to say that productivity once again showed significant progress. We delivered a further $21 million of productivity savings in the half, with $14 million of this coming from operational and supply chain efficiencies and $7 million from procurement and cost management. To give you a sense of how deeply the culture of productivity is embedded across the whole organization, more than 150 procurement projects and over 180 continuous improvement projects across our manufacturing network were delivered to achieve these savings. Our strong performance brings our total productivity savings over the last two and a half years to $112 million. Given our strong productivity pipeline, we are increasing our five-year target of $150 million savings by the end of the 2028 financial year by a further $50 million to $200 million. Turning to our fourth action to strengthen our balance sheet and shareholder returns. We continue to have a strong focus on cash generation. Our target is to deliver cash conversion greater than 75% each year while balancing with our priority to drive top-line growth. We are targeting improvement in the cash conversion cycle of the CP Kelco portfolio, which is naturally high in inventory, and we expect our operational expertise to deliver inventory reductions over time. In addition, we're also working to increase working capital efficiency across the combined business. Another area of focus is the disciplined investment of capital. We continue to bring rigor to the investment appraisal process of the combined business and expect new capital investments to meet attractive rates of return. Moving on to capital allocation, we are committed to the disciplined deployment of capital and maintaining our financial strength. Consistent with our capital allocation policy, we will continue to invest in organic growth, selectively in acquisitions, joint ventures and partnerships, operate a progressive dividend policy, and look to return any surplus capital to shareholders. Our current leverage of 2.3 sits within our long-term target range between 1 and 2.5 times net debt to EBITDA. Looking ahead, for excess capital, the board intends to continue to pursue the deleverage of the balance sheet, and subject to prevailing market conditions, we'll consider initiating a share buyback program when leverage is below two times. The board remains firmly committed to its progressive dividend policy. With that, I'll hand back to you, Nick. Thank you, Sarah. To ensure we act with pace and agility, we are making some organizational changes to drive delivery of our priorities. Firstly, I have appointed Didier Viala to lead our Americas region. Didier was previously the chief executive of CP Kelco and has over 30 years of food industry experience. His leadership abilities, fresh perspective, and deep customer knowledge will be of great benefit to us as we focus on accelerating top-line growth. Secondly, we are combining platforms, solutions, marketing, and commercial transformation into one team to drive commercial execution across the business. This team will be led by Melissa Law, our Chief Commercial and Transformation Officer, and will allow us to accelerate end-to-end deployment of new solutions and capabilities to customers. Turning now to the outlook and summary. Our outlook for the year ending the 31st of March 2026 is unchanged from our pre-close statement on the 1st of October. In constant currency and compared to pro forma comparatives, we continue to expect revenue and EBITDA to decline by low single-digit% compared to the prior year. To conclude, there is no getting away from the fact that it's been a difficult first six months of the year, and our performance is not where we want it to be. However, on the positive side, we are very pleased with the progress in delivering the benefits of the CP Kelco acquisition, with both revenue and cost synergies ahead of plan. What is clear is that we are stronger together and have a highly engaged team. The power of the combination is driving high levels of customer engagement, and our new business pipeline is growing strongly. This reinforces our confidence that the enlarged Tate & Lyle has a highly compelling customer offering and is well placed for growth. Given the challenging near-term economic environment, we are taking decisive action to deliver top-line growth and improve our performance. We are investing to strengthen our customer-facing capabilities. We are simplifying our organization to focus on commercial execution. We are continuing to deliver the benefits of the CP Kelco combination, and we are accelerating productivity to invest further in our business. As one Tate & Lyle team, we are excited about the future. With a portfolio repositioned to address growing consumer demand for healthier, more nutritious, and sustainable food and drink, the long-term structural growth drivers of our business remain strong. Our opportunity is to turn high levels of customer engagement and the strength of our pipeline into top-line growth and stronger financial performance. Everyone at Tate & Lyle is focused on making this happen, delivering on our action plan and the priorities we have set out today. The power of the combination is clear, and our focus is on execution, delivering for our customers, and growth. With that, Sarah and I will be happy to take your questions. We will take questions from both the floor and those joining remotely. For the purposes of recording, please state your name and institution. Can we please have our first question from the floor? At the front here. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes. I can. I think there was a can. Yeah, that's coming in here. Hi, I'm Joan from BNP Paribas Exane. I have three questions, if I may. The first question is, your new President of Americas, can you share more about why Didier is the right person to lead Americas? How can he help spearhead the recovery of this division? What went wrong in Americas? How do you envision Tate & Lyle outperforming end markets going forward? This is my first question. The second question is on your EBITDA guidance. With better-than-expected run rate cost synergies and higher cost savings from your productivity program, what is stopping you from raising your guidance? Why do you still expect it to decline in line with sales for the year? My last question is on sucralose. You said revenues were broadly in line with last year, which is surprising because it already grew double digits last year, and we're expecting some phasing effects. Can you help us understand the market dynamics for sucralose for this year, please? Thank you. Sure. Let's take those in order then. Sarah, maybe you take the second question on EBITDA. Look, on Didier, I mean, let me start with nothing's gone wrong in North America or in the Americas. We're experiencing a slowdown in market demand. In North America specifically, we saw flat revenues in the first half. However, a fresh perspective is always good. Didier, with his vast experience of serving the food and beverage industry as the CEO of CP Kelco, is deeply ingrained in our customer base and has a really strong understanding of the potential of the combined portfolio. Because of all of the work that we've done together, he's been leading our platform teams for the last 12 months, close to 12 months, and they're fueling growth as well. We're taking his experience and putting it into a specific region to help accelerate growth. We should remember as well, the Americas is still our biggest business. It is over 40% of our business. I am really delighted that he is taking on this new challenge, and he is really excited about it as well. At the heart, Didier is a commercial guy. I mean, he has been doing this for a long time. He will bring real new energy and a fresh perspective, which is always good, off what is a solid base as well. We have got a great business in the Americas. Let me take the sucralose question as well while we are on it. Look, sucralose had a very solid first half. Very consistent with the previous three or four years, very consistent delivery on both the top line and the bottom line. We are still seeing strong growth and demand for sucralose globally. It's still the best non-nutritive sweetener out there, and there's a huge demand for sugar replacement. We've still got this franchise that's incredibly strong for us and lots of customer demand for what we do, especially in the developed markets because of our unique sourcing out of North America. We feel really good about sucralose. It's a solid part of the portfolio and will continue to remain. I'll let Sarah take the details on the EBITDA guidance. Let me put it into reference. We're assuming in our guidance that we're going to continue to see muted demand through the balance of the year. Despite that, we want to continue to invest in growth. Ultimately, we're looking to grow the business now and for the longer term. Therefore, reinvesting some of the savings we're seeing is really important. I don't know whether we want to add a little bit to that. Yeah, thanks, Nick. I think, indeed, I think it's put in context. The first half is obviously minus 3% revenue, minus 6% EBITDA. We've got to demonstrate improvement in the second half to deliver the low single digits. As Nick said, we absolutely have demonstrated taking those costs out, but we're choosing to invest to ensure that we have the right competencies and capabilities in the organization to drive that top line. We've talked about some of those activities today. I'll come to you next, Matthew. Morning. Fintan Ryan here from Goodbody. A few questions for me, please. Firstly, in terms of the soft end market demand that you're currently seeing, even though you're starting to develop, a lot of the cross-selling benefits seem to be growing. Could you just describe in terms of the, is it a case that the core underlying end markets or business is performing worse than expected in the short run? And we're not seeing the benefits of the new cross-selling benefits come through? Or is it a case that the products are being launched on the market, but they're just not meeting the initial hopes and thresholds that maybe you would have envisaged? Secondly, you point out quite strong performance in the Chinese market, particularly in the first half. A lot of other food and beverage companies are talking about softness in that particular market. Describe what makes your business different. Is it your customer base? Is it your category mix? Could you foresee that continued strength in the Chinese market continuing into the second half and beyond? Thank you. On your first question. It's simply a phasing question. Fundamentally, underlying market demand, not where we had anticipated it would be. We're seeing real build in pipeline and cross-selling, et cetera. The benefits of the combination, especially on the top line, really only start to phase in from the next calendar year. If you think about the distribution take back, you think about some of the cross-selling coming through, those naturally come through in the next year. We're expecting to see those start to flow through in quarter four and into the next financial year. The underlying base is where the softness is, with those things coming in as we phase them in. If you remember, we said when we announced the transaction, this was a kind of three-year build, and it really started to build in the second year. That's what we're seeing. The good news is we're seeing that demand come through in terms of the pipeline we're building. In terms of China, I'd say a couple of things are different for us. The first is the CP Kelco business is on a recovery path, and China was an especially soft part of the business where they saw the decline historically because dairy suffered really badly through the sort of last couple of years. We're seeing recovery there, and of course, we're also seeing the increased benefit of the two businesses starting to come through. I would say China was robust. We saw some growth, but we're not getting too excited about it yet. We're still seeing relatively muted consumer confidence overall in China, but the CP Kelco recovery is part of it. The way the business is doing a really good job of managing the tariff issues into China is helping too. We should expect to see that in the second half too. Matthew, I said I'd come to you next. Damian, I promised I'd come to you after that. First one's probably one for you, Sarah. Could you just talk us through where we are on the working capital and inventory front? Obviously, you took inventory levels up in the first half. I just wonder whether that's done, whether there's more to come in the second half, at what point. Obviously, you've talked longer term about getting working capital levels down. Just sort of where we are on that cycle, that's the first question. The second one, which I suspect is quite closely related to it, is I wonder if you could just update us on the tariff sort of implications. What you are doing both to deal with that yourselves and also to help your customers adjust to that new reality. The third question, forgive me if you talked about this already, but I noted the comments about optimizing capacity in your US manufacturing facilities. I wonder if you could just be very clear what that entails. Thank you. Working capital first? Yep. So indeed, there was a working capital drag in our free cash flow. It comes back to a number one priority is having the right product in the right place for the customer. With the ever-changing world of tariffs, it leads to an environment where we're not optimal working capital, but we're very much focusing on the right product in the right place for the customer. There's also an element, and it comes to your third point, about as we optimize our manufacturing facilities in the US, and that particularly relates to biogums, we have to build a bit of inventory as we revalidate product with customers as we continue to ensure we have that optimized footprint. In the US with respect to biogums, I think absolutely this is going to take some time to unwind. It will not be a tailwind in H2. But absolutely over the months, it's that continual focus. It comes back to how are we delivering what's under our control. Clearly, working capital is one of those elements. Absolutely over time, we continue to optimize our working capital. On tariffs. It's sort of hard saying it's a moving feast because everybody knows that already. But it's having an impact on the business in a number of ways. The first is, as Sarah's pointed out, we're prioritizing putting inventory where we need to for customers and building inventory in anticipation of tariffs moving around. We're still seeing a little bit of a moving feast, especially with the US-China issue. It's therefore impacting our ability to serve customers effectively, clearly. We're prioritizing that. We're passing through tariffs where we can. We're also moving production around the world to avoid tariffs where possible. For example, recently for us, shipping pectin or hydrocolloids out of Brazil into the US has become more of a challenge. We're shifting production into Europe and managing the network in a different way. The team's doing a really nice job of managing that effectively. It hasn't had a disproportionate impact on the business. Operationally, it's a challenge that a lot of businesses are dealing with. I'd say the bigger question actually is the second-order effect of tariffs and the impact it's having on consumer demand. That's what we're seeing in the U.S. The Nielsen chart I showed you earlier, that pricing that came through in the second quarter is a reflection of tariff pass-through. The consumer confidence around the world is being impacted by it because of pricing. All of those things are factored into how we're managing the business. Like every other business, we're dealing with it in a sort of agile way and as best we can. In terms of the footprint rationalization in the U.S., I think Sarah's broadly covered that. One of the benefits of the transaction was the significant investment in lower-cost biogums manufacturing in North America. That's allowing us to move production around and rationalize facilities in a way that will take cost out. It is part of the productivity drive in the business. That capital has already been invested as well, which is a good thing. If you remember, we talked about the $200 million of investment that was made. We're now in the middle of executing that transfer. The transfer takes a little bit of time because of moving customers onto a new facility and a slightly different production platform. Thank you very much. Damian, I promised I'd come to you next. And then we'll go. Thank you. Damian McNeela from Deutsche Numis. I think first one for you, Nick, is I appreciate you've given us some information about U.S. FMCG markets and volumes down sort of broadly 2%. If we look at some of your peers, they've delivered positive volume performances in that region. I was just wondering, how do you think about Tate's market share evolution over the last six months? Where is it sort of a category issue for Tate? Is it the fact that it's very difficult to compare apples with apples in this environment? That is the first one. Secondly, Sarah, for you. APAC profitability was at nearly 20% on flat revenues. Can you talk about what drove that improvement in profitability? Is that country mix driving that, please? Let me take the first question, obviously. It's very difficult to measure share precisely. It goes up and down. When you look at our North American business in the first half, volume down a little bit, pricing up a little bit, revenue flat. Actually, in terms of volume weighted ahead of the category that we're seeing. Now, what does that mean in terms of share? Difficult to say. I wouldn't say we're performing particularly differently to anybody else because there are category mix issues. There are comparability issues. What I'm concerned about now is accelerating top-line growth. To do that in the near term, we'll have to make sure we're targeting growth areas within our categories and look to take share as reformulation kicks in. Sarah. Thanks, Nick. David, on the APAC, it's great to see APAC performance resilient despite all the noise about tariffs. If we recall, CP Kelco is a really important part of APAC. As they have improved, that's really supported the improvement of EBITDA. Additionally, there's good old-fashioned cost control supporting that broader remit of the region. I mean, I think it's a good example of controlling all the things that we can control in the context of the environment that we're in. The Asia team's done a really nice job when you add on the complexities of tariffs in their business. I'm conscious that we've got people very patiently waiting online as well. I think I'm going to take an online question next, and then I'll come back to the room. Karel from Kepler, over to you. Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I have a question on supply demand in the North American market because it's been a market that's been difficult for a period of time now. We are heading into the negotiation season, of course. How are you seeing supply demand in the North American market, I guess, particularly on your sweeteners platform? The other question is in a slightly different way. It's been asked before, but we noticed quite sizable gaps in the performance of ingredients players, also in North America, depending on the end markets they serve or have a strong foothold in. Now, if you look to the wins and new customer engagement, is there a big program where you see us becoming more successful, making inroads in higher growth segments? Can you single out a couple of things that look promising at this point? Thank you. Sure. In general, with muted demand for the last couple of years, the supply-demand balance is clearly shifting a little bit. We sort of were conscious of that as we go into the season for renewal of framework agreements with customers. The thing I'd say is, part of the repositioning of the business is about creating levers that go beyond that. If you think about the growing pipeline, the broader portfolio we have, it gives us many more levers to play as we go into that season. Very early in the whole process of renewing customer agreements for next year, so we'll give you an update on that in the new year. We are bringing different levers this time around to the past as we brought the two businesses together. We've got the distribution take-back and the direct selling from. That to benefit from. We've got the pipeline. There are lots of other things we're thinking about driving. What we've seen so far in North America is relatively stable pricing. In the first half, we saw price slightly ahead of volume. In terms of what does that mean in terms of focusing on growth, it's all about going after those priority growth subcategories. It's about lower sugar relating to the sweetener business, as you talked about earlier. I mean, clearly, we've got a unique sweetening portfolio. We've got the only North American or American supply chain for stevia. We've clearly got a North American sucrose business benefiting us as well. It's about targeting subcategories where we're seeing lower sugar combined with mouthfeel because when you take sugar out, you need to replace the mouthfeel to provide customers with products that really work for consumers. Those are the kind of things we're working on in terms of building a pipeline of future growth. As we start to see innovation pick up, we'd expect to see those things flow through into new business for us. Artem, I'll come back to you. Thank you. Good morning. It's Artem from Rothschild Redburn. Thanks for taking my question. I've got one on solutions. Encouraging to see the number of your solution sales as part of your new business wins, 39% compared to 22% like-for-like. Just maybe help us understand this number a little bit. Obviously, it looks like a big jump in the number. If it's like-for-like, does that mean it's still Tate & Lyle plus CP Kelco? Does that exclude synergies before? Is it a function of synergies kicking in and you see the progress of more solution sales? Otherwise, is it just a function of you being able to do more with the CP Kelco business? Your portfolio broadens, you can offer more solutions. Could you talk a little bit about this number? Because that's obviously very encouraging to see such growth. Thank you. Yeah. So. Like you, we're very encouraged with the growth in our new product revenue and in the pipeline of solution wins. Like-for-like really means we're measuring the combined business in both years. We're taking the combined portfolio last year and measuring it against the combined portfolio this year, which I think is a fairest measure in terms of seeing progress. Clearly, there's been a big increase in the overall total and spend because when you bring an extra business in, you naturally get a big bump. Think about it as a comparable. The 7% on new product revenue, for example, is a really good example of that. Why is it growing? Because our new products have real relevance for the future of where food is going. Because the combination coming together allows us to do things that we couldn't do when we were apart. If you think about the examples I showed you from the US to Australia to Spain, they were all a combination of the two portfolios coming together. Twelve months ago, we could not do that. Hopefully, that answers that question. Yes. Back there. Hi, Lisa De Neve from Morgan Stanley. We have three questions. One is a follow-up from Artem's question. I mean, you've done very strong on solution-driven sales. Can you just put a bit of context at how that's going to drive your mix and your delta margin progress over the coming 12 months? That's my first question. The second question is on price. You've talked about making price investment in the first half. Can you just detail a little bit where you've invested in price and how we should think about this to trend in the second half of the year, especially in ongoing deflationary context for raw materials? The last question is on special returns. You've highlighted you would consider a buyback when net leverage drops below two times. Can you share if that's the main driver driving that potential decision for a buyback or whether you will take other variables in consideration as well, such as market backdrop or your level of your share price? Thank you very much. Do you want to take the margin point? Price point. Yeah. Yeah. I'll come back on the. Oh, you want me to go first? Okay. Yeah, thanks for the question. I think it's really important to think about region by region. We've talked a lot about what's going on in the Americas, but I think it's worth highlighting in Europe, for example, the price has been under a lot of pressure. We have invested in price there. We knew that was going to happen going into this calendar year. That's one of the main contributors to the slightly muted results in Europe. I think it's really important that region by region, there are different dynamics, and that depends on the supply chain funds, but what else is going on. Indeed, the significant price pressure has, we've seen it in Europe. Solution selling then and the sort of pipeline. I mean, clearly, our experience from history and all of the pipeline conversion we've seen over the last three or four years is that the conversion of that pipeline is margin positive. It should help as we go into quarter four and into the following financial year. That'll be weighed off against all the other factors we're driving in terms of managing the mix in the business. It is a positive benefit for us as we go forward. How much flows in and when it flows in, of course, will be determined by the rate of pipeline conversion. Coming back to your question about shareholder returns and share buybacks and how you might do that. Look, I mean, I think the signal today is that we're very conscious about balancing off, investing in the business for growth, and delivering returns to shareholders as our balance sheet allows us that flexibility. When we get to a point in time where we have that decision to make, the board will use lots of different factors to determine what the right answer is for both shareholders and the business. It's a bit difficult to give you a template for that. It's not prescriptive because it'll be situational. There'll be the market circumstance. There'll be the share price. There'll be the investments in the business. There'll be what the growth potential of the business looks like in the near term. All of those things will come into play. I think the point we're trying to make today is we're going to be very flexible and open-minded about that, conscious of the fact that we want to maximize shareholder returns in the current environment. I'm going to go back to the screen now. I see that Alex Sloane from Barclays has a question. Alex, over to you. Oh, yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking the question. The first one, just in terms of the CP Kelco business, I think you're bringing back a lot of that from distributors in quarter four. I wonder if you could speak to how you're managing any risk of potential air pockets as distributors try to phase out stock. Is that something you're seeing at all in quarter three? And is that embedded in your second half guidance? The first one. And the second one, I mean, over the summer, a former FDA commissioner filed a citizens' petition with the FDA seeking to revoke GRAS status for a host of corn-derived ingredients. He argues contribute to negative health outcomes. How material is that development on your sort of overall radar screen of risks? Thank you. Do you want to take the first question? Very happy to. Morning, Alex. Absolutely. Take-back from distributor is a key part of the transformation case with CP Kelco. We are working well with our distributors and trying to find the win-win. How do we consolidate our relationship with distributors? Distribution will be a key part going forward. I think with those larger distributors, the conversation is, if we take back this geography, we could give you another geography to support their growth as well. You talked about air pockets. I think absolutely we have to acknowledge that in Q3, as we start some of those distributors, we do start taking a house. That does have an impact, as obviously they work through their inventory. Absolutely, that is built in the guidance for the full year. Alex, I just add one other thing to that, which is as we worked with our distributors on that program, we're focused, number one, on maintaining customer service. Number two, on working with them to balance off the business, to give them incentive to grow with us going forward as well. They're always going to be an important part of our business to a certain extent in certain markets. On your question on the Kessler petition to the FDA, I mean, not unusual. We've seen things like this in the past. They tend to take time to work through. When we look at our broad portfolio, a number of our products in the portfolio already have alternative accreditation anyway, so it wouldn't be impacted by it. That's where the sort of breadth of the portfolio really helps as well. Because to the extent that there will be any substitution, we'd have other products that we could move into the mix. Obviously, we're following regulation in the US very carefully, as you'd expect. We don't anticipate it having a material impact on the portfolio. Okay. Any other questions? No? In the back? Yes. Oh, Patrick, sorry. I missed you on the screen. Patrick Higgins. Good morning. Morning, everyone. I just wanted to come back to the solution selling for a minute. And forgive me if I missed this, but do you know how much of the combined sales today are sold via solution? I appreciate it might be too early to guide in this, but where do you think that could get in the medium term? Obviously, through today's presentation, you've kind of highlighted the benefits of the combination or the power of the combination and how CP Kelco will enable that increased solution selling. Where do you see the biggest gaps in the rest of your kind of offering to enable that kind of progression in terms of solution selling? Is it application? Is it consumer insights? Just a bit of color on that would be really helpful. I mean, great question. I actually can't give you a specific answer to how much of it is combined in terms of the solutions bit of it. What I do know is the pipeline is growing very strongly. And a lot of examples I've given you in terms of recent success have included the combined portfolio. I actually think the more important measure is the total strength of the pipeline. Because actually, if you think about the example in Spain, where we're working with a customer on a broad-based set of solutions now, it's because of the combination. It might only be one part of the portfolio that goes into a particular solution, but it's the fact that we can cross-formulate that gives the access and the confidence that we're the best partner for that. How far that goes, we'll see. I mean, we clearly want to continue to grow it because it has a positive impact on the business. In terms of gaps, I do not think the gaps in the portfolio are about the latent ammunition, if you like, the ingredients themselves. I mean, would we like to have a little bit more exposure to protein, maybe? I think the gaps actually more are about building increased consumer understanding of where we can grow best. Really understanding our customers' needs and where they see their big opportunities, and then continuing to learn internally about the power of the combination as our application scientists come together and formulate in a way across the portfolio that we could not do before. That is about time and learning. I mean, over time, that will strengthen, and it will be augmented by things like Alfie, where we have got this rapid prototyping capability. We can actually accelerate our own understanding and therefore accelerate our ability to delight our customers with solutions they did not think were possible before. It is now really about execution of what we have and executing it in a way that we are executing it against the biggest growth opportunities externally, either customer-specific, category-specific, and in some cases by region differences. Okay. If there are no more questions, I cannot see any hands up in the room or names on the screen. I will finish with a couple of brief remarks, if you like. Look, as we said, in the first six months of the year, our performance is not where we want it to be. We are incredibly encouraged by the strength of customer engagement and the strength of our pipeline. That gives me confidence that we are moving in the right direction. Our near-term focus is absolutely on the priorities we just laid out for growth. It is all about execution, growing with our customers, and really helping them grow in a more difficult world. Thank you for joining us today. We will no doubt see you in the new year when we give you an update then.