Super. Well, a good morning and welcome to you all. Thank you for joining Alan and me, and my group leadership team colleagues and broader leadership community colleagues here in the room this morning. We are very pleased to present the details of a good first half performance for the group with revenue up just over 10%, and operating profit broadly in line with a strong comparative, where merchanting outperformed with a revenue growth of 13.3% and adjusted operating profit growth of 9% against a strong comparative period. A challenging half for Toolstation as pandemic comps unwound and where our focus remains on enhancing our trade customer proposition. As I'll discuss later, the breadth of the customer base of the business and our end market exposure provides resilience during uncertain economic times, and our strong balance sheet and focus on organic growth creates flexibility for the business to manage macroeconomic uncertainty. First, I'll hand over to Alan for a finance update, and then I'll return to our operational and strategic update. Thank you, Nick, and good morning, everyone. It's great to see a full room and lots of people who are interested in attending a face-to-face meeting, so I'm delighted by that. Turning for those on the webcast to Slide 6, first of all, the key financial highlights. As Nick mentioned, it's been a good first half overall, both in terms of further progress in delivering on our strategy, as well as in terms of our operational performance. Revenue grew by 10.3%, driven by recovery of significant cost price inflation, as I'll come on to describe in a little more detail shortly. Adjusted operating profit was in line with a very strong H1 2021 and some GBP 90 million higher than the first half of 2019. You'll also note the strong performance on adjusted earnings per share, 11.7% ahead to 51.6 pence. This was driven by a reduced share count following the buyback programme and the corporate activity in 2021. Group return on capital employed, excluding property profits, increased by almost a point from 10.8% to 11.8% despite the lower year-on-year performance in Toolstation. As I'll describe later, the first half saw a free cash outflow driven predominantly by the impact of inflation in our trade debtor book. We completed the return of proceeds from the Plumbing & Heating disposal via a further GBP 172 million of buyback. Lease adjusted leverage at 1.75x was bang in the middle of the range of 1.5x to 2x, which we announced as our target last year, giving us plenty of flexibility for the future. Finally, the board has declared an increase in the interim dividend to 12.5 pence per share, reflecting our confidence in the business's prospects. We're all aware of the significant step up in inflation, which is brought into stark relief, I think, by this chart. Price mix was a little over 14% for the group overall. In part, this reflects the annualization of H2 2021 manufacturer price increases, but it is predominantly driven by further price increases in H1 2022. The level of inflation obviously varies significantly between product categories and business units, but all of our businesses have demonstrated their ability to work with customers to pass on the impact. The reduction in volume that you see was primarily driven by the reduction in DIY sales in Toolstation, following a truly exceptional performance in H1 2021. Looking at underlying group volumes, excluding the June 2020 closure program, they're around 10% above the level of volume seen in the first half of 2019. In terms of contribution from new space, approximately half is driven by the continued expansion of Toolstation with a modest but growing contribution from new space in the general merchant, a theme to which Nick will return in a little while. On Slide 8, I've broken out for you the drivers of the group operating profit performance. Gross profit increased by GBP 54 million as the business acted to pass on the impact of inflation, both the pass through of manufacturer price increases and selected general increases to mitigate in part the inflationary impacts in the overhead base. The gross margin percentage was modestly lower as a consequence of segmental mix between Toolstation and Merchanting, customer mix, and also the impact of absolute high levels of product inflation. As we all know, overhead inflation is increasing and is driven primarily by salaries and fuel costs together with utilities inflation. While utility inflation levels are very high, we did enter the year with hedging in place. Furthermore, the overall cost is a relatively modest element of our indirect cost base. I've broken out separately the strategic investments we're making in the business. These are fully aligned with the plans we laid out at the capital markets update last September, and are focused behind the Toolstation and General Merchanting networks, driving our service proposition and improving our IT and digital capabilities. I've separated out from this the increased loss in Toolstation Europe, which is driven by investment in the business, and I will return to this theme in a couple of slides. Turning to performance at the segmental level and starting with Merchanting. As Nick described, it was a strong performance, all the more impressive given the tough comparator from H1 2021. The General Merchanting demonstrated outperformance with 12.2% revenue growth. We saw continued recovery in some of the areas which have been slower to pick up from the pandemic, such as social infrastructure. It was particularly pleasing to see good growth across the margin-accretive, value-added areas highlighted by Ciaran last September, such as Benchmarx, Managed Services, and Tool Hire. The specialist businesses, which represent around 40% of the segmental revenue, again delivered an excellent performance, with revenue growth of 15.1% and good progress in delivering the future growth levers, which Frank and Angela showcased for you at the Capital Markets presentation last year. Operating profit grew by GBP 40 million or 9% as the businesses adeptly managed the cost inflation, with operating margin coming in at 7.9%. Return on capital employed grew by two percentage points to 16% despite the impact of inflation on working capital balances growing the operating assets of the business. In contrast, it's been a tough first half in Toolstation following the outstanding growth seen over the last 24 months. As we all know, Toolstation is a great business with a market-leading proposition for our core trade customers, and we will continue to invest in the trade-focused business. In the UK, revenue was 6% lower as the customer base normalized and DIY sales declined following that truly exceptional H1 2021. Over the last 24 months, we've added 140 branches to the U.K. network, along with digital and supply chain investments. As a consequence of this investment and the DIY sales decline, operating profit fell to GBP 7 million. In Europe, overall revenue grew by 7%. The business saw some similar trends to the U.K., with DIY-related sales reducing. This was less evident in France and Belgium than in the Netherlands, given those countries' startup nature compared to the Netherlands. We opened a further 20 branches in the half, with the network now virtually having doubled in the last 24 months. We also began the commissioning of a second distribution center in the Netherlands to support the Benelux expansion. The combination of network investment, including the DC, and further digital and marketing investment to drive future growth resulted in an increase in the first half loss in Europe to GBP 15 million. We now expect a full year loss in Europe of closer to GBP 30 million as a result. The progress is tangible and the Dutch business remains on track to break even in late 2023. As I noted earlier, the key driver of the working capital outflow in the first half of 2022 was the growth in trade receivables. The growth in the trade component of receivables is roughly in line with the growth in revenue and is clearly a consequence of elevated levels of inflation. Our credit book continues to be very well managed, with overdues as a percentage of credit sales and the DSO, or day sales outstanding, largely in line with the position at the end of 2021. You'll see from the table that stock balances have also increased, largely as a consequence of product inflation, but also when compared in particular to H1 2021 due to improved stock levels as availability challenges have now largely dissipated. The increase in stock value was fully financed by a corresponding increase in creditors. As a consequence of the impact of inflation on trade debtors and a modest step-up in the CapEx, the group experienced a free cash outflow in the half of GBP 45 million. Looking at that CapEx in a little more detail, you can see that, as previously guided, base CapEx increased year-on-year. The increase is predominantly driven by investment behind our strategic priorities, along with a normalization to run rate of maintenance CapEx. In terms of the growth investment, this is focused on Toolstation branches and distribution facilities, along with new and upgraded branch investments in the general merchant, including Benchmarx. I should also mention branch investments in TF Solutions, which, while modest, are supporting very strong growth in that part of BSS. As I covered at the capital markets update in September, freehold property activity is an integral part of our strategy, ensuring we have long-term security of tenure of our best trading sites. During the half, we took the opportunity to buy in the freehold the three branches in London and the Southeast, as well as the Edinburgh Loanhead branch, complementing recent acquisitions in 2021 of future development sites. On the disposal side, the number of transactions was lower, but did include the central Cambridge site, where proceeds will be received over the next 24 months. In terms of the balance sheet, as I said earlier, we're in a strong position following the portfolio actions that were undertaken in 2021. As mentioned in my introductory comments, we completed the return of the P&H disposal proceeds in full via a further GBP 172 million of buybacks. Together with the working capital outflow described earlier, this led to an increase in net debt under IFRS 16 to GBP 902 million, or 1.75 x lease-adjusted net debt- to- EBITDA. This is in the middle of the target range of 1.5x to 2x, and we expect to be in the lower half of the range at the year-end. I've also included, for information on this table, the covenant metrics under our debt facilities, which you can see demonstrate very significant headroom on both metrics. In terms of guidance and outlook, over the last two years, we've taken actions which have strengthened our businesses and we've reshaped the portfolio. Our businesses are proven winners with broad end market exposure, and we are confident in our plans and in our ability to outperform our markets. While we are mindful of the current macroeconomic uncertainty, the long-term fundamental drivers around markets remain robust, and these are underpinned by the government's commitment to decarbonization, infrastructure, and house building. With our unique portfolio of businesses, the group is ideally placed to partner with the construction industry to deliver on this agenda. Supported by resilient end markets, agility in responding to market conditions, and great execution, the group's Merchanting businesses' strong first half performance is set to continue through the second half. The Merchanting performance will be offset by the impact of both the normalization of Toolstation's customer base and the continued investment in the business in both the U.K. and Europe. As a result, the group is expected to deliver a full-year performance broadly in line with market expectations. With that, I'll now hand back to Nick for the operational and strategic update, and then we'll be very happy to take questions. Super. Thank you, Alan. We certainly think that those numbers represent a good performance. We all recognize that the level of uncertainty in the market has increased. Through the half, we've used our operational agility to navigate challenging market conditions in order to help our customers run their businesses every day, particularly in the face of significant inflation. Because we're in a better position to do that than ever before. We are a different business to the business we were three years ago. We're much more agile in the way that we operate our business, with flexibility in CapEx and OpEx, a strong balance sheet, led by a clear strategy with knowledgeable colleagues and really focusing on our trade customers and outperforming the market, whatever the weather. That's underpinned, as Alan said, by our broad market exposure and our solid trade customer base. We're really positive about the progress we've made with delivering our strategy and operating our business, particularly as our customers tell us that we're helping them navigate an uncertain environment. That Slido poll image on the slide there was taken at a recent seminar of the top 15 house builders in the U.K., all of whom are customers. I asked them in a word on Slido to describe us. What I did not get was supplier. What we got were advisors, trusted partners, solutions providers, another step in our journey to becoming the leading partner to the construction industry. I'd like to focus this morning on two key themes. Firstly, let me take the opportunity to update you on the characteristics of our end markets and the nature of our customer relationships across those diverse segments, and how we're positioned relative to those markets, the choices we've made within our strategy underpin the confidence we have in our ability to outperform the market, whatever the conditions ahead. Secondly, let me update you on the progress we're making with delivering our strategy because it reinforces the robust investment thesis that we articulated at the CMU last year by always staying close to our customer and helping them meet their needs every single day. Let's look at the dynamics of our end markets and our customer base. We remain confident in the robustness of our end markets that we have chosen to serve. Economic and social infrastructure investment is urgently needed, whether it's new build roads or rail, the sort where Keyline is active, High Speed Two and Hinkley C, for example, or the repair, maintenance, and improvement of schools and hospitals in Barking and Tooting here in London, down in Brighton, and social housing so active with BSS, CCF, and our general merchant. More houses are required every single year to meet demand. An office and commercial space continues to be reconfigured for different patterns of work, and that's where CCF and our general merchant are in such demand. We need to continue to retrofit our legacy housing stock to improve energy efficiency and comfort, and let's be honest, in periods of extreme heat, as well as those cooler winter periods. You'll see that the breadth of end market exposure that we have gives us continued confidence in long-term demand drivers. You'll notice that the much-discussed domestic RMI segment is actually less than 45% of our revenue. Our strong offer in this space, particularly through Toolstation and the general merchant, remains absolutely vital, as repair and maintenance, the R&M, will always be less discretionary than improvement, whatever the market conditions. Therefore, that provides a natural hedge in times of uncertainty. Actually, the need for improvement in energy efficiency is likely to increase investment by homeowners, particularly as winter approaches. We serve these markets through our trade customers, and we relentlessly focus on honing our proposition to serve them better. Where our larger developer, contractor, asset manager, and home house builder customers are served by our specialist merchant and our general merchant, and our smaller professional trade and general builders by our general merchant and Toolstation. The breadth and depth of these relationships, coupled with our national scale, provides a natural hedge in uncertain times and an ability to adjust for the transient effects of consumer discretionary behavior or unprecedented events like COVID, allowing us to outperform the market. So our market-leading merchants are winning. We continuously review the market. We work closely with our suppliers. We work closely with our customers. We observe our competitors. As Alan said, the H1 performance of our general merchant was strong, outperforming the market and gaining market share. By providing superior propositions in heavy building materials for our core customer segments, regional house builders, general builders, social housing providers, and targeted investments in markets where historically we've under-indexed, and we remain confident in our ability to outperform. Similarly, our specialist merchants, BSS, Keyline, and CCF, continue to lead their markets and gain share, again, producing great results during the half through delivering and focusing on our strategy. Our businesses are focusing on deepening our relationship with trade customers and building on all the hard work of the last few years, with gains in our customer satisfaction scores for pricing, for service, for knowledge, and for convenience. Where customers are benefiting from local empowerment of our teams and the increased flexibility of our resource base, complemented by convenience and choice between a branch channel and a digital channel. We've made progress in adding value to customers, too. Let me deal with some specifics. Firstly, our hire services are going from strength to strength. In describing our strategy last year, we described our ambition to grow our hire service, which exists in over 250 of our general merchant branches and our BSS business, and where we were making additional investments in colleagues and skills in our branch teams to really drive growth during the first half and beyond. We're very pleased with our progress. Our customer penetration is increasing, our sales are increasing. The integration with our core branch teams has enabled our core trade customers to access hire services quickly and easily. We continue to make progress and invest in expanding the range and categories of equipment that we offer into areas like high and low access, for example, with very positive feedback from our customers. We're also investing in efficiency through specialist hire hubs that give clusters of branches access to different categories and a seamless service with a greater range of equipment. We're now successfully growing our hire business through Keyline, and we're trialing it in CCF, where it's being tested and refined for specific customer needs. This is completely on strategy. This is about growing services that add value to customers and that which are both margin and ROCE accretive to our business. Let's look at CCF and carbon. Our progress in hire is evidence of us deepening our relationship with our customers, but our businesses have also made progress in adding new and added value to our customers' business. CCF is one example where we've worked at elevating our relationship with our customers. The deployment that we talked about previously of our delivery management system technology, which provides a seamless end-to-end tracking and delivery for delivered orders to sites at a time of customers choosing, has enabled the integration of Scope 1 carbon data directly related to the delivered order. This is innovation which has real value for customers. Morgan Sindall, Errigal, and Sir Robert McAlpine, customers who, like us, have got progressive ESG agendas that they want to perform against. This, in turn, has created a competitive advantage for CCF, integrating operations with data through the use of technology. With this, we will be able to continue to drive more efficient operations and the use of our fleet and further improve our own carbon performance, and allow us to expand the range of data that we offer to our customers that helps them improve their business. Again, we're bringing to life our purpose goals about being at the heart of decarbonizing our industry, measures that have helped us reduce our carbon emissions associated with the group's vehicles by over 5% over the last 24 months. Let me turn to the point that Alan touched on around capital allocation, something we've talked a lot about before. Some of you, many of you actually I'm sure, will recall Kieran, the MD of our TP General Merchant at the CMU, explain our strategy of creating destination branches within target urban and fast-growing geographies, where we're integrating our Benchmarx kitchens and our hire services within the core branch to really provide a superior service proposition. This strategy to provide that leading proposition was at the heart of increasing our CapEx, where we were confident of driving superior returns on capital, incremental returns on capital employed. We're very pleased with the results. Sales have surpassed our expectations and the customer feedback has been very positive, and it's increased the penetration of both our Benchmarx kitchens and our hire offer that I mentioned earlier, and especially in areas where we've under indexed in the past. With new destination timber and Heavy side branches in Liverpool and Birmingham, new openings due in Manchester and Leeds, major refurbishments at Vauxhall here in London, and soon at Birmingham Central, where we've acquired two adjacent parcels of land for a significant expansion to increase capacity. The branches that have opened in fast-growing regional centers have also performed really well and produced strong results. In Ipswich, we relocated our branch in 2020, and a new branch already has increased market share by over GBP 9 million. We relocated our Exeter branch to a new larger site in 2021 and have seen gains of over GBP 5 million and similar gains in Farnborough. We relocated our branch at Erdington in Birmingham to Minworth last year, and we've seen sales up 30% against 2019. We also relocated our branch in Reading last year and have also seen sales up over 13.3% against 2019. We've also been repurposing property assets to enlarge our footprint and enlarge the reach in key locations. In Edinburgh, we moved CCF from a co-located branch with a general merchant out to a new bespoke location across the road, which was a far superior offer for our customers, allowing substantial expansion of the TP branch and a new destination for our customers. Added to this, the new and refurbished branches allow us to maximize our digital channels to provide convenient delivered solutions and click and collect for customers, and to be much more efficient and flexible in the way that we re-use our resources, both colleague resources and fleet resources, allowing us to manage cost and improve carbon performance in the face of inflationary pressures. This is absolutely strategy in action, enabling our merchant to gain share and outperform in those local markets while also being ROIC accretive to our business. To Toolstation. Toolstation is a brilliant business, and it's now established as one of the leading Light side distribution businesses in the U.K. with huge growth potential and with a first-mover advantage in the European markets that we serve. There's no escaping the fact that the last few months have been challenging for our fabulous Toolstation team. We've managed through the impacts associated with the shape of the customer base normalizing after the DIY surge of the pandemic because these are short-term challenges, and we look beyond them. We laid out our plan to focus on our trade customer in Toolstation at our CMU in September, and that's exactly what we've done. While it remains open to all, as we say on the front of every store, DIY and trade alike, our relentless focus has been to create the proposition of speed and convenience for our trade customers, and that will remain our goal in the short, medium, and long term. We have won and continue to win new trade customers. We have doubled the number of trade credit customers in Toolstation in the first five months of this year compared to all of 2021, and we continue to grow trade credit sales as a result. Our data shows us that our trade customers' average order value was 20% more in H1, and they shopped twice as frequently. The introduction of the trade credit account has really accelerated this trend. These customers' AOV is more than 50% more than other customers, and they shop 6x as frequently. This reinforces our confidence in the fact our strategy is correct, and we're doing the right things, which is why we have continued to invest in this business through the first half, in the U.K. and in Europe, despite the changes in customer dynamic. We're building this business for the long term to benefit from this growth. We've gone further. We've really accelerated the acquisition of trade customers by leveraging the power of the group. Regional teams between the business have collaborated in a standout way to really accelerate the acquisition of trade customers into Toolstation from our other businesses. We've also had the added benefit of quickly rolling out proposition enhancements from the U.K. into Europe to really shorten the maturity curve. Continued development of our app and website, which is so vital to our Toolstation proposition, has been fantastic. We've got now over 250,000 active app users in Toolstation, and it's allowing us to reward our trade customers, which we're also doing between Toolstation and TP. This channel and its effectiveness will be further enhanced when we open our new DC next year. These developments, coupled with our investment in the trade proposition, is allowing us to achieve a world-class NPS of 78 in Toolstation. We are really pleased with the progress we've made in Toolstation during the period. Our investment thesis remains clear. Many of you will recognize this slide from our CMU in September. We are pleased with our good performance during the first half. Driving operations in the face of sustained inflationary pressures, all the while focusing on delivering our growth strategy for the future. We believe we're making good progress in its delivery, and it's the correct set of choices, whatever weather lies ahead. We're a very different business now, with strength and balance in the diversity and breadth of our end markets and trade customers providing resilience in the face of short-term uncertainty. We remain laser focused on outperforming the market and gaining market share, with evidence, confidence in our Toolstation model continuing to drive investment in the U.K. and Europe. Our cash generative business model and strong balance sheet provides flexibility and resilience, enabling us to reinvest in our business where we drive the greatest return for shareholders. Clear examples of which I think I've mentioned this morning. Our focus on disciplined and targeted allocation of capital for growth continues to deliver long-term returns. Our investment thesis remains robust, with total shareholder return in the long term, while providing resilience and flexibility in the short to medium term. We're seeing the benefits of focusing on the delivery of our strategy while being true to our purpose. To bring to life our purpose goals of decarbonizing our industry, removing cost, carbon, and complexity from our customers' business as well as our own, and investing in skills to add more value to our customers. Finally, we've asked a lot of our 20,000 colleagues over the last two years, and it's testament to the amazing spirit of this business and the care our colleagues show for each other as well as our customers that we continue to deliver, and they continue to deliver for us even when we ask more from them and life gets tougher for them personally. I thank them all for their continued hard work and commitment, and I genuinely believe that we have the best team in the industry, and therefore I look forward with confidence. While the macroeconomic environment remains uncertain, the drivers remain robust, and the changes we have made over the last few years leave our businesses well-positioned to outperform. We benefit from resilient end market demand, underpinned by diverse exposure across the U.K. construction from a broad trade-focused customer base and long-standing customer relationships. We benefit from a strategic and financial flexibility, a strong balance sheet, which allows flexibility in capital allocation, a simplified portfolio, and an organic growth strategy based on proven concepts. Our structural growth drivers remain unchanged, a requirement to decarbonize the U.K. built environment, the need for new and affordable housing, and significant planned investment in infrastructure and public sector assets. We look forward to the future with confidence, and we remain positioned to outperform. That concludes the presentation. Many thanks for joining us today. I'll now open up for Q&A, for which we have around 30 minutes. I'll start with the floor and then if we've got time, I will move to the phone lines. Will. Morning, sir. Morning. Three, if I could please, hopefully quick ones. The first is just what your expectations would be for merchanting volumes in the second half, I think comparable to the -2% you saw in the first half. The second is if you could just talk a bit more about Toolstation Europe in France, and just I think you've, in the past, talked about wanting to increase format awareness, learning more about the right locations. I guess what have you learned in that last six months around the prospects in France? Then just more generally, when we think about investment levels across the group, there's lots going on. If the market was to weaken and you had to start to make changes, what are the kinda higher and lower priority areas in that scenario? Thanks. Super. Alan, do you wanna start on the first? Yep. We'll come back to investment levels. Can you hear me okay? Yeah. On the first question, Will, I think you were asking about the comp for the second half in Merchanting. I suppose it's insightful to think about the first two quarters, 'cause I know some people are saying, "Well, what's the run rate from Q2, and what does that mean?" On the comps to 2021, first of all, Q1 was by far the weakest quarter of 2021. If you recall, the market didn't really pick up until mid-March, as we were coming out of some of the lockdown measures, and Q2 was by far the strongest comp in the numbers. When I think about the H2 performance in Merchanting, I'm really thinking about a blended average of what we've seen across the first half, rather than a Q2 exit- rate. Which is why in the statement, and based on the plans we've got internally, we've made the statement for the second half that we're confident in the continuation of the strong performance that we've seen. Moving on to the second part of your questions on Toolstation Europe, and in particular France, what have we learned during the half? And then maybe Nick, if you want, a few comments on priorities in terms of investment for us. In France, we've opened more branches. We've seen growth of 35% to 40% in the half, that sort of level. We have seen that the proposition is very trade-focused, in terms of the customer mix that we have in France. Where we've got our best performing locations so far, they have indexed much more towards trade customers who buy more frequently and with a heavier average order value than we see in the U.K. in the French branches. They take longer to service at this stage in France. That's not about our internal efficiencies at getting the stuff out there. It's much more about educating the customer on the proposition and how it works. We often have customers saying, you know, looking at the catalog in the front of the branch rather than using one of the laminated catalogs to fill in the form for what they want to order, and they want you to go and get the box and show them the product. We need to keep educating the customer on how the model works. That's not a problem that it takes longer to service them at the moment, because we're not as busy as our U.K. branches, self-evidently, because we're building the business. It's those sorts of nuggets and insights that we've been seeing, and I'll come on to locations briefly as well, that give us the confidence and why we've stepped up the investment in terms of the openings that you've seen. That branch network, where are we performing best? It's actually in some of the smaller conurbations where we've got a branch in a 10 or 20,000 inhabitant location with 25 minutes drive time 100,000 inhabitants. Those areas tend to be poorly served by the competition and therefore they are open spaces for us to go and make a mark. We've particularly seen that in some of the smaller towns in the Rhône-Alpes region. We've also spread a little further north into Burgundy and seen good success, and also where we've gone further south. Going forwards, in terms of the locations, you know, I don't want to reveal everything, but we're much more likely to be concentrating our efforts on the smaller conurbations where there's less competition to get the business known. Nick, on investment priorities. Yeah. Well, you know, as I think we mentioned a couple of times, we've got operationally much more agility in how we flex the growth and investment within our business. Strategically, again, great visibility over all the areas where we're investing for growth. Actually, that allows us to, you know, make necessary changes to how and where we're investing. In some cases, you know, we are, we remain, as we talked about in September, very much in a kinda test and learn phase. What we adopt is a very rigorous review at every stage of the benefit of the investments that we're making and how we pivot to improve or how we accelerate to grow. Visibility is much better and ingrained in the way that we work so that we can make those sort of choices. Where we will continue to invest is, as I mentioned, really deepening our relationships and that investment in the trade proposition, so I've given some examples of that. We will also continue to invest in technology capability in our business, where it drives both value for the efficiency of our business and our operations, but also for the value and ease and convenience of our customer proposition, and we've talked a lot about examples of that. We will also continue to invest in where, as the example I used with CCF, where we are finding ways to add value that is a competitive advantage for us. You know, you'll see from that these are perhaps on the face of it, small areas, but they're significant in their potential. We will continue to build the skills of our colleagues because they're absolutely critical in giving that superior trade-focused service proposition that we need. We're absolutely in a position with full visibility. The infrastructure we use internally, particularly driven by our Group COO in front of me here, Frank Elkins. We're able to really tune the way that we invest. Actually those are the areas that we will continue to double down because we're so pleased with the results that we're making. Thanks, Will. Charlie? Oh, sorry. Ben. Hi, Ben Wild from Deutsche Bank. Three questions from me. Just in terms of coming back on Merchanting in H2, in terms of the areas in Merchanting where you have the best visibility and relatively less visibility, can you provide some color there? I know in the report it's the point is made that specialists are now 40% of the Merchanting mix. Secondly, to follow up on the investments point, are there any circumstances in which you would accelerate the freehold property program to fund additional or continuing investments in Toolstation and elsewhere? Then, thirdly, just on Toolstation, in June and July, after the kind of peak DIY comps, any color on the growth that you're seeing there as the comp base has normalized? Thanks. Do you wanna pick that up? Yeah. We'll take them in order, Ben. On where have we got the best visibility and less visibility in our specialists and in the general merchant? I think the first comment I'd make is we are close to our customers, so we know what they're planning. Particularly for the specialist businesses we tend to get a longer visibility. The larger the customer, the more visibility generally you get as to what they're thinking through and what they're planning. We know that we have customers who have won orders. We know we will be supplying those orders. It's then a question of the call-off against that you see. Overall, everything we're hearing, particularly commercial, industrial infrastructure, new house building, the work is absolutely there. It's a question of the timing at which they can build. Some of that you'll have heard from house builders as well, I'm sure, comes down to planning, or there is evidently some repricing going on in the background as well between the developer, the principal contractor and their subcontractors, given the absolute levels of inflation. Summary, the work's definitely there. There may be a bit more flexibility in the timing of when it's actually called off, but we know the overall order pattern is still healthy. In terms of the general merchant, again, from the larger customers, we know that the work's there. We've seen a really good bounce back in particular, as we were saying, in the work that we do on social infrastructure through the Managed Services business in particular. The area where you evidently get less visibility, and this is not a comment on the health of the market, take it for what it is as you get towards the smaller customers, the jobbing builders, we have less visibility there. What we do have to give us confidence in that part of our mix is the trade surveys that we do and the regular contact that the sales teams have with customers. We know they're still busy. They're probably, unlike, Q2 2021, they're probably not trying to juggle two or three jobs at the same time, but it is still difficult to find a trades person to do the work that you need to get done. That's why we remain confident in the merchant outlook. On the second question around accelerating freehold investments, that would probably be less Toolstation than the Merchanting businesses. We do have scope. We have scope from the balance sheet, but we also have scope from the ongoing turnover in the property portfolio that we naturally generate when we're running so many sites overall. I used a chart in previous years and at the Capital Markets Day, where you will see the inflows and outflows of cash from freehold property acquisitions and disposals over a 10-year period. It's been fully self-financing, but we have grown the market value relative to the net book value of the portfolio in so doing. Those opportunities are still there and I think over the next 24, 36 months, we will actually see greater opportunities open up, given that we've seen some of the froth coming out of the industrial property market. I think we will see greater opportunities opening up on future development sites, and we're perfectly prepared and indeed are looking at some sites within the Southeast at the moment where we'd be prepared to buy in those sites, go through the planning process however long that takes. To Will's question on flexibility around investment, if things, you know, if the economy is looking tougher, we can just pause a little on the time to plan out those sites, and to execute them. We've got a few which we bought. You know, I mentioned Cambridge for a disposal earlier. It was an example we used in September. The replacement site we actually bought in late 2017, early 2018. We will not close the central Cambridge site, hence the deferred consideration until we fully built out that replacement site. In terms of Toolstation, I don't want to get into picking out month by month. We have certainly, as we've come out of the peak comparator period, we've seen the numbers in the U.K. stabilize and start to move back into growth. Ben, I would just add that, just on that final point, it's not quite the question you asked, but I got a fabulous email from a trade customer this morning, who had a gnarly problem to solve. Went to a couple of notable competitors and got absolutely no joy. Went to his local Toolstation branch, all sorted in the branch, great customer service, great knowledge. Colleagues prepared to look up whatever he needed, and we had it right in store. I mean, he couldn't have been more effusive. I'd love to read it to you, actually. Maybe afterwards. The point is that my point about trade proposition, investing in trade customers, investing in that proposition, we're seeing month-on-month benefit from that. You know, acquiring them, and Simon Robinson's in the room, our Retail Director for Toolstation. We're delighted by the response we're seeing from our trade customers. We've been delighted from what we've seen in the first half, and that just continues all the time. Thanks, Ben. Charlie? Thanks. Charlie Campbell at Liberum. A couple of questions from me, please. Going back to Toolstation Europe, just wondering how we should think about that next year. I guess you flagged that Holland comes back into breakeven. Should we think about the same sort of loss in France, or does that maybe kind of narrow a bit as well? And then the second question, just in going back to sort of, I suppose, General Merchanting, you've talked quite a lot about gaining share. I just wonder if you could help us understand kind of how those share gains have happened. I mean, is it more to do with the ancillary sort of Tool Hire, Managed Services, or is it more about winning more customers? Is it about actually gaining share with larger customers, whereas where perhaps you've been a bit underweight in the past? Just to help us understand those dynamics a bit more. Alan, do you want to talk about Europe and France? Sure. I'll come on to the general merchant. Charlie, on Europe, I did flag that I'm fully anticipating the Netherlands to move to breakeven in Q4 of next year. From a Benelux perspective, I do expect the losses to narrow next year. France at this stage is a bit more difficult to tell, in that if we continue to see encouragement, we might want to go faster. But at the moment, I think the best guidance I can give is probably a similar level for France to this year. The split is probably 60/40 between France and Benelux in terms of the loss. Charlie, your question on general merchant. We are delighted, as I said, with our progress in Hire. I didn't mention Managed Services, but delighted with our progress there and Benchmarx. It's not just that to which I'm referring. I'm talking about gaining share in our core business of providing business, building materials. We've done a great job of that. We have really focused, and I've got Kieran in the room, and I've got two regional managing directors, Richard, and Paul at the back there. You know, region by region, we have focused on not just investing in refurbishing and new branches, but the core service proposition within those branches, really invested in our colleagues, really thought about what we're trying to do, local flexibility, local empowerment, all the work that we talked about over the last two or three years in terms of pricing, ranging, having local decision-making, really where it matters for our customers. As a result, we have won more and won back larger and smaller customers across the country who have really noticed the depth and the credibility of our timber range, of our light side range, of our heavy building materials range. They're coming back for a reason, because we provide a superior service proposition. In branch, we've really invested in that, but of course, we've invested in our online and our app channel as well. For all cohorts of builders, particularly the younger general builder and professional trades person, that's been transformative. We're winning new customers, we're gaining share because we're supporting, as Kieran likes to say, the best builders in town, and we're doing so really, really well. We're hugely pleased with, you know, outperforming the market by being really diligent and serving our customers and deepening that relationship with them. Perfect. Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. If you can touch on, firstly, maybe on your comments around the full year. Just looking briefly, I think people are 350, which implies 190 for H2, if my math is roughly right. I wanna understand what's the sequential improvement in profit between H1 and H2. I appreciate there's some seasonality. I guess within that, if you could just comment whether you think Toolstation can be profitable in H2, please. That's the first question. The second question is on sort of wages and what you've done to sort of help your employees. Obviously, there's a big cost of living squeeze going on. I've seen some other companies sort of top up. Have you done any of that? If not, are you planning to do so in the future? Thirdly, on sort of working capital. Obviously, there was a big outflow in H1. If you could just give us a sense where that's heading, whether essentially it's just a basically step up in price and therefore we should extrapolate it. Thank you. Do you wanna tackle the first and the last? Yeah. I'll come back to cost of living. Yeah, sure. Gregor, on the sequential improvements in profit, there's a few drivers there. You're right, you point to seasonality. Last year was unusual in that it became a very strong half given the Q2 performance as well as the continued outperformance on Toolstation in the first half last year. As a reminder, revenue growth in Toolstation last year, 39% in the first half, and a business that's up over 90% from 2019. We did benefit from that in the first half last year. I would imagine, you know, a 48 to 52, 47 to 53 underlying type of split that we've seen historically would be what we will start to revert towards. Toolstation does improve in the second half. Elsewhere, you can imagine, given the cost pressures that we are seeing, that we have started to pull some levers to make sure we're in the best position possible. Particularly in the merchant businesses, that will help support the number in the second half versus what you might be imagining. If we go to just to be very clear on the guidance, the way that we phrased it, I flagged an incremental GBP 10 million in Toolstation Europe. I think that's a key thing. I've said that the continued strong performance in Merchanting will help us mitigate the underperformance relative to expectations that people have in Toolstation. On your final question on working capital, a few thoughts. Firstly, you know, we are more of a seasonal peak in the summer than the winter. There will be some seasonal movement there. The trade debtor position will, by definition, be an outflow because of the inflation in the sales price that we're charging. You will see an outflow related to that. While the stock levels, I did comment earlier that they were broadly offset by the trade creditors, we do have some further stock improvement plans for the second half. Two things in particular I'd comment on there that we're targeting. Where we have had, if you look at a category underperformance year on year, landscaping has been weaker, so we've got a plan to focus on reduction within the landscaping stocks, which are higher than we'd want on the merchant side. Obviously with Toolstation having a longer supply chain in terms of the time it takes to get product sourced from the Far East, it takes a bit longer to react. There is a plan within Toolstation to make sure we manage the stock profile. Then I suppose a third element, because of the availability challenges last year, we have got some branches where we feel a little overstocked where, because of local purchasing decisions, the branch managers have made sure they're full. That's great from a customer offer perspective, but from my perspective, I need to make sure that's a balanced position overall, and not too excessive. Not looking at anyone in particular. Richard Perkins running late. Sorry, Richard. Gregor, thank you for your question on cost of living. I hope you wouldn't be surprised to say it's absolutely uppermost in our mind, for our colleagues, as well as the impact on our customers. We have already made pay awards, for the vast majority of our colleagues in excess of Real Living Wage or National Living Wage, depending where they are in business. We have a comprehensive package of support, for all of our colleagues which they access, which covers a whole range of issues and support. As I think you'd expect, you know, we are very watchful and thoughtful about the situation as it develops, particularly as we approach the winter period. I think, forgive us for being slightly more thoughtful and elegant than just giving across-the-board increments, which actually I think companies are doing that more for retention purposes than they are really thinking about cost of living and the impact on their colleagues. We remain very watchful in this space. Would you be prepared to say a number, roughly what your wage inflation is like going forward? We just remain very, very watchful. Okay. We'll make the appropriate changes as necessary. Thank you. Thanks, Gregor. Just one point to help Gregor if I may, Nick. We do have a lot of colleagues, obviously in our branches, the vast majority of colleagues. While we in the Merchanting business, we're at least real living wage, and in Toolstation, we pay more than national living wage. You've obviously got a lot of colleagues who we index towards those increases in living wage, which are over 6%. If you think about it, that gives you an indication of where you can go on the wage overall and on a salary base. Thanks. Christen Hjorth from Numis. Three questions from me, if that's okay. First on just the ability to pass on cost inflation. I know you noted in the Merchanting business margins came down partly due to cost inflation. So just sort of understanding that and I suppose the wider pricing environment in that context. Second, just on Toolstation between consumer and trade mix currently, and is it now where it needs to be, or is there further sort of mix there as we move to the second half? Then just third one, full year price expectations, I suppose by division. Thank you. Shall I cover Toolstation, Alan? Yeah. We can come back on the other two. Is it where we want it to be, Christen? No, I think you know, through our comments, hopefully we've demonstrated that we remain absolutely focused on developing the proposition for our trade customer. Were you to go into a Toolstation, you would see that. You know, we've made changes to the front of house. We continuously update and upgrade the functionality of the app, all focused on our trade customer. You know. As I said, we're acquiring more and more all of the time, and now we are leveraging the power of the group to ensure that all of our trade relationships from the group are able to access Toolstation really quickly and easily. I suppose that says that we're not satisfied that we're at the right trade mix yet. As I said, you know, we say on the front of every store, you know, it's open to all. We welcome consumers and trade alike, but it's absolutely focused on our trade customer. That's always been the plan. It's what we laid out in September, and that's what will continue to be the plan. You know, we pivot the model at every step, and we really focus on the acquisition of trade customers. Of course, we've seen a huge amount of dust in the atmosphere around, you know, the behaviors of DIY and consumers during the pandemic, accessing Toolstation because it was one of the very few outlets open, and it had a really fantastic click and collect and web offer and everything else. As that settles, which is what we've seen, and then, you know, we really see the increased participation of trade, and that's what we continue to grow. Our focus is on that, and I think we will see that trade mix grow progressively over the quarters and years to come. I might start with the third part, Christen, on price expectations 'cause it's informative on the first part of your question. At this stage, I'd expect second half inflation to be similar to the first half. We are aware there will be further price increases to come, but I, you know, sort of taking that into account in my mind. Going forward, over the next 12, 24 months, I think you'll see the higher the energy component, the more likely you are to see increases. But that's obviously very dependent on where energy prices go. That's the key sensitivity to watch rather than tightness of supply. You know, I think that's the key sensitivity to watch rather than tightness of supply. There are still some areas, as you know better than me, with tightness of supply in the market at the moment, but I think I refer to that for us in the main, having it abated somewhat. We have seen timber pricing be quite volatile. That's obviously related to Russia, Belarus, and the product that's coming through and the pressure that puts on other parts of the market. We have seen swings from inflation back to pronounced deflation back to inflation and down again. You know, that's a market that moves fairly rapidly in any case. Taking that through into ability to pass on the cost inflation, I think for cost of goods inflation, the market customers obviously don't like it. They are attuned and, you know, I won't say accepting of the fact, maybe grudgingly acceptance of the fact that the inflation is there and that's part and parcel, at the market, of the market at the moment. If you do some very simple math and say, we're a business that makes a 30% gross margin, say, and you've got 15% cost of goods inflation, and work that through, and say, "I only want to recover the gross profit pounds impact," you get close to 300 basis points hit to gross margin, on that. You maintain your bottom line profit. Obviously, the operating margin figure will look slightly different depending on your leverage of your overhead cost base, but it is a very pronounced thing that's being worked through. I said our gross margin realization was a relatively modest decline against a good year last year, which is indicative that the businesses have taken action to pass on some of the labor inflation as well as the distribution cost inflation. I think everyone is cognizant that there is no choice when the inflation levels are at these sorts of levels. It is, you know, it is across the market, people are doing that. Lastly, on Toolstation, we're obviously very focused on maintaining that value advantage that we have in the market. We're known as a value leader with increasingly known for high quality products as well, which may not have been the case seven or eight years ago. I think in times of macroeconomic uncertainty and, you know, a potential downturn, customers seek out value. That's a really important key for Toolstation to remain in that position. That said, in the breakdown, you'll note we did pass on 9% price increase in the first half. Man, I think we have time for one more, one part. Just a hint. Thanks. It's Sam Cullen from Peel Hunt. I'll ask a question on Toolstation, but I will ask about the U.K. and Europe, so part A and part B of one question first. In the U.K., Alan, you said demand normalization a couple of times during your piece. I think if I do a rough kind of margin calculation, given the numbers you've given last year and this year, it looks like margins are in and around kinda 2% to 3%. Is that a normalization of margin, or can you build that margin back up next year given the cost inflation you're probably gonna see in the wage line and also probably in the utilities line coming back given the volume outlook? And then the second one about Europe. If I look at the kind of like-for-like volume declines on a per-branch basis, it looks to be around 15% to 20% based on my kind of back-of-the-envelope math, and you might take issue with that later. Is that how we should be thinking about that business? I would have thought it would have been a better performance than that given the immaturity profile of those stores. Sam, I think we need to get our spreadsheets out 'cause I don't recognize that level of decline in Europe. Certainly in the detail of the RNS, we did flag the Netherlands, which is the largest component at this stage of Europe, had a modest like-for-like decline. The price inflation was also a bit skewed towards the U.K. versus Europe. On the normalization of Toolstation, let's be really clear, this is normalization of customer mix, not a normalization of the margin by any means. I would expect the margin to recover progressively. I made a point about the number of branches that we'd opened in the last 24 months. 140 branches opened over 24 months on a base that was in the 400s, in the 300s actually, before we got to that level. That's an enormous amount of additional overhead that you're carrying from rent rates, staff to run the branches, distribution costs to service that, as well as putting in more distribution assets. We're at a position with the falloff in the DIY sales, where we've got to grow into that cost base. I still firmly believe that for Toolstation to be relevant with the trade, who come in more likely to come into the branch than order for home delivery, self-evident, if they need something to complete a job, they need to come in. The 650 branches or so nationwide is the right position to get to on Toolstation. I've done a lot of reflection, as you can imagine. Every single step that we've taken on Toolstation over the last 24 months, I'd do again. It's absolutely the right thing to set the business up for the long term in the way we're doing to be really relevant to our trade customers. As Nick tried to demonstrate, you can, you know, we can see and feel that resonating with the customers. It may not be coming through in the P&L at this stage in the way that you'd like to see it, but that's more a reflection of the falloff in the DIY. We're totally confident in what we're seeing to give us the confidence to continue to develop that business in the way it's going. Thank you, Sam. Good. Well, with that, we're at our 30 minutes. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. Very happy to now take your questions as you mingle. There are a number of members of the Group's team in the room. For those of you who would like to pick up some questions with our colleagues, then please do so. Thank you very much for attending. Have a good day.