Welcome to the Travis Perkins Q3 trading update call for analysts and investors. With me, I have Travis Perkins CEO Nick Roberts and CFO Alan Williams, who will take your questions. I will now hand over to Nick for his opening remarks before we move on to questions from the phone line. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. I'm joined today by Alan Williams, our CFO, and after a short introduction, we'll move to take your questions. Clearly, a lot has happened since we last spoke to you in August, and with the challenges we've seen, I'm pleased to be reporting a resilient set of numbers during the third quarter. For the group as a whole, total sales on a trading day-adjusted basis were up 10.7%, and like-for-like sales grew by 7.4%. In our merchanting segment, sales were up by 11.5%, and I think encouragingly, this performance was very consistent throughout the quarter. Toolstation returned to growth in the third quarter, with sales up 6.1% and like-for-like sales marginally ahead. Here we saw an improving sales trend across the quarter, supported by the launch of the September catalog, which has been well received by our customers. Our European business continues to build well, with sales up 23.3% in Q3. Reflecting briefly on our end markets, we did see some softening of demand in the smaller trade customer segment, who predominantly trade with the general merchant and Toolstation. Elsewhere, though, particularly in the specialists, end market demand remains robust. This includes larger repair and maintenance contractors, new housing and commercial, industrial maintenance, and infrastructure projects, demonstrating the benefit of our end market diversity across the construction sector. Given the current environment, we're keeping a very close eye on costs and driving operational efficiencies. We continue to flex our cost base as required, depending on market conditions. Taking all of that into account, where does that leave us? The current range of analyst expectations for FY 2022 is in an operating profit of between GBP 304 million and GBP 340 million. Adjusted for the unexpected bank holiday in September, we now expect to be around the middle of that range. Finally, while we're seeing a lot of macro uncertainty at the moment, I'm confident that the investments we've made in our business over the last few years will be really important in helping us differentiate ourselves and enable us to outperform and to continue to outperform our end markets. Now I'll hand back to the operator, and Alan and I will take your questions. Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star two. Your first question comes from the line of Priyal Woolf from Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Morning. Yes, it's Priyal here from Jefferies. I've got three questions if possible. The first one is just on merchanting volumes. You've obviously said that the specialist merchants are doing much better. I just wondered if you could give us any more quantification on the volume trends within those specialists. Are they still up year on year, and versus the generalist merchant, which I assume is down more significantly? The second question is just, you know, wondering if you could give us a sense of how your inventory levels have moved over the course of the year and into Q3. We're obviously starting to hear a little bit more about the stocking across the sector more broadly. The last question, it's probably quite unfair to ask about the outlook for 2023 at this stage, but maybe what are the range of scenarios that you deem reasonable in terms of volumes, pricing and margin? Thank you. Hi, Priyal. On your first question on the merchanting volume specialists, are they much better than the general merchanting trend? I think in the statement we've pointed to it being in the smaller customer, and from a merchanting perspective, that would be mainly the cash and smaller trade accounts within the general merchant where we're seeing the softening of demand. Elsewhere, whether it's in the general merchants or the specialists, the volume trends are fairly consistent and have been consistent through the quarter. On the second point, inventory levels, obviously, this is a Q3 trading update on sales, and I wouldn't normally say much about the where we are on balance sheet items. As we've got the question on inventory levels, they've come down a little during the third quarter. I agree with you, it is a little unfair to ask about 2023 range of outcomes at this stage. Obviously, we're all cognizant of the external environment. I think the key thing for us is that the business is outperforming across its different end markets at this stage. We can't control the end markets, but we can make sure that we perform as strongly as we can within the market environment we've got. You know, we've deliberately moved the portfolio of businesses over the last few years to have a more resilient set of end markets. There will be softness in different areas, but at the moment, we're managing through that by continuing to outperform. Thank you. Thank you, Priyal. Your next question comes from George Gregory from BNP Paribas. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. So just picking up on that inventory piece, and sort of the pricing dynamics associated with that. If there is a risk of sort of destocking across the sector, does that mean that you'll see any reversal of that gross margin tailwind that you've had, over the last couple of years? George, the gross margin tailwind is a function of the absolute level of inflation we see year-on-year. If you assume that the overall inventory levels are relatively consistent year-on-year in actual volumes, what you get is, on the stock that we have on hand, you will see inflation gains if prices are going up. As the level of absolute inflation starts to tail off, there won't be a tailwind anymore on that. I think nine months ago when we reported, or maybe not that long ago, seven months ago, when we reported the full year numbers for 2021, I identified that we thought that was a, you know, 40 basis points-60 basis points range for the group as a whole on an inflation level at that stage of 12%. Now, obviously, inflation in materials has gone a little higher, so that the amount of inflation gains would have been a little higher overall, but you've got to deduct from that the 12% from prior year. I don't think it's a hugely material thing overall to get concerned about. Okay, that's really clear. Another one, if I may. On previous calls, you've made comments about, you know, larger customers in the mix having a bit of a diluted impact on margins. You know, we've talked about today the smaller customers within merchanting starting to see volumes soften there. At what point do you think the sort of mix of customers will start to stabilize? I think that's a really difficult question to call at the moment, George, because you know that smaller customer piece, there are two factors going on. One is the strength of performance in 2021, so you've got a comparative thing. Then secondly, you've got to take into account the high levels of macroeconomic uncertainty at the moment. It's difficult to tell with inflation being at a 40-year high and policies changing day by day, exactly how the end customer in the RMI market will feel going forward. I think we know that whatever the economic conditions, repairs and maintenance still has to take place, and it's the improvement piece where there's a little more uncertainty. You'll appreciate that given the high economic uncertainty at the moment, that's quite difficult to call. Okay. Maybe just one last quick question on Toolstation. Could you just give a bit more of an update on the European rollout, just in terms of, you know, how are customers responding to the business proposition and maybe a bit of a guidance on when you think it might start to become profitable? We're really pleased with the overall performance in the third quarter, up over 23%. Within that, the French and Belgian businesses, which are, you know, earlier in their development, performed really strongly. They saw less of an impact from the DIY slowdown compared to the Dutch business. But the Dutch business is still in strong high single-digit growth year-on-year in the quarter. As for break-even, I'd refer you to comments we've made previously. We're expecting the Dutch business to break even around the end of 2023, and fourth quarter 2023 should be around a break-even position. The position has not changed on France and Belgium, where we continue to invest in those businesses. Okay. George, might I just add something to Alan's answer on your second question around customer dynamics? You will see released today the next installment of the Travis Perkins RMI Index, which shows in our smaller customer base, our smaller trade customer base, albeit we have seen softening in that segment, which we say in our statement today, continued resilience in their forward order books. As Alan says, it's a very mixed picture and one that's actually quite hard to discern signal from noise. Actually, we saw sustained forward order books, customers still being positive about their workloads over the coming three to six months. Increasingly, and this is something that we might see and are looking carefully around, an increasing number of their end customers asking about energy efficiency schemes and energy efficient products in their builds. You know, against the relatively bleak macro outlook, we still see those signs that our trade customers hustle and win work and remain positive around their order books in the smaller segment. Just a counterpoint to some of the broader indicators. Great. That's some really helpful color. Thanks for taking my questions, guys. Thanks, George. Okay. The next question comes from David O'Brien from Goodbody. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions, and a few from me, please. Firstly, it looks very difficult to see where we're going, but maybe you could help us rebase where we actually are. Because trying to pinpoint where merchant volumes now versus 2019 levels, accounting for branch closures, et cetera,, and a lot has happened. If you could give us that picture on a divisional level for merchanting, and if you had any color on how that varies between the general merchant business and specialist. I guess, again, back to Priyal's question, maybe very difficult to determine where the top line is going next year, but I guess the cost base is a little bit more in your own hands. Where do you see inflation in the OpEx cost base for the second half of 2022 kind of trending? Where do you expect that to go into next year? You've talked about, you know, tightening your belt with regards to cost of managing closely. What are the levers you can pull given there was a pretty meaningful restructuring not so long ago as well. Third question, just have you seen anything in regards to bad debts ticking up generally in the U.K. merchants business? And finally, just to get a sense of, look, you're clearly calling out this weaker RMI, and then the larger guys remaining pretty resilient. In your experience, has one or other leader lagged into a downturn? You know, ultimately, is RMI telling us that this is coming on the larger contractor side as well? David, thank you. I think we got all of those down. Let me start, and then Alan will pick up. I'm just going to start with the weaker RMI. Alan said it earlier. We just are cautioning around bucketing everything as RMI. We see improvement projects showing some sign of weakness, which, given the factors in the broader environment, is not surprising. Actually, as I said about our RMI Index and the feedback we get from customers, there's still demand around R&M. We just need to take that into account, and we, you know, we would expect to see some level of softening around the more discretionary spend. We trailed that at half year. You know, it's a finer picture that we need to think about rather than just bucketing it in the broader RMI. However, we know from the breadth of our customer base that there's still plenty of R&M in the commercial and I in the commercial and particularly social housing space, the kind of social infrastructure space, that needs to be undertaken, and there's still an element of catch up post the pandemic. You know, it is a very complex picture, but within that, we see areas of sustained demand as well as early signs of a bit of weakness in the domestic space. Let me just talk to the cost base. I think it's fair to say that, you know, we would expect to see inflation continue in all areas of the cost base. We mustn't forget that we have gained far greater flexibility in our cost base over the last few years. As you say, we took out much more inflexible elements in our cost base in 2010-2020 around smaller branches, and we'll come back to that point in a minute. We got much more flex and much more agility in our business to be able to flex our cost base. We have been adjusting our cost base, particularly in Toolstation and the general merchant this year, unsurprisingly, and we'll continue to do so. We're able to manage that at all levels of the organization and tune accordingly. But clearly there are very different dynamics in the different parts of our business. We're further forward in tuning Toolstation and general merchant, so there's no one-size-fits-all answer to that. We do maintain focus on all the things that we've gained, all the levers that we've gained in, that are giving us the position of outperforming our markets, and we maintain a very clear focus on delivering our strategy. All, you know, lots of flexibility in the way that we tune and adjust our business as we go forward. Alan? Yeah. David, so if I pick up on your other couple of questions. Where are volumes in merchanting in 2022 year to date versus 2019? And you talked about the branch closure program that we've had. I suppose the first point to remember is that in 2021, the recovery from the pandemic came more quickly than any of us were anticipating, and we exceeded the levels of volume that we'd seen in 2019. It's just its closures in 2021. I haven't done the exact calculation, but I guess that our volumes overall are roughly in line with 2019 at this stage, if not slightly ahead. I don't think there's a discernible difference in trend between the general merchant and the specialists. The specialists continue to perform really well, which has been a theme, gosh, we're getting off it ten years now. They've been outperforming and the general merchant, as we flagged at the half year, and we've hinted at in the statement this morning, continues to recover its market position. On the third question you asked around bad debt experience, we're not seeing anything unusual in terms of the patterns at this stage. Debtor book, when I look at overdues as a percentage of credit sales, the DSO as well as the bad debt experience, they're all pretty much in line with prior year at this stage, so nothing I'd want to flag there. The one other point I'd make on, with regard to Nick's answer to your fourth question, which Nick answered first around the RMI and the larger customers. The larger customers are still telling us that they have very busy order books. It's a question of when that work comes through for them, when they put things down on the ground. We still hear anecdotally shortage of workers for a number of the major contractors. They're still looking for labor, which gives us some encouragement that things have slowed because of the high levels of uncertainty, but the levels of work is still out there. Great. Thanks very much. Thanks, David. Your next question comes from the line of Aynsley Lammin from Investec. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, all. Just two questions for me, please. First of all, on the pricing, if you could give us a bit more color, what's kind of pushing the price inflation and trends you're seeing there? Are gross margins still holding up? Are you still able to pass those price increases on successfully? Then the second question, just looking at the kind of full year guidance, just wondered what you'd assume for Q4. I mean, is it the kind of continuation of the trends you're seeing in Q3, you know, top line growth around kind of 10%? Are you still on track for a GBP 25 million property charge profit within that guidance? Thanks. Hi, Aynsley. On the pricing, first of all, what's driving the elevated levels of inflation, it's another round of increases that we've been seeing on heavy side materials. I think we flagged these at the half year that we'd already seen them being presented to us for effect from July. A fair amount of that is energy related. So anything which has a high conversion cost is seeing higher levels of inflation. We are still operating and, you know, I characterize the merchant market as orderly in terms of passing on that inflation to the customer base at this stage. I'm not expecting a discernible difference in trends Q4 versus Q3, and the guidance on property profits for the full year still remains. Great. Thank you very much. The next question comes from the line of Rajesh Patki from J.P. Morgan. The line is open. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi. Good morning, all. I've got two questions as well. First one is, if you could provide the moving parts by division for the revised guidance. If the revision you made, almost entirely for the merchanting division with the expectations for Toolstation, unchanged. Secondly, if you could provide any indications on the recent three weeks, if there has been any noticeable difference to what you reported for the third quarter. Thank you. Hi, Rajesh. On moving parts by division, I don't think there's anything additional that we need to flag or suggest versus expectations. Listen, I'm not going to comment on a three-week trend. I think that's an unfair and potentially misleading question to be frank. I've already given the response about the trends from Aynsley's question, Q4 versus Q3. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Christen Hjorth from Numis. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you. Morning, Nick. Morning, Alan. A couple of questions for me, please. First of all, on Toolstation, I mean, obviously you sort of called out at the half year stage. There's been a lot of investment in new branches over the last 24 months. Could you just touch on the performance of those new branches? I know it's maybe a slightly different macro backdrop, but is that all going as expected? The second one, just on TP, noting the moving parts around the smaller jobbing builders, but overall, obviously the strategy has been to win back some of those smaller jobbing builders. where do you think you sort of fit in terms of market share, and how should we sort of extrapolate that out from, you know, some of the comments you make around demand? Thank you. Thanks, Christen. On Toolstation, we remain really positive about the performance of the branches that we've opened. You know, we continue to see consistent performance against our Our maturity model, as you know, and as we talked about, I suppose several times now, we continue the kind of tradification of our Toolstation business, really focusing our customer proposition, the way in which we develop our branch channel and our digital channel, all towards the need of our trade customers. We're really pleased with what we've seen, both in, you know, branch performance and digital channel performance. You know, on an ongoing basis, a successful conversion of trade customers from the other businesses within the group over to Toolstation. You know, despite the volatile macro, we remain really pleased with the investment in the Toolstation business and what we're seeing in return. To your second question about winning back those smaller customers. Again, we've seen some really positive progress in that regard. Not only are we benefiting from the investment in our branch channels, particularly around the destination branches that we talk about, where we, you know, we've got the depth and the range of heavy side product that our customers want and demand. We've got the attachment of tool hire and equipment hire. We've got the attachment of Benchmarx, and then we benefit from the, you know, augmenting that with the digital channel, which gives our customers the opportunity to check stock, organize delivery, organize click and collect. All of that is ensuring that we are more simple and convenient to do business with for our small and large customers, actually. We've seen smaller customers come back to us because they appreciated the ease of the service proposition and the fact that our pricing architecture is now competitive with the rest of the market. You know, we continue to outperform the market, as we've said, and we continue to win back you know, former and lapsed customers and indeed win new customers, particularly in the kind of younger cohort of the professional trade and smaller builder who are much more willing and seamless in the use of a digital channel. Positive signs on both fronts. Excellent. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, Arnaud. Hi, Arnaud. Excellent. Hello, Nick. Hello, Alan. Thank you so much for taking my questions. I have three, hopefully fairly short ones. You highlight a sequential improvement in Toolstation in the third quarter after a somewhat disappointing first half. Do you believe that it could help you get back to break even in the second part of the year or into 2023? That's my first question. Staying on Toolstation, considering the macro backdrop in the U.K. and continental Europe, have you started to revise your plans for store openings for the next couple of years in an environment that might be a bit more challenging than expected? Lastly, I remember from your CMD, you were talking in some segments there could be some small M&A opportunity. At this stage, are you thinking, well, you know, we are more in a cash preservation mode at the moment considering the macro uncertainties, or do you think you've got a bit of flexibility to pick up maybe some of the weaker competitors in a more challenging market? Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Arnaud. Good set of questions. On the first one, you're right to flag the sequential improvement in Toolstation that we are highlighting. At a total segment level, I don't think that's enough to get us back to break even on the year. As I'd responded to Rajesh's questions, I think we think the market's there or thereabout, segmentally at this stage. I do expect improvements in the U.K. in 2023's profitability, of course. We'll need to update at some point with a bit more specific guidance on the startup costs around the warehouse, you know, given that that was timed towards the end of this year. It slipped a little on the timeline on delivery of some of the equipment, but we will update in due course on that. In terms of the opening plans, in the U.K., I think we'll end this year 575-580 branches or something like that. The objective is still 650. We won't get to 650 next year. It's clear we're not going to open 70 branches. You know, it's early days to say exactly how many. Referring back to Nick's response to Christen, we still are really encouraged by the performance that we see from new branches. Again, we'll update on that in due course. At this stage, I don't see any reason to be slowing the branch openings in Europe. At the moment, you know, we're growing the business strongly by adding capacity. It is, you know, it's obviously a market share gaining position that we're looking at at the moment. On your final question on M&A opportunities, we continue to look, we continue to be very choosy, and it would have to be additive to the capabilities in one of our businesses in order to do that. I think our thinking there is not about picking off weaker players or Preserving cash or anything like that. We've got a really strong balance sheet, and the cash performance, you know, I'm pleased with where we are overall. I think that still continues to provide the scope for increased shareholder returns going forwards. I think we've probably been more focused on increasing shareholder returns rather than the M&A side, if I'm honest. Absolutely. Just to add to that, Arnaud, I think, you know, what we are doing is really focusing. I mean, one, of course, and we've talked about this a lot, Arnaud, haven't we? You know, we are benefiting from the simplification of the group over the last couple of years and, you know, allowing us to have very clear capital allocation. We're really supporting the growth of our two most recent acquisitions, TF Solutions and Staircraft. We're really pleased with the way those businesses are not just performing, but evolving and evolving the overall offer. As Alan said, it would have to be something that would be really accretive to that growth. We retain a keen eye, but actually you haven't necessarily seen anything particularly interesting yet. That's very clear. Thank you so much. Operator, I think that's all the questions therefore. Should we wrap up the call? We must be wrapping up. Sorry. Sorry, we have a few questions left. Do we still have time to take any of these questions? Happy to, yeah. Okay. The next question comes from Maddy Jaber from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. Just two from me, please. Firstly, I was wondering if you'd be able to quantify the network impact for the quarter and then maybe a little bit about your outlook for this for the full year. Then secondly, on RM&I, you've obviously mentioned that while R&M have been relatively more resilient and I has been the area where you've seen a little bit more weakness. Would you be able to tell us what proportion of your sales this quarter have come from respectively R, M, and I versus what this usually would be, say, through the cycle? Thank you. Maddy, thank you. The answer to your last question is no, not really. We've often said it's actually really difficult to see through what is R, what is M, and what is I. I'm afraid we're not really able to do that in any quantifiable way. You know, what we do see, as we've said, given the breadth of customers and end markets that we serve, we see continued demand in that R&M, both domestically and commercially. In you know, the non-commercial and more social infrastructure space, continued demand in the I as well. It's more the domestic I that's where we see some signs of weakness. That shouldn't be said that we see no activity. You know, our Benchmarx business continues to perform well, you know, selling kitchens to our trade customers and typically to the domestic market. You know, it is far from all doom, but we just see that weakness there come through in the quarter. You know, quantifying that is very difficult. Maddy, it's Alan. On your first question, the network impact is around 2%. Great. Thank you very much. Your next question comes from the line of Marcus Cole from UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi. Morning, guys. Two questions as well. I was just wondering how price increase conversations are going with customers. They're still being accepted, et cetera. Then on CapEx moving forward, I just wondered how much can this be flexed, especially going into next year, given the deteriorating backdrop. Thank you. Hi, Marcus. On your first question on price increases, you know, I think customers don't like them, but they understand what's driving that given the high inflationary environment we're experiencing currently. As I said a little earlier, the market is still pretty orderly in passing through those price increases. On capital expenditure, there is some flex within the CapEx that we got planned. Obviously, a fair amount of the spend is maintenance related. We need to go ahead and replace aged vehicles within the network. We can look at slowing the timing of some of those replacements in a volume downturn. They're the sorts of things we'd look at on maintenance. If you recall a little on Arno's question, things like Toolstation openings in the UK, we certainly have more flexibility to influence the timing of some of those. Can I just follow up on the IT investment? Is there any sort of flex there as well? Of course it all spend ultimately can be flexed. The IT spend is pretty modest, in the overall scheme of things, and it goes mainly through the operating expense line, given the way that we account for it. Thank you very much. Your next question comes from the line of Ami Galla from Citigroup. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Morning, guys. Just to follow up from me. The first one, just on the network point, can you give us an update on merchanting? Are there any plans for further branch additions there? The second one is on the inflation in the staff cost base. How has that trended so far, and how do you see that shaping up in 2023? Thank you. Yeah. Hi, Ami. On the merchanting network, we've had a few openings, as you know, during the first half, in the general merchant. There are still some of those planned, along with refurbishments of branches. We're seeing really encouraging results from some of the new openings that we've had. I think the specialist networks, with the exception of TF Solutions, are fairly stable at this stage, so we have added branches into TF Solutions recently and will be minded to continue to add branches there. On our staff wage costs, we've obviously got a number of colleagues who are either at Real Living Wage levels or National Living Wage plus a premium, and we will look wherever possible to continue to increase in line with the Real Living Wage and National Living Wage plus guidelines that we see. Thank you. Your next question comes from Sam Cullen from Peel Hunt. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Morning, everyone. I've got three, if possible. Can you just firstly remind us of your exposure to public sector spending, just with a kind of a mind to probably possible spending cuts or probable spending cuts next year and into the medium term and the lengths of order books there in terms of your major customers in that sector. Secondly, I think Nick mentioned not the fixed cost reduction. Can you just remind us of the variable and fixed split in the nature of the cost base? Then lastly, I think, Alan, a couple of questions ago, you mentioned that the market was remaining pretty orderly in terms of prices. What's your view in terms of how orderly the market will remain should volumes decline 5%, 10%, 15%, for example? Well, let me start. Thank you. I'm not gonna speculate on what the government's going to do around public spending. I think the picture is unclear on all sorts of fronts right now. What I will say is, look, as you know, we are really well positioned in a diverse set of end markets within the public space, both economic infrastructure, so we're supporting roads programs, HS2, Hinkley Point C, a range of really exciting infrastructure projects which continue to attract public government policy support. Clearly there might be some variation of that. You know, our experience with infrastructure is that takes some time to play through, and we're still seeing, you know, our customers, the tier one contractors and the like, with strong demand, strong workloads, lots of projects to complete. In the more social infrastructure space, that's quite a broad bucket, and obviously this is very local and not, you know, all central government. Obviously, there's lots of local government, lots of agencies, but we see this up and down the country in the schools, the hospitals, the public buildings, social housing. Again, you know, from talking to our customers, from looking at forward order books, they have sustained demand for repair, maintenance, and improvement work. As we've said before, some of that is related to the fact that during the pandemic, very little of that work could be undertaken. Of course you have an awful lot of catch-up to do. As we move into, you know, the winter period, then schools and hospitals need all sorts of attention, which really benefits our businesses like CCF and BSS and obviously in the infrastructure space, Keyline in particular. Whatever might happen in that public sector spend space, we stay, you know, diversified, you know, with strong relationships with our customers who have strong forward order books, and we're able to flex and adjust as those demands change. On the question on the cost base, what's variable, what's fixed? I think it's a question of timeframe that we should look at. You know, obviously in the very short term, things are fairly fixed. As you start to look six, nine, 12 months out, you can bring more variability into the cost base. Perhaps I'd look at it about what variability we've put into the cost base as a way of addressing the question. On something like vehicles, for example, I referred to in the previous response around the two markets around the flexing CapEx, what can we do? Well, with the nine-year average life for vehicles, you can slow down the rate at which you replace vehicles and therefore ensure that you've got fewer vehicles overall. You see a reasonable amount of turnover in the driver population, so again you can look at your replacement of drivers to flex to the volume environment you see. On labor within our branches, we've started to introduce some more part-time workers, which obviously is something that allows us to vary the hours more to suit the volume environment that we see before us. It's those sorts of levers, and Nick referred to this earlier, that we've already been pulling in the general merchant and in the Toolstation business, and that we will look to continue to pull to address the market conditions in which we trade. On the pricing side, I don't think you can correlate a breakdown in orderliness in passing on inflation to a particular volume decline level or anything like that. What I can say is that the levels of inflation that we're currently seeing, I expect to start to abate somewhat. I think that will be helpful overall if that's the case. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Sam. Operator, I think we have time for one more. Yes. The next question comes from Ben Wild from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Morning, Ben. Good morning. Morning. Thanks for taking my question, and I only really have one final question after a comprehensive set. The question is with regards to the volume decline you're seeing in Toolstation. It looks like on a like-for-like basis, you're kind of experiencing 10% volume declines at the moment. If you look at your more mature branches, those that have been around for five years, what's the level of volume decline you're seeing there? And how do you think about that in the context of the environment faced by the kind of core Toolstation customer? As a secondary and tertiary point, can we assume now that all the COVID comp effects has washed away and this is a kind of normalized comp base going forward? Thank you. Thanks, Ben. I think yeah, I think we fully cycled, in my opinion, the COVID uplift that we saw in DIY volumes to answer that piece first of all. I think, you know, again, we were encouraged with the performance, and I should preface my comments here are Toolstation U.K. specific, given the relative maturity of that business versus the European businesses. In terms of the performance we're seeing in the more mature branches overall, they are following that trend. What we have seen is that it's the direct volume that came off a bit more quickly than the more mature branches. A lot of the more mature branches would have a good weighting of trade customers in them. I hope that helps. Understood. Thank you very much. Super. Thank you all for joining us this morning and for your questions. As Ben said, that feels like it's been quite a comprehensive set of questions. We wish you well, and we'll speak to you soon. Operator, back to you. This concludes this call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.