Good morning, and welcome everybody to our results presentation. Thank you to everyone here in the auditorium at Numis' offices and also everyone joining via the webcast. We're delighted to be presenting this morning a really strong set of results and, as you've all seen, last night the announcement of our placing and this morning the announcement of the successful completion of the placing alongside the results. Joe will talk us through the placing in a little bit more detail shortly, particularly focusing on use of proceeds and the financial impacts. Just turning to the first-half results. The headline financial performance for the first half of 2022 is particularly strong. Earnings up 15% to GBP 0.275, strong dividend growth up 7% to GBP 0.118, NTA at GBP 9.28 is stable. We've also seen record demand for the 2023/2024 academic cycle and are therefore confident in full occupancy for the academic year. We've upgraded our rental growth guidance alongside the results to around 7%. With these results, we've upgraded our earnings guidance to the top end of the previous range, so the top end of GBP 0.43-GBP 0.44. Earlier than we normally do, we're providing guidance for the 2024/2025 academic year and providing our strongest ever initial guidance at rental growth at least 5%. Demand, therefore, remains very strong in our markets. Additionally, we're now seeing a real supply crunch in homes for students. HMO landlords, so the traditional private landlords, are leaving the sector. New PBSA supply is materially down on historic levels, about a 60% reduction on pre-pandemic levels, and I don't expect there to be a supply-side response for a number of years. The qualities of our business, the combination of the positive operational environment that's supporting us, is creating probably the strongest opportunity set that we've seen for quite some time, hence the raise. Our development pipeline has now got 6 committed schemes. We've got an attractive pipeline, additionally, of asset management opportunities and strategic partnerships with universities, something we've been talking about for a while, are getting much closer. We'll cover each of those areas in a little bit more detail as we go through the presentation. As I've mentioned, we've seen record demand for 2023/2024 academic year, and particularly pleasing, you know, obviously, we have increased rents more than we've done historically. In part, that's to recognize the cost pressures that we are facing along with everybody else. Demand right through the cycle, so our reservation performance at each stage has been well ahead of any year. I think really demonstrating that students and universities are committing to their accommodation much earlier in the academic cycle. Universities have increased their nominations with us. We've got 2,000 more nominations than we've had previously, which means our noms now represent 54% of the portfolio. As you know, within our nomination percentage, some of those deals are fixed, some of them are single-year deals. On the one-third that we've renegotiated this year, we've achieved rental growth on those nominations that is ahead of our direct-let performance. I think that's really a clear indication that universities value the Unite offer. They're willing to pay market rate for those beds, and they're not expecting, in this environment, any kind of discount for volume that we might have delivered in the past. We're also continuing to win market share from HMO. We now have 11,000 students living with us who’ve proactively chosen to live, beyond their first year, to stay in PBSA as more mature students, valuing the product. That is important because the houses in multiple occupation market has got over 900,000 students in it. Any small shift we can attract from that market is a clear positive demand driver. We’re also very conscious, in this higher-rate environment, that we need to remain focused on value for money and, particularly, affordability for students. I really am confident that we’re striking the right balance there. We’re continuing to invest in our service. We’re continuing to invest in our product. We’re ensuring our pricing is appropriate in every market versus the alternatives, and I really do think we offer students the best choice. Just turning to demand in the higher education sector generally, our business is underpinned by the enduring strength of the UK higher education sector, and we expect to see sustained growth in demand from both domestic and international students. We still have demographic growth in the UK out to 2030, and the growth in demand will be strongest in the cities where we’ve deliberately aligned ourselves with the universities that students want to go to. International students do still continue to value a U.K. higher education degree, and it's absolutely clear that when they come to the U.K., they generate real economic value, and that economic value is recognized by the U.K. government. We have seen some policy change announced over the course of the last few weeks by the government. We've seen the tightening of visa policy, particularly around dependents of international postgraduate students not being allowed to bring those dependents to the U.K. That policy comes into effect from January of next year. That will have very limited impact on us because, obviously, we don't provide accommodation to international students with families. That's not the product that we offer. Again, it's a very limited impact there. Also, more recently, we've seen the announcement around low-value degrees and the Office for Students having powers to restrict a student's ability to access the student loan from a degree that doesn't provide value in the eyes of the government. Again, we don't believe there'll be a material impact on our business. In our markets, the vast majority of students achieve really good outcomes. They continue through their degree, they complete their degree, they achieve really strong sort of earnings performance. That focus on the removing of low-value degrees has very little impact for us in our markets. Also, I think more generally, universities are already reacting to that change. Universities are taking away some of the degree courses that would perhaps be considered low value and not offering them anymore. That doesn't mean that student doesn't go to university, it means they go to a different university or study a different course at the same university. I think it will have a fairly limited impact on demand. As I've mentioned, supply is unable to keep up with demand, and it's clear that we are seeing a housing crunch across the U.K. We are seeing a material reduction in private landlords in many of our regions that we're operating in, and there are a number of factors sort of contributing towards that. We've got increased regulation. There's been specific regulation around renting in Scotland, which has caused a number of private renters in Scotland to look to other markets. We're also seeing increased regulation in the U.K. in the form of the Rental Reform Bill. We see that as a positive, ensuring that landlords behave in the right way. Clearly, there are some landlords that don't want to face that sort of additional regulation. In terms of EPC accreditation, I think you'll all be aware that in order to be able to rent to anyone, whether it's a student or indeed anybody else, and rent a property in 2027, you need to achieve an EPC rating of at least C. We estimate that for a typical HMO, that's about a GBP 9,000 investment the landlord needs to make. Clearly, if they make that investment, which would be a great thing to do for the environment, those costs will likely be passed on to students, but some of them, they perhaps won't make that investment, and that house will come out of the rental market. Then also, more recently, you know, what's happened with the cost of interest on buy-to-let mortgages. We've got some figures up there that a sort of typical buy-to-let mortgage, we estimate will cost a landlord around GBP 3,000 extra per annum. If you break that back into what that means for an additional weekly rent for a student, if that landlord wanted to make themselves whole, it's about a 30% increase from a typical HMO weekly rent. It's very material and I think will support that focus on PBSA as offering real value over the private landlord market. At the same time, you know, we're not seeing a material supply-side response from the PBSA market. Pre the pandemic, developments and new PBSA that was opening was around 30,000 beds a year. That's more than halved, and we think will continue at that suppressed level for quite some time, and that's because of, you know, development, viability, funding costs, et cetera. You know, we are still active in development. We've obviously raised money to commit to new developments, but we're not developing in all markets. Development viability, the cost of the land, the material costs, the build cost, funding costs, means that, you know, if you were to build a new student accommodation in that particular market, the rents you would need to achieve make it effectively, economically unviable. So we're not gonna see a supply-side response until any one or a combination of those factors change. Then finally, in terms of supply, what we are seeing, and we've seen for quite some time, is really clear growing student expectations when it comes to the quality of student accommodation. We're starting to see quite a lot of university-owned, sort of first generation, accommodation coming out of university campuses and universities either closing or mothballing accommodation on their campuses. That's really because, one, they don't have the finance that they need to commit to improve the quality of those assets, and also, quite often the university doesn't have the capability to undertake the asset management initiatives that would need to be undertaken to bring them up to standard. That's creating clear opportunities for us to deepen our partnerships with universities to help them solve that accommodation challenge. You know, we've talked for a number of years now about, you know, our unique relationships, and I generally do believe we have unique, you know, relationships with universities. You know, there is a real important difference, I think now, in that universities are clearly recognizing that there are accommodation shortages, and those accommodation shortages will impact their growth. Like every business, a university is facing real cost pressures. At the same time, for a university, a large proportion of their income, the income that comes from undergraduate student fees, is fixed. It's been fixed for a number of years at GBP 9,250 and actually remains fixed until about 2026. If you've got a large proportion of your income that's fixed, while you've got cost pressures, the only way to sort of manage that is to continue to grow, to continue to recruit more students. Obviously, students generally need accommodation when they go to university. That need for accommodation is even more acute, when you're thinking about international students obviously coming to study, in a different country, so they have the greatest accommodation need. There is a real opportunity, I think, for us to continue to support universities. As I've mentioned, we've seen universities commit to us for another 2,000 beds this year. As I've said again, they've been willing to pay market rates to secure these beds because they recognize the rising costs of delivering accommodation, but also that really important point around higher and increasing student expectations. These factors are leading to better quality, you know, strategic conversations, and we're in advanced discussions with a number of universities over on and off-campus development, over stock transfers, and over asset management opportunities where we would go in and help them with their existing estate. The opportunities, the conversations are complex, and they do take time, but we're as confident as we've ever been that we will be converting an opportunity in the not-too-distant future. I think the opportunity set that we have in front of us, you know, we need to recognize that we are operating in, you know, quite sort of challenging times for everyone with sort of the cost of living, with the expectations that the consumers have. I hope it's clear that, as a business, we operate with a real purpose, and we're a business that seeks to do what's right for all of our stakeholders. Over the past five years, I think we've consistently demonstrated this through our response to COVID, our ongoing commitment to understand and really support students, particularly when it comes to mental health and well-being, our deep investment in being part of the higher education sector, not just a supplier of bedrooms to the sector, and our investment in critical areas of ESG, with a particular focus on the environment and also diversity and equality. This commitment to really being a purposeful landlord is something that we're committed to continue with. By doing what we do, by delivering student accommodation, by developing more beds, we are positively contributing towards the creation of homes across the UK, which is incredibly important. We're supporting local communities by enabling students to come and live in those towns and cities, and students do bring real economic value and diversity to towns and cities. We're also supporting universities to grow, so supporting them to provide, you know, world-class educational support, and clearly supporting students, the communities, and the environment. You know, as a landlord with purpose, I think we really can look ahead with confidence and continue to be successful. At that point, I'll hand over to Joe to take us through the financials and also the placing. Morning, everyone, and thank you, Richard. Delighted to be announcing another set of strong results this morning, with earnings and EPS up 15%, dividend per share up 7% off the back of the strong lettings performance that we've delivered. Given that strong H1 performance, we are upgrading guidance, as Richard said, to the upper end of our 43-44 P range and guiding to 5% rental growth for the 2024, 2025 academic year. Both NTA and LTV have been flat since the year end. Valuations are up 0.8%, as rental growth has offset the outward yield movement, and we expect this trend to continue over the next 6 months. We've made positive progress with both earnings yield and net debt to EBITDA ratios. The positive earnings growth in H1 is taking our earnings to a record level for our business, which is another major milestone, that returned to full occupancy and rental growth in 2022, 2023, really driving that. We have seen cost pressures, as we've talked about in the past, principally around utilities and staff costs, and obviously also inflationary pressures across the rest of the supply chain as well. We've been able to hold gross margin flat and see some steady progress around EBIT margins as well, through that maintained focus on overheads, interest, and development costs. This is shown probably most clearly visibly through the earnings bridge, showing those key drivers flowing through of earnings, rental growth, offset by those costs and finance costs. As I mentioned, we have been able to manage the inflationary pressures through the rental growth that we've been delivering and been able to pass on those higher costs to both universities and the students who book directly with us. We have tried to balance this, as Richard mentioned, with our position as a responsible landlord, to manage those affordability pressures. We are seeing others being more aggressive in the marketplace, which we think holds us in good stead over the medium term. On utilities, we are fully hedged for the 2023 financial year and 75% hedged for next year. This will be fully hedged by September, when the academic year starts, in line with our policy, and the increase year-on-year does represent about 2% of our rental growth. We'll continue to focus on margin improvement in 2023. The recovery won't be as fast as we previously indicated, given these ongoing pressures, which seem to be lasting longer than we had expected at the start of the year. We continue to expect to manage costs through rental growth to support further margin improvement into next year. NAV has been stable. Valuations, as I mentioned, were up 0.8% in H1. Rental growth has more than offset that outward yield movement of 13 basis points in the first half, which has taken the overall yield movement to 27 basis points since the peak in June 2022. Mike will cover a bit more color on the transactional market shortly. The outward yield movement has been reflected in our development portfolio, with a 4p hit to NAV from that development pipeline. The ongoing investment into fire safety has resulted in a 3 pence impact. We've increased our provision by around GBP 15 million in the first half and made recoveries of GBP 3 million to offset that. That really does allow us to continue to look forward and continue to invest with real confidence into that strong market, which Richard has outlined, whilst also strengthening and maintaining a very strong balance sheet. We will now commit to the two developments that are shown on the slide, Temple Quay in Bristol and Meridian Square in Stratford. These developments are in two of our strongest cities, in Bristol and London. They will be let to long-standing university partners of ours in those cities on 50% nominations agreements. The development team have worked really hard to increase the returns on those, given the rebase in funding costs and our own return hurdles as a result, and added around 100 basis points to the development yield over the last 12 months on those schemes through land renegotiation, enhanced planning, and enhanced rents through discussions with the universities, allowing us to therefore increase our assumption on the direct-let elements as well. Temple Quay has planning. It's ready to go on site now and will be delivered for 2025. On Meridian, we've completed a full pre-application consultation with the local authority and partners in that area. It is now in planning, and we expect to receive planning before the end of the year, allowing us to buy the site and move into the build phase immediately thereafter. The asset management activities we've talked to you recently about in Manchester, and this year we've got schemes in London, Birmingham, and Edinburgh. We're starting to identify more of those opportunities on some of our sort of older stock, as we've seen rents rebase, and really to invest in those properties, lift the rents, and also make environmental investments into those to ensure we're hitting the EPC and also reducing the energy intensities in those buildings as well. We've identified those schemes, and we'll be gearing up to go onto site over the summer of 2024 and 2025 to deliver those schemes. That will allow us to commit around half of the proceeds in the first 12 months and just under 75% over the two-year period, so a pretty effective use of capital, with the surplus capital being used initially to repay our revolving credit facilities and allow us to save at our marginal cost of debt to ensure that this supports our earnings accretion in 2024. Pro forma LTV will reduce to 25% initially. We are reducing our LTV target to around 30% from the previous range of 30%-35%. We will target net debt to be at the lower end of our 6-7 times range as a result of the placing. We continue to actively manage our balance sheet, something that we've always taken a lot of pride in doing so. We have a portfolio of assets in the market to recycle capital. That will allow us to continue to invest in our portfolio, continue to invest in growth, and that ongoing investment that we want to see in our business. Whilst the public debt markets aren't yet back to where we'd like them to be, or historic levels, the private debt markets do remain supportive, as was seen by the recent facility that we secured with Legal & General for USAF, a seven-year facility at an all-in cost of 5.4%. We also extended our RCF by another year to 2026, at the same terms that had previously been agreed. Our marginal cost of debt is currently about 5.5%-6%, depending on the duration of that debt, and that's what we're using again to benchmark and base our return hurdles on that level. As we flagged at this time last year, we are expecting to see a gradual increase in our cost of debt. We are fixed in under all of our investment debt, so it's that increases and where we're borrowing new money, that we will see the increased rates flow through, and we'll focus on our GBP 300 million refinance of the unsecured bond at the back end of 2024, and we have full hedging in place, forward hedging in place for when we need to refinance that. I'll now hand over to Mike to give you a bit more update on our property activities. Thanks, Joe. Morning, everyone. The first half of the year saw a pickup in investment activity in the student accommodation sector, albeit transaction volumes remained below the historical average. There remains strong investment appetite from private equity and institutional investors, who are attracted to the sector's sustainably growing income returns. Transaction activity is focused on major regional markets where property yields are higher. Given the high reservation levels for this September, deals are now being priced off the rental levels achieved for the 2023-2024 academic year. As Joe said, we're currently in the market with a disposable portfolio of GBP 150 million-GBP 200 million of regional assets, which has attracted a wide range of interest at pricing at or around book value. Our investment valuations increased by 0.8% in the first half. That was driven by rental growth off the back of our strong sales performance. This more than offset the impact of a 13 basis point rise in property yields. We expect to see a growing volume of transaction evidence in the second half based on a healthy pipeline of deal activity. We also expect our valuations to benefit from further rental growth in H2, following completion of the 2023-2024 sales cycle and our sales launch for 2024-2025. Turning the slide, as Joe said, our equity raise has enabled the business to commit to a further two development projects in two of our strongest markets in Bristol and London. Both of the newly committed schemes are expected to be around 50% nominated to university partners on long-term agreements. This provides us with a high degree of income visibility. For Temple Quarter in Bristol, we've confirmed construction costs with one of our framework contractors. We'll go on site in the coming months. At Meridian Square in Stratford, our planning application has been supported by UCL. We expect a decision by the end of the year. In September, we'll open our newest development at Morris House in Nottingham. The asset is located next to the University of Nottingham's Jubilee Campus and will be fully let on opening. Thanks to our strong leasing performance, we've outperformed our original rent expectations, leading to an improvement in the development yield to 8.5%. We're continually looking to improve the customer experience in our new buildings. Morris House will incorporate new design concepts for our communal and outdoor amenity spaces used by our students. The project will also be our most sustainable development to date, thanks to efficient design and use of low-carbon materials. The project will achieve a BREEAM Excellent and EPC-A rating and will reduce embodied carbon by a third compared to benchmark residential developments. Looking further ahead, we've also made good progress at our Lower Parliament Street development in Nottingham city centre, which we now expect to deliver a year earlier than previously planned, in time for the 2024-2025 academic year. Across our GBP 8.5 billion of stabilised and completed properties, there's a significant opportunity to invest in accretive asset management initiatives to improve quality and customer experience. Replacement costs for new student development are now above property values in many of our markets. We believe this will limit new development for the foreseeable future and provides an excellent opportunity to upgrade our buildings into a supply-constrained market. The equity raise will allow us to accelerate our run rate of major refurbishments to around GBP 50 million per year, on which we expect to deliver a yield on cost of over 8%. Planning and delivery risk is relatively low, and we have experience of successfully delivering GBP 75 million of these projects in the past two years. The supply crunch that Richard talked about earlier only increases our conviction in this opportunity. Over the page, we look at these opportunities in more detail. We will deliver three asset management projects in 2023 in London, Edinburgh, and Birmingham for GBP 24 million. These initiatives go above and beyond our usual building maintenance program. They deliver significant enhancements to bedrooms and living areas within apartments and create new and enhanced amenity space for students. We will also use the works as an opportunity to deliver energy efficiency initiatives required for EPC compliance on net zero carbon. The combination of these works delivers returns through improved rents and lower utility costs. We expect the 2023 projects to be fully let this September, delivering a yield on cost of around 9%. Looking ahead, we've also identified a further pipeline of around GBP 140 million of projects for 2024 and 2025 at similar returns. As Richard said, we believe the strength of market conditions creates a multi-year opportunity for new investment in development and asset management. We're making good progress in unlocking a range of new projects. Firstly, we have two secured but uncommitted development schemes in Bristol and Paddington in London, which we plan to deliver, subject to achieving planning approval in 2024. We're also considering a substantial pipeline of longer-term asset management initiatives beyond the GBP 140 million I just spoke about. Over and above those, we also continue to see a healthy flow of new development opportunities at attractive returns, and we are in advanced discussions for a handful of projects in London and prime regional markets. All of these new schemes have the potential for long-term nomination agreements with high-quality universities. As Richard mentioned, we're also seeing increased engagement from universities for strategic partnerships to create new or improved accommodation, which will help unlock the potential of their campuses. We're uniquely placed to secure these opportunities, thanks to our long-standing university relationships, operating platform, and development capabilities. As an example of the flexibility we offer universities, we would be able to relocate students into other buildings in our portfolio in the same city while their beds undergo redevelopment. Taken together, the range of opportunities we're considering is the most exciting we've seen for a number of years, and we expect to make progress in each of these areas in the next 12 months. In build-to-rent, we're also continuing to explore opportunities to increase the scale of our pilots in the sector. We will not increase our capital allocation to build-to-rent in the short term, but would instead look to find any growth through co-investment with institutional investors. This type of structure would enhance our returns through management fees and limit our capital commitments while we develop our understanding of the opportunity in the sector. With that, I'll hand you back to Richard. Great. Thank you, Mike. Just to conclude, before opening up to questions, you know, we are experiencing the strongest market conditions that we've seen for many years. We've got record reservations, record earnings, and the dividend at record levels. We've increased our EPS guidance, as we've said, to the upper end. We're also targeting at least 5% rental growth for the 2024/2025 academic year. We firmly believe that these positive conditions will persist, that sustained supply is a reality, at the same time... sorry, sustained growth, in demand, sorry, was a reality at the same time as reducing supply. Taken together, we think the combination of these opportunities, as Mike has just said, creates the strongest opportunity we've seen for quite some time, and an opportunity set that we believe, as a landlord with purpose, we're particularly well placed to execute on. We're confident that we can continue to deliver sustainable rental growth, that we can continue to deliver sustainable earnings, and grow the overall size of the business in 2024 and beyond. With that, we open up for questions. I think the plan would be that we'll have questions in the room first, then questions on the audio line, and then finally, we've got some questions coming in on the webcast, which Mike will facilitate. We also in the room have Karan Khanna, our Chief Customer Officer, who will be able to answer questions as well. Firstly, any questions in the room? Great. Morning, it's Sam King from Stifel. Thanks very much for the presentation, guys. Two questions from me, please, if I may. The first is just on strategy, and picking up on the points on strategic partnerships with universities. Just interested if you have some more comments in terms of the size of the opportunity in that market, in terms of stock transfers, and reverbs of old stock, and also what that might look like in terms of financial structures. i.e., are you looking at JVs with universities where you split CapEx and then act as asset manager? Are you looking at effectively acquiring assets and then signing a long-term nominations agreement, almost like I said, a leaseback kind of deal? Yep. secondly, in relation to that, in terms of the financial strength of universities, and in terms of how you manage that in relation to covenant risk. Clearly, lots in the press at the moment about the financial health of universities' reliance on international students. Just interested in terms of how you think/manage that when you sign these partnerships or look at new nomination agreements. Yep. Maybe if I take the, sort of, the size of the market, the strength of universities, Joe could pick up the sort of, you know, potential structuring for these opportunities. I mean, in terms of the size of the opportunity, universities own and operate around 300,000 beds across the UK. You know, the whole of the private purpose-built market is around sort of 400,000 beds, it's a very material opportunity. Clearly, all of those beds aren't in the markets that we're operating in. Many of our university partners have accommodation. Many of our partners are really considering whether that's the right thing for them to be doing. The opportunity set, I think, is very material. We are talking to universities that we believe are longstanding, growing universities that will manage any challenge they've got in the short term. The top end, not just Russell Group universities, but those really strong university partners who I really do think will survive any change in international student numbers, any change in domestic demand, any sort of government regulation. I think the universities that we are talking to will continue to grow and to continue to provide a world-class education for domestic and international students. We are therefore confident with those university partners that they've got the sort of the longstanding financial covenants that work in any kind of university partnership transaction. Yeah. I guess I'll start by saying each university is different, and each university has a different set of problems and challenges. What we found has been really successful is working alongside those university partners to help them to answer the exam question, which is: they need some new beds, they may have some existing beds which need refurbishment, they don't have great access to capital. The PFI, PPP model doesn't work in a high interest cost environment. The model which seems to be landing favorably with the universities, is where they contribute an existing asset into a joint venture vehicle with us, so they're not having to put any physical cash into that. We would be able to access capital to invest in that building and upgrade or build new onto their campus. That would be a long-term real estate transaction, whereby there would be an underlying underpin from the nominations agreement as well. That's the model which nobody's doing at the moment, but is really gaining traction with those universities and this complex sort of set of funding criteria. Okay, great. Thanks. Great. Any other questions in the room? Don't think so. Are there any questions on the audio line? If you would like to ask a question on the phone lines, please press star one on your telephone keypad, and please ensure your line is unmuted locally, as you'll be advised when to ask your question. Once again, that's star one if you'd like to ask a question. We currently have no questions on the phone lines. Great. I think we do have some questions on the webcast, which Michael read out for us. If anybody on the audio does want to ask a question, particularly of Karan, that would be great. Great. Thanks, Richard. The first question on the webcast is from Simon Lama, from SDL: What impact have you seen from Brexit on international student numbers? I mean, we anticipated that we would see sort of about a two-thirds decline in the number of EU students coming to the U.K., and I think that is what's transpired. EU students represented about sort of 8% of all students in U.K. higher education. It was sort of slightly higher in our portfolio, around 9%. That is now down to 3%. It's simply a fact that a matter of sort of commercials, those individual students coming to the U.K. used to be able to access a loan from the U.K. government. They now can't access that loan, and they're also treated as international students, so they don't pay GBP 9,250, they pay, you know, whatever the higher international fee is. I do think actually, over the course of the next few years, we'll see EU international student numbers start to recover. For a university, it sort of hasn't been commercially sensible for them in the past, sort of pre-Brexit, to target, let's say, a student in Germany, 'cause they'd have to go to Germany, set up a rep office, you know, do all the marketing, find that student, and they could only charge GBP 9,250, versus they could do that same thing in China and charge, you know, probably materially more. Clearly, with that change, universities are targeting, much more aggressively, Germany, France, Spain, the Nordics, setting up rep offices. I think we will see that recover. I don't think we'll see it recover back up to the sort of 8%-9%, but I do think we'll see growth in EU student demand over the coming years. We have a couple of questions from David Brunston at Aztec. The first question is: With a clear demand for PBSA, how does the new build-to-rent initiative fit within the business strategy? I think as Mike's sort of articulated, you know, the build-to-rent pilot is something we're exploring, 'cause it's something that we, you know, believe could be an interesting opportunity in the medium to longer term. You know, we wanted, with the acquisition of 180 Stratford, to test our operating capability, to see if we could understand the customer base. You know, how do you sell? Actually, that pilot is performing really well. It's sort of outperforming, you know, what we thought in terms of sort of business assumptions. Rental growth is incredibly strong. There's very strong demand. The next step would be to look to expand that pilot, not using our capital, but again, expand our operating understanding. Being very clear that in the short term, our capital will be deployed into students. We think it remains a sensible thing for us to explore, a sensible thing for us to continue to pilot and expand our operational understanding. Absolutely, the priority remains student. The second question from David Brunston, Aztec is: What are the drivers to the increased build cost inflation you're seeing, and what is the outlook? Do you want. I think the build cost inflation of the past two to three years has been driven largely by the sort of energy costs increase. Therefore, cost in materials. There's also been a increase in the labor costs across the construction sector. I think thankfully, we're starting to see that inflation sort of level out now. When we're pricing the contracts, we're certainly seeing a more normalized level of inflation being factored into 2024 and 2025 contracts and their build elements. Encouraging that that's leveling off now. I think we've seen the peak of that build cost inflation. Yeah. The only thing I would add to that is the costs are coming in in line with our underwrites as well. We're able to commit to projects as we have done with the placing, in line with the development returns we're targeting. We have a question from Andres Toome at Green Street: Please, could you split the 7% rental growth for 2023, 2024 between nominations and direct-let beds? As I said, the nomination performance is slightly ahead of our direct-let. The average is 7% with 54% nominations. You're probably talking about nominations being about a percentage point stronger than the average, and direct-let, therefore, around 6%. Some of our direct-let, remember, is in some of our weaker-performing cities. All cities are performing well. We've aligned ourselves to universities. They take our nominations in our stronger markets. That's why we're seeing that differential. I think it's really positive that there could be, with some of the caps and collars in our nominations, a perception that they're a drag in a higher inflationary environment. What we're seeing is that's not the case. It provides absolute certainty. We're delivering good rental growth. We've then got a second question from Andres at Green Street, which is: Could you give an indication of the land price deflation you are seeing from renegotiations with vendors? We've seen on the two schemes where we have renegotiated around 15%-20% reduction in land price in London. We haven't had the opportunity to do that regionally. We'd expect that movement to be less significant. Next question is from Dan at RMS Partners: What percentage of the portfolio is currently EPC-rated C or above, and what is the plan for the section that isn't? By value, 85% of the portfolio is currently EPC-rated or better. We have what we call energy transition plans for every single asset in the portfolio. They're focused on getting every asset to compliant status on the 2027 EPC regs and the 2030 regs. Over and above what we have to do for EPCs, we're also thinking about our net zero carbon objective. That means essentially, across the portfolio as a whole, we need to reduce energy intensity by about 3% per annum. We'll be going into every asset as part of this asset management program that we've discussed today, looking to deliver energy initiatives that help drive those carbon savings. The key point there is, you know, we're investing around GBP 10 million gross each year to deliver those improvements. Our share of that's about GBP 5 million-GBP 6 million. We do receive a very attractive payback on those investments, because we bear the utility costs in our buildings. Actually, we're getting a payback on that sort of GBP 10 million of annual investment of less than 10 years, typically. I think also to add, that that investment is improving technologies, things that we've done consistently across the estate, whether it's air source heat pumps, whether it's heating controls, whether it's sort of LED lighting. The things that are out there can be delivered. We understand how to deliver them. We have a question from Daniela Lungu at First Sentier: Please, could you give more color on the energy hedging? How long in advance is this done, and when would the current fall in energy prices begin to show in your numbers? As I outlined, yeah, we look to forward hedge 12-18 months so that we're effectively locked in for the full academic year by the time that academic year starts. The GBP 710 that we outlined as the cost for 2024, that is effectively the rate at which we'd be acquiring now. We're at that stage where the falling rates have effectively reached what we've locked in at. If we see any further falls, we could see a fall further out for the 2025 academic year, but unlikely for 2024. The next question then is from Bjorn Zietsman at Liberum Capital. "Please, can you comment on how the competitive landscape is evolving? Are you seeing material interest from private equity investors competing in the space? I mean, we did see in the sort of first half of the year, certainly, sort of May, June, an increase in the number of transactions. It was about GBP 1 billion worth of transactions occurring. We saw Blackstone coming back into the market with a couple of acquisitions, KKR as well. You know, very strong interest remains. We have a portfolio in the market at the moment, around GBP 200 million. It's a regional portfolio. We would argue it's not necessarily our strongest performing assets, but it's attracting considerable interest. We've got a significant number of first-round bidders. We'll go through a second-round process, and values are at sort of around book value. I think that sort of demonstrates that there is sort of a enduring appeal for investment assets in the student space. I think there is a particular focus on perhaps regional markets and strong regional markets, perhaps over prime markets in London at the moment, just given where yields are, you know, probably natural. We would expect to see, you know, further appetite and, you know, a whole range of whether private equity or institutional investors are still looking at student and seeing it as very attractive. Great. We have a final question from David Brunson again, Aztec. "A recent report suggested a contribution of GBP 49 billion of revenue to the U.K. economy for international students. If accurate, shouldn't the government be more supportive of the sector rather than hostile? Can you summarize the political climate? Oh, I can see my colleagues getting very nervous now, because there's a political question coming up, but I will not get on my soapbox. Should the government take a lot more interest in international students and be entirely encouraging towards them? Absolutely. Great. Nice, concise answer for a while. Well, well, I know you're getting worried, Mike. I'll leave it as that. No more questions. Great, are there any more questions on the, on the phone line or the audio line? Nope. Thank you. Any final questions in the room? No. Thank you very much, everybody, and sorry, Karen. Cheers. Thank you. Thanks.