Good morning, welcome to Victorian Plumbing's half year results, the period up to March 2024. Presenting today is myself, Mark Radcliffe, the CEO, and Dan Barton, CFO. Hand over to Dan to get a start on the financials. Perfect. Welcome, everyone. So from a top-line perspective to start, it's a continuation really of the themes that we reported in November, with continued order growth of 2%, offset by a reduced AOV decline, and that leaves revenue flat on a like-for-like basis when adjusted for Easter timings. Consumers shifting to our own brand, together with reduced shipping and stable FX, has resulted in continued gross margin power up from 46% to 50% year-over-year. And these dynamics have resulted in an increase in adjusted EBITDA of 33%, which of course, at Victorian Plumbing, with our cash generation, is mirrored in our free cash flow. So taking a closer look at revenue, one of the things we can observe is the growth in our trade offering, which now makes up 22% of the group's overall revenue. The other point to note is total order growth of 2% is a really strong performance against an unchanged but still challenging backdrop, and really is further evidence of the strength of our market-leading proposition and market share gains. Depending on the source of the big ticket RMI market information set you use, this market's down between 6% and 15%, so to deliver flat revenue and order volume growth when adjusted for Easter is outperformance we can be really proud of, against this market. Our recent focus on our trade offering is paying dividends with a return to high single-digit growth following a subdued second half in FY 2023. Growth is pleasingly driven by order volume and stable AOVs, with investment in our app, designed with the tradesperson in mind, but not to alienate consumers, together with investment in our dedicated trade team, all culminating in healthy returns and excitement builds with dedicated marketing to follow soon. A reminder that we are under indexed in trade, with a 50/50 split between consumer and trade in the market, leaving plenty of future growth to go for, all of which powered up once we get into our new shed. Victorian Plumbing's unique own brand mix, now standing at 79% of our overall revenue, sets us apart from other e-commerce businesses and talks to our strategic positioning to always put our customers first, with quality product at affordable prices and our excellent Trustpilot scores, which have improved again, driving this success. You'll see from the graphs on the right, that both the own brand and third-party brand margin has increased, and that's driven primarily from improved shipping rates. So expansion categories. So despite being limited by space, we have still grown our expansion categories by 19% with our own in-house designed brand, Stonehouse Studio. This, this range is performing particularly well during the period, and it's really exciting. One of the themes you'll hear Mark and I talk about a lot is the excitement around unlocking the growth levers and potential in the new shed, and this is an area, of course, which, which we're set to do. So pleasing return in the period. So to gross profit. The graph on the left shows the absolute and margin growth of 8%, and four percentage points, respectively. The graph to the right, I just wanted to give it some perspective, shows the margin at the record highs and now exceeding the COVID peak. So while we're in this challenging, in inverted commas, environment, it is a market that presents opportunity for us, and I think it really demonstrates the strength and resilience of the group's business model. You know, I am lucky as a CFO that this business can deliver the profit irrespective of market conditions because of that business model and that hedge it has in its own brand. So very exciting, as we look forward. Online marketing spend remains stable at GBP 38.6 million or circa 26.5%, and that's against the backdrop of CPC inflation. You can see the continued investment year-over-year in our brand spend, which Mark will extol the virtues of, shortly, but is an important feature of the business going forward. CAC remains stable at GBP 88 per order. So to underlying costs. So some temporary financial frustration now, with 10% increase to National Living Wage, and slightly less efficient ways of working in our existing infrastructure.... kind of gives rise to 12% growth in people cost. Now, whilst the National Living Wage dynamics are outside our control, remember, we are looking forward to the scalability improvement that we'll see once we're operating from our new DC. and so whilst this is a temporary frustration, I do look forward to the future in which we can start to show the benefits of our investment, and you can kinda see that come through. The transformation to our warehouse infrastructure has given rise to an expansion of our FTE, so we're well underway with that. We'll talk to that later. And that's driven the FTE increase of 80 heads, you can see there, is largely as a result of making sure that transition is done properly. All those costs are baked into underlying costs. None of them are exceptionalized, so should see some return fairly quickly once live. So EBITDA increases by 33% or GBP 3.3 million, to GBP 13.2 million, which represents a 9% margin, which is up two percentage points, and on the trajectory towards double-digit, as we've set out before. The bridge to the right really shows the impact of the shift to own brand and shipping and cost of sales in terms of, the EBITDA margin. That's offset in part by branding, brand investment. But that, that's important because continuing to invest in your brand every year, year-over-year, consistently is, is important for future return, and some of the people dynamics which we've talked to, which we look forward to reducing in the future. So in terms of EBIT, in terms of adjusted PBT now, EBITDA progression flows through to adjusted PBT. You'll see some interest received on the cash we held on the balance sheet, offset, offsetting the depreciation and amortization growth, largely as a function of the investments we've made in our dev tech team, that Mark will talk to the benefits of shortly. 40% growth in adjusted PBT translates to 42% growth of adjusted diluted EPS, which has in turn facilitated a step down in the dividend cover and an increase in the interim dividend to GBP 0.0052. This really is a function of remaining confident about hitting our full year expectations. I think it's really important to remember, and something I want to get across, in this market, we've held revenues, we've grown order volume, we've delivered 40% increase in adjusted PBT. We're investing in a new shed with big CapEx outlay for the future to underpin the underlying cost base, and we'll come on to it with Victoria Plum, and we're continuing to increase our dividend. And all of that still results in cash on the balance sheet. So you can see the cash there at the half year, reduced slightly to reflect the free cash flow growth of GBP 8.6 million, with GBP 15 million of outlay for the new warehouse, but ultimately, as I've guided to, we'll still have cash in the business. So for me, that's a fantastic place of strength. The business continues to generate cash returns. We have industry-leading working capital management. Really proud of the team here at Victorian Plumbing All the while enhancing the customer offering, the range and availability, key pillars to the business's success are still in play. So I can't kinda share enough about how happy I am with cash flow, with much more to come. So over now to Mark to discuss some of the investments we've made in this period. Yeah. So as Dan has alluded to in some of his financials there, investing in the future, brand investment has always been a big, you know, a topic for me and an important area. And so, you know, we continue to develop creative campaigns, and we're working on quite a lot at the moment in anticipation of the release of our, you know, space constraints. So we're kind of working ahead, getting ready for that. So we're seizing the opportunity and maximizing that space and taking more market share, you know, with all of the marketing that we have planned and we're working on. We have an ongoing partnership with Bolton Wanderers FC. I'm sure many football fans will have seen their recent coverage with the playoffs for the Championship. It didn't get through, unfortunately, but it was great visibility and a lot of awareness. You know, so more on that sports sponsorship to come in the future. Something we've been learning a lot about with that initial test, if you like. So super excited about that and where that's gonna take us. Continued improving brand awareness up to 61%. You know, that, you know, one of our obsessions is to continue developing Victorian Plumbing as a household name. And, you know, our investment that, again, that Dan's been talking about there just pays off. It is a long-term thing that we just never stop with. So, yeah, it's, you know, an enjoyable part of running the business, I think, watching the development of our brand. The acquisition of Victoria Plum, I think it's a really obvious and intelligent acquisition to make. When you think about the brand and the brand confusion that inevitably exists with the similarities of the name trading opposite each other for 22 years, there's a lot of brand benefit now that we're in control of. So I think that's gonna be helpful going forward in the future, for us to continue taking market share and being in a much stronger position. Moving on to our team, our IT team in particular, you know, there's another area of continued investment and again, long-term visions here. We're working on so many elements of software in the background, and some of them we've spoken about, you know, with maybe the trade app. Another really important area is our warehouse and the warehouse management system, something that we've, you know, been working quite heavily on and investing a lot of time and effort into to make sure that we've got a fully customized, dedicated system that will utilize the space and the new technology that we're introducing into that warehouse. So that's an important part. On the other side, on the IT team is obviously the customer-facing website and the technology we use there. So we're always making improvements. You know, we've got the introduction of AI into a lot of the shopping experience now for the consumer, which is helping us. There's a lot of data that's coming back to us now that's, that enable us to make intelligent changes that benefit, you know, conversion. All these things have actually already started to improve conversion. We've had a 0.6% increase from H1 2023 to 3.4%, which is just a small step in the right direction, and it's starting to show through the work that we're doing. It's starting to have an effect, and so that's really good, and again, just reinstates the importance of this investment, and hopefully, we'll be able to talk more about that in the future as it continues to add to the numbers. Infrastructure, coming back to the warehouse, yeah, it you know, we're really close with that now. I think the fact that, you know, as also again, just repeating what Dan said, you know, we're at a very, very late stage now in the transformation. A lot of the work is done. We're on target for the budget and, you know, the timelines, which I think is really helpful for any anybody who's had any concerns about these projects. I know in the past, other businesses have failed at some point. I think if we were going to fail, we'd probably... something would have aired itself by now, so I think, you know, a real massive congratulations to get this far by the team that we've got working on this. So, you know, to continue to report that we've got no, no problems is good news. You know, and again, you know, the technology that we're introducing there just to improve the customer journey, something that we're missing at the moment, and it's gonna make a big difference to the customer's experience. So super excited in all of these points here. Okay, just moving on to back to the new warehouse. Just a reminder of the benefits. The next day ordering and the cut-off time, something that's been restricting our offering to the customer for as long as I can remember now. The new warehouse is gonna unlock that and allow us to be able to deliver orders more efficiently, and more importantly, we can get them out much later in the day, so I think it'll really benefit trade, or we know it'll really benefit trade, but and the normal consumer. The expansion of all the categories, you know, we speak about this a lot, the expansion categories and how limited we are with this. Obviously, this new space is going to unlock those and allow us to really ramp up the growth, and we're seeing growth already in these categories without us really making any effort, so it's... But that's, when I say not making any effort, we're putting all of the foundations in ex- you know, developing our own brands, and that's what's creating this growth, which is a really good sign about what we can do once we actually, you know, we can push, you know, in our normal way with these. So, you know, again, super excited about that and can't wait to utilize that space for those areas. The efficiency improvements, I mean, for anybody who's seen our operation, existing operations and the five-warehouse setup, it is extremely inefficient. We're constantly moving stock around the different warehouses. You know, the dispatch times are compromised as a result. So the efficiency gains that will materialize once we're operational will be quite, you know, important, I think, and hopefully, again, we'll be able to display those in the numbers in the future. So I mean, just on another point there, really, the opportunity to further improve our ESG credentials, solar panels, electric vehicles, electric forklift trucks are two points, and then we've got improved on-site facilities with a gym and a canteen and various other things. Do you wanna talk about some of the numbers on the warehouse transformation, Dan? Yeah, so as Mark says, remain on time and on budget with our warehouse transformation program. Expecting to be operational from Leyland by the end of the financial year. You can see there, at the half year, we've spent just over half of the fit-out CapEx. As at kind of end of May, we're about two-thirds, kind of four-fifths of the way through that, which kinda talks to the progression that we're making. So really pleased. Just bringing it to life, since last time we updated you in November, most of the racking is now installed and in place, huge amount of steel in 544,000 sq ft. The transition process has begun, so we're now moving stock around, and there's stock in the new site. Some of the slower-moving items, but we're using it for storage as we get the balance right ahead of switching over. And we've kicked off with our people plans for where we'll be in the future. The unlock of space constraints and new ways of working, of course, will help drive further profit margin improvement. That's the key, and to be doing that in this financial period against this backdrop, I think is really good because we'll catch the crest of the wave as consumer sentiment returns. We'll all have our own view on when that happens, but we're laying down those foundations now. The priority, as ever, and I've said it before, but we'll say it all the way through until we're safely in our new home, is prioritizing the customer first. Making sure the experience for them is unchanged, and maintaining the excellent reputation we now have with our customer base. It's really easy in these projects to lose sight of that. I'm really proud of the Victorian Plumbing are operating, in that that's at the forefront of our mind. Double running costs, I think we've got about GBP 4 million in this half, another GBP 4 to come, as we've signaled as part of that safe, safe landing. So all on track and on time, and pleased with that. Okay, so just gonna cover a few more points on the acquisition Victoria Plum. i know it's an important topic and probably a lot of interest in this area. So yeah, as I stated earlier, you know, we've traded, you know, against each other for 22 years, with a confusingly similar brand. It's quite a journey and a story there behind all of that. But, you know, the important thing is now we have acquired the brand, and we control the brand, and it doesn't no longer jeopardize any of our investment in the future. On brand itself, there's no dilution of that investment, and we can ensure that we now take market share and keep market share, with this acquisition. So there's a lot of plans, and, you know, discussions about how we think move things forward in the future. We've engaged with the team there Victoria Plum, and we've brought them in, into our team, which has been, you know, really nice. I think there's been a lot of uncertainty there for a long time, so I think, you know, we've reassured them about, you know, what it means to us in the future. And it's been really nice actually to see the enthusiasm, and I think probably some sort of reassurance that, you know, they've-- they're now partners with somebody who's displayed previously a lot of success, and a lot of focus. So, I think it's now they're looking forward to a period of stability. It's probably the interesting thing, so that's been nice to see over the last week. I mean, this is very early stages that we're talking about this, but, you know, it's super nice actually to be able to give them some reassurances about what it means to be part Victoria Plum. lots of potential here now, enhancing shareholder returns with the potential to drive efficiencies within the group. Accelerating our growth in the core bathroom products and accessories. You know, again, you know, strengthening our position in the market is probably something that, you know, I'm super excited about and continue to invest in the brands. And then we've got the, we're actually learning quite a few things as well by acquisition in this acquisition and some different operating models and different things that they've done, so it's been quite interesting in these early stages. But all in all, I think it makes it, it was a very logical thing to do, and it's now set us up for the future. Again, you know, my view on the long-term benefits of these things, it's, yeah, super proud to have got it, got this over the line and done. You gonna talk to us about some of the numbers on the acquisition? Yeah. So let me give you, quite a lot going on on this slide, but if we look at the green and the central column first. So acquired the business on the seventeenth of May, 2024, for GBP 22.5 million on a cash-free, debt-free, normalized working capital basis. Not expecting much of a difference when the completion accounts come through. Do have circa up to GBP 2.5 million of legal and professional fees and some investment just to get it going and to cover the losses as we've talked to in that business in the short term. Moving to the left-hand side, so the pre-acquisition, let's just take a step back and remind ourselves of Victoria Plum's gone through. So not so long ago, this business had annualized revenues of circa GBP 100 million. Those annualized revenues are down at circa GBP 40 million today. The business was operating with annual losses of GBP 6 million, and those losses, EBITDA terms, today are around GBP 1 million. The ongoing workforce has come down sizably from 400 to around 150 today. The retention of title issues have now been dealt with out of the administration, so picking it up at this point is clean. Suppliers have been re-engaged, and they are moving back to standard Victoria Plum has been operating in an environment in which it's having to pay suppliers up front, and there's obvious opportunity for us there, and there is investment in stock. So we pick up the business with circa GBP 10 million of book value stock. We're obviously ongoing, well underway with fair value and all of that. So Mark said it, but worth reiterating, in terms of post-acquisition, it, it's been just over a week, so you'll forgive us for playing for time, I'm sure. And we are taking the time to understand the business. We are doing that with the management team and the workforce. Very keen to get the proprietary knowledge from those 22 years as part of the decision-making process, and we will develop the right plan for the group, accepting it's been through a lot of change. So we will update you in due course on where those plans get to, alongside the opening of our new DC, and into FY 2025. Of course, it is earnings accretive in FY 25, and, you know, the potential is there for us to drive that further. So hopefully covers off the financial dynamics. And so just before we move to Q&A, I'm gonna take you through our current trading and outlook statement. So current trading first. So customers do continue to seek value. Demand for big ticket discretionary items is unchanged over the course of the last seven weeks. The group has continued to take market share organically by all indicators we monitor. Like-for-like revenue in April and the early part of May has been in line with the trends that we saw in the first half of 2024, with order volume growth continuing, albeit offset by lower AOVs. The decline in AOV has shown some early signs of leveling off, which bodes well, I think, indicative of a slowdown in the shift by consumer, to buy more of our own brand product range. Reminder that, as revenue returns via AOV growth, gross margin softens slightly. If it continues to reduce, gross margin protects us, so important point to note. Additional, comparative shipping cost tailwinds have diminished over recent weeks, so I anticipate a stabilized gross margin. And then outlook, the group will benefit from revenue growth as a result of the further market share gains from the acquisition Victoria Plum, albeit tempered by a continuation of those recent trends we've seen in the market. While the Victoria Plum cost reduction program is finalized, losses from the business will have a marginal impact on group profitability in the second half, and therefore, adjusted EBITDA for the full year is expected to be broadly in line with current consensus. The acquisition is expected to be EPS accretive in FY 25, as I've talked to. So net cash, excluding IFRS 16 accounting at the full year, is expected to be in the range of GBP 5 million-GBP 7 million, which is a reminder, and lastly, to finish with, reflects the impact of the acquisition and the investment in our distribution center. Thanks, Dan. So hopefully that's been informative presentation. Again, just to really finish before we move to Q&A, that, you know, hopefully it's a good sign that, well, we continue to invest in the business, the acquisition, the warehouse, our technology, this is how we work. I've always spoken about how we look to the future, and we don't, you know, we keep the business in a very, very good cash position and yet invest heavily in, in what we want to do long term. I hope some of what we spoke about gives you that impression and, you know, in, sort of instates what, what we are, we're about and what, how we run this business. So thank you, Dan, for all of your points.