Good morning and welcome to the M Winkworth PLC Interim Results Investor presentation. It's actually a recorded meeting. Attendees will be in listen-only mode. Questions can be submitted at any time by the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your question and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during today's event; however, we'll have the ability to publish responses where appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet Company platform. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to the Executive Management Team, Dominic and Andrew. Good morning to you. Good morning, everyone. I'm Dominic Agace, CEO of Winkworth and Andrew Nicol, the CFO of Winkworth. It's our pleasure to be here again to talk through the first half results of 2025. So without further ado, we'll start the presentation. So really, for those of you, some of you have been on these presentations before, but for those that haven't, we always do a little sort of recap of the model just to sort of give the sort of fundamentals. Winkworth, its franchising model, it was established in 1835, so it's its 190th year, but it didn't franchise until 1981, which was actually the first time an estate agency franchised in the U.K.. So it was a trailblazer in that regard. Today, it stands with 100 U.K. franchise offices, 57 of which are in London, 43 outside of London, and three of which we own and are in London. The model itself grew out before anyone else started franchising. As a result, it grew from London outwards. That, in essence, is its defining characteristic to a large extent. It has a network of 57 offices that grew at a time when it was affordable to grow offices as independent businesses across London. The network, therefore, grows in areas that affiliate with London. Particularly, you look at markets, the obvious ones being the commuter belt, where people, when they come to sell their house, look to use an agent that has access to London buyers. That's what we provide an independent business to allow them to attract better clients and properties to sell. So that very much will shape this. We also shape our market positioning. Obviously, we have been competing in the golden postcodes of London for many years now, and that ensures our positioning as a sort of prime market, mid to upper family house market agency. The model itself, we charge 8% royalty on gross revenues. If you took the, there are, as we're very old, additional fees that have been brought on as things evolve. So, for example, the internet. If you put all those additional fixed fees, which are monthly fixed costs, onto the 8%, then it equates to 11% of the average turnover of a franchise office. We do not take leases. The leases are held by franchisees, and therefore we have a low fixed cost space. We have options should we require to take over those leases. Our aspiration as a business is to provide a platform that enables an independent estate agency to operate in the top three of its marketplace. That is, I suppose, a marriage of the investment we make into our platform and being able to find the talented operators that can operate at that level. In essence, we believe in growing by backing talented individuals and bringing them into our business, so on that note, onto the slide of operational overview of H1. Business was very strong in the first half. Network sales were 26% up. We had this growth in lettings. We were the largest sales agent in our operating area. We opened two new offices. We refranchised two offices, which is an important part of us, is bringing in new talent where those might be looking to retire and re-energizing parts of our network. We made a significant investment into Prime Central London to follow the acquisition of a talented operator into our Knightsbridge office last year. We increased our investment in consultancy to support systems development to ensure that we're evolving the platform as we go to support these operators and make sure the sort of top three ambition can be realized. So on that, I suppose Andrew can talk you through the numbers. Thanks, Dominic. In terms of the network revenue, as Dominic said, it was a strong performance in H1. Network revenue was up 15% to GBP 32 million in H1. Within that, the network lettings revenue increased by 3% to GBP 15.1 million. The real driver behind the growth was, though, the sales side, which grew by 27% to GBP 16.9 million. That increase in sales revenue drove the sales lettings split to reverse from last year, and in H1 was 53% sales, 47% lettings. In terms of our revenue, our revenue of GBP 5.2 million was up 1% on last H1. Two elements to that. The owned offices were up 11% to GBP 1.67 million. And within the franchising business, the growth, the strong growth in sales and lettings was offset by timing differences on revenues booked on new or resold franchise agreements, in particular the ongoing proceeds from the sale of the Kennington Lettings business that happened in 2023. The cost of sales were down slightly due to the change in split commissions on one of the equity offices. The admin expenses were up by just under GBP 400,000 in the half, as Dominic said, a combination of one-off fees. So we put GBP 100,000 into Prime Central London marketing and the new Knightsbridge franchisee. We had a head office move that with move costs and double rent for a month or so cost us GBP 70,000, and we put GBP 50,000 into consultancy work to help build our systems. Overall, the cost went up, as I say, by just under GBP 400,000. The profit before tax in H1 was GBP 0.83 million, which was down 19% on H1 last year. In terms of the owned offices, they were profitable in H1, and we'll come into more detail on that as we go through the presentation. Cash at the end of June was GBP 3.86 million versus GBP 4.12 million in H1 2024. We declared dividends per ordinary share of GBP 0.066 in the half versus GBP 0.06 per share in H1 2024. Okay, the operationals. We started to break down the sales and lettings performance of the business in the first half with the various regions, I suppose, as we them. Central London, Outer London, and the country market outside of London. As you can see, they all grew pretty healthily as effectively we had some momentum from Q4 last year based on the end of fiscal tightening and the sort of lowering of mortgage rates, encouraging people to transact, as well as a change in Stamp Duty in April, which encouraged people to transact more quickly in order to beat that time frame. I suppose it's interesting to note the different regions. The strong region, which is the majority of our business in terms of the highest growth, Outer London. This is a needs-based market with families. There are lots more properties available at the moment where families are reorganizing their lives, come out of a period of increased costs, and perhaps back on school fees. All these things feed into reasons why people would like to transact at the moment. You can see that in the kind of buoyancy Outer London. The country market is slightly lagging others. In large part, there was a significant growth after COVID and the rush to the country, and that is sort of being digested. That sort of 20% price increases are now coming off somewhat, and therefore there's lesser activity. I think the thing to note on this also is there is the sort of overhang of the market is divided with the higher end of the market has more uncertainty in it. That is for that is meant traditionally those houses the higher end have sort of been used for because there's a higher cost budget to rein in and because of the concern around taxation on some of these larger properties and the wealthier, particularly in London, we're seeing them more sticky than previously. So it's led by the sort of middle market rather than the higher end. Well, lettings revenue, what was great results to see here was it broadly reflects activity where people are buying. Obviously, they're not letting and vice versa. And we have higher growth rates in the country because we have newer offices. So the sort of maturity of London means there's slightly lower natural growth in lettings. There's also, I suppose, one would say a few more landlords exiting because of the cost of increased interest rates. The great thing to see here is the mix of our lettings revenues, the revenue for letting a property has reduced by 4% in the first half. That in itself is not fantastic. We look at the management income, and that's grown by 10%. What you're seeing is a net increase of 3% of our lettings and management business, which will sort of make for the best ever H1 we've had because where there might be some landlords exiting the sector, we are managing more properties and offering that service to our existing landlords, and therefore the net effect is greater than 3%. Moving on to the breakdown by region, we sort of talked about this slightly already, but it shows this is Outer London, our stronghold, I suppose, for Winkworth, where we've been there many years. We're deeply embedded, and it delivers a large proportion of our income. So they say broadly with similar margins. We do feel there is a moment where central London and Wimbledon grew significantly. We made the effort to invest in individuals. That obviously takes time, but we see that growing a sector of the chart. It just needs a bit of a break on political news. On the lettings and sales splits, you can see that it's swung in favor of sales. But as I said in the previous slide, that's still lettings still grew by 3%. So it's not from lettings not growing. It's just that as cost of finance reduced and people wanted to get on with their transacting, we saw sales grow at a faster rate. The sales by demand, this is sort of further breakdown, which I always think is interesting because it's the number of people registering to buy a property. So number of buyers per property for sale. And on the right is the number of tenants per property to let. In effect, if the prices were going up, you'd see more people registering to buy per property for sale. What you're seeing is kind of that a lot of properties on the market. I think there are 45% more properties than there were three years ago on the market. To put that in context, that's still 50% less than there were in 2009. It's been a lower volume market for many years, and it kind of shows where potential volume headroom is. What it also shows is that what we're saying really, which is there is, it's not price growth, but what there is, is there is a desire to transact, and that's driven by, say, we've had a period of far higher cost. People may have spent on their doing up the house. They may be coming off fixed mortgages. They may find all sorts of things that mean that perhaps they either downscale or people have reasons to transact, and obviously, our business is driven by transactions rather than price increases. On the letting side, it's been, there's a tightening of supply, and we should talk about the fact that we're managing more, which is offsetting a tightening of supply in terms of reduction of landlords. I think ultimately, we've seen a significant growth in rents. Post-COVID, a lot of mass movement, and now it's settling down, and it will track wage inflation plus one, which it always historically does because ultimately, rents can only, there's an affordability ceiling to them. But clearly, there are issues in this market where there is not the same number of new buy-to-let landlords coming in as they have seen previously. In terms of our dividends, this chart shows the progressive nature of the dividends we pay. We pay our dividends quarterly, and we would look to continue paying a progressive dividend. Circumstances, trading conditions, etc., allowing. So we move on to drivers of growth to remind everyone of where we, how we look to move business forward. As I said, ultimately, overriding all of this, it is this kind of belief in finding the right individual and investing in them. That's a very rich vision. And then this breaks down into four parts of our business. So the new franchising part, which is new people coming to our franchising, offices under the Winkworth system and brand, assisted acquisition, where we're supporting talented people either buy existing Winkworth franchises if they don't quite have the money or buy other estate agency businesses to add to their own portfolio. So that would be an example, sort of letting portfolios and the like. Portfolio management would be looking at where some of our offices may be looking to being there for a long time, looking to exit, and making sure we can find the best possible people for that sort of opportunity. That, for the one moment, is a big opportunity to make sure that every time a business sells, the next person in is even better and it goes forward, and then own businesses, which is the sort of final part, which is clearly there are some opportunities out there that we look at that we have the perfect person for and they can't afford it, or perhaps they're at a position in life where they don't quite want to take the risk. And so we would look at owning that business and their building estate and eventually buying it off us in due course as a way of getting this talent into the network. So on the franchising territory, sort of the new franchising ebb and flow. We've opened three so far this year. One, hopefully two further new offices set for the remainder of the year, sort of five for the year. We have resold two offices and with a further four to come. So approximately 11 sort of new franchise, new people coming into our business this year, which we feel will be able to move forward, move our business forward. Interesting enough, eight of those 11 are related to London. We see this positive because I suppose London has, I think, the highest potential in terms of revenue per area due to the value of the properties and the sort of mix of those properties, flats and houses, and the churn because obviously it is a relatively young marketplace where people are moving up through their lives and buying and selling properties along the way. That leads to the other part, which we always try and do a slide of introducing some people, characters in the network. The full year will do a slide on the broader, hopefully compounding effect of all these investments in people. The half-year part, we'll talk about Neil. Neil was a franchisee at St John's Wood, very experienced agent. He bought it. It's always been a very good office for us, St John's Wood, but he's got a very big territory as part of the franchise with Grantley's exclusive territories in it with a very old business. This territory covered, for those of you who know, Maida Vale, West Hampstead, Belsize Park, all within this area and obviously huge potential to develop for Winkworth and generate more fees. So with his enthusiasm, we have supported him to open further offices, second office in Maida Vale 2021, West Hampstead 2023, Belsize Park beginning of this year, and in that time, the net result is not any more offices, but an increase in revenue of 101%, 100%, which is fantastic. It's exactly what we want to be doing is good people backing them, developing the opportunities. These areas have great brand awareness because they're already sort of cheek by jowl with Winkworth, and we already have data in the area of clients we can approach, so they're sort of easier wins in many ways, then we move to the owned businesses and profit revenue. Let's say we sort of Pimlico was the most recent in 2023. So sort of very early days, it's sort of on its trajectory of a sort of hopefully three-year term to get to sort of maturity. The revenue is growing out of the profits. As time comes, we will look to potentially exit one of these to management and then due course at the right time, add an exit and kind of continue to use it as a tool to bring talent in and obviously have the benefit of income over and above 8% from areas that we've assessed and analyzed as having significant potential uplift for Winkworth. So moving to operating area and performance. This is just to say hopefully that the combination of the strategy and the people within the business are delivering. It's a fantastic concept really to have people owning their own business within a network where they get the benefits of that network, but have the drive and ambition to reach their own heights. As a result, they also are very efficient. They are telling their clients they're long-term in their areas and they're telling clients what they need to be told in order to sell the house at the best possible value. Therefore, we're number one at converting new instructions, new listings to sell property to sold across our area, so sold subject to contract, I should say, and then beyond that, we're number one from agreeing that sale to getting it to exchange, so I think it shows the efficiency of having good people running these businesses. That's all part of building the goodwill of the name because people have good experiences and they're getting their sales through them and it's not falling through at the same rate as perhaps others. Then we go into this revolution. We've talked a lot about people and this part really, I suppose, is to reflect that the bit, we are trying to, if we go to the next slide, I think, we are investing in our capabilities. We want to make sure we pick our routes through it where we respect the role of the individual and the importance they have and the value they have. We want to do things that support them rather than take away from what we believe is important, which is a personal experience for clients. These are just examples really. Say MyWinkworth sort of effectively where people can go to the section of the website and follow their transaction proceeding through the process. That's one idea. One concept is that this comes through there, and the other one is just simple use of an example. We're looking at AI solutions just where they can obviously take notes on the phone calls and that means the whole data quality of the whole network will improve significantly by having that functionality, so really sort of practical use of it, and next slide we just talk about another area, simple sort of design, so Winkworth Hub and bringing all that together so that we give better support to our franchisees in terms of all the information they need and regulation increases, we can provide more support through this. We can give the sort of greater connectivity for those individuals by having it as a space where they can communicate and ideas can be shared. And we hope that it's a tool that we've had, but this is a vast improvement set forward as we always try and do to allow people to benefit and then ultimately to run better businesses that generate more money. So then I suppose the next one is just to talk about the long-standing Winkworth website, which I believe was maybe the first estate agency to have a website in 1992. So it's been around a while. This is, I suppose, the engine room of the franchise network ultimately. It increasingly delivers the leads, the all-important leads to value property, which is the sort of lifeblood of an estate agency office. If you look at this in around 100 offices in the first half, it's delivering around 40 valuations per office. So on that basis, it is more than paying its way for the value for the 8% royalty fee that we charge for a franchisee to be part of Winkworth. So looking back and looking ahead, we sort of like to check in where we are. I mean, it's a strong first half in line with our expectations. We've continued really to, as we do continue through always to execute plan of bringing in new talent, and we've sort of accelerated our investment in some of that talent in recent times, and are comfortable continuing to do that because we can see that this just gives us our forward pipeline of growth. We're open to new offices. We refranchise two. We've got net cash generating operational activities doubled to GBP 0.96 million. And we increased the dividend for the year by 10%. So going forward, and these are very much, some of these are ongoing, obviously ongoing, have been ongoing for a while, aspirations to aim to be the first option for estate agents to wishing to set up their own business operating in prime markets. That's our, I suppose, that's another way of explaining the sort of top three strategy we have of building something that is best in class or top three within their areas. We do that just to remind everyone because we think that's not only, that's where there's durability in the market. There's always enough transactions if you're in the top three to ensure that you can run a profitable business in all markets. So we feel that's a sustainable goal for our franchise network, which is obviously made up of independent businesses that are long-term and, in many cases, only family-held. We continue to evolve this menu to attract new franchisees and work out ways to grow new sites, but also within existing territories and improve existing offices. We have the continued investment in digital. We remain a business that is led by people and guided by available talent. And that feeds into all the things we do. We target new equity participation businesses with key talent in key areas where that's available. We see further growth in the majority-owned businesses. And we have a strong balance sheet. And obviously, we'll always look to pay a progressive dividend as we go forward. I think that's the presentation. So thank you for listening. Fantastic. Thank you very much indeed for the presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, do please continue to submit your questions just using that Q&A tab situated in the right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the team take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that the recording of the presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Let me just pop your cameras up, guys. Bear with me one second. There we go. As you can see, we've received a number of questions throughout today's presentation, also pre-submitted. If I may, just ask you to click on that Q&A tab where appropriate to do so. Just read out the question, give your response, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Great. So the first question is, Winkworth Wimbledon recently closed. There is a debt to Winkworth. Does this have an impact on outstanding loans or provisions for Winkworth Franchising Limited? And the answer is, whilst the conference comments in full, that it doesn't have an impact, there are no loans from us to that franchise. So there is no sort of need for any provisions in regard to any money's due. So another pre-submitted question. What interest rate are you able to obtain on your cash balance? At the moment, we're getting just over 4%. That's down slightly from the start of the year. That's on the money as we have in the money market or through Treasury bills. Excuse me, Build to Rent. How do you see this impacting the market versus private landlords who exit? Does it matter make a large concentration of clients' properties? I think obviously there is a big push for Build to Rent. It is a long way off covering the market and we're a long way away from covering the market, and so I think there's private landlords that need it. Also, I think the sort of real thing is private landlords, it is a great investment. The issue that's happened over the years is that the debt too, if you have a buy-to-let property, having debt has made less sense. So you have less debt now. But clearly, if you can afford a buy-to-let property for your pension pot, then it's a fantastic asset. So I think that will endure. Question. Today's results referred to the ongoing proceeds from the change in the sale. Can management outline the scale of these proceeds and when they were recognized? So this relates to the successful High Court action we took to change one of our franchisees. It resulted in us getting the Pimlico office, which is one of our owned offices, and also in the acquisition of the Kennington Lettings business, which we sold to the Kennington Sales franchisee. He paid GBP 500,000 upfront, GBP 100,000 in 2023, GBP 400,000 in 2024. And then there are three subsequent tranches of GBP 100,000 each in this year, 2026 and 2027, assuming that various performance targets are met and the 2025 one was duly paid over earlier on in the year. Great. Next question for me. All franchisees seem to pay a flat 8% or commissions, but what flexibility is there on that 8%? The very best agents might become more attractive to Winkworth on a percentage lower than 8%. And you actually generate more income to Winkworth overall than a less talented agent on 8% due to much greater commission values. It's a very good question. I think we have been set in stone that from 1981. So we would rather invest in that talented individual and maintain our fee structure because obviously we believe that fee structure supports the evolution of the systems we need to support the agent. So rather than sort of go down that spiral, we would rather put our money to helping that agent acquire Winkworth's office in the first place or another office outside of Winkworth. So I suppose that's our mindset on that question. There's a question from James C. Oh, yeah. Sorry. How do you balance franchise autonomy with maintaining brand consistency and quality across the network? So that is a life's work of running franchise organization there. Ultimately, the best way is to get the right person in the first place. Once they're in, you've got a good quality person who believes in the same standards and values as you, then you're off to a winning start. Beyond that, there is a huge investment and number of people involved in ensuring that we do continue to, I suppose, respect, but monitor the standards offered by Winkworth offices and support them. We try and do it as a supportive basis rather than a sort of school mastery basis because we respect them as individuals and business owners. But we also need to ensure that no one lets down another one. So we try and be very, as the business deserves, mature in our conversations about it. And hopefully, we've achieved that today. Final question. On the interim dividend, when will it be paid? Will dividends be paid quarterly still? Yes, we will always be looking to pay quarterly dividends. I think the next one is due to be announced in mid-October for the Q2 dividend. Answers that one. Great. I think those are all the questions. So thank you, everyone, for those. I think that's covered for each one presentation. Thanks very much, everybody. Thank you very much indeed for taking those questions, you can. Of course, the company can review all further questions that are submitted and publish responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Dominic, perhaps just before redirecting investors to give their feedback, just if you did have any closing comments, otherwise I'll wrap up. I suppose there's a few things, but accessing the talented people is the opportunity. It's kind of like that is the bit that we believe will shape our growth and where we can't access them that we're limited. So as a business, we believe in that sincerely, and that's the number one pursuit. Fantastic. Dominic Agace, thanks indeed for updating investors today. We're asking investors not to close the session; you should be automatically redirected to provide your feedback. So the team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few minutes to complete and is greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of M Winkworth PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's.