Hello, and welcome to the Dalata Hotel Group plc half-year results call. Throughout the call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and afterwards, there'll be a question and answer session. Today, I am pleased to present Dermot Crowley, Carol Phelan, and Shane Casserly. Please begin your meeting. Good morning, thank you, everyone, for listening in. Just to let you know, the slides can be found on a webcast that's running on the website currently. As Mark just said there, I'm Dermot Crowley, CEO, and this morning I'm joined by Carol Phelan, our CFO, and Shane Casserly, our corporate development director, and we'll bring you through the presentation. Firstly, I just wanna say I'm delighted to be announcing such a strong set of results. I think after the last two years of COVID, it's a very positive trading update for you, and the recovery has been much faster than we would've anticipated. I just wanna bring you through the highlights page on slide three. I want to start by talking about our people because really we are now reaping the rewards of protecting our core teams throughout COVID. The hotels have been fully operational since reopening at the start of February. Because we've got experienced people in charge of all our hotels and running our hotels, we have found it easier as well to attract and recruit new people into the company. Then on top of that, we have had a lot of people available to open our new hotels that we did in the first half of this year. Really what I want to say is, if you remember one thing, okay, it is our people who are now delivering exceptional results for us. As I said six months ago, hospitality is all about people, and we really do have great people. If I could just move on to sustainability. We've continued to develop our ESG story, which has been a priority for me as I've taken over as CEO, and Shane's gonna give color on our sustainability journey later in the presentation, and we are making a lot of progress in that area. Inflation is a big challenge for us, and Carol is gonna bring us through a bit more detail on that later on. Now, on the upside, because I like giving some good news early on, we do have a very effective hedge against inflation on two of our major cost lines in terms of interest. Our actual interest rate for the second half of the year is gonna be lower than the first half of the year, because of the gearing of our balance sheet, and we are fixed in our interest rates out to October 2024. Also interestingly, when you look at our lease agreements, our 60% of our rent is fixed beyond 2026 as well, before rent reviews kick in. That's very positive. As I said there, in terms of operating performance, we've recovered faster than we expected. Revenues of EUR 220 million, exceeding where we were in 2019, and really importantly for us, free cash flow of EUR 56.6 million, which is 25% higher than 2019, which was a record for the group at the time. If I look at our balance sheet, you know, we use the word robust, and it is. Hotel assets of EUR 1.3 billion. Net debt to EBITDA, as measured for our banking covenants, of 1.9x, and our net debt to value of less than 20% at 17%. I think you'll agree, an exceptionally strong balance sheet. If I look at the strength of the recovery, it's continuing into July and August. I'm delighted to say that our group RevPAR was 25% up on the same period in 2019. I suppose where I finish up on this slide, it's been a really busy eight months. Very good performance, but also very exciting in terms of opening new hotels, where we've opened, I would say, six exceptional hotels in great locations so far in 2022. We've got our first hotel in continental Europe, which will hopefully be a gateway to further opportunities in Europe. I'm gonna hand you over to Carol now. Thank you. Thanks, Dermot, and good morning, everyone. As Dermot said, we're delighted with these results. I will turn to page five. Firstly, I suppose we continue to drive the business forward on all fronts, and this is reflected in the strength of the first half performance. We've grown our revenue, our earnings, and our free cash flow ahead of pre-pandemic levels, and it was driven not only by the incredible recovery in our existing hotels but also the successful further growth in our portfolio. Naturally, there's a very buoyant market backdrop as people look to catch up on their travel and experiences which were curtailed over the last few years. There's significant pent-up demand across all segments. Levels of international travel have substantially returned, and the events-related business has been particularly strong. In addition, there is a considerable amount of hotel rooms out of the Irish market which are being used by the government to house refugees, notably those fleeing the Ukrainian war, and I'll touch on this later with respect to the impact on Dublin in particular. This overall performance was achieved by the strong efforts put in by the teams all across the business to ramp up so quickly after two years of COVID, where we have seen other businesses and industries really struggle. It is also testament to clear-eyed strategic and tactical decisions taken in the expectation of high post-pandemic demand. Dermot's touched on it, but firstly, very early on in COVID, we took the decision to retain our core teams, and the retention of this skill and experience has been absolutely critical in the ramp-up period. Secondly, in anticipation of high demand in early February, we took a decision as senior management group on revenue strategy to confidently hold space and yield on rate. The level of demand and the speed of the ramp-up far exceeded our expectations, but this ensured we were in a great position to yield strongly. Encouragingly, we have also seen a return to more normalized levels of rooms booked for corporate travel in our business as we progress through the period. There is, however, a change in mix and profile. The business we are seeing is more skewed towards non-international corporates. Most U.S. multinational corporates, particularly in Dublin, have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels of travel. The charts on the bottom of this slide really show the story of the last few years. We're up now 10% on revenue on 2019, and 14% on adjusted EBITDA. What a difference in our cash generation, and I'm gonna touch on this in more detail, later. Turning now to page six. In the first six months, we are also really pleased that we have not only delivered an excellent recovery in the existing portfolio, but we have also pushed on with delivering our pipeline and pursuing growth, and these have contributed strongly to the numbers. In 2022 to date, we have added six new hotels to the portfolio, and we're going to open our 50th hotel, the stunning Clayton Glasgow, in October. Within those six hotels, we've also made our first strategic step into continental Europe with the Hotel Nikko Düsseldorf, as Dermot mentioned. Along with the Maldron Glasgow, which we opened last year in August, the hotels that were added have contributed almost EUR 5 million to EBITDA. Their quick ramp up and contribution to our profits is in no small measure due to the fact that these hotels are largely run by management teams internally developed. 57% of our rooms are now outside Dublin. Shane is going to touch later on some of the specifics of one of these new hotels, Clayton Manchester, and draw out some of the elements which have been critical to its success to date. Slide 7 also provides great summary of our position of strength at the end of a period where we've been able to get back to where we like to be, which is trading at full throttle and delivering on those growth ambitions. We continue to play to our operating strengths in our excellent teams, our quality assets, and our ability to launch new hotels, which we've seen in that first half. I'm obviously delighted by the sheer strength of our financial position. With EUR 1.3 billion of quality asset backing on the balance sheet and with very low gearing, again, as Dermot touched on, with net debt to EBITDA after rent of 1.9 times. That is exceptional after what the business has been through. Again, it speaks to the actions that have been taken, calmly and with an eye always to the future over the last 2 years. It leaves us very well placed to execute on our further growth ambitions. I'll get into some further detail now on the financials on slide 9, which sets out the group income statement for the first six months. Relative to the same period in 2001 when the business was only able to trade minimally under restrictions, revenue has increased almost six-fold, which really gives a sense of the type of ramp up we've seen this year. We've delivered adjusted EBITDA of EUR 83 and a half million, with a segment EBITDA margin of 41%. The impact of the earlier restrictions was offset by government grants and subsidies of EUR 12 million, in addition to rate waivers, which were worth EUR 3 million to the group. I'll touch on occupancy levels and average room rates and the part they played in this in a moment. We're also very pleased with this performance, not least with some of the cost inflation which we have seen this year, notably on utilities, and I'll again touch on that in a later slide. In addition, we have seen just over EUR 100 million net gain on our property valuation undertaken by independent external valuers at the end of the period, and this is largely due to the recovery in trade, which impacts their estimated cash flow. The business has lower drawn debt than through the same period last year, which also led to a reduction of EUR 1.7 million in our interest bill. Turning now to slide 10. We set out here some more information on RevPAR across the group. There's some excellent charts and slides on the top of this page, which really set out the recovery over the period and how that compared to 2019 in particular. After the initial impact of restrictions, which started to ease from January into February, levels of occupancy overall have surged and have reached 89% in the July-August period, which is largely back in line with 2019. Average room rates are considerably ahead of 2019, reaching 121% of 2019 levels in the May to August period. This is due to yielding strongly in the periods of high demand and to that tactical early decision to hold space in anticipation of strong recovery. This great rate growth has been extremely important in meeting cost inflation challenges. In a sign of the demand, the Dublin market had 15 compression nights. That's where occupancy exceeds 95% in May-June. Dalata Dublin hotels had 30 nights, as our hotel teams apply their usual intensity to ensure every possible room is sold. Turning now to slide 11, which sets out some of the Dublin supply and dynamics. As I've already mentioned, the biggest impact is the estimated 15% of Dublin hotel room supply that's currently out of the market for government use to support refugees. Unfortunately, there is no line of sight on an end to the current crisis. In fact, it is expected to worsen when student accommodation currently being used by the government is required for returning students in the coming months. Almost 1,800 rooms have come into the market to date in 2022, and another 2,800 are due from now until 2024. Given the challenges of construction inflation and where it sits currently and the wider uncertainty in the backdrop, it is likely that this will slow considerably thereafter. The rooms currently coming into the market are largely in the budget and apart hotel sector, which has been very underserved to date in the Dublin market compared to the UK and Europe. On slide 12, we present a bridge which sets out the, from the first half performance in 2019 to the first half performance in 2022, what exactly has happened. This takes us through the different elements of the growth on that period. The new hotels added since June 2019 have driven the growth. Adding about EUR 25 million of revenues, which converted strongly to almost EUR 6 million of EBITDA, despite most of them only opening through the period. The closure of the Ballsbridge Hotel at the end of last year reduced revenues by over 5% that would've had a lesser impact on EBITDA, given the large variable rent under the short-term lease. Existing hotels remained almost EUR 8 million back in EBITDA despite revenues being ahead by EUR 2.5 million, and the impact of this was offset by government support. On slide 13, we set out some further detail in respect of costs, and I suppose the very strong performance in the first half of the year has come despite considerable cost inflation, and we continue to proactively respond to this across all our outflows. We have set out how we are very fortunate in that our interest and fixed rent payments are largely hedged against the current levels of rising inflation, and Dermot gave a little bit of color of that a moment ago. These represent about 17% of our operational outflows in the first half of 2022. The interest payments on our term debt are fixed until 2024, and our low gearing following the first half performance also means we have dropped to the lowest margin ratchet, a decrease of approximately 140 basis points. This is estimated to save EUR 1.5 million in interest margin payments in the second half of 2022. In addition, over 60% of our rent roll at 30 June is not due for rent review until 2026 or later, and over 90% of our operating leases have rent review caps, which typically limit the inflation in any given year to 3.5%-4%. That is great protection in the current period of exceptional inflation. Shane will touch later on what this means, for example, for our Clayton Manchester Hotel. Over the 3 years since 2019, labor costs have naturally increased. Our hotel payroll has increased by 10% on a like for like basis, and as our largest cost, this has considerable impact, and it reflects the wage increases since then, most notably on minimum and living wages in both our jurisdictions. Naturally, our rate performance has helped mitigate against these and other rising costs. By far, the most significant cost inflation has been on the cost of our energy, like many other companies. Our costs for the first half of the year are over twice the 2019 levels. We do have forward pricing arrangements in place since July for the majority of our expected consumption for the second half of the year. We estimated as of mid-August, our costs will be over 60% higher in the second half of 2022, depending on price moves on our unhedged element. We've worked hard to combat this, and really encouragingly, with our focus on sustainability initiatives, our teams have managed to deliver a 17% decrease in consumption of energy per room sold in the Q2. Food and beverage costs are another large part of our operational costs, and they have seen cost inflation also during the period. With our very strong central procurement team, price increases and very responsive menu management by the whole team, hotel teams, we're very pleased that we've largely maintained that gross profit margin compared to 2019. All of these actions we're taking on the different elements are obviously underpinned by some of the things we hold dear, which is that decentralized model and the experienced teams that we have kept in place throughout the pandemic. The environment though does remain very uncertain with energy cost increases and volatility impacting all businesses and jurisdictions, and we're very pleased with how we've been able to respond to date, but it will be an area that we need to be exceptionally vigilant on over the coming months. Turning now to slide 14. We've delivered very strong cash flows of almost EUR 57 million in the first six months of the year. The bridge presented shows a strong conversion of the EBITDA to operating cash. We did defer almost EUR 11 million in taxes in the early part of the year when COVID-19 restrictions were in place, and these will become payable in early 2023, along with the taxes we deferred in 2020 and 2021. As our hotels added to the portfolio comprise mainly leased hotels, our fixed rent has also increased by just over EUR 10 million, despite the closure of the Ballsbridge Hotel. In the first half of 2022, our refurbishment CapEx is back on 2019 levels of approximately 4% of revenues, and that's due really to the delayed start to spend at the start of the year when restrictions were in place, and some construction sites were still operating under limitations. Last from me, but by no means least, is slide 15, which sets out how our balance sheet stands in a bit more detail at the end of the first half of 2022. As I mentioned earlier, we've a very strong financial position with EUR 1.3 billion of assets, and they're in prime locations. The weighted average terminal capitalization rate in Dublin is 6.8%. Our valuations were increased by external valuers by about 9% on December numbers as trade has returned very strongly. We have low levels of net debt at approximately EUR 200 million, which reduced further after the completion of the sale of the apartments on the Maldron Hotel Merrion Road site for over EUR 40 million in August. Our main commitments over the coming year are the completion of our Maldron Hotel Shoreditch we are building in London and the EUR 37 million repayment of taxes deferred as part of government supports during COVID-19. We've considerable available facilities of almost EUR 290 million. That leads me nicely now to handing over to Shane, who's going to talk about our growth strategy, focus, and ambitions. Thanks, Carol Phelan. Good morning, all. This is Shane here. We're now on slide 17, compelling growth strategy. In terms of our growth strategy, there is no material change. Ireland is not a strategic growth market for us, but as always, we remain interested in attractive opportunities in the large cities. Regional UK is the key strategic growth market for us, and there is one slight evolution on our focus. Currently, in the current environment, we're not targeting opportunities in what we would call the small, smaller, lower RevPAR cities. However, due in no small part to the success we've enjoyed with our current openings, we're more interested in further opportunities in the large cities. For example, Manchester, on which there's a slide later. London, as ever, we remain very interested in opportunities in London, but as ever, it remains very difficult and competitive to secure opportunities in London. In terms of Europe, we are very pleased with the progress to date in Düsseldorf, and we're always assessing other opportunities in Europe, but we are treading carefully at this stage. We are very conscious of retaining our discipline in terms of site selection. In terms of the Dalata competitive advantage, I won't go into too much detail on this slide, but just to highlight, we are definitely seeing the benefit of our behavior during COVID, and this is reflected in our covenant values. Also, the last three points highlight some of the key differentiators for us with some of our competitors. We operate our own hotels with responsibility sitting with the hotel team. We own our own brands. We also develop and fund our own hotels, thus giving us a full understanding of the challenges of the development funding market. Moving on to slide 18. The graph on the left-hand side clearly demonstrates how we are continuing to diversify in terms of our geographical exposure. Including just our committed pipeline, our Dublin room count represents only 40% of our total, compared to 50% of our open rooms in December 2019. Our criteria for new opportunities remains unchanged, and the success of our new openings has only reaffirmed our belief to remain disciplined in this area. We are now on slide 19, Clayton Manchester City Centre. This is a property we opened in January 2022 with 327 bedrooms. It is a living tribute to our development and operating teams, and indeed their partners, that they successfully completed and opened this hotel in such challenging times. The picture on the slide, while impressive, doesn't do it justice. You can see that almost 50% of the management team were developed within Dalata, and it's clear to all of us how the Dalata culture very quickly established itself in the property. There are some occupancy, average room rates, and rental cover stats at the end of the slide. Needless to say, they are well ahead of business plan. Carol touched on earlier how our rental commitments are effectively hedged. 60% of the rent, rents are not scheduled for rent review until 2026 or later, and this hotel represents a perfect example of this. We actually agreed the headline rent on this hotel in early 2017 with the developer. The rent commenced on the opening of the hotel in 2022 and is not scheduled for an index review until 2027. The index review will be subject to our normal cap and collar limitations, inflation limitations that Carol mentioned earlier. If we move on to our sustainability slides, and specifically to slide 22, this is essentially a progress report on our near-term targets we announced earlier this year. I should caveat that at this stage, these results do not include our Düsseldorf hotel. One, waste diversion. We now have contracts in place for all our regions that our waste is not directed to landfill sites. Two, energy-related emissions, Q2 2022 versus Q2 2019. We are currently calculating a 17% reduction in energy consumption. The main drivers in terms of delivering this result were the increased focus from our operating teams and the benefit of our new hotels which have diluted our energy per bedroom lens less. However, I should caveat this is only one quarter versus one quarter, and Q2 2022 was the first full quarter after lockdown. We are still very early days in this journey. Three, food waste reduction. At this stage, we've engaged suppliers in all of our regions to capture food waste details, and we're now able to accurately report our volume of food waste. Four, water consumption. We are close to full installation of water meters and have installed flow restrictors in the bedrooms of two of our hotels. Five, finally, collect supplier carbon submissions. This work is ongoing and it indeed will dovetail nicely into our supplier engagement work and Science Based Targets. Slide 23 now. We certainly do very much aspire to commit to science-based targets, and we have made considerable progress to date. We certainly have a far greater understanding today of science-based targets and the related challenges. The fundamental challenge for us as a growing company is that science-based targets are measured in absolute targets, not on an efficiency basis such as a per room sold or sleeper. When you take into account that we had 44 properties at the end of 2019, and we'll have 50 at the end of this year, you can understand the challenge we face in terms of committing to the 2030 targets. At this stage, we do believe there is a potential pathway for us to commit to the targets in Scope 1 and 2 emissions. We do, however, need to understand far more the investment models required to achieve the reductions within our growing portfolio. Specifically, the Scope 1 targets will be dependent on the large-scale conversion of the hotel's electricity usage. Scope 2 will be very dependent on state authorities delivering on the greening of the grids. Currently, in terms of Scope 3, we believe the best course for us is likely to be to commit to the supplier engagement targets. We expect to be able to conclude on the viability of this by H2 2023. Thank you very much. I'll hand you back to Dermot now. Thank you, Shane, and thank you, Carol. I'm just gonna move on to the outlook on page 24. I suppose when you look at the various segments, as we go into the final part of the year, we're still seeing very strong pent-up demand, in leisure over the summer months, and we see that continuing into September. The very strong events calendar, especially in Ireland, where there was a lockdown was longer and therefore there was more events to catch up, so that looks very positive for the balance of the year. We are very aware, though, from our leisure business, that with inflation at the levels it is currently, that will impact on disposable incomes. We're keeping a very close eye on the potential impact that has on people's spending power and ultimately their ability to stay in hotels. Conferences are only starting to return really in September and as we go into the final quarter. We expect that to be a positive influence on demand. As Carol mentioned previously, although our corporate business as a whole is at similar levels to 2019, we haven't really seen the return of the FDI companies in terms of their travel patterns to pre-COVID levels yet. Again, we'll keep a close eye on that for the balance of the year. In terms of one of the important things in terms of supply, Carol mentioned we do have limited visibility on the supply situation in Ireland because of the unfortunate events in Ukraine. We don't see that normalizing within the next six months. The hotels that we added throughout 2021 and 2022 have continued to perform very well during the summer months, and we're very optimistic for their performance for the balance of the year as well. In summary, in terms of the balance of 2022, I think we can say we're cautiously optimistic on trading for that balance. We're keeping a very close eye, especially on the impact of inflation on our costs. Looking forward, we will continue to be innovative and proactively manage the business. When I talk about innovation, with cost levels rising as much as they are, we are challenging each other to find new and more efficient ways of running our business. As I said previously, we are largely hedged on interest payments until October 2024 and 60% of our fixed rent payments until 2026. What can we do? What can we focus on what we control? Well, we continue to focus on our people, offering them a great place to work. We need to continue to exceed our customer expectations. One of the things I'm particularly pleased about is that we maintained our customer satisfaction levels over the last three months despite significant rises in demand and of a lot of new employees in the business. We will continue, as we have over the last two and a half years, to safeguard our strong financial position. We'll continue to act as a responsible player in the market with sustainable policies on pricing and also policies on sustainability, as Shane has outlined, and a gradual increase in our approach to ESG generally. If I could just move on to the next page. We've put in something which is a bit different to what we had previously, and if I try to explain the reasons for that. At meetings, we often get asked, you know, "Can you help us understand the underlying value of Dalata?" Quite often we've got to help people drag out pieces of information from the financial statements, so we thought it might be helpful if we put this on one page. If I look, first of all, at our owned portfolio, when I look at the net asset value per share, that is just currently at less than EUR 5 per share as at the 30th of June. That is backed up by independent valuations that we carry out of our properties every six months. If we look at our leased portfolio pre-2020, that earned EBITDA after rent of EUR 20 million in 2019, which was the last full year to deliver EBITDA after rent of approximately EUR 15 million when fully operational. As you can see from Shane's slide on Clayton Manchester, these new properties are performing very well for us. Then if we look at the leased pipeline that was in existence at the 30th of June 2022, these five hotels, when they're fully operational, are expected to deliver EBITDA after rent of EUR 10 million. I think hopefully you'll see that beyond the net asset value of EUR 494, there's significant value in our existing leased portfolio, our newly opened leased portfolio, and what we're currently building in our pipeline. I hope you find that helpful in understanding the value of Dalata. Finally, I just want to thank the team. This has been a team effort. It's been the effort of everyone working in the hotels, everyone working at central office. I think over the last six, or sorry, over the last eight months, we've all worked very, very hard to deliver value for our shareholders. I want to offer a sincere thanks to my colleagues for all the efforts they've made during that period. Now I think we'll open up to questions. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please dial zero one on your telephone keypads now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask your question. If you find it's answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial zero two to cancel. There'll be a brief pause now while we register your questions. Okay, there are a few questions coming through. The first is from the line of David Bracken of Goodbody. Please go ahead, your line is open. Morning, guys, and thanks for all the color this morning. I have three questions all relating to energy. Firstly, in terms of the energy hedges that you have entered, could you just confirm what period they're running till? Secondly, thinking into 2023, you know, what would be a sensible level to kind of consider for energy next year? Would it be kind of the H2 run rate annualized or any kind of thought on that? Finally, just on the 17% reduction in energy usage, can you give us any flavor in terms of what drove that and whether there's kind of further you can go in that as well? Thank you. Hi, David. I tell you what, okay, Carol Phelan will take the first two questions, and I'll ask Shane Casserly to come back to you on the third question. Hi. Hi, David. Sorry. In relation to energy, as you set out, we are largely hedged the back end of the year, and some of those hedges or forward purchase agreements extend into quarter one of next year when we would have a large element of the gas hedged and slightly less of electricity. I suppose we're sitting in a good position to go through the winter and have a lot of that current volatility we're seeing over the last few weeks locked out. As to 2023 and what is the sensible level for next year, well, really your guess is as good as mine beyond that period of locked out. It is very difficult to call. You've seen the level we have, which was just almost EUR 13 million the first half of the year, and we were estimating as of mid-August, EUR 21 million for the back end of the year, which has been helped by consumption reduction. But obviously it is a very volatile and uncertain market out there. I do note this week the efforts that are going on at an EU level to try and decouple the electricity costs from gas and the efforts that are being made across the EU and by our own governments, but it's very hard to call what the 2023 numbers will be. I'm gonna hand over to Shane in terms of what we can do and continue to do on energy consumption. Hi, David. In terms of 17%, it's two parts, as I kinda mentioned. One is on the operational side, and it's just every inch by inch, to be honest, and an incredible focus by our operations people in terms of energy efficiency. That's going back to terms of, like, boiler calibration. It's going back to terms of lights calibration. It's in terms of getting metering in, and it's just an incredible focus on making sure that they're as efficient as possible in terms of the day-to-day operations and what energy they're using. Then the other aspect is we are seeing a real benefit on a lower energy per room lettable spaces in terms of our new pipeline. You know, if I offer you two extremes, all of our buildings are, well, Düsseldorf aside, new builds. They have the best technology, the best designs in terms of energy retention. The reality is that none of them have swimming pools. You know, as an aside, it's gonna be very hard to justify building a new swimming pool or building a hotel with a swimming pool in this new world we're in. They would be the two main headlines in terms of what have driven us in Q2 2022 versus Q2 2019. Perfect. Thanks, guys. Very useful. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Colin Grant at Davy. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Thanks very much, and good morning, everybody, and well done on a very strong H1 set of results. Couple of questions. Firstly, just in terms of the shape of recovery, within the corporate travel segment of your business. Leisure, obviously extremely strong. Corporate, a little bit slower. I'm just wondering if you can give us a bit more color on that. You mentioned conferences just starting to come back and the FDI companies you're kinda keeping an eye on, but we're kinda waiting to see. Do you have any indications at this stage of when that might see an acceleration? Is there anything that you think that might drive it, return to work and so on? I'm just trying to get a bit more flavor of what's going on there. I mean, if you could answer that, I'll come on to the second one after. Thanks. Hi, Colin. Dermot here. I'll come back on that too. Yeah, I mean, corporate, our corporate levels Carol mentioned, right, are similar to what they were in 2019, but the mix is completely different, right? The gap really is those foreign direct investment companies. If I look at it, I mean, I did note with interest about 10 days ago, Apple are asking that everyone gets back into the office, three days a week. I do think the return to office is linked to the return to travel as well. We're keeping a very close eye on that. It isn't that there's no travel, right? Certainly in May and June, right, it would've been considerably stronger than what it was in April and May. Now, July and August see a natural tail off in corporate travel in any year. I would be optimistic that we're seeing. Now, some companies are ahead. One or two companies are actually ahead of where they were in 2019, but others vary between 20% of their levels up to about 50% of levels. That is primarily the sort of space you're talking about. Typically, you see travel patterns from the second week in September once you get beyond Labor Day in the U.S. and all kids are back to school. That's what we're waiting to see. Conferences, we you know, we mentioned there was some conferences. We host a number of conferences ourselves in May and June, but in reality, right, they haven't really started to happen yet. We do have some conferences in our own hotels for the balance of this year. We're keeping a very close eye on what's happening in that side as well, that area as well. Great. Thanks, Dermot. Just moving on to the other question I have is really to do with your balance sheet, which has strengthened considerably over the last year due to the cash generation you've had. I'm just wondering how you think about utilizing that balance sheet strength going forward to kind of optionality there in terms of doing things. Do you have any kind of plans in place for anything you want to do there, or you're just keeping a, an open eye for opportunities as they come along? Well, at the moment, Colin, we're keeping an open eye for opportunities, right, okay? Like, any period you go into, right, where there's a lot of, you know, potential stress in the industry, that can in time lead to opportunities arising for us. So we do want the flexibility, you know, in our balance sheet. If I think back when we bought Clayton Hotel City of London for, you know, for EUR 100 million, the equivalent to EUR 100 million, you know, people were asking us at that stage, "Well, what are you gonna do with the cash that's building up on your balance sheet?" That's what we did with it, right? You know, I'm not saying, by the way, don't read into that we've got a Clayton Hotel City of London just around the corner, right? We do like to have that optionality, and I think the next six months are gonna be very challenging for our industry, so we just want to keep a very close eye on what's happening. You know what? It's great to have the options now, right, okay, that our balance sheet are delivering, as we clearly didn't have that at the height of COVID. We're keeping our options open at the moment, Colin. Great. Thanks very much. Thank you. We currently have one-third person in the queue. Just as a reminder to participants, if you do wish to ask a question, please dial zero one now. The next person in the queue is Owen Shirley at Berenberg. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Morning, guys. Thanks very much for taking the questions. I have three, please. The first was just on energy. Perhaps you could talk about if energy costs persist at the kind of levels they are or indeed even higher over the next few years. You're obviously reducing your usage, but what can you do in terms of, I guess, offsetting the cost in other ways? For instance, how many hotels could you viably install solar on? If you did that, how much could that cost and how much of your energy requirements could that ultimately end up covering? The second question just on RevPAR into next year. You sort of cited that a lot of the supply has been taken up by refugees in Ireland. What's your kind of best guess on if that all came back overnight, and it sounds like you don't think that's likely to happen, but if that supply all came back into the market, what's your best guess on what impact that would have on RevPAR, just so we can get a sense of how much it's helping at the moment? The final question, kind of following up on the one on balance sheet optionality, are you seeing any distress in the market yet on the back of energy prices? You mentioned the Clayton Hotel City of London asset. You know, would you be looking at kind of single acquisitions or are there any groups out there of two, three, four, five hotels that you actually think could be attractive at the right price? Yeah, hopefully that's not too many, but thanks for taking the questions. Thanks, Owen. I was just trying to remember those as I got through them. Good morning. I suppose on energy, right, okay, we're doing a lot, right? As Shane said, you know, it's just one quarter where we got that reduction of 17% and we are being helped by our new hotels. Now we're far better positioned than a lot of our competition because the average age for hotels is much younger and we can see that a hotel that's 5 years old is far more efficient than a hotel that's 30 years old, right? So we are well-placed, right? There is no silver bullet. You know, you can talk about solar and everything else, but there's no one action, right, that can significantly reduce your energy other than converting from gas to electricity, and there's a very significant cost with that. Basically our role really is to make sure there's an enormous focus on it and we can cut consumption in each hotel and be as efficient as we can. Actually it's as simple as, to give you an example, one of our new Maldron was operating far more efficiently than one of our other new Maldron, and the guy, head of maintenance in that hotel has gone down to the other hotel to try and explain the sort of things that are working for him. We do have the benefits of scale. We'll have 50 hotels in October and we work together. That is really important. We will continue to look very closely in terms of our hedging strategy. That is just something that Carol and her function work on and will hopefully make sensible decisions as Carol and her team did a couple of months back. In terms of RevPAR, it's a very difficult one, right? We don't see it resolving itself anytime soon. Your views on when the war in Ukraine ends are going to be probably even better informed than mine, okay? That is very much linked to that. Obviously, as that unfolds, and it doesn't unfold overnight, more rooms come into the market. I'm not sure all those rooms will come back into the market. Some of them, right, but the vast majority will come into the market. Don't forget, right, okay, if the war in Ukraine finishes, right, okay, and the refugee situation resolves itself, then likely you would expect energy prices will start falling, so our costs will start falling, but inflation will start falling and your normal demand generators will start increasing again. I don't think it's a fact 15% of the room supply will come back on and we'll have the same levels of demand. I would be delighted if the war in Ukraine finished and those refugees who've come from Ukraine can return home. I think that would be on an overall global basis much better, obviously from a humanitarian perspective, but also actually much better for hotels getting back to a normalized hotel market. Your final question was on the. In terms of options coming up with the current economic distress. Yeah. Is that fair enough, Owen? Is that how you Yes. Exactly. Sorry, Shane here. My short answer was no, but then I had to think about it. I mean, if you look at Düsseldorf in terms of that would have come out of, you know, the reality would have come out of, or would have come available as a result of the COVID distress. I suppose what I would highlight is what we would have mentioned in the presentation. We are very, very disciplined in site selection. We're not out there trying to grow the portfolio by just adding simple hotels. We want to add them, the right hotels in the right locations. That limits us in terms of opportunities. I mean, there, we're always, my team's always having discussions in terms of going concern opportunities, and there's a few discussions ongoing at the moment, but I'm certainly not seeing, you know, either directly or even anecdotally, any kind of wave of opportunities as a result of, let's say, the current economic challenges that any of the geographies are facing. Brilliant. That's really helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Currently there are no further questions lined up from our participants. Okay. Well look, if there are no further questions, again, just wanna thank everyone for listening in today. As I said previously, you know, we are very upbeat about despite all the challenges. We're very enthusiastic. We've come through two and a half years, you know, of COVID, or two years and the last six months, the recovery has been stronger than what we expected. We feel we're in a very good shape financially with a strong balance sheet. Critically, as I said, is we have the teams in place, right? That will, you know what? That'll get over any challenges we have. We've got great teams. We enjoy working together, and we will continue to work for shareholders and all our stakeholders over the next six months and beyond. Thank you for listening and look forward to meeting a number of you on the roadshow and others over the next few months. This now concludes the conference. Thank you all very much for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.