Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Dalata Hotel Group PLC half-year results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star, one, and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star, one, and one again. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, CEO, Dermot Crowley. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, and thank you everyone for joining us today. I'm here with Carol Phelan, our CFO, and Shane Casserly, our Corporate Development Director. Carol will bring us through the financial review, while Shane will take us through our development and growth strategy, including a section on sustainability. I will then wrap up at the end with the outlook. If I could turn firstly to page 4. I'm very excited about what we've achieved in the first half of 2023. On taking over as CEO, I asked the management team to focus on a number of key themes, to put our people at the center of everything we do, to look for innovative ways to respond to the challenges we face and exploit the opportunities that arise. I also asked that we put a relentless focus on our customer and to develop our ESG strategy with a particular emphasis on reducing our carbon emissions. In addition to this, we have sought to continue and evolve our growth strategy. The results presented here today show that the focus on these key themes is generating significant value for our shareholders. I will take you through some of the highlights now. We have grown revenues by 29% to EUR 285 million, Adjusted EBITDA by 24% to EUR 103.4 million. I am particularly pleased that we have managed to restore our hotel EBITDA margin back above 2019 levels at 41%, despite the very significant inflationary pressures that we have faced. We put in place innovative initiatives throughout the business that allowed us to become more efficient without compromising the employee or guest experience. Carol will bring you through some of these initiatives later. This focus on innovation has been instrumental in us achieving the 41% margin. The strength of our balance sheet continues to grow, lowly geared with EUR 1.6 billion worth of prime hotel assets. London is one of the world's great cities, and to secure 2 hotels there in the space of a few months was very pleasing to us all. I'm also happy to report that the hotels we added in 2022 exceeded our own projections. As indicated earlier in the year, we will be paying a dividend to our shareholders for the first time since 2019, the amount of which will be EUR 0.04 per share. We remain focused on our people, and it was very encouraging to see our excellent employee engagement score of last year repeated in June of this year. I will go through to our commitment to people on a later slide. The weather events in Europe over the summer show that climate change is real and having an impact on us all. We are committed to becoming more sustainable, and I'm very happy to report that we have reduced our carbon emissions per room sold by 24% versus H1 2019. Shane will describe how seriously we take the impact on the environment of both our existing hotels and those in our growth pipeline. If I could ask you to turn to page five. We are moving away from comparative performance to 2019, but given the COVID restrictions in early 2022, we do want to provide some context and demonstrate how much the business has grown and evolved compared to the pre-COVID period. Revenue in the first half of the year was 41% ahead of 2019. Adjusted EBITDA at EUR 103.4 million was EUR 30 million greater than 2019, and free cash flow has grown by 31% to just under EUR 60 million. Our balance sheet has strengthened further, with net debt to EBITDA after rent now at 1x. As I said earlier, we are committed to growth, and when the current pipeline is completed, we will have over 12,000 rooms in our portfolio. Turning to page six. I would now like to share with you some highlights in how we are clearly creating shareholder value. We delivered EUR 0.5 billion in property value growth since our IPO in 2014. We have created a portfolio of leased hotel, hotel assets that delivered earnings after rent of EUR 80 million in the first half of this year, with further pipeline in place. We are now generating very strong free cash flow, and the strength of our balance sheet gives us considerable firepower to further grow our portfolio. This growth can be achieved through the purchase of hotels like we did in the first half of this year, the development of new hotels, as we are currently doing at Shoreditch, and taking on leases of existing or newly developed hotels, as we have done in the past. Efficient capital allocation is a key objective for us. We will continue to invest the cash we generate into maintaining and improving our existing hotels, to grow the size of our portfolio further, to reward our shareholders through a progressive dividend policy, whilst always maintaining a strong balance sheet. Looking at our current gearing and our ongoing free cash flow, we estimate that we have EUR 0.75 billion to invest in new hotel assets in the medium term. It is truly an exciting time for us all in Dalata. Moving on to page seven. On this slide, we look at what we think makes Dalata different. Our decentralized model ensures that we are agile and fully understand the local markets that we operate within. The hotel's teams are supported by the expertise and experience of those working at our central office. For it all to work, we need quality people. We launched our employer brand in January. We want to tell people about the culture of Dalata and what it's like to work with us. We believe that Dalata is a different way and a better way. We like to empower our people. We look to develop our people through our quick commitment to learning and development. We currently have over 500 people on development programs. We all receive to promotion within. There were 280 internal promotions in the first half of this year alone. We offer attractive benefit packages, and crucially, we treat each other with fairness and respect. In 2022, we received a Bronze Investor in Diversity Award, Brands Investor in Diversity Award, and I'm delighted to report that this year we have received a Silver Award, reflecting our commitment to being an inclusive and diverse organization. We will continue to take care of our people and keep them at the top of our agenda. We pride ourselves on being exceptional hotel operators. Our experienced hotel acquisitions and development team has a very strong record of acquiring and developing hotels. The combination of operational and development experience ensures we will continue to grow our portfolio and deliver value to our shareholders. I will now hand you over to Carol, who will take you through the financial review. Thank you, Dermot, and good morning to everyone listening in today. We've a really good set of results to take you through, so I'll get to it. On slide nine, we set out that H1 2023 has continued to build on the momentum from 2022 and delivered ongoing growth in both the like-for-like hotels and the full year impact and ramp-up effect from the 2022 newly opened hotels. We've delivered a 29% uplift in hotel revenue, equating to EUR 65 million, of which just shy of EUR 25 million is from the full period impact and ramp-up of those seven hotels added in 2022. This translated into almost EUR 20 million of an uplift in Adjusted EBITDA. While the early months of 2022 still had some pandemic disruption, the growth is still considerable, even excluding this, not least given the EUR 15 million of government support and assistance in H1 2022. We have now grown by over 40% in both our revenues and our Adjusted EBITDA since 2019. I am proud of the hotel teams and their central colleagues for taking the cost challenges the inflationary environment has thrown at us and protecting margin. I'm really pleased to report, and Dermot has already mentioned, that the first half margins are actually 1% ahead of first half 2019. I will touch on our setup and our culture and some of the innovation and initiatives in an upcoming slide, which has helped us to achieve this. Our lower average borrowings in the period contributed to lower interest costs. In addition, our margins ratcheted down in line with our significantly lower net debt to EBITDA levels as we returned to the trailing EBITDA levels we would've seen pre-pandemic. Turning now to slide 10. Like-for-like RevPAR performed very strongly, growing by 23% on first half 2022. As I mentioned, some of this was due to the occupancy gap in the first quarter of last year. However, we do continue to see sustained demand across our domestic customers and a very strong ongoing return of international travelers, as evidenced by the strong airport passenger numbers. Our best-in-class revenue teams in the hotels continue to operate our successful yield management and dynamic pricing strategies. In addition, our sales teams have worked exceptionally hard to build new corporate relationships and reprice our corporates from rates negotiated before or during the pandemic. Our growing sustainability credentials, our strong partnership, and our great offering has helped them in achieving this. Average room rates are 10% ahead of 2022 levels. Again, this is due to yielding strongly in periods of high demand and strong rate increases on negotiated contracts. Turning to slide 11, as I mentioned earlier, I'm extremely pleased with our very strong margin performance. Despite increased energy costs and rising wages, we set ambitious targets for ourselves for 2023 to get back to our pre-pandemic margins. In Dalata, we've always prided ourselves on converting our revenues strongly to the bottom line, and the teams rose admirably to this challenge in 2023. Having experienced operational and finance teams operating in a decentralized model is absolutely critical to this achievement. They drive their hotels and are best placed to drive strong local pricing and adopt both centrally developed and their own initiatives to counteract inflation. As one of Dermot's key priorities, there has been a huge emphasis placed on encouraging innovation across Dalata, and the fruit of some of that work and drive has borne out. I'll touch on some examples of this in the next slide. After some higher energy pricing in quarter one, under contracts entered into in July last year, we expect our gas and electricity costs to reduce by about EUR 1 million into the second half of this year. This will also be EUR 5 million lower than the second half of 2022 costs. Our teams continue to drive down consumption per room sold, which is also supporting lower energy costs. As Dermot mentioned, we have achieved a 24% reduction on our Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon emissions per room sold in the first half of 2023, compared to the same period in 2019. This has obviously helped lower costs, too. This has required minimal investment and is driven by focus and changing all of our habits in terms of how we consume and seek to save energy across the business. We have also put in place central resources, including an experienced GM, who is helping marshal and support our teams in their efforts across the group. Margin-wise, Dublin is broadly in line with 2019 at an already very high level of 47%. The Ireland region, at 30%, is 6 percentage points ahead of H1 2019 levels and reflects the level of work that has taken place to drive efficiency, in addition to very strong pricing, particularly in locations which are more impacted by the supply out for government business. The U.K. is 2 percentage points ahead of 2019. Protecting this margin and driving higher revenues means we have delivered over EUR 20 million uplift or 26% on the 2019 EUR 75 million like-for-like hotel first half EBITDA. On slide 12, we've set out some of the initiatives which have been brought to life across the group in 2023 to respond to inflation challenges. Work commenced in earnest on these in 2022, and our hotel teams really embraced these through this year. Firstly, our accommodation efficiency project involves us undertaking a full-time in motion study and challenging our perceptions as to the requirement for the level of service provided. This identified inefficiencies and inconsistencies in the room cleaning process, which had emerged through the pandemic. We retrained our teams to reduce the impact of this. We also introduced QR codes onto our cleaning trolleys to reduce time lost, checking whether rooms were checked out, and also introduced cordless vacuums. This all served to reduce minutes per room cleaned and also enhanced our employee experience, which we could see through our most recent employee survey in the housekeeping department, and it did not impact our customer satisfaction, also measured through our TrustYou scores for this area. Indeed, we tasked ourselves, as Dermot mentioned, at ensuring that our efficiency drive should help offset costs, but should always protect or indeed enhance both our customer and our employee experience. The redesign of our newly opening hotel lobbies has served to reduce the labor requirement and give greater flexibility to our teams. These savings and redesign also provide our development team with a wider array of options when looking at potential new hotel designs. The Dalata signature food range has been well adopted by our hotel teams to enhance our offering, including availability, while reducing the labor requirements in the kitchen, where recruitment of experienced chefs can be more challenging. It also reduced food waste, which is good for our sustainability ambitions. Our customer scores have actually been enhanced in this area, with enhanced consistency and availability of offering. Again, we have provided further flexibility for our employees. I cannot emphasize enough how underpinning the success of all these initiatives is our decentralized model. While it's often led from center in terms of the original concept and development, our experienced hotel teams have taken them and suit their customers and their employees. They have enhanced their use and application to best suit their own hotels, to ensure achievement of the financial benefits while still upholding the customer and employee satisfaction. This is evident in our first half results, which saw both increased margins while increasing productivity and still holding those customer and employee satisfaction scores. Turning to the next slide, we present a bridge from first half 2022 to first half 2023 for our hotel revenues and Adjusted EBITDA. This takes us through the different elements of the growth in that period. The six hotels added during 2022 have contributed to the growth, adding almost EUR 25 million of revenue, which converted strongly to almost EUR 12 million of EBITDA. Like-for-like hotels increased their revenues by just shy of EUR 45 million, driven through closing that occupancy gap that I mentioned earlier from pandemic restrictions in Q1, in addition to ongoing rate growth. EBITDA was ahead by almost EUR 28 million. This was offset by EUR 15 million in government support in 2022, not recurring in 2023. To slide 14, we've delivered strong free cash flows of almost EUR 60 million in the first half of 2023. The growth is lower than the growth in our earnings at 5% up on 2022, due to the benefit of working capital inflows in the first half of last year. As the business ramped up post-full lifting of the pandemic restrictions and as new hotels were opened. Our free cash flow has grown by over 30% since 2019. In addition, using existing facilities, we've refinanced the acquisitions of Maldron Finsbury Park and on the third of July, the acquisition of the now rebranded Clayton London Wall, which is why the cash balance was EUR 114 million at the end of June, when we had the funds in place to close that deal. Our financing, like interest payments and rent payments respectively, are largely hedged for the medium term due to interest rate swaps and rent caps. Indeed, the interest on our term debt of GBP 176 million is fixed at a very attractive 1.3% until October of this year, and an even more attractive rate of 1% until October 2024. Given our net debt to EBITDA levels, we are also at our lowest margin ratchet on our facility. Over 75% of our rent roll at 30 June is not due for rent review until 2026 or later. Over 90% of our operating leases have rent review caps, which typically limit the inflation in any given year to 3.5%-4%. This continues to be a great protection in the current period of inflation. Turning now to slide 15 sets out our balance sheet and the ongoing strength therein. Our balance sheet sits at 11% net debt to value, and the business is generating just over 13% in a normalized return on invested capital. We continue to have a balance sheet backed by EUR 1.6 billion of very high-quality property assets, and I'll touch on those in more detail in a moment. We have low gearing and levels of net debt, approximately just over EUR 156 million. This is up from EUR 108 million at the end of 2022. We generated, as I mentioned in the previous slide, almost EUR 60 million in free cash flow in the first half of 2023, but we completed the acquisition of Maldron Finsbury Park for GBP 44 million pounds and repaid pandemic-era warehouse taxes of EUR 35 million. This net debt was also before our GBP 54 million acquisition of Clayton Hotel London Wall this month, which increased it. Our main commitments over the coming year are the completion of our Maldron Hotel Shoreditch, which we are building in London. As indicated on one of the earlier slides, given our asset backing, which offers both security and optionality and the strength of our ongoing cash flow generation, we will be comfortable operating at leverage of 2x-2.5 x, and spiking to 3x temporarily for the right opportunity. In the medium term, as Dermot mentioned, this means we believe we can grow our property assets by over 50% or 3/4 of a b illion, and continue to maintain our gearing discipline. As with our gearing, we would, as always, remain very disciplined in the opportunities we would look at, and we would seek to create further shareholder value with our acquisitions, as we have done to date. Slide 16 provides a bit more color on our property assets and an additional valuation growth in the first half of this year, about 6% on those like-for-like assets. This growth has been driven by the ongoing strength of the current operational performance and profit growth, which feed into the forecasted cash flows used by the external independent valuers. Given the interest rate environment and its impact on property yields, the weighted average capitalization rate used by the valuers has moved out by almost 1% since 2019. Our property values overall are still up 7% since then, due to the rising profitability. Indeed, EUR 500 million of property value growth has been delivered since the 2014 IPO, as our experienced development and property team sourced attractive deals with the opportunity to create value, which the operational teams delivered through excellent trading. Almost three quarters of our value sits in Dublin and London, two very attractive markets for property ownership, which provide both security and potential for further uplift. Turning to the next slide. Despite some of the headwinds, there are very positive indicators around the market backdrop in both Ireland and the U.K.. Firstly, as we previously set out, 2022 saw the highest ever increase in foreign direct investment employment, with a growth of almost 9% on 2021 into Ireland. Indeed, the Irish economy continues to trade very strongly despite inflation. Both the Irish household disposable income and the savings ratio remain ahead of 2019 levels. Also, as we can see in our numbers and travel, travel and leisure statistics more widely, consumers continue to prioritize travel. Given we trade on two islands, the levels and resilience of air travel have an important impact on our business. I'm encouraged to see that there has been a continued recovery towards pre-pandemic passenger numbers through 2022 and into 2023. Eurocontrol are forecasting flight traffic levels in Ireland to outperform 2019 now in 2023, which is earlier than their previous projections of 2024. Turning now to slide 18, we set out some of the Dublin supply dynamics. The biggest impact, as we've already mentioned, is the estimated 10% Dublin hotel room supply currently out of the market for government use to support refugees. Some of this supply has reentered the market since November last year, when it would've been closer to 13%. Unfortunately, there remains no line of sight on an end to the current crisis, and as we previously committed, we continue to provide rooms across the island of Ireland to the government, about 5%. Almost 3,000 rooms have come into the market in 2022 and to date in 2023 in Dublin. The vast majority of these were aparthotels or budget sectors. About 350 of these were Dalata rooms. Another approximately 750 are due before the end of 2023, and just over 800 in 2024 as new supply normalizes. Given the challenges with construction inflation and the wider uncertainty, it is likely that it will remain at or below these levels for some time. The business continues to be lost to the Dublin market. It has 17 compression nights in quarter two, which is when occupancy is greater than 95%. Dalata had 32 compression nights, which demonstrates the high demand in the city and also our team's intensity around selling every last possible room. The next slide, 19, is an illustration of how our model lease is primed for growth. We are very pleased with the two new assets delivered to date in 2023, which is as a direct result of our discipline in sourcing opportunities through economic cycles. Which is a good point now to hand over to Shane to talk about our development and growth strategy. Thanks, Carol. Good morning, Shane here. We are on slide 21, which is; Ambitious Growth Strategy. In terms of the left-handed slide, it is basically a confirmation of our strategy for geography. The U.K. is our key strategic growth market. In Ireland, we will maintain our market-leading position and assess the most attractive opportunities as they arise. Whilst in Europe, we continue to grow our knowledge and network with a view to establishing the next strategic growth markets. It has been an interesting year in terms of hotel market acquisitions. Cost of debt has gone up considerably. Landlord investment yields have gone up, and indeed, they have little or no appetite for new acquisitions currently. Trade is strong. Capital values have held at least, whilst there has been minimum negative impact on site values. This has obviously led to a reasonably low level of activity, especially in the institutional landlord market. But ironically, by utilizing our balance sheet strength and gearing, our excellent counterparty reputation, our in-house development and acquisition capabilities, we've been able to secure two very exciting assets in the first half of 2023, that were operational in Q3 of 2023. Turning to Slide 22, executing our strategy, you can see the two hotels. Clayton Hotel London Wall and Maldron Hotel Finsbury Park. Addressing Finsbury Park first, this was a close to completed new budget hotel that we were asked to assess, we potentially providing a lease underwrite, which would allow the developer to market to institutional landlords. The attractiveness of Finsbury Park as a potential location for a Maldron was very quickly apparent to us, but we were aware of the lack of appetite for new acquisitions in the institutional landlord market. We explained to the developer that we had the resources to purchase the property ourselves, and believed we were best placed to reposition the hotel from a budget specification to a full four-star property. We secured the property in February, opening as the Maldron Finsbury Park in July, with all 191 bedrooms open for trade by mid-September this month. Or sorry, next month. Apex Hotels, like ourselves, are a well-regarded owner and operator of hotels in the U.K. market, and when they were seeking a potential strategic recalibration of their balance sheet, we were an obvious counterparty to consider, given our operational focus, our available funding, and our well-earned reputation as a counterparty of good repute. We submitted an offer for Apex London Wall in early March of 2023. We had contracts exchanged by early June, and the hotel was operational as Clayton Hotel London Wall in the first week of July. London, as a truly global city, has very high barriers to entry, and a year to secure an opportunity in London is a good year. To have secured two in six months is extraordinary and a testament to the strength of our acquisitions team. Moving to slide 23 now, compelling U.K. acquisitions or U.K. expansions. I must compliment Carol's Investor Relations team on an excellent timeline at the top of the slide. Per my math, represents a near 200% growth in the U.K. portfolio from 2016 to 2024. At this stage, we are very comfortable developing and operating in the large regional cities of the U.K., and then as we and our hotels continue to mature in the markets, we are confident that we'll be able to secure greater market share in these cities. You can see our ambition to add 5,000 further bedrooms in regional U.K. over time. I have discussed London already, but our appetite is certainly not sated. Maldron Shoreditch is scheduled to open mid-2024, and we are certainly open to further opportunities in the London market, be they development or ongoing concerns. Q2 of 2024 will be a very busy period for development and UK operations, with 834 bedrooms scheduled to open between London Shoreditch, Brighton, Liverpool and Manchester. Moving on to slide 24 now, sustainability, science-based targets, initiatives. We confirmed in the last update in February 2023 that we were seeking to engage a consultant to aid us in concluding whether we could commit to science-based targets or not. In terms of macro updates, Dalata sits within the building sector classification of SBTi. The final SBTi building sector guidance is scheduled for Q4 of this year. We appointed the consultants in March, completed detailed models, which included key components of operational, embodied, and Scope 3 carbon, our current committed pipeline, expected future pipelines, large-scale electrification of the current portfolio. We have, with the help of our consultants, identified pathways where we can deliver an SBTi -aligned near-term targets. However, the final guidance is required from SBTi before we know whether we can commit or not. One material item is the direct purchase of new green energy, which would need to be recognized as an applicable target reduction, as accepted within other sector guidance. We would also obviously need to review the final guidance to ensure there are not any other issues which could cause us difficulties. We are now on slide 25, sustainability: committed to decarbonization. Whatever the outcome resulting from the final SBTi guidance, we are on a committed journey to decarbonization. The three boxes in gray on this slide are classified as per the current SBTi draft property sector guidance. Box one, which is in-use operational emissions, we will have a strategy for current compliance for each asset in the portfolio. We are confident that our new build specifications will have zero on-site operational carbon, and whilst early days, we've commenced the process of identifying methods of directly procuring credible green energy. Two, embodied carbon emissions, we are confident that our new build hotels will be within SBTi building sector guidance and within applicable LETI targets. And then three, Scope 3 emissions, we will continue to work with our suppliers, targeting broadly SBTi building sector guidance requirements. On slide 26, sustainability, active progress across the portfolio. Just some updates in terms of tangible progress. Our carbon emissions reductions per room sold versus 2019 is at 24%, which compares very favorably with our 2026 target of 20%. The design is complete for the first transition of one of our existing hotels from carbon plants to air source heat pumps. We are seeking to identify potential partners on the possibility of generating electricity on our properties, and we are assessing plans for the decarbonization of our bus fleets. We will continue to work on identifying and delivering on opportunities to reduce our embodied carbon for new build hotels. And as stated earlier, we're confident that the next generation of our new build, build hotels will have zero on-site carbon. That's it for me now. Over to Dermot. Thank you. Thanks, Shane. Now, if we could switch to page 28 and the outlook. Trading remains strong with group RevPAR in July and August up 5% on a like-for-like basis compared to 2022. The hotels added to portfolio in 2022 continue to exceed expectations, while our two new London hotels are performing well. We continue to see the strong return of international travelers, especially from the U.S. market. Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, there continues to be a large number of hotel rooms in Ireland contracted with government. Unfortunately, there's limited visibility as to when this may change. We continue to focus on our costs. We now expect our energy costs to total EUR 29 million for the full year, compared to EUR 32 million in 2022, and we have fixed prices on 80% of our projected energy consumption until December 2024. Our interest payments are largely hedged until October 2024, and 75% of our rental payments are fixed until 2026. For all these reasons, we are optimistic for the remainder of 2023 and also about our future growth prospects. Finally, we have set out on page 29, a breakdown of the hotels that we operate and the value they generate. At 30 June 2022, the value of our hotel portfolio was EUR 1.6 billion, and the NAV of the balance sheet was EUR 626 per share. If you were to exclude property valuation, property valuers deductions for purchases costs, it would equate to EUR 684 per share. Our owned portfolio generated EUR 145 million EBITDA in the 12 months to June 2023. Looking at our leased hotels, they delivered EBITDA after rent of EUR 18 million in the first half of this year, which represents a rental cover of 1.7x. On top of the hotels in operation at the 30th of June 2022, we expect that our three new owned hotels in London will generate EBITDA of a further EUR 16 million when fully operational. The pipeline of leased hotels is projected to deliver EBITDA after rent of circa EUR 9 million, when fully operational. On top of all that, and as I said earlier, we estimate with the cash flow we are currently generating and our asset-backed, lowly geared balance sheet, we will have firepower of EUR 0.75 billion in the medium term to purchase more hotels. This, together with our track record of securing leases for new and existing hotels, shows that we have the capacity to grow shareholder value further in the future. On that very positive note, I would like to thank you all for listening to us this morning and finish off by thanking all my colleagues across our 52 hotels and in central office. Their commitment and professionalism is the main reason why Carol, Shane, and I can present such a strong set of results to you this morning. As I have said in the past, it is an honor to be their CEO. I might hand back now to the moderator. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Thank you. We'll now take our first question. Please stand by. First question is from the line of Jaina Mistry from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi, everyone. Thanks very much for taking my questions. I've got three, if I may. The first question is around OpEx. I mean, you've been very clear around, gas and electricity costs for this year, and you mentioned that you've hedged 80% of your costs for next year. How are you thinking about the components of OpEx inflation for 2024? And what do your hedge rates imply in terms of the gas and electricity costs and the percentage change for 2024 versus 2023? And then my second question is around potential M&A. I think for the industry, the previous barrier to, to further transactions was the wide bid-ask spread. Are you seeing any narrowing in the bid-ask spread today? And, where, where do you see areas of distress or pockets of value today? Then my last question is around demand for 2024. I mean, you mentioned international demand is coming back very strongly this year. It feels like leisure's above 2019. Are there any areas of pent-up demand left that hasn't come back this year, that you expect to return next year? Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I'll take the last question first, and then I'll pass over to Carol for the OpEx question, and I'll let Shane deal with the M&A question. I suppose when we look at particularly any areas of pent-up demand, I mean, the main market that is only starting to open up is China, which would have a big impact on London in particular, right? And obviously with our two new assets in London and opening up in Shoreditch, that'll be very beneficial to us. Now, we have seen a very strong rebound from North America this year into both Ireland and London. And we have seen at this stage the recovery, obviously the full recovery of leisure from other destinations. I mean, corporate travel has changed. We're definitely seeing far less at the moment from, in Ireland, especially from the large multinationals, but that has been replaced by other business that we've secured in, in corporate demand. So our corporate mix is broadly similar now to what it was in 2019. As to whether that will ever rebound, the multinationals, we're not really sure, because it is normal that travel budgets get cut, in the technology sector when jobs are cut, which we're seeing at the moment. It could well be that people are using Teams and Zoom more, so it could be a permanent reduction. And I think all companies, including ourselves, are focused on sustainability. So the true return of corporate travel is something we still can't be sure of. And is that okay? I might hand you over. If that's okay, I might hand you over to- Yeah, that's very clear. Thank you. Carol? Hi, Jaina. So as regards our operating costs or our OpEx base, obviously, labor costs are the biggest elements of our costs, and the governments in both jurisdictions have indicated that they would be continuing to increase minimum wage rate. So the expectation in Ireland is about 12.7% going into 2024, and the U.K., which will assess its numbers until later in the year, indications are that will be somewhere between 7%-8%. So that's sort of the expectation heading into 2024. As you did mention, energy costs have continued to come back, and we are hedged out to the end of 2024, so that will provide some benefit to our OpEx lines next year to help offset some of that labor inflation. But I suppose the thing in Dalata is we've never accepted going backwards in terms of our margins. We have to find different ways to work around it, and I suppose some of the initiatives I set out earlier on the call have really helped us get back and above 2019 margins this year. My colleagues across the group, I'm sure, will not be shy in innovating their way around some of those increasing costs into next year. Hi, Jaina, Shane here. I suppose in simpler terms, is the bid-ask spread narrowing a little bit? Or is it narrowing a little bit, but not by a huge amount. I suppose what we're seeing is there's, you know, we would certainly feel that there's holders there that have got financing events in 2023 or early into 2024, and that's maybe, I suppose forcing them to revisit their, the values they have or their expectations. And the ability to complete is also key. I mean, we're certainly getting traction because of the strength of our balance sheet and the strength of our gearing model, which are leading to conversations that probably wouldn't have happened in the past, where other bidders are simply not able to demonstrate the ability to raise the necessary funds. And then the fact that we can move quickly has led, let's say, to we're getting more off-market approaches than we would have ever had before. Brilliant. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now take our next question. Please stand by. This is from the line of Dudley Shanley from Goodbody. Please go ahead. Thanks very much, and good morning, everyone. I just have two questions. One is for Carol and one for Shane. First of all, if we think about the kind of cost dynamics and the margin management that has gone on, there's been a lot of innovation. How much more innovation do you think there is still to come through? And I guess in terms of the projects that are ongoing and other projects that are in the pipeline. And then switching to the question for Shane, obviously, you mentioned that the bid-ask spread in terms of hotels is narrowing a little bit, and obviously, finance events and your ability to complete will help you there. But there's also, I guess, development pipeline to be thought about. What's the market for development of hotels like at the moment? Thank you. Okay, Dudley, I might answer your question with regards to the costs and margin management. And as to how much innovation there is still left to go, I would hope quite a bit. I suppose if you think about some of the things we're doing in our new hotels, would speak very encouragingly to how we manage that ongoing management. The redevelopment of the ground floors in our Maldron Finsbury Park hotels, which reduces some of the labor requirements and also increases the flexibility, will mean that we are set up to be able to manage that better as we go forward in our new properties. And also, that will give us learnings that we can take into our existing properties. So there's still quite a bit to that we believe we can do on that. And some of the initiatives that we have brought in this year, through this year, will continue to bear fruit into the back end in this year and into next year. And obviously, pricing still remains part of how you deal with ongoing costs. You know, we have delivered rate growth over the last few years, and we continue to expect to deliver rate growth as we look forward. The reality is we offer a really good service in our hotels. We always prioritize value for money, and that means we attract and retain both our leisure and our corporate guests. So I suppose I would be very hopeful, though the challenges are not insignificant when you look at some of the increases in the labor rates that we'll be seeing heading into 2024. My pass to you, Shane, now on the- If I'm understanding correctly, Dudley, in terms of development market, it has an inherently more risk, so it's gonna be always more sensitive to pricing. And that's one of the benefits of our model, that we're, you know, we can develop, we can acquire, we can lease when needs be, when the market conditions are advantageous to any one of those sectors. So we are like, we are seeing value on the development side, but we're always very, very careful. But, I mean, if you look, I suppose, at Charlemont, which is just down the road from where we're sitting, you know, I think we bought- I'm going from memory here. I think we bought the site for EUR 12 million. Overall development of about EUR 42 million, and then we did a sale and leaseback with Deka at EUR 65 million when the market conditions were correct. And that's a fantastic asset today, sitting, you know, in terms of the rent covers and so on. So if, you know, a developer is going to be more challenged in terms of raising debt than a hotel operator, if they're going concern, because it's inherently got more risk. So there's going to be more value on that development side. That's great. Thanks. Thank you. We'll now take our next question. Please stand by. This is from the line of Paul Ruddy from Davy. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning to all of you. Just two quick questions. The first is on the EUR 750 million target. I think that's a new number. And just some context around that, is there any kind of shift in your kind of view as to whether maybe blocks of assets might be more attractive now, might look like at a group of hotels, or is it still very much kind of single assets on a single asset basis? And is there any kind of broad room targets addition we can think of around that EUR 750 million spent? And the second question then is just on the operational side, just the Irish VAT rate is due, I think, to go up at the start of September. Just maybe how you think that might impact RevPAR in the back end of the year and into next year? Hi, Paul. I'll take those two questions. Yeah, look, I mean, we put color there to try to explain that, you know, with our balance sheet and with the free cash flow we're generating, you know, that we do have a lot of money we can spend. Now, we have a track record of spending that very carefully and efficiently. Like, so if blocks of assets come up, like we were done previously with Moran and Bewley's and with Choice Hotels in Ireland, we certainly, you know, we're very open to doing that, right? But if it's single assets as well, that's what we'll do, or we can actually develop, or as Shane mentioned previously, in the past, we've developed new assets very successfully. I think our biggest skill, to be honest to you, is that we're agile, okay? And we look at the underlying value we can create, whether that's developing a new asset or buying a single asset or buying a block of assets. The reality in the hotel industry, it is more difficult to buy a group of assets without actually taking on a lot of assets that you subsequently need to dispose of. So we'll be very, very careful. And so we are flexible, and we're open to all opportunities as long as they meet our returns criteria. As regards to the Irish VAT rate, well, I suppose the first thing, you know, I, like, I do find it extraordinary that in Ireland we're going to actually increase the VAT rate to the second highest in Europe when the tourism economy is just so important to the country. The focus on this being a temporary support, it just makes no sense to me. That's the first thing. That's my little rant out of the way, first of all. And how it impacts on RevPAR? Well, you know, roughly about 45% of our business is contractors, right? So in that situation where you've got tour groups, where you've got negotiated corporate rates, the VAT rate automatically increases, and that's taken account in the contract. So we don't suffer any reduction in average room rate. The reality on the transient side of the business, you just don't know because we've a dynamic price model. So our prices are changing every day, depending on supply and demand. So the actual impact on average room rate, you don't know, because if I can charge someone EUR 120 and then increase that to EUR 125, I don't know if that's because the VAT has increased or whether they were just willing to pay EUR 125 in the first place. So it's a very hard question to actually answer, but obviously, it's not positive in terms of RevPAR. Does that answer that one? Yeah, that's really clear. Could I ask just one follow-up, Dermot, and Shane, maybe just on —d o, you know, from what you've said through the call and around that kind of target, EUR 750 million, medium-term target, does it signal a kind of a shift from maybe potentially you'd spoken to, to more leasehold expansion? Now, does this kind of, and the current yield environment, signal the shift back to, to a bigger focus on, on acquiring, freeholds? Do you want to take this? Well, like it does it signal? It probably converges with the problem to a certain extent, but Dermot's correct there in terms of he mentioned our agility and what's been demonstrated at the moment was when yields were, sorry, institutional landlord yield values were at a very, very attractive, we were able to focus on growth through leaseholds because that was the most attractive route for us to grow. That market has certainly stalled or has paused at the moment, and as a result of the overall market dynamics, opportunities have opened up, and the two London properties are prime examples of that. I mentioned in the presentation, any year you get a London opportunity is a good year, and we, to get two in six months, you know, is kind of a bit mind-blowing, to be honest. So I wouldn't—I don't think this signals that we're not going to do leaseholds. What it signals is that we're able to adapt with our mixed model, that when the value isn't there on to partner with institutional landlords, we have the capability of either going and acquiring, which is what we did with London Wall, or actually acquiring with a little bit of development upside, which is what we did with Maldron Finsbury Park. So we will, you know, I certainly don't want you to think we're shutting down our, our route to leases or anything like that. Just, it's just a matter of what's attractive at this time in terms of the market dynamics. Okay. That's, that's really helpful, Shane and Dermot. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now take our next question. This is from the line of Jarrod Castle from UBS. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone. Just a few from me. Firstly, I mean, no, no real mention of the Continental European hotel, Düsseldorf. So just, just in terms of that, how you've seen performance, and also, you know, how potentially you see M&A opportunity on, in continental Europe. Secondly, any commentary just in terms of broad-based, in terms of lease versus freehold mix, if you kind of look over the medium term, is there, you know, is there any target that you kind of broadly aiming towards? And then lastly, just the share-based expense obviously went up quite, quite a lot in the first half. And I guess it's just because of the performance. But, how are you thinking about kind of that expense for the full year? Is it fair to multiply it by two, or how should we think about it? Thanks. Hi, Jared. I'll let Carol come back to you on the last question. I suppose on Düsseldorf, what we did say is that all seven hotels we added last year were exceeding our expectations. So Düsseldorf will be included in that. So we're very happy with the performance of Düsseldorf. As regards to M&A opportunities in continental Europe, we're constantly looking, right? But we will be careful, right? You know, when we locate a Clayton in a city where Clayton is unknown, it's important that the location's really, really important. And that's why, you know, when I look at Düsseldorf, we're outperforming the concept, the local, concept in Düsseldorf, and that's down to obviously a lot of our revenue management expertise, but also the excellent location and the excellent, hotel we have. So we are constantly looking in the larger cities in Europe, but we will be careful and take our time. I mean, the lease versus freehold mix is a question we always get asked, and the reality is that, again, it depends on a number of factors, right? But I think it is fair to say, right, that over time, right, the percentage of leasehold will increase because that takes up less capital from our balance sheet. Now, we're but we're obviously flagging here today, where we've got EUR 0.75 billion over of the medium-term spend, that we will use the current opportunities to try and grow our owned portfolio as well. But by the nature of it, there will be more leased over time. We don't have any fixed sort of mixed percentage. It just depends on so many other factors at that point in time. So does that, did I answer those two questions? And if so, I'll hand you over to the share-based expense. Sure. Hi, good morning. So the share-based payment is obviously a non-cash accounting charge. And there would be a slight impact in the start of the year from the shares that would have vested in March of this year, which provided a little bit of additional cost at the first half of the year. Thanks a lot. Thank you. We'll now take our next question. Please stand by. This is from the line of Tim Barrett from Numis. Please go ahead. Hi, morning, all of you. I wanted to ask about forward bookings. I wonder if you'd comment on that, around any visibility you have on groups, meetings, that kind of thing, for the rest of the year. And then a question on occupancy. I just wonder whether you have an occupancy target for the group over the medium term, or whether that simply isn't relevant because you're so decentralized, but that would be of interest. Thanks very much. Okay, Tim, I'll take those. I mean, in terms of forward bookings, we always have limited visibility. I think something like 70% of our bookings happen within five or six weeks of arrival, and that hasn't really changed post-COVID. That's just the nature of what we have. Like we have said, that we are optimistic for the balance of the year, so that reflects our confidence as we look forward into the last four months of the year. In terms— We don't have an occupancy target. We very much, because we're a decentralized model, every city is different. We've some hotels in Dublin that operate at over 90%, and then if you go into a city like Birmingham, where it's more events driven, you know, you can be down in the mid-70%s. So it varies hugely from location to location. But what we're always focused on is maximizing RevPAR. So we don't look at just occupancy, we don't just look at average room rate. We are really focused on RevPAR. And the fact that we have a revenue manager in every hotel is hugely beneficial to us. And now we're currently looking at potentially investing in a new revenue management system to support all those revenue managers as well. So that's how we look at that occupancy source stroke average room rate question. Okay, understood. Thank you. Thank you. There are no further questions, so I will now hand back to the speakers for any closing remarks. Thank you. And look, I just want to reiterate, thank you for taking the time to listen to us this morning. I hope you found this beneficial. We do feel very upbeat about our future prospects. And myself and Carol will be on the road for the next 2 weeks -3 weeks, meeting investors, and we look forward to fielding more questions and having some good lively discussions. So thank you very much. Thank you. This does conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.