Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Dalata Hotel Group PLC 2024 half-year results conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star one one on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Dermot Crowley, CEO. Please go ahead. Good morning, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today as we announce Dalata's results for the first six months of 2024. I'm here with Carol Phelan, our CFO, and Shane Casserly, our Deputy CEO. Carol will bring us through the financial review and market overview, while Shane will take us through our growth strategy. I will then wrap up at the end with the outlook. Turning to page four in the slide deck. Trading in the first half of 2024 has been softer than what we expected due to the impact of increased room supply in Dublin, the increase in the VAT rate in Ireland, and a reduction in domestic consumer demand in Ireland and the U.K.. The additions to the portfolio in 2023 have compensated for the softer trading of the existing portfolio. This has enabled us to continue to grow revenues up 6% to EUR 302 million and Adjusted EBITDA up 4% to EUR 108 million. I am particularly pleased with the focus we have put on innovation over the last three years has delivered projects which have mitigated the impacts of inflation on our margin. Our EBITDA margin came in at 39.4%, compared to 40.6% in H1 2023. Since 2022, the group has absorbed increases of approximately 20% in National Minimum Wage in Ireland and National Living Wage in the U.K.. We remain focused on unlocking efficiencies and streamlining work practices through a number of innovative projects, which Carol will take you through later. We continue to strongly convert revenue into cash, as demonstrated by free cash flow of EUR 48 million for the six-month period. This is behind the level achieved for the first half of 2023 for a number of reasons, which Carol will explain at a later section. We delivered a strong return on invested capital of 12.6% for the 12-month period, the six-month period ended the 13th of June, 2024. We remain focused on delivering sustainable returns to shareholders. Our people are our greatest asset, and we remain focused on providing an environment where they feel valued and can grow their careers within Dalata. I am very pleased we have achieved productivity increases while also enhancing customer satisfaction levels and maintaining our very strong employee engagement scores. It has been a very busy summer for us in the U.K., where we've opened four new Maldron Hotels, starting with Manchester, followed by Liverpool, then Brighton, and most recently, Shoreditch in London. We've now doubled the number of hotels we operate in the U.K. over the last three years, operating 22 hotels across 13 cities. We've announced today an increase in interim dividends to EUR 0.041. We also announced a share buyback of EUR 30 million. I will touch on capital allocation on a later slide. I'm very pleased to today announce the appointment of Shane Casserly to the role of Deputy CEO. Shane was appointed to the board in January 2020. I expanded Shane's responsibility on taking over as CEO in November 2021, and the title of Deputy CEO more appropriately reflects his contribution across all elements of the business. I'm also delighted with the appointment of Des McCann to the board, effective January 1st, 2025. I appointed Des as COO in January 2022. He has made an outstanding contribution to the company in the intervening period and will bring a wealth of operating experience to the board. Turning to page five. The graphs on this slide highlights how we continue to grow the business and the results we have achieved over the last three years. Revenue has grown by 37%, and adjusted EBITDA has grown by 29% since the first six months of 2022, with strong cash conversion to free cash flow. Gearing remains low at 1.3 times net debt to EBITDA, with capacity to deploy capital for further growth as we find suitable opportunities that meet our return on investment requirements. The value of our hotel asset portfolio continues to grow and now exceeds EUR 1.7 billion. 70% of the hotel value is located in the commercially attractive capital cities of Dublin and London. The final graph on the bottom right demonstrates the group's successful execution of our U.K. growth strategy and our expansion into Continental Europe. Today, almost 50% of our rooms are situated outside of Ireland. Turning to page six. One of the first things I did on taking over as CEO was to separate the marketing and sales functions to facilitate an increased focus on marketing. We are now beginning to see the benefits of that increased focus. This year, after extensive consumer research, we refreshed our Dalata, Clayton, and Maldron brands. Dalata represents the heart of hospitality and underpins everything we do within the company. Clayton, where it's personal, and it starts here at Maldron. We have created new centrally controlled websites for our brands with local content for each hotel. The result is an easier digital journey for our customers. With the use of third-party agencies, we have consolidated our social media and digital marketing activities to deliver more consistency and cost efficiencies. The strategies that we are adopting are leading to an increase in direct bookings on our websites. Room bookings were up 6% in the first half of the year on a like-for-like basis. Post the migration to our new website in April, organic website traffic is also up 6%. In the first half of this year, the percentage mix of rooms booking directly to our own website has grown from 13% to 14.1%. And finally, we continuously see a good return from our focus on our Dalata Employer Brand, with an 84% increase in job applications since we started our employer brand journey. We will continue to develop our brands and engage in detailed consumer research to increase the emotional connection with our customers and guests. Turning to page seven. Disciplined growth, capital efficiency, efficiency, and financial strength remain the cornerstones of our capital allocation strategy. Balancing our capital allocation considerations remain a key priority for us as we remain focused on driving long-term returns for our shareholders. Firstly, we are committed to maintaining and enhancing our EUR 1.7 billion hotel portfolio. We continuously invest in our properties to ensure we continue to deliver great customer experiences. We continue to evaluate new hotel opportunities that meet our very disciplined returns criteria. We will spend in excess of EUR 125 million over the next 3-4 years, developing over 500 additional bedrooms in-house, with a further 200 rooms being constructed at Maldron Hotel Croke Park, which we lease. We are committed to a progressive dividend policy, as demonstrated today by declaring 4.1 cent interim dividend. For the first time, we are also announcing a share buyback. We will allocate EUR 30 million to this program, EUR 30 million for this program. We have adequate headroom under our existing facilities to fund the proposed repurchase, to fund the payment of dividends in line with our dividend policy, and finally, to fund our organic growth and acquisition strategy. As I look ahead, I remain very confident on Dalata's future growth prospects as we continue to deliver on our stated growth strategy, becoming a key four-star market player in targeted locations. While the quantum and timing of hotel investments varies from year to year, given our investment return criteria, I'm excited by the opportunities we are currently looking at. Our ambition is to announce over 6,500 additional rooms over the medium term across all of our markets, as we look to continue to grow in the regional U.K., expand our presence in London and other large European cities, and maintain our market share in Ireland. I will now hand over to Carol, who will bring us through a financial review and an overview of the markets we operate within. Thank you, Dermot, and good morning, everyone. Turning now to page nine. As Dermot already mentioned, we've seen good growth in both our revenues and our adjusted EBITDA, which grew by just over EUR 4 million. The growth was driven by the additions to the portfolio in 2023 and in 2024 in London, Amsterdam, and Manchester, and they contributed just shy of EUR 6 million to adjusted EBITDA in the first half. Significant increases in entry-level pay rates have, as expected, put pressure on margins in our like-for-like hotels. Coming into 2024, minimum pay rates have been increased by the respective governments in the U.K. by just under 10% and in Ireland by over 12%. Labor costs represent about 45% of our hotel costs, and as a consequence, as Dermot mentioned, hotel EBITDA at our like-for-like hotels decreased with a reduction of EUR 3.8 million year-on-year. It may seem counterintuitive, but I'm very pleased with that as a result. In a period when revenue growth has been more challenging, the outstanding work across the business to limit the impact of these increases has been excellent, and these results have been hard-earned. I will touch on this in more detail later. So this means our like-for-like hotel EBITDA margin of 39.4% is back on 40.6% delivered for the same period last year. But again, I'll talk about how the business limited that later on. As regards our interest and finance costs, we've continued to benefit from favorable interest rate swaps, which effectively limit interest rates on our term loan of GBP 176 million to 1% until October 2024, which are significantly lower than current rates in the market. Given our low level of gearing, we also benefit from the lowest margin under our banking facility. As a consequence, the average rate of interest we paid on our debt for the first half of 2024 was 3.3% for our sterling-denominated term and revolving debt facilities combined. Profits after tax of 35.8 million declined by about 15%, due primarily to the impact of adjusting items and period-on-period, which impacted to the tune of EUR 4.2 million, in addition to the underlying performance being back at our like-for-like hotels, as I just mentioned. To slide ten now. Looking at how revenue performed in the first half of 2024. On a like-for-like basis, RevPAR for the group decreased by 1% for the first half. The group achieved occupancy of 78%, marginally behind the same period in 2023, with strong average room rates of EUR 140, which is slightly ahead of 2023 levels. There was a mixed performance across the regions for the first half of 2024, as set out on the middle graph. Ireland, as Dermot also mentioned, had a more challenging start for a couple of reasons. RevPAR for regional Ireland decreased by 2% on the back of slightly softer leisure demand, particularly in April, when transient leisure segment was impacted by earlier Easter holidays and poor weather. It was impacted also by the additional 4.5% VAT since September 2023, although we did manage to secure increases in its average room rate. RevPAR for the Dublin market was back 4.5%. It was impacted by the digestion of 10% new supply into the market, which put pressure on both rate and occupancy, not least when the market had been impacted by the additional 4.5% VAT. We do see slightly more measured consumer spending behavior, particularly on last year. However, that said, the Dublin market remains strong, especially around event nights... And we saw this in June, when there were several high-profile events on that month, and indeed, the level of compression nights in the city over the entire period, which I'll touch on later. U.K. portfolio continued to perform well, with RevPAR up 3%. Regional U.K. drives positive RevPAR performance, with good domestic demand across most of our cities, particularly from corporate and increased passenger numbers at regional airports supporting growth. The five hotels added in 2021 and 2022 also continue to ramp up. We do see the impact of more measured consumer spending behavior here also, however. Revenue from food and beverage is 1% up on a like-for-like basis, 7% overall with the new hotels. Given the consumer spending behavior I mentioned a moment ago, it is currently difficult to move prices. However, I am pleased that ongoing projects, notably work around the latest Signature Range, the standardization of menus, and food contract retendering, are supporting profitability despite the increase in some of the costs. Next, to slide 11, looking at how the Dublin market performed during the first half of the year. It can be easy to take for granted the strength of Dublin as a hotel market. Following the pandemic, Dublin was one of the quickest markets to recover to pre-COVID levels compared to other European cities. Looking at the graph at the top of the page, Dublin was back to 2019 RevPAR by 2022, and was 21% ahead of 2019 levels for the first half of 2024. Other European cities took much longer to reach this level. It continues to be a strong attraction for international guests. Visitors to Ireland, as represented by foreign overnight visitors, increased by 15% for the period compared to 2023, and I'll touch shortly on some of the economic and population impacts on demand into the market, too. In addition to very strong demand fundamentals, there is also limited new supply coming into Dublin in the near term. To date, in 2024, approximately 770 new rooms have opened, with a couple of extensions to existing hotels, adding about 140 rooms, possibly coming before the end of the year. Looking at planning permissions and what is in construction as of now, market property experts continue to forecast a slowdown in growth in Dublin as we look ahead. Higher construction costs, elevated interest rates, and challenges in securing planning permission represents significant barriers to hotel development in the city. There is still a degree of supply out of the market for government use, but it is still unknown what quantum of this will return to the market and when, given the supply has been out of the system for a prolonged period of time, some over four years. The Irish government continues to come stricter on the use of short-term letting restrictions in Ireland. Legislation, though it has been slow to come, is expected to be introduced later this year. Looking at how Dalata performed relative to the Dublin market, we are very pleased that even in a more challenging market, Dalata outperformed the wider Dublin market. As I mentioned, we saw a RevPAR decline of 4.5%, and that was versus the market decline of 5.2%, and this outperformance has continued into July. In both the first half of 2024 and 2023, Dalata significantly outperformed the market on compression nights, which measure nights when occupancy approximately exceeds 95%. This demonstrates our strength in revenue management and the intensity of our teams in bringing that they bring to maximizing revenue every single day. Turning to the next slide, on page 12. As I mentioned, there are positive fundamentals across our markets, which give us confidence as we look ahead. The economic forecast for Ireland and the U.K. are positive, with strong forecasts in employment numbers. The outlook for the Irish economy is particularly strong, which is supported by a growing population and strong foreign direct investment employment. Inflation across both continues to moderate, and interest rate cuts have commenced by central banks. We continue to see the recovery in air travel, which is important for our island economies like Ireland and the U.K.. Turning to slide 13. The chart shows how hotel EBITDA for the first half of 2024 has moved versus the same period in 2023. These analyses are prepared on a like-for-like basis, so it includes only those hotels, and so excludes the impact of the hotels in 2023 and 2024, which were added. Revenue decreased by EUR 2.6 million, driven by the Irish portfolio, which was back EUR 5.2 million as a result of the headwinds I mentioned earlier. The group was also impacted by the elevated payroll costs in Ireland and the U.K.. And if you applied those higher rates for 2024 to the hours worked in 2023, it follows that the hotel payroll should have been EUR 5 million higher. So in Dalata, pay rates increased by an average of 8% versus the same period last year. However, on a like-for-like basis, hotel payroll costs only increased by 5% or EUR 3.2 million, with the impact of that continuous progress from the accommodation efficiency project and the Dalata Signature Range, impacting in particular. Building on the work we did in the first half of 2023, we have achieved a 9% reduction in hours worked in accommodation and F&B departments in Ireland. Work is ongoing to replicate some success of our accommodation efficiencies across U.K. hotels, with encouraging results achieved from trials at two of our hotels. These efforts contributed to reducing the impact to our EBITDA margin of some of the cost headwinds by sixty basis points. As a team, we are exceptionally pleased by the delivery of the tangible impact of our efforts to innovate and to find ways to increase our efficiency in times of rising costs, and yet maintain that steadfast focus on the long-term potential of our business, represented by the enhanced employee and customer satisfaction scores in these areas. The group also benefits from favorable energy pricing, in addition to a reduction in consumption per room sold of 4%, which resulted in lower energy costs of EUR 3.4 million for the first half of 2024 compared to 2023. We are hedged on the majority of our expected gas and electricity consumption for the second half of the year, and expect gas and electricity costs to be in line with the second half of 2023. So we won't see necessarily the benefit of that tailwind in the second half of this year. Altogether, hotel EBITDA decreased by EUR 3.5 million, with a hotel EBITDA margin of 39.4%. We expect the increase in pay rates seen in the first half of 2024 to be of a similar impact for the second half of 2024. As we had already achieved a 10% decrease in hours worked in accommodation and F&B departments in the second half of 2023, there is a slightly more limited opportunity to decrease the hours further in the second half of the year. However, we remain focused on delivering efficiencies and innovation in other areas of the business, and further projects are underway. For example, check-in pods, where results to date have been encouraging. Turning now to Slide 14. We continue to generate strong levels of free cash flow, which enables us to fund further portfolio growth and returns to our shareholders. In the first half of 2023, we achieved just over EUR 48 million in terms of free cash flow, and while this result did decrease compared to last year, it remains ahead of our cash generation pre-COVID. Last year, there were a number of factors that contributed to fewer working capital outflows than expected during a typical first half cycle. In addition, the timing of our refurbishment project was still somewhat impacted by supply chain disruptions during the recovery from the pandemic, leading to the level of spend being lower in the first half of 2023. The group made fixed lease payments of EUR 29 million in the first six months of 2024, a EUR 3 million increase on the first half of last year, driven primarily by the addition of the Clayton Hotel Amsterdam American in October 2023, along with impacts from a couple of our leases. Lease payments payable under lease contracts at the end of June 2024 are projected to be about EUR 30.3 million for the six months ending at 31 December 2024. However, this will increase further from the impact of the two lease hotels opened after 30 June, in the U.K.. We used our free cash flow, EUR 48 million, to fund about EUR 23 million growth capital expenditure, mainly on our latest hotel developments in Shoreditch in London, which was developed in-house, and other costs relating to our three leased hotels opening this summer. We also paid the final 2023 dividend of about EUR 18 million, and funded our Employee Benefit Trust, which repurchased EUR 6 million worth of shares to facilitate employee share award schemes vested during the period. Turning now to slide 15, where we set out our balance sheet, which is a source of continued strength and security. Our balance sheet, as Dermot mentioned, is backed by over EUR 1.7 billion worth of very strong hotel and property assets. This asset backing provides a number of key advantages. It is a strong covenant for our financing partners, excuse me, including our fixed income investors, who largely benefit from our parent company guarantee. It allows us to be flexible and recycle capital if required, as we have demonstrated during COVID. And finally, it protects the business during economic cycles or demand shocks, not least demonstrated during the pandemic. I'm particularly pleased with our debt and lease service cover of 2.7 times. Our current net debt to EBITDA after rent of 1.3 times, and cash and undrawn facilities of EUR 0.3 billion, provides a platform for growth. And we have previously mentioned, we are comfortable around the 2-2.5 times leverage level, so we remain primed to execute on that growth. Finally, moving to slide 16. We continue to have a high-quality, balanced portfolio that delivers value for our shareholders. In a moment, Shane will illustrate the close interaction between these portfolios and the additional value they create. As I mentioned on a previous slide, they're a very well-located hotel asset portfolio, and it drives basically a net asset value of about EUR 6.35 per share. 72% of this is located in very attractive hotel markets, capital cities of London and Dublin. It provides an excellent underpinning of value, being both lower risk and profile, and offering greater opportunity for long-term capital appreciation. Overall, our owned assets delivered EUR 155 million over the last 12 months in the EBITDA. We also have a very high-quality lease portfolio that continues to contribute strong EBITDA after rent of EUR 42 million, at rent cover of over 1.73 times for the 12-month period ending the 30th of June 2024. This rent cover underpins the quality of these leases and, indeed, the discipline with which we execute our growth strategy. Following the completion of 4 new openings this summer, our pipeline now comprises two new hotels and three extensions at existing hotels, and that will take the core portfolio to over 12,500 rooms. Finally, we have a medium-term ambition of adding over a further 6,500 rooms beyond our current pipeline in the medium term. I'm now going to pass to Shane, who will talk more about how we aim to continue to deliver that growth. Thanks, Carol, and good morning, everyone. This is Shane here to take you through our growth strategy, starting on page 18. Disciplined growth remains the cornerstone of how we create value for our shareholders. By maximizing EBITDA, cash generation, and asset values, we aim to provide sustainable returns to shareholders. Dalata has a number of avenues to expand its portfolio through leveraging our expertise from operating and developing hotels, our strong financial position, and excellent counterparty reputation. This slide shows how we grow the portfolio through developing, acquiring, and leasing hotels. For example, in 2023, we acquired two freehold hotels in London, one new and one existing hotel. We also took on the lease of an existing trading hotel in Amsterdam. To date, in 2024, we opened four new Maldron Hotels in the U.K.. Three hotels are newly developed leased hotels in regional U.K., while the last is about the hotel in Shoreditch, London. I will touch on the new 2024 additions to the portfolio in more detail on the later slides. We ourselves are currently developing 500 rooms, comprising two extensions to existing hotels in Manchester and Dublin, and a hotel conversion project in Edinburgh. We were successful in our planning permission application for the project in Edinburgh in 2024, and achieved a 12.4% increase in rooms through redesign, post-acquisition. We expect the development of these 500 rooms to require in excess of EUR 125 million in capital expenditure over the next 3-4 years as we complete the projects. We also have an agreement for lease for a new Maldron hotel at Croke Park, Dublin, where construction is underway, with the hotel expected to open in the second half of 2026. We remain disciplined in our growth strategy, ensuring opportunities meet our strict investment criteria, while balancing the growth mix of owned, leased, and hotel-managed developments. Moving to page 19 now, which sets out our ambitious growth strategy. We remain committed to maintaining our market-leading position in Ireland, securing attractive opportunities as they arise. We want to become a key four-star market player across the major cities and regional U.K., while also growing our presence in London and the large, commercially attractive European cities. I will take you through our growth strategy for the U.K. and Continental Europe in the next slides. Since the start of 2022, we have added over three thousand rooms, bringing the current portfolio to just under twelve thousand rooms. While this is very impressive, overall growth percentage is 34%, it would be remiss of me not to highlight the growth in the key markets of regional U.K., 78%, and London, 48%. A clear statement for our success and ability to identify and deliver on opportunities. We have considerable firepower over the medium term from ongoing cash flow generation, and comfort that net debt to EBITDA after rent are between two and 2.5. Our ambition is to announce over 6,500 additional rooms beyond the current pipeline over the medium term. The U.K. region and London will remain key strategic growth markets, but we'll also look to continue to expand our presence in Europe and maintain our market share by securing attractive opportunities in Ireland. This growth ambition will see Dalata's portfolio increasing to over 19,000 rooms. Turning to page 20, which showcases how we are executing our U.K. growth strategy. As I mentioned earlier, our ambition is for Dalata to be a key four-star market player in the large cities in the U.K., which have strong rate power and mix of corporate and leisure demands. This includes cities where we do not yet have a presence, for example, York and Oxford, and cities where we would like to increase our current market share, for example, Edinburgh and Birmingham. We also want to grow our market share in London, where we currently have over 870 rooms, a tiny percentage of the overall bedroom supply in London, highlighting the opportunity for us in the city. However, patience and discipline are required to secure the appropriate opportunities in this very attractive global city. As Dermot already mentioned, 2024 was a very busy year from the perspective of growing our portfolio, with our U.K. footprint increasing to 5,000 rooms, a growth of 20% increase since the start of the year. As depicted on this page, we opened four new Maldron Hotels in the U.K., comprising over 830 rooms across ten cities. This includes our fourth hotel in Manchester in May, our first hotels in Brighton and Liverpool in July, and a fourth hotel in London in August, representing a total investment of approximately EUR 100 million. We developed a Maldron Hotel, Shoreditch in London, comprising 157 rooms for a total development spend of circa GBP 73 million, including site costs. The three other hotels are operated under long-term operating leases of 35 years in partnership with estate investors, which require minimum initial capital investment. These three hotels are expected to achieve target rent cover of 1.85 by the third year of trading. I am delighted with the addition of these four superb properties, which reflect the refined Maldron brands. The hotels are consistent with our strategy and demonstrate the strength of Dalata's growth model. Maldron hotels, excellently located in large cities, designed to be sustainable, operationally efficient, while offering the customer the most modern of facilities. In terms of further growth, we currently have a pipeline of 402 rooms in cities of Manchester, Edinburgh, and London, and we are actively looking to increase this further. Turning over to page 22. Consistent with the U.K., we will continue to move forward with our disciplined expansion into Continental Europe, focusing on the prime locations in the most attractive destination cities. As I said before, in terms of locations, we are targeting cities that have large numbers of hospitality visitors, preferably in mix of corporate and leisure demand drivers and attractive growth paths. We know from our experience that these locations offer the most rewarding values for our decentralized model. An example of the locations we're exploring includes the top six cities in Germany, also Barcelona, Madrid, Vienna, Brussels, and Copenhagen. As regards to the properties themselves, we will retain our discipline, targeting central, modern, four-star properties that are consistent with our current portfolio. We expect most of our growth in this region will be through operating leases, but we remain open to acquisitions if the fundamentals are attractive enough. We recently announced the appointment of a head of development strategy for Northern Europe, Kathrin Jung-Reinhard, to assist us with our growth in Continental Europe, and we're already excited by the impact Kathrin is having. I will now hand you back to Dermot. Thanks, Shane, and now turning to page twenty-three and the outlook. Group RevPAR in July and August was 1% ahead of 2023 levels on like-for-like basis. Trade was lower than expected in the region of Ireland and the U.K. as a result of more measured consumer spending. As anticipated, July was a quieter month in terms of events, which softened demand in Dublin. However, there were a number of key events in August, which supported increased leisure demands and very strong months for us. For the two months combined, RevPAR was in line with last year. I continue to view Dublin as a great city to operate hotels for the reasons Carol discussed earlier. In the July, August period, RevPAR was also in line with 2023 levels for regional Ireland, and like-for-like U.K. portfolio achieved a 3% growth. Group like-for-like RevPAR for the period January to August is now flat compared to 2023. Demand from corporates and international visitors remains strong, and while we're seeing softening from more cost-conscious domestic customers relative to last year, we continue to see good leisure demand around busy event nights. As we look ahead to the balance of the year, we expect these trends to continue. The events calendar for the final quarter is strong, particularly in Dublin, helped by the return of the Autumn Rugby Internationals in November. The impact of the 4.5% VAT increase will also be fully absorbed from the first of September. I'm happy with the early performance indicators of the four hotels that Shane just outlined, which we opened in the U.K. during the summer. I remain optimistic on the medium-term outlook for the group with our proven business model and our robust financial position, supported by strong economic indicators in both Ireland and the U.K.. We have demonstrated our ability to confront the challenges facing our industry in terms of payroll inflation through the rollout of a number of efficiency and innovation projects. We are actively looking to define further projects while also ensuring, sorry, while always ensuring we continue to deliver great guest experiences and take care of our employees. Finally, moving to slide 24 and summary. I'm very pleased that we've managed to keep group RevPAR at the same level as 2023 up to the end of August, given some of the challenges faced by the markets we operate within. I'm also very happy with how we've mitigated the impact of the rising pay rates on our EBITDA margin through our focus on innovation and looking for smarter ways to run our hotels. I am excited about what we are doing with our brands and the strong progress we have made in creating new brand websites, managing our social media presence, and consolidating our approach to digital marketing. Our increased focus on research will continue to inform our approach. The interim dividend of EUR 0.041 per share and our EUR 30 million share buyback highlight our focus on delivering returns to our shareholders and managing our capital efficiently. We will continue to be disciplined in the execution of our growth strategy as we see further exciting opportunities in Ireland, the U.K., and Continental Europe. I am excited about the number and quality of opportunities we are currently exploring. Finally, I want to thank all my colleagues in central office and out in the hotels for all their hard work and support in delivering the results we are announcing today. Given the strength of our teams, our focus on our guests and customers, and our strong financial positions, I am very confident that we are well positioned to react positively to both the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead. I am excited about the remainder of 2024 and beyond. As I always say, at Dalata, we have great hotels in great cities, operated by great teams. Thank you very much. Thank you, dear participants. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw a question, please press star one one again. Please stand by. We'll compile the queuing roster. This will take a few moments. And now we're going to take our first question, and it comes from the line of Paul Ruddy from Davy. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Hey, good morning, Dermot, Carol, and Shane. Just a couple of quick questions, if that's okay. The first is just on Dublin. If I read the statement correctly in your comments, it feels like, in Dublin, in particular, maybe some short-term weakness, but, in more medium term, you feel it, it feels quite positive. I'm just trying to marry those two things. I suppose key considerations would be: Do you feel that the 9% additional rooms or so that were brought into the market this year have now been absorbed, and we might start to see more positive momentum and, as a result of that kind of supply/demand? And then just as a side on that, just on the kinda maybe the cyclical piece, you alluded to, I think, softness around the domestic customer. Maybe just if you could give some more detail on that. Is that something that's accelerating, that's come more recently, or something that's been persistent through the year and you're just managing? And the second question then, if that's okay, is just on the buyback. Just, I suppose why now? I think you alluded to you know, an exciting pipeline. But it you know, is there something in the market in terms of development opportunities that they're just out of price range at the moment, or there's just a shortage, or is this just solely as a result of the strong free cash flow? Thanks, Paul. I'll take both of those, actually. I suppose the first thing, I'm gonna address the second question firstly, the buyback. We've always said that capital allocation is something we take very seriously and something we continuously review. When we look at the cash we're generating, it's really important for us that we invest in our existing portfolio. And as I said earlier, we continue to deliver great guest experiences. We are still, and this should not be looked at as if we're reducing our ambitions and goals. I think Shane outlined it very well, what we hope to achieve, and so we continue to spend money on developing new properties, and we still will be acquiring existing properties as well as the opportunities come along. But we will remain very disciplined in our return criteria when looking at opportunities. Last year was kind of first time, last year really was the first time we said we could restart dividends after the whole COVID period. And then I suppose what we have been looking at in the other two, and which we've always been looking at, is whether or not share buyback is something we should do, because that obviously is another important element of capital allocation. And we have considered carefully over the last year, and we think now is the right time. It is great value to buy back shares at the current levels. And our gearing at 1.3x is well below our target range. So we feel by announcing this EUR 30 million share buyback, it reflects the value we can get for the shareholders by purchasing our own shares without compromising our very significant growth ambitions. If I look at Dublin, then, I mean, Dublin, you know, if I look at the performance of Dublin, really, right, and if I think of what everyone was concerned when we announced our first year, our final year results in March, and we had to I had to learn off about all the contracts and everything else to reassure people that we were not going to be down 11% for the year as a whole. I think the city's performed very well. The VAT increase of 4.5% means effectively, if there was no VAT increase, Dublin would be roughly in line where it was last year, which was considered a really, really strong year. Because as Carol pointed out, Dublin recovered faster than most other European cities. Now, on top of that, there's been, over the last 18 months, an increased supply of about 2,500 rooms, which is close to 10%. So that is actually an incredibly strong performance in the city. That doesn't surprise us, right? If you look with us, the growth in employment in Ireland, as a country as a whole, the growth in the population, the growth in the economy, it continues to drive increased demand into the city. We can see that in terms of the corporate demand, because some of the people, the corporate customers who delivered a huge number of rooms pre-COVID in the technology sector, don't do anymore, but they've been replaced by new corporates, and an awful lot of infrastructure-related work. Then finally, to what you say, is this something that we've only seen recently in terms of the domestic consumer? It isn't really. We've seen it, and not just Dublin, we've seen it in the U.K. as well. There's definitely a softening of demand in terms of domestic consumers. Now, from international, North American travel has been really strong in both Ireland and the U.K.. In summary, on Dublin, I say, in my quote, "It's a great market to operate in hotels. Okay, that's really helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question, and it comes from the line of Jack Cummings from Berenberg. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Morning, all three, if I could. The first one, you highlighted the 60 basis points of savings from the efficiency projects in half one. How are you thinking about inflation in the cost base in H2 and also into 2025? And is there scope for more margin savings that can be extracted through efficiency projects? On the second one, on capital allocation, just going back to the buyback. If there aren't further acquisitions announced in, say, Continental Europe or the U.K., could the company continue to buy back shares over the coming years, given the cash flow generation? And then finally, you mentioned seeing some softening from more cost-conscious domestic customers. Is that across Ireland, U.K., and Continental Europe, and are there any regional differences? Thank you. I'd like to take the second and third question, and Carol, I'll give the first one back over to you. Well, first of all, sorry, good morning, Jack. First of all, as I said, I am confident, right, that we are going to come across, you know, further opportunities. And we're always looking at opportunities, right? But because we're careful, as we should be, you know, some of those fall away and some are delivered. But I'm very comfortable, with the level of opportunities we're currently looking at and the type of those opportunities, as well. Would we do more? Well, as I said, we look at capital allocation continuously, right, okay? And within that, you know, I've outlined the uses of our cash, and that includes dividends, and that includes, share buybacks. So if the kind of confluence of events was correct, of course, we would look at it again. But what I don't want people to read into that is that we're not confident about our growth process going forward, because we are. In terms of the slowdown in domestic demand, yes, we're seeing that in Ireland and the U.K., right across markets we are. And I think when you see commentary from airlines and restaurants and everything else, that's just consistent. Where we're not seeing it is, I think people are still prioritizing going away for international breaks. So we're not seeing it from international customers, but we're seeing across all our markets from domestic customers. And I'll hand back to Carol for the first question. Yeah, good morning, Jack. So just in relation to costs, we spoke about the increase on the cost base, which will travel into the second half of the year, and that's about EUR 5 million or so. The innovation project, we also commenced then towards the back end of the first half in 2023. So some of the immediate impact from those will dissipate a little bit. However, as I mentioned, we continue to work on innovation efficiency projects. We recognize that the pay rates were increased coming into this year, and there may well be further increases into next year. That said, for the government, you know, inflation is starting to come back more generally, which should support, I suppose, the pressure on some of those increases. We did also have the benefit of reducing energy costs in the first half of the year versus last year. We won't necessarily have that for the second half of the year, but working on our margin is something we're always at, and you look, you do look to revenue to do some of the lifting on that. So I suppose we always say into that, we don't expect going backwards on margins, but that takes effort and hard work. And I am pleased that there are a lot of initiatives that we're working on currently to build further on those that we've delivered here before. Perfect. Thanks all. Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. And now we're going to take our next question. And the question comes from the line of Dudley Shanley from Goodbody. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for taking the questions. Three questions, if I may. The first one is just to follow up on one of Jack's questions, and to kind of bring it along a little further. If you think about how well you've done in managing the cost impact in the first half and expect to do with the second half and beyond, how do you think some of the smaller peers are doing on that? And, I'm kind of thinking that ultimately they must be struggling and would probably have to look to push rate at some stage. The second question is- Sorry, Dudley, I didn't quite catch that. How do you think? How do you think the smaller peers are doing in terms of managing costs? Okay. Thank you. Because ultimately, they'll have to push rate to offset the costs and- Yeah. How does that play out in the market? The second question is to do with the market leasing and buying new hotels. I noticed you mentioned in the statement that there are some signs that the leasing market is reopening. Can you just talk us through the backdrop there? And then the third question is, you also mentioned changes to the website and the flow of customers leading to higher direct bookings. How does that benefit you, and where do you think that can go over time? Thank you. Yeah, I'll take the third question first, then I might hand you back to Carol on managing costs, and Shane might deal with the market for this. I mean, I suppose, look, what's exciting on the branding side is that you always want to have more direct, you want more direct contacts with your customers. And we're increasing, you know, we're increasing the number of the potential bookings that are coming through our own website. So year to date, that's increased from 13% to 14.1%, and last year, I think it was 1% increase versus the previous year. And in a period where actual searches for Google Search for hotel stays dropped, right, we actually increased the traffic. Since we launched those new websites, we've increased our traffic by 6%, so that's very encouraging as well. Now, where can it go to? I honestly don't know. We're just working the whole time on increasing that level. One of the hotels in the U.K., right, is up to something like 19%. We're trying to understand now why that particular hotel is getting 19% of its bookings through the website. There's no absolute apparent reason, so we're trying to learn, as we do, as a management team, learn always as to how we can improve things. But it is exciting, and then when we do what we've done with social media, that's significantly increased the sales we can directly attribute to our social media efforts. But also, it means that what we're saying in social media about our hotels and about our brands is completely consistent with what we're saying in on our websites, and it's consistent with the experience you get when you stay in a hotel. And that's how you build strong brand experience. On top of that, you know, since I've taken over, we've significantly increased our investment in consumer research. We're always listening to our customers. So I'm really excited about the potential. I can't give you a percentage number, right, but I'm really excited about the potential of having more direct contacts with our customers. Carol? Yeah. Hi, hi, Dudley. So I suppose just coming back to the cost, I mentioned the projects that we continued to work on earlier on, the likes of pods. Which would help us be more efficient on our front desk and checking in our customers. QR code is something else we've been working on. And some of these projects we spoke about briefly last year, but we put the time and effort when we're bringing these projects in to make sure they don't damage our employer or our customer experience, so they do take time to come through. Dermot actually just touched on there, what's happening from a brand perspective and a marketing perspective. That does help in your commissions, too. And as we look at our growth, you know, we are designing a system into our new hotels. We, we've just opened our Maldron Hotel Shoreditch. We opened our Maldron Hotel Finsbury Park last year, and they are extremely efficient hotels and have had efficiency designed into them. That's hugely encouraging as we look forward. Actually, taking some of the learnings from those and bringing them back to other hotels has been very beneficial. I, I'm confident that we have still effective levers to pull in terms of costs. In terms of peers and others, we would feel we operate very strongly in terms of converting our revenue down to the bottom line. We work very hard to do that. You know, Shane would see a lot of opportunities, and that is something we do see tangibly. So what that means is, if you're one of the strongest players in a market, that should lead to others looking to push on rate more quickly than you would need to do so. So that can only underpin, I suppose, a constant look forward at where revenues and RevPAR should go for the industry. Hi, Dudley. How are you? Shane here. So look, a lot of this is anecdotal by definition, but I mean, the market in terms of the institutional and landlord market is very closely. Their appetite is very closely related to the cost of funds and cost of debt specifically. And so some of the optimism would be tied to those projections. So we obviously know that market very well. We've a lot of friends in that market. Some of the players are still, to be honest with you, with their own current balance sheet rather than look to add to it. But what we are, I suppose, what has us, I won't say excited, but what certainly has our interest piqued, is we're seeing a number of new entrants into the market. And coming in, certainly compared to 2023 levels, at levels that they're eager to do business. It's not one of our properties, but I'm aware of, say, one property that at the start of the year, towards the end of 2023, was not able to get a way into the market, and now there's a bidder in there, I understand, at 50 basis points better than what was engaged six, nine months ago. So that's just one small example in terms of how we're seeing the market is beginning to open up a little bit. That's great. Thanks. Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. And now we're going to take our next question, and it comes to the line of Jaina Mistry from Jefferies. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I just have two left, actually. The first one is going back to OpEx inflation, and I wondered if you could walk us through the moving parts to gross OpEx inflation for 2025. My second question, could you just give a bit more color around the impairment charge that you took in H1, and whether there was anything specific to that there? Thank you. Hi, Kean. I'll take two of those. I suppose in relation to OpEx into 2025, you know, we obviously don't know yet. We haven't had information from governments in terms of where they expect to move rates next year. But I suppose anecdotally, you'll be hearing that they should be considerably lower than we've seen in the last few years, as inflation has slowed down. So, we would expect to see that going into next year, and then obviously we will be working very, very hard to limit the impact of that on the business. In terms of energy, we should see an ongoing reduction into 2025. Again, we would have locked forward quite a considerable amount of the consumption in next year. But we will continue to see a bit of that coming back and we continue as a business to work hard on reducing the overall consumption, per room, both for cost purposes, but also as part of our sustainability ambitions. In terms of the impairments, no, like with IFRS 16, and obviously valuation policy in our business, you're constantly looking at rejigging every six months, those and looking at your balance sheet and looking for. There's nothing in there at all that I wish to draw your attention to. Sometimes it's simply the mechanics of it as you work through, particularly on the right-of-use assets. And then what happens is, or what I would have pointed out, in terms of the movement year-on-year at profit level, you can have it going down and then coming up again the following year or vice versa, but it's very much around the edges in terms of what comes through possibly this year. That's very helpful. If we could just go back to the OpEx moving parts. I appreciate it's still very early days, but is it fair to say that we could land on a low single digit range for next year? If you look at it this year, we took, in the context of the just shy of, 10% in U.K. and the 12%, so over 12% in Ireland, the business would have taken an 8% average, pay rate increase. So if you expect the 10% and 12% to be much lower, that wouldn't be, I suppose, an inappropriate expectation to have. And so the current indications here in Ireland, and I haven't seen in the U.K. yet, is that the minimum wage is going to increase by between 6% and 7%. But that isn't confirmed, but that's speculation in the media. Thanks very much. Thank you. There are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to speaker, Dermot Crowley, for any closing remarks. Well, first of all, just thank everyone who, who's listened in, today. As I said previously, you know, we are very pleased with our performance, in the likes of markets that have been a bit challenged in terms of RevPAR, and we're very happy that we've mitigated that in terms of our EBITDA margins. So thank you very much, and, you know, I'll be meeting a number of you on the road show. I look forward to that. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.