Hello, and welcome to the Pepco Half Year Results Conference. I'd like to hand the call over to your host today, Mr. Andy Bond. Please go ahead, sir. Okay. Afternoon, everyone, and thank you for your time. Apologies for the slight delay in this presentation for technical issues beyond our control. I wanna make a few introductory comments, then I'll hand over to Neil Galloway, who you're all familiar with now, and then I'll come back to give you some closing remarks. So look, an introduction from me. I'd say these are a very pleasing set of results with some significant progress against the objectives we set out at the Capital Markets Day. What would I highlight? Our core Pepco business has delivered very strong profit growth in half one at around 40% EBITDA growth year-over-year, with more to come in the second half, I believe. We still feel very confident that the future growth plan is intact. We see a very large white space for growth into the future, with our focus in the short-term future being investing primarily in the CEE markets, where we know most about how to deliver an excellent return on invested capital. While we will focus on CEE in the short term, we are still very confident about Western Europe and are making progress on the things we need to do to create a more investable model. And we also feel confident that in the second half of the year, we'll start to see some recovery in the Poundland and Dealz businesses that have been significantly disrupted by the changes we made, although we think the vast majority of that recovery will happen in FY 25. Finally, we're very pleased with the control and discipline we're starting to establish in our CapEx spend. First quarter, we still spent quite a lot of money, but that was a residual impact of commitments from FY 23. So the half as a whole, you'll see a significantly more disciplined CapEx and working capital model, which will allow us over time to deliver significantly better free cash flows. I'll come back and give you a few thoughts, further thoughts on strategy at the end, but now I'll hand over to Neil to give us the financial review. Thank you, Andy, and good afternoon to all. If we just turn to Slide 4, I'll just run through the highlights and then after that, give a bit more detail on the numbers. So a record half one performance in revenue terms for the group, EUR 3.2 billion, up 14% year-on-year, 11% on a constant currency basis. That was principally driven by new store expansion. While we still have challenges in our like-for-like performance, we'll talk a bit about that later, which was a negative 2.5% for the first half. Group gross margin was up 310 basis points to 43.1, largely driven by Pepco, where the gross margin improvement was 480 basis points, and that was as expected. And as we telegraphed, we expected to see coming through during the first half of this year. So that's pleasing that that's come as expected. That delivered a record underlying group EBITDA on an IFRS 16 basis of EUR 487 million for the half, 28% up on prior year. Largely driven by Pepco, and at the Pepco OpCo level, EBITDA was up just under 40%, year-on-year. We opened 289 net new stores in the first half, of which 86 in Q2, 203 in Q1. So again, as we telegraphed, we're much more disciplined, focused on new store expansion, slowing down. And again, just to remind, we telegraphed a net new store opening target of around about 400 stores for the full year. So we'll continue to see store growth, but at a slower pace in the second half. And that drove a strong underlying operating cash flow of EUR 182 million, an increase of approximately EUR 100 million over prior year. So again, consistent with what we were aiming to do to drive better cash generation within the business. So that, those are kind of the highlights. If we turn to the next Slide 5, I'll just pick up a few additional points on the more detailed P&L. Firstly, just to comment, obviously, higher interest costs running through due to a higher gross debt level. That was really driven by, if you may recall, a refinancing of our Term Loan B last year with an inaugural bond issue, at a higher quantum and at a higher interest rate, during the summer. So that's driven a higher interest cost as a result of that, but that was important for us to deliver, a higher revolving credit facility to support, larger working capital requirements in the business and a greater liquidity pool. Secondly, just to highlight the non-underlying items. As in prior years, we've continued to see elements related to the Value Creation Plan and our ERP program running through that. The one incremental non-underlying items went through was in relation to the fraud, the phishing incident we experienced in Hungary, which we announced a couple of months ago, which had about EUR 16 million impact. We've broadly finished the sort of investigations in relation to that, and taking remedial actions around the control environment, et cetera. So that was a one-off incident we do not expect to repeat. But then just to comment on tax, running at approximately 20%-27% in the first half. Now, if we allow for a prior year adjustment, the effective tax rate really should be close to 22% on an ongoing basis. So there was a prior year adjustment going through in the first half related to last year. And lastly, to highlight again, discontinued operations of EUR 51 million. That relates to our exit from the Austrian market, which again, we announced a couple of months ago, with the elimination of that business from the group. That was predominantly non-cash related impact on the P&L. There was approximately EUR 11 million of cash related to that exit. If we then move on to Slide 6, just to touch on the revenue performance, total company, I said up 11%, you can see first half, but the like-for-like, negative 2.5. Pepco improving quarter on quarter, Poundland weakening slightly. That was largely related to challenging execution of the transition to clothing and GM ranges in the U.K. Whereas again, we telegraphed we were experiencing challenges on that complete range change out to Pepco product, which has had an impact on performance in Poundland, particularly in the second quarter, but the first half overall. The total sales are largely driven by the new store growth, and we do expect to see we've also had some impact from availability in the first half, in part due to Red Sea, just in terms of stock arriving. So that those are some of the factors that have impacted sales in the first half. If you turn to Slide 7, we've just set out the historic like-for-like performance over the last several quarters. I think in particular, just to highlight, we had a fairly challenging comparative period that we were lapping in half one this year, quarter one and quarter two, for both Pepco and Dealz compared with prior years, which you can see there. We're expecting that to be significantly less of a headwind going into the second half, and Andy will touch a bit on that later when he talks about the outlook for the business. It will be a little bit more challenging within Poundland, particularly in Q3. It benefited, last year, from fairly strong weather and the Coronation effect in the U.K. in the month of May. Again, it will be a slightly more challenging Q3 for Poundland. But overall, we expect for the group as a whole to see a better outlook from a like-for-like performance in the second half. If we turn to Slide 8, this year, we've moved, as telegraphed at the Capital Markets Day, to a slight change in our segmental reporting. So we've split out Pepco, Poundland, and Dealz Poland. Before, Dealz Poland was included within the Poundland Group to give more visibility on the three trading brands between each of those. And you can see Pepco deriving what's maybe 62% of the group revenue, Poundland a third, and Dealz about 5%. Although it was the fastest growing segment, but off a low base in Poland. Then if we turn to Slide 9, we've similarly slightly changed the segment reporting from a geographical perspective, particularly to highlight Western Europe, which is an area of particular focus and where there has been obviously significant growth and attention over the last couple of years. While it's the smallest segment, Western Europe has been the fastest growing. It accounts for approximately. Spain and Italy are the largest two markets within that, accounting for about 85% of revenues in that segment. We have the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, Poland, and U.K. and Ireland. Just to give a bit more visibility, and we'll be reporting on that segmental basis going forward. If we then touch on turning to Slide 10, the key drivers in gross margin, which we had expected, we've indicated a bridge here from, excuse me, year-on-year, from 40% up to 43%. The largest block in terms of our product margin, really driven by a combination of lower commodities, better sourcing negotiations, and an average, and pricing essentially coming through within the business have been the key drivers. Benefits we saw as the unwind of challenges in freight and duty, notwithstanding some incremental costs from Red Sea, we've still seen a good improvement, with the other elements being marked down FX, stock loss and mix. So a strong performance in the first half, and you can see, particularly if you look at the chart on the right, the quarter-on-quarter performance, again, we saw that strengthening during Q2. We don't expect that pace of the pace of improvement to continue, but we do see continued room for improvement in the overall gross margin through the second half, again, as expected. If we then move to Slide 11, just to touch on the profit performance by unit. So the key driver being Pepco, we've set out both the IFRS 16 and pre-IFRS 16 numbers there. So up 38%, just 39% for Pepco, year-on-year, in IFRS 16 basis. Poundland's weaker performance, largely due to the poor transition to the new Pepco ranges, and we are, you know, we will continue to work on improving those issues during the second half with an expectation, FY 25 will see significant improvement in the Poundland, Poundland business. Turning to costs on Slide 12. The cost increases have largely been driven by the store growth, both rent and labor. So that's really what's been driving the overall cost increases. Labor increase in the U.K. in particular was further impacted by increase in National Living Wage, which came through on top of the store expansion. Poundland's probably had its most significant store expansion this year for many years. We opened quite a number of stores, largely related to Wilko stores we took over in the first quarter of the year. So while we've seen good efforts on cost control, the miss on sales in terms of the weak like-for-like performance, as mentioned, the operating cost to sales ratio has deteriorated. But we are seeing good cost control on an absolute basis as we look through the business, and that will continue to improve in the second half based on a number of initiatives going on within the business. Turning to the cash flow performance on Slide 13. We've seen significantly stronger pre-CapEx underlying operating free cash flow, improving by EUR 100 million. A combination of both better trading performance and improvements in working capital. That performance would have been even better, but for some of the impact on the Red Sea, where we've held stock on ships for longer, particularly those stock that is heading for certain of our ports in the Mediterranean. So, you know, a good performance, but would have been better absent that. We paid down approximately EUR 90 million of our revolving credit facility to reduce both interest costs and negative carry. And while CapEx was ahead of prior year, and that was front-end loaded as expected, given the following the store development profile. And while we guided previously at full year CapEx of around EUR 300 million, that's likely to be below EUR 275 million on a full year basis, based on the current outlook. On Slide 14, we've just provided a little bit more breakdown of where that CapEx is landing. Again, it's predominantly store driven, both new openings and refits. Maintenance CapEx down slightly larger. We've got quite a lot of new stores in the base now, so maintenance CapEx slightly, slightly down on, on the half year, although there is some phasing, phasing in that, and IT and supply chain, fairly, fairly consistent year on year. At a gross number, we opened 346 new stores in half one, and we completed 219 refits throughout Pepco during the half. Then, finally, just moving on to touching a few of the items in the balance sheet on Slide 15. Just the main movements in the balance sheet, again, largely driven by the new store expansion and fit outs, both in seeing increases in both the PP&E lines and the ROU and lease liabilities related to the, the sort of, store leases, et cetera. We have had a tighter stock discipline. As you can see, inventories are marginally up on prior year. Although, I would expect that to be more challenged at the year end, as we intend to take in stock earlier for Christmas to improve availability. And given our financial year end is at the end of September, which is just ahead of our peak trading season, it's entirely likely we'll see a higher stock at the year end to put us in the strongest position for trading. But that's largely a timing issue rather than a general direction of travel to have much tighter stock and working capital management within the business. And to that point, if you turn to Slide 16, you can see an improvement in stock days year-over-year dropping down over the period on a slightly elevated stock number. We've a slight change in mix in the half. I think combination of reasons for that, we again opened quite a lot of new stores on the Wilko conversions in the U.K., which are larger stores, and that's driven an increase in the FMCG range. And we're slightly under on clothing, again, partly related to just timing differences in delivery of clothing, much of which is coming into the business actually in May. So that's just to give a little bit of context, but nothing materially changing otherwise in terms of the mix. And then if we look at the sort of trend position in working capital on Slide 17, you can see improvements in working capital in terms of inventory days and our cash conversion cycle through both improved inventory and payables management, which remains an area of focus for the business. And lastly, just to cover off on Slide 18, just a recap on our financing position. Term Loan B and the corporate bond, which have maturities in April 2026 and June 2028. And again, just to remind, we increased our RCF to EUR 390 million, which is largely undrawn at this point in time. and so a very strong, very strong liquidity and balance sheet position, with access to over EUR 450 million in liquidity, and well within our covenants and, leverage on a 0.9x on an LTM basis through through the end of March. And with that, I'll, I'll, pass back to Andy for some updates on the strategic initiatives. Thank you, Neil. So if we were to move to Slide 20, please. Look, I would like to sort of take a step back and give you my own personal perspective and a few data points on the sort of strategic direction for the company. The first slide here, Slide 20, sort of gives you a longer term vision, which is I still think the business is very well set against its ambition to be Europe's biggest and best discount variety business. We've got a very clear, compelling strategy, particularly in our core Pepco business, and there's a lot to be pleased with in the progress we've made in half one.... We're very confident, both about executing a short-term plan, but equally confident about the long-term, disciplined, profitable growth plan for the business, and so we see a very significant opportunity for future growth. If we now move to Slide 21, what are we focused on in the short term? And I hope this is extremely repetitive to what we said at the Capital Markets Day, and I think this is in priority order. We have first got to rebuild the profitability of our core Pepco CEE business. Secondly, strengthen and maximize our position in each of our main markets. Three, review our underperforming and non-core areas of business and strengthen our cash generation and cost focus, and I'll address each of those in turn. So if we go to Slide 22, I mean, I think this slide very clearly demonstrates the why the CEE is so important to us. I mean, on the left-hand side, you can see from a sales point of view, it remains the majority, the slight majority of our business, but the other pie chart, you can see how extraordinarily important it is to the profitability of the company. On the right-hand side, I set out the Capital Markets Day, the ambition that by the end of this year, our run rate Four-Wall Cash EBITDA per store would be back to pre-COVID levels. I'm very, very pleased at with what the team has managed to do in the first half, because we've actually got back to the pre-COVID levels of profitability at half year, with more to come. It's also worthwhile recognizing that we have been very successful at reducing our CapEx per store, as well as the initiatives Neil has headlined from a working capital point of view. Add that all together, and today, investing more in Eastern Europe is even more profitable and even better return on invested capital than it would've been pre-COVID. So we've reestablished that in that sort of justification and earning the right to grow, particularly in Eastern Europe. If we then move to Slide 23, strengthening our position in our core markets, there's a bit of a breakdown here in terms of where we've opened stores in the first half, and then again, both myself and Neil have already mentioned this, but to highlight that the store opening program was front-end loaded substantially because we already had commitments, as I, as I said. We see, you know, the sort of around 400 store openings this year, so the second half will be substantially lower than the first half, but they will be largely in CEE, and therefore will deliver an extremely good return on invested capital. To Slide 24, you can... There's a little bit of a discussion here about where those stores are being opened. I think the most important thing I can highlight as we think about CEE is it's not yet a saturated set of markets for us. We still see some very good runway for future growth, and therefore, the fact that we're focusing most of our capital there now does not constrain us in terms of our growth ambitions. However, I think that within the next 12- 18 months, we will have achieved the target of delivering a target operating model in Western Europe, particularly in Italy and Spain, that will allow us to recommence store opening a significant store opening program in Western Europe, and that will be helped and facilitated by the distribution center opening later this calendar year in Spain. Slide 25, just a few headlines of things that we've stopped doing. I made it very clear at the Capital Markets Day that we needed to do less to achieve more. I think we started on a good journey in that sense, and three things I'd highlight: first of all, in Western Europe, the significant progress I feel we're making there is based on focusing primarily on our core Pepco format. We are therefore discontinuing our growth plans for Pepco Plus and focusing our efforts purely on the Pepco single format model. Secondly, as Neil highlighted, I wouldn't necessarily use the word successfully, but we've exited Pepco Austria. That was an essential thing to do, which was leaking a lot of money, and we saw no opportunity to deliver a profitable business there, so that was the right decision to take. Finally, while we will have a refit program for the future, every business needs to remain contemporary. We will do it in a way in the future that's significantly less CapEx intense and delivers a much better return on invested capital than the program we were doing. Finally, on Slide 26, the more disciplined approach to cash and costs. On the left-hand side, just a few headlines that are about CapEx. I think Neil has made the point already that we are now on track for a very significant reduction in overall CapEx spend, year-over-year. And, and on the cost management side, we continue to invest in our IT systems and, and other technology, in order to lower our cost, and while, again, as Neil's already highlighted, the fact we've had some degree of negative leverage on the fact that our like-for-likes remain negative and we've opened some expensive stores, we see that cost initiative and cost program really driving some benefits into the second half of the year. If we now move to Slide 28, and I talk a little bit about the near-term outlook. First of all, it is worthwhile highlighting that our negative like-for-likes have continued in the first few weeks of this half. However, I remain extremely confident that by the end of the year, we'll be exiting this year with a solid positive like-for-like growth that's sustainable in our core Pepco operating company. I feel that's clear because we know the levers that we are pulling, that are making progress. Our price position is better. Over time, our inventory quality, which has been a major problem for the company, is improving. And finally, the fact that we are doing less just means that operationally, we're managing our business much more in a disciplined manner. So I'm confident we'll see an improving like-for-like trend in the second half. And again, as we've both already highlighted, we see the recovery in gross margins continuing in the second half, not necessarily the amazing improvement from Q1 to Q2, but definitely continued improvement. And finally, we feel confident enough about the shape of the business to start reestablishing some guidance. It's our view that we are confident of delivering around EUR 900 million on an IFRS 16 basis in the financial year that we're now in. Look, final slide from me, Slide 29. Now I'm back to the summary of the first half. I feel that we've, while there's still a lot to do, you know, we still have challenges in our like-for-like growth. We still need to see significant benefits from the massive disruption we put into Poundland and Dealz. I think it's been a half of significant progress. Our core Pepco business has delivered 40% profit growth year-on-year. That's nothing to be sniffed at, and I see more of that to come in the second half. We are very clear where we can grow and deliver very strong returns and profitable growth, and we'll be doing that in the near term, as I've explained, largely in CEE. I am confident that over the next number of months, we will be able to reestablish our growth plans in Western Europe based on the progress we're making on the investment and operating model there, as well as start to see progress in Poundland and Dealz. Although I must emphasize, I think we all feel the majority of that improvement will land in FY 25, substantially based on the lead time of our product. And finally, we feel that we've established a much stronger discipline around CapEx and cash management, which will lead to much more robust, disciplined, free cash flow generation in the future. Okay, with that, we've got, probably as you know, up to half an hour, depending on what questions we have. We'll open it up to any questions that you may have. Most certainly, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have any audio questions, please do press star one on your telephone keypad. Also, ensure mute function is not activated to allow similar reach equipment. That is star one if you wish to ask a question. Our first question today is coming from Michał Potyra of UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi. Afternoon, everyone. It's Michał Potyra from UBS. Firstly, congrats on the EBITDA performance, definitely above market expectations. But my question really goes, therefore, into your full year guidance, which kind of implies that the second half will be worse. And I'm just, you know, wondering, because that doesn't really correspond to what you've been saying about accelerating like-for-likes, carrying over the gross margin benefits, et cetera. But is the guidance simply, like, super conservative, or are there other elements impacting your- Yeah ... expected EBITDA for the full year? Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Thanks for teeing up a difficult question. Look, I think the answer is somewhat in what you've already said. I mean, we go back to September, and we were catching a falling knife for want of a better term. I think we've done a lot to improve the quality of the business and the quality of our earnings. However, you know, as I said, we are still in negative like-for-like territory, although I am confident that will improve, but sales remain a risk. With that in mind, we have therefore been somewhat prudent in our guidance to date, and we will be able and willing to update that again at quarter three update, depending on how we see the shape of sales emerging over the next few weeks. So yeah, I think that sort of answers your question substantially. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you have any questions, do press star one at this time, please. We don't have anybody at this time, so just do a final reminder, ladies and gentlemen, as a final reminder, please press star one for questions. Okay, we do have, Michał Potyra calling, with a follow-up question. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi. So, let me continue with the questions, please. So, I'm just wondering if you could comment maybe a little bit more specific on Dealz. I understand this business is still kind of in a testing phase, but could you perhaps give a little bit more color on Dealz profitability? Thank you. I'll sort of fill some time while Neil might choose to give you a more detailed answer, but while Neil's thinking about that, my view, I'll just reiterate what we said at the Capital Markets Day. First of all, to remind you, and it's a very basic, but important economic framework that Marcin highlighted, where the investment model for this business from a requires a P&L of a 35% gross margin, 25% cost of doing business, and therefore, an EBITDA margin in, in old money of 10%. That's the way we're managing the business towards the year end, and as we said at the Capital Markets Day, we'll be making a strategic decision on where next for Dealz, dependent on how we turn out at the year end. So I think it'd be premature to sort of talk about, you know, how we're feeling about that strategic review. It'll be happening, you know, in, internally at sort of September, October time. Yeah, the only build I'd make on that. Look, we've obviously the business has increased. We opened a lot of stores last year. The business is now a reasonable scale. It's got strong brand equity and recognition in Poland. We've seen improvements in the gross margin year-over-year. So, you know, directionally, it's moving. It's not moving as fast as we would like during the year. It was handicapped, which I think we called out previously, but if not, just to remind on, it, as with Poundland, it changed out its general merchandise range, which it was sourcing relative to a range being sourced through the Pepco commercial buying team, to leverage some of the benefits we have from scale from that. And there were some delays in the implementation of that, which meant the category mix within Dealz during the first half of the year has been largely FMCG. So it hasn't had any of the margin uplift benefit from a better quality general merchandise range landing in it. So it has been handicapped during the first half due to some of that changeover from the availability of new general merchandise range, and we've taken some action steps to address that more short term, and those products are now landing in the stores, and we are seeing margin improvements on that. So I think as we said at the capital markets, and Andy's just reiterated, it's a, you know, work in progress. We've put a challenge to the team around that. We want to see it deliver the right level of margin performance to give us, forward-looking conviction to invest further and expand the business. So that's where we are at the moment, and, you know, we will obviously update at Q3 and then in the full year as to where that business has got to, but it has got very strong brand recognition within Poland. You know, and, you know, that's a good place to build from. Okay. Thank you. Maybe, I'm gonna go with another question, please. Maybe if you could comment on your, on segment revenue. Actually, I'm looking at the geographical breakdown, and I'm just, you know, looking at, Poland materially outpacing the rest of CE. And I'm wondering, was Poland doing so well, or the rest of the CE not yet, not yet catching up? I'm just, you know, trying to- Well, no, a lot of that, a lot of that is essentially driven by the number of new stores opened in Poland relative to the rest. I mean, Dealz, I mean, in round numbers- Dealz, yeah. You've got to remember, Poland as a geographic segment, includes Dealz, which is, in round number terms, doubled its store base over the last 18 months, and, and Poland has also added quite a few, few stores. So that, that's really been the driver in terms of the whereas the rest of CE encompasses, you know, a, a wide number of other countries where we've, we've seen- If you flip between now Slides 8 and 9, you know, Dealz had 55% year-on-year growth in the first half, and that will obviously... They're all- that's all in Poland. And furthermore, Pepco opened quite a number of stores in Poland. So it's about store openings across both brands, as Neil says. Okay, understood. So no like for like difference. No, I don't think- Okay. I don't think you should conclude that, you know, Poland's, from a like-for-like basis, knocking it out of the park and everything else is in the toilet. Not at all. I think that the, you know, the sort of performance at the same store level is reasonably uniform. And again, to reiterate, I think that we see that improving in the second half. Thank you. And maybe a final question, if I may. I mean, always a difficult one, but perhaps you could comment a little bit on, on kind of on your competitors. There was a lot of noise, for example, regarding Sinsay, very ambitious store opening plans in the CE region, and obviously, we have the competition from Shein, Temu. If you could maybe address that. Is that impacting your business or, you know, what do you expect? Thank you. Yeah, look, the great news, I mean, first of all, I think there's some very good competitors out there, you know, but I, I'm not gonna spend my time dissing them. I think that we... The great news is we have a lot of self-help mechanisms that if we get them right, will undoubtedly make our business performance better. You know, our inventory quality remains poor, but is improving. Our price position is improving, our focus on, you know, more disciplined growth. These are all things that irrespective of the competition, will make our like for likes and our gross margin, our EBITDA better. So I'm not overly worried about Sinsay, they're respected companies. Sinsay do a nice job, but I think we can do a better job. Shein, I think is a great business, but I think Target's a different consumer, so, or in a different shopping occasion. So look, I don't think, I genuinely think that the success or failure to us is not about whether they're good or bad competition. We've got so many things in our business we can make better. I'm very confident we can drive good like-for-likes and good profit improvement through self-help mechanisms. Thank you. Thanks. Sorry, sorry to interrupt you, but we do have one question just popped up. It was coming from Rafał Wiatr, calling from Citi. Please go ahead. Hello. Congratulations on the numbers. Could you comment a little bit on the sustainability of gross margins in the second half of the year? Yeah. How we should think about it? Yeah. Well, look, first of all, as Neil's identified, I think remember, there's the group gross margin, and then there's the individual OpCos. At an individual OpCo, by far the most significant improvement program has been in Pepco. Although, remember that now that Poundland and Dealz have Pepco general merchandising clothing, there'll be a read across there. You've seen in the waterfall the very significant improvements from quarter one to quarter two. And that, you know, we made that on Slide 10, we've made that very visible. So, you know, quarter two's gross margin at 44.4%. I think to reiterate what Neil and I said, I'm not gonna give you specific guidance, but to be clear, we see there being further improvement in the second half, but not at the rate of quarter on quarter improvement we saw between Q1 and Q2. So we see that improvement both sustainable and maintainable, in other words, and potentially higher than that. Assumption that Q3 and Q4 gross margin could be at the level of second quarter. Is that too optimistic or not? No, that's not too optimistic at all, no. Okay. Okay. And one, and I apologize, kind of like a bizarre, maybe a bizarre question, maybe not. Given the fraud that you have and this unfortunate situation this morning, which puts a little bit in our kind of thoughts in my mind, is everything okay? Is everything under control in the company? Could you comment, comment on what has been done differently, and how you are making sure that this fraud or something like this would never repeat again? Yeah, look, I'll let Neil answer the point on the fraud, but I want to make explicitly clear to everyone on the call that the issues of this morning were nothing to do with Pepco. They were to do with the regulator in the Warsaw Stock Exchange. So I think, first of all, I'd strongly refute the read across that says anything about our competence. And- Okay. People on this call should be thinking about the competence of the regulators, not about us in the context this morning. However, your point about fraud is always, you know, look, we need to be self-reflective on that, and I'll let Neil answer that now, but I wanna be absolutely clear, this morning was nothing to do with Pepco. But I'll, and with regard to fraud and what it means about our ability to manage the business, I'll let Neil answer that. Yeah, look, specifically on Hungary, and we obviously made some comment at the time, and I'll say what I can in the context of sort of follow-up and investigation on that incident. There are external authorities involved in, you know, fairly detailed criminal investigations that behind us. I can't comment beyond a certain amount, but we've obviously taken an extensive review of our control, compliance, procedures, training, and any sort of issues in terms of system access or intrusion. There is absolutely no evidence or an afterthought that there's been any system intrusion anywhere into our systems. This was not a cyber event from that perspective at all. This was a sort of phishing attack via fairly sophisticated and clearly targeted social engineering event that was targeted on specific individuals in the business in Hungary that unfortunately were duped into acting. But we've taken an extensive review, both in Hungary at a forensic level, and taken lessons learned from that and applied that across the whole group with a fairly rigorous set of retraining and deep dives. So I'm confident at the moment, based on all the work we've done, that that should not be a repeat offense, absent, you know, intentional action from fraudulent actors within the business, which is a risk that every business has, and we've mitigated to the maximum extent possible. Okay, thank you. Just the last one. Assuming that you deliver this 900 and maybe even better, even the margins and strong cash flow generation, what are your thoughts regarding the potential dividend next year? Look, I think we've telegraphed we're focused on, you know, greater discipline around capital allocation and cash generation. I mean, I think that is a question for the board, rather than one that Andy and I will answer or are in a position to answer on this call. But, I mean, the choices will come down to, with any excess capital generated in the business, whether we reinvest it in the business because we believe that's the best return or other forms of either distribution to shareholders or repayment of indebtedness. And I think that's, you know, that I think that would be a normal process we'll evaluate at the time. But, you know, we will look at it through a lens of increased discipline around capital and return. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much for your questions, sir. As we have no further questions, Mr. Bond, I'd like to turn the call back over to you for any additional or closing remarks. Thank you. Okay. Look, I don't want to repeat the my sort of commentary about what I feel good about, but just, again, I think that the half one has been a half of significant progress for the company. Still lots to do, but we're definitely on the right track in terms of improving the company. Thank you for your time today, and I look forward to speaking to you again. Probably the next time will be the quarter three announcement, so look forward to that. Thanks, everyone, for your time today.