Good morning and welcome to Pepco's Q3 Trading Update. At this time, I would like to hand the call over to Andy Bond, Pepco's Executive Chair. Good morning, everyone. Welcome. I just give you short headlines of the agenda. So we will be giving brief headlines of the quarter three trading update. I have Neil Galloway here with me, and so after that, we'll take Q and A together. But before we do that, I'm gonna take the opportunity to introduce Stephan Borchert, our new CEO. He already deserves a long service award because this is his second week in the business. As a reminder, Stephan has got a three-month intensive induction program during which there'll be a formal transition between he and I, or myself and him. So I'll be stepping back to non-executive chairman on the 1st of October. And in that interim period, I'd say there'll be a seamless, hopefully seamless transition. So I'm gonna take this opportunity to give Stephan the platform just to say a quick few words, and then we'll get on with the formal quarter three trading update. Thank you, Andy. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks a lot for the intro. As you mentioned, it's day nine. I just counted it down. Yeah, after my role as CEO of GrandVision NV, I'm super happy to have joined Pepco Group now. As Andy said, it's a two to three months introduction program. I'm induction program I'm looking forward to. We'll then start to take over the role, with the new fiscal year. I'm very much looking forward to working with you. I think for today, I keep it as short as this, and we'll engage, of course, much more intensely than going forward. Thanks a lot. Super. All right. Well, welcome, Stephan, and thank you. I feel very confident about Stephan's contribution, so look forward to working with him. So look, onto the formal quarter three trading update. It is a headline update 'cause it's only a quarterly update. So I'll give you the headlines, and then myself and Neil between us will answer any questions. And I'll substantially pull from the formal release, obviously. So starting with top line revenue, 8% growth on a constant currency basis. Both brands and collectively on a like-for-like basis in negative territory. That really shouldn't be a surprise as that's what we flagged up in May. I think we also, more importantly, know the underlying reasons for that, and are resolving those matters, as some of them are company specific. So let me get into a little bit of detail there. Pepco's like-for-like at -2.7%, which is a slight improvement on quarter two. I mean, the three key component building blocks of that, first of all, a mechanical issue, the timing of Easter year-on-year with some of Easter falling into quarter two this year. Continued challenges around Red Sea impact on availability. And finally, again, as we've flagged it previously, progressively working through excess old inventory, meaning that our inventory quality is not as high as it should be. Obviously, each of those factors will unwind at least somewhat during quarter four. So I do feel more optimistic about the quarter four trajectory. Poundland's like-for-like of -6.9%. Really, this is substantially, if not exclusively, around the disruption of moving from company to group level sourcing of clothing and general merchandise. We understand the things that we need to do in terms of correction of errors. But again, hopefully consistently, you've heard me say before that this will only really unwind into next financial year. But you know, some signs. The thing we're certainly very clear what we need to do to address the issues there. And finally, Dealz, negative 7.3, very much the same theme, really, around disruption of the product change, but also a very intense competitive environment in FMCG in Poland. More positively, the gross margin position in the business goes from strength to strength, both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. Very strong gross margin improvements, particularly in Pepco. And then moving on to other matters, you know, in terms of growth, again, a very measured new store opening program as we highlighted. So, I, I feel, taking a step back, I feel in general terms, the messages we gave at the capital markets. They were delivering very strongly on and moving to a platform of more profitable growth. So, you know, the, the same store cash profit, per store, what I call four-wal l leave it there, is growing in strength. And as we said at half one, that is now back to pre-COVID levels. So by the end of the year, it should be higher than pre-COVID levels. And that new store opening program, meaning we're, we're opening a more considered number of stores, which will allow us to deliver strong return on invested capital. And, and that, that store opening program, really focused primarily in CEE. That will mean our CapEx for the year is, is down quite dramatically. We may wanna talk about the details in Q&A, but it's down quite dramatically. Finally, before opening up for questions, outlook, we are reiterating our guidance of EUR 900 million. That really is built around a very strong underlying performance in Pepco, offsetting some tougher performances in Poundland. So you can imagine that roughly 20% year-on-year profit growth at group level is substantially higher than that at a Pepco level. Then from a momentum point of view, we see particularly in Pepco an improving sales trend in quarter four. So consistent with what I've said before, we see the business exiting this year in a stronger like-for-like position. So yeah, look, just finally stepping back, I think we've made good progress this year against refined strategy of doing less to achieve more. As I've said, you know, a more moderate level of growth, but conversion into much stronger profitability and free cash flow. You know, as we enter the last part of the year, we see momentum improving. So into next financial year, I think we'll see the business in good financial and operational strength or good health. I'm sure there's a few questions, so I'll pause there and ask who would like to ask questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We will take our first question from Alison Lygo of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, guys. Two or three kind of interconnects, I guess, thinking about sort of supply chain and stock coming in. Wondering if you could talk a bit about that. So both in terms of whether we have any risk in terms of late arriving sort of summer stock, but also how you are thinking about forward planning to make sure you've got the stock in for kind of key events like Halloween that I guess are sort of starting to appear on the horizon now and just being kind of confident in terms of that seasonal timing. And then the next one sort of connection in parts of that, how you are thinking about managing that balance of the strong growth margin tailwinds that you've got coming through, but also getting that slower moving older inventory out of the business, like whether we should be thinking about gross margin investment, yeah, how you're thinking about those two moving pieces together. Yeah. Okay. Good questions. On the supply chain side, we have definitely taken the right actions to improve our availability. So look, if we go backwards, I mean, first of all, this is well publicized. I mean, there's for every business, there's been some degree of delay and bubbles of stock flow because of the fact that the Red Sea's been very disruptive. People needn't ship stock around Africa. And everyone's done a, you know, a job to recover availability. Our position is somewhat accentuated, at least for part of our inventory by the fact that we actually ship into three European ports, Gdańsk in Poland, Koper in Slovenia, and Constanța in Romania. Those latter two ports are significantly smaller than the very, very large northern European ports. They have therefore, because they're smaller, had semi-unique issues with a congestion that's caused. So the 2- or 3-week delay that comes from going around Africa has been accentuated even further in those ports. So some of our inventory's been up to 4-5 weeks late. Now that bubble is now substantially behind us, Alison. So, you know, the issues we've seen in quarter three will abate in quarter four and into next financial year. But it definitely did cause a bubble, which everyone saw, but we probably had it a bit worse than others. As far as how that's gonna impact seasonal sell-through, very confident that the demand has actually been very strong when we've had products in stores. Summer apparel's been in double-digit like-for-like growth when we've had the right product. So demand's out there. We're selling product well even though it's late, and we don't see risk to the year-end numbers based on markdown. Looking forward, like everyone else, we've taken the right, I believe most of the people, not everyone, taken the right action in shipping product from the Far East early, and so we do not see a risk to our product availability into the final quarter of this calendar year, our quarter one financial year. I think as we may, I believe we float about half one. Perhaps the most practical issue, if there is an issue, is the fact that it will impact our year-end inventory position on our balance sheet because we have pulled inventory forward. So our cash need to invest in inventory will mean our cash position will be lower than it otherwise would be, and our inventory position will be higher than it otherwise would be. So I think we'll be in good shape for quarter one availability-wise. And then the other thing to think through is the fact that everyone's taken the same actions of pulling inventory forward, means that, you know, you are seeing spikes in spot rates of freight, upwards towards $8,000, so a significant increase. Again, we are not flagging up risk to our forecasts as a consequence of that. We feel we're able to manage that for now within our financial forecasts, and so I wouldn't flag that up as an issue. In terms of the second question about like-for-like and gross margin, look, I think this is, I genuinely don't want to feel defensive in answering this question. It's been a fine balance this year between the most important issue in our core Pepco business has been about rehabilitating our gross margins. We lost 500 basis points somewhere along the way. I think the team has done a tremendous job recovering those. If anything, ironically, we may slightly overshoot those and may have, you know, slightly underinvested in driving sales. But that for me, it is a good position to be in. We have totally rehabilitated our gross margin, and we're starting to see, you know, signs that our like-for-like should improve into quarter four in our core Pepco business. Will we need to invest gross margin in further marking old stock down? No, that's built into our forecasts. You know, and we're seeing that old inventory clear nicely. And as that old inventory clears nicely and we see new inventory coming in sequentially, we should see sales improve. So it's always been a fine balance this year in getting the right aspiration for sales and gross margin. But I think in balance, we've done the right things, recovering the margin. We're seeing sales start to improve, and we are clearing the excess stock very well. So I don't see a risk moving into next financial year of having the same story of, oh, you know, you keep telling us about old inventory. We should have cleared all of that inventory in Pepco during this financial year. I think that covers what were probably about 10 questions, actually. Hopefully that gives you a clear view, yeah? Yeah, that was, that was very clear. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. There are no questions coming through. I will now hand it back to Andy for closing remarks. Okay. Well, look, I'm grateful for a bit of time back, actually, to be honest. This is the first thing. I think, I, I remain very confident that, that the, the strategy we set out at the Capital Markets Day, more measured growth leading to strong profitability and free cash flow, that, that is the right strategy for the company. We're making very good strides. A few things still to sort out, and I'm very confident we'll see continued improvement in our underlying business into quarter four and into the new financial year. And, again, welcome to Stephan and look forward to working with him. So, look, I, I, I, I feel very confident about the future of the company and look forward to speaking to you again alongside Stephan and Neil, sometime shortly. Thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.