Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Mr Price Group's half year results presentation. It's the half year for the ending March 2024. I'm Mark Blair, the CEO. I'm joined today by Praneel Nundkumar. As you would have read and heard, I guess some of you had the chance to meet Praneel already, Praneel was appointed CFO in August. A couple of months under the belt. This is effectively your first rodeo, but welcome, Praneel. Thanks, Mark. You do know about Praneel's background, he's been with the group seven or eight years, spent most of his time in Mr Price Money. He was a financial director there for a number of years, more recently, spent three or four years as managing director. We've changed the results presentation a bit. What we did at the year-end, bearing in mind we only spoke to you a few months ago, we delved quite a lot into strategy, a lot of detail. We're going to pull back slightly on that. Obviously still address some really important messaging to you, we're going to leave some additional time for Q&A, and we've expanded that section. I'll talk about the retail environment. Praneel will go into the detailed financial analysis part, I'll come back for value creation and outlook. For us, one of the really important things is that when we give messaging, it's as transparent as we can make it, and it's really how we see the future unfolding. I just wanted to go back to what we said in June, this was the time with the results presentation for the end of year results, gave you some kind of pointers, it's really verbatim the slide, as to what we said about the external market how we're feeling about trade and our own performance as we looked into H1 of this year. This is the half that we're currently talking about. From an external perspective, we all know about the sectoral inventory carry that's taken place. It did create a lot of disruption, especially in markdowns and promotions. The intensified level of load shedding hasn't been in the base for this first half. That obviously set a base that was tougher. Obviously the cost of living pressures were quite heightened. Nothing's changed on that front. They're still as heightened, if not more. That affected the retail industry as a whole. As far as Mr Price was concerned, don't forget, we're up against an earnings base of double digits for the same half last year. That's the first point. The really important part that we said is when we make acquisitions, for example, we don't worry about trading H1, H2. We look at the annual result. Structurally, we did know that Studio 88 delivered the lion's share of their profits in the second half. Of course, the inverse applies to the first half. That performance will have some dilution in terms of its impact, especially when you're stripping out the lost interest on the acquisition price. We'll go over that in a bit of detail a bit later. The thing about the RSRI growth, and it's really strong double digit top line, that we did say because of that and other factors like particularly Q1 GP pressure and sales performance, that we didn't expect to see that same growth in the top line translate through the income statement down to the bottom line. Those are the reasons that you can see there. I've mentioned some of them already, which is higher markdowns than the prior period, the inclusion of Studio 88. Then it's not only them, it's also some of our other growth channels, the acquisition of Yuppiechef and Power Fashion. They're growing very strongly on the top line. As we know, some of those metrics aren't the same as the group's historical metrics, although there's a plan to get them there. Let's just jump into a couple of very high level things looking at the SA economy and how business is feeling. GDP growth, you can see the movements from Q2 last year to Q2 this year, either down slightly or up slightly, very lackluster, and that's I guess the biggest thing impacting corporate performance in general. Unemployment, still very hard, no great shapes or movements there. CPI, the 5% that you're seeing there is probably somewhat misleading. That's the Q3 number. I'm talking calendar year here. When you look at the movement from Q1, Q2 to Q3, it was coming down quite nicely in each quarter. Q1 was 7%, Q2 6%, Q3 5%, as you see there. Unfortunately, the latest numbers just come up and that's ticked up to 5.9. Of course, we will all be watching the outcome of the Monetary Policy Committee meeting today. A rise in inflation doesn't augur well for interest rate reductions. I think that one's off the card. Consensus seems to be at this stage, interest rates will probably remain as they are, but it doesn't rule out the prospect of an increase with CPI increasing, as I've just explained. We've had a lot of movement in currency. You can see from 14% growth to 16.37%, and it's moved on a bit since then. Looking at business confidence, it's down really low at 31 points. We've spoken about the high levels of inventory and markdowns are moderating somewhat. It's still quite elevated at this stage. If we thought load shedding was significant last year, you can see from that graph that for the 9 months to date, load shedding has surpassed last year's number by some way. Of course, it helps that we've now got backup power in all our stores. I'm not really talking to that. It's just this is what the public's experiencing and shoppers included. On the Consumer Credit Index, well, that's on the lowest on record at 39 points. A lot of things in there painting a pretty bleak picture. I think as we go through the presentation, as bleak as that is, you'll sense a sense of optimism and a sense of some momentum swift as we actually thought, just that we'll talk about in the rest of the presentation. Just dwell on this inflation number for a sec, because if you see food inflation, public transport, double digits, that's really got an impact on our core shopper. As you know, when you're looking at that value segment, and that price segment that we play in, more than 90% of our sales are in that sector. Food prices and transport charges going up to the extent that they have, has got a big drain on consumers' wallets. Interest rates probably affect the upper income consumer a lot more, but you can see the momentum in terms of the constant increases, in fact, for some time now. Real wage growth continues to be negative. Consumer confidence is also low. I think that really talks and wraps up the discussion on the consumer environment. Not a lot to talk about. In this environment, it's really about a low growth environment. It's really about gaining market share and outdoing the competition. All that's translated into revenue growth of 26%, heavily aided by the inclusion of Studio 88, obviously. At this stage, until you get to the really bottom line of the income statement, although we acquired 70% of Studio 88, it's 100% of the earnings that are in all these numbers that then get stripped out right down the bottom of the income statement. Revenue is ZAR 16.8 billion. EBITDA was up 14.7% at ZAR 3.3 billion, and operating profit at ZAR 1.9 billion was flat. There was a contraction in operating margin. I've discussed some of the reasons already. Praneel will go into a bit more detail, but we believe that's temporary, and we expect that hypothesis to start playing out. Diluted HEPS was down 9.6%, our dividend policy is, as you know, 63% payout ratio. Just to come back to that diluted HEPS number, obviously, not all the sell side put out interim consensus numbers. Those that do, our performance was much better than the average consensus H1 number, which was about -18%. We're well ahead of that. I'm going back to the second slide of what we said in June, because the first slide was talking about how we thought H1 would play out. I want to now sort of just dwell on one of the last pages in the year-end presentation. This is also verbatim that we expected to start seeing shoots and an improved H2. I'll paint the picture just now in a lot more detail. The things that were leading us to take that stance was significantly reduced disruption. Our ERP system challenges are behind us. It's been bedded down, in fact, for a number of months now. That's behind us. Significant milestone for the group, and load shedding was now in the base from H2. We had 100% backup power in all our stores, and it's a really good solution relative to competition. The industry levels and promotion activity was moderating, and not only does it take away competitor forces, but it allows us to display our offer more clearly. What we are expecting to play out is, and it's really part of our everyday low price model, is that we can sell more full-priced, differentiated fashion value merchandise, and that's really key. The differentiation in our merchandise is really what sets us apart. Just on that, we're not here to gain market share at all costs and to dilute GP and really result in not really profitable market share gains. The quality of those sales is really important to us, and we're going to spend quite a bit of time talking to our metrics and where we think we're going to go with those metrics. We did expect some positive impact of some of the merchandise initiatives we had put in place, and we had identified some opportunities really across all our divisions. That did come with a big proviso that it was all subject to no further deterioration in the macro environment. I'll talk to one or two things a bit later in the presentation on that front. I think this page really then sets it out diagrammatically quite clearly. When I was talking a little bit earlier about the momentum shift from Q1 to Q2, this is really what it's all about. You'll see that the graphs are monthly, and we've also put in, you can see the red bars there. Those are quarter totals. Just look at the group and everything at this stage, these numbers here exclude Studio 88. We're talking really about our core operations. We have started to see the beginning of the recovery that we did anticipate and that we did communicate to you some months ago. If you just look at the sales growth lines, that's looking at Q1, just remember that sales growth was 0.9%. For Q2, that increased to 7.1%. Not only that, when I was talking about the quality of sales, although GP was down in Q1, it improved significantly by 190 basis points from last year in Q2. You can see there that we actually started gaining market share as well. Started gaining market share in August and September. When you really look at the comment that I just made about this anticipation of improved recovery in H2, what this is clearly showing is that we've actually saw it a little bit earlier than that. We started seeing it in August and September. That I think positions us quite nicely momentum-wise, into H2. I think this really then explains it as well. That sea of green that you see there, that's all talking to this improved momentum. What this does, this table stipulates the Q2 statistic, then the green bar is the movement or the improvement from Q1. Whether you're looking at our geography, SA, non-SA, you're looking at the channel, bricks or online, the tender types, cash or credit, or certain merchandise metrics, whether it's unit growth or the GP margin, you can see the extent of improvement quarter-on-quarter, which is really significant for us. That's the introductory part of it. Praneel's going to go through a lot more of the detailed financial section, then I'll come a bit later to discuss strategy and outlook. Thanks, Mark. Good morning to all our stakeholders dialing in for the presentation this morning. I'm pleased to present to you our interim results for the group for the first half of F 2024, in what has been quite a challenging retail sales sector in South Africa. From Mark's overview, you would have heard by now that we have had pretty much a tale of two quarters. Q1 affected quite significantly by some of the issues flowing through from H2 F2023 in terms of a very discount promotional market affecting GPs, Q2, a momentum and shift in all our metrics signaling the beginning of the anticipated recovery with momentum carrying on into H2 F2024. Starting off with a view on revenue, retail sales grew 27.8% to ZAR 16 billion in the first half, obviously buoyed by the acquisition of Studio 88 into the group numbers. The blue block on the side gives you a view excluding Studio 88, where retail sales came in at 3.8%. Comparable store sales came in at -0.8%. Talking to the Q2 improvement, Q2 came in at 34.4% retail sales growth, excluding Studio 88 at 7.1%. Comp store sales growing at 2.6%. Other income grew 13.3%, driven by the financial services sector, telco sector. Within financial services, the increase in the repo rates over the period resulted in increased interest. From a cellular store perspective rollout, we've seen some really good momentum in cellular device sales and accessory sales. Total retail sales interest and other income grew 27.7%, with finance income decreasing 55.6% to 2023, driven particularly by lower interest generated on cash reserves to 2023, which I'll talk to just now. Total revenue for the period at 26.4%, taking the group revenue to ZAR 16.7 billion for the first half. Moving on to the group income statement, just touching on what Mark said just now, in June 2023, we said that the sales growth expected in the first half would not translate directly into operating profit growth for the three specific reasons he mentioned, higher markdowns compared to the prior period, the addition of Studio 88 at lower GP than the traditional business, a heavy weighting to the second half, together with high growth in acquisitions and departments at a lower GP. This is precisely how the shape of the income statement turned out in terms of what I'm presenting to you today. Revenue grew 26.4% that we've just discussed. Looking at Gross Profit, Gross Profit was up 22.5% on 2023 to ZAR 6.2 billion. The gross profit percentage amounted to 38.6%, which we'll talk about just now. Expenses grew 33.6% to ZAR 4.8 billion, excluding Studio 88, this growth was 6.1%. I also have a slide to talk to the expense growth shortly. As you can see, the expense growth ahead of the sales growth resulted in a flat operating profit from operating activities of -0.4%. A slight negative wedge, but a really big focus for us for the second half, which I'll talk to you shortly about. I've given you two specific reasons why in the red block to the right-hand side. Lower bank interest generated due to the payment of the acquisition for Studio 88 of about ZAR 3.5 billion, together with an increase in interest on lease liabilities from the take on of Studio 88 store assets, and rental agreements and new store openings for the core business. All in all, that took profit before tax to -9.5% on last year to ZAR 1.5 billion. If we drop down after excluding the non-controlling interest for the minority shareholders, profit attributable to equity holders of the parent came in at -10.3% to ZAR 1.1 billion. As Mark mentioned earlier, we're happy with our EBITDA up 14.7% to ZAR 3.3 billion. Giving a view now of our retail sales by segment, we've presented to you the apparel segment, home, and telco segment. You will see immediately from the circle on the left-hand side, the Mr Price Apparel contribution of 42.7%, down from last year, this time at 50% due to the diversification and the introduction of Studio 88 into our stable. The apparel segment now contributes 78.8% of total retail sales, up from 73% last year. Retail sales in the apparel segment grew 37.9%, including Studio 88, and 5.1% excluding Studio 88. Retail sales did have a tough base at +8.5% last year, with operating profit coming in at +6.5% and op margin at 12%. The home segment, now contributing 17.9% to total retail sales. Retail sales in this segment was down 1% compared to a base of -1.5% last year, showing some improvement. Operating profit at -34.7% was impacted by some of the sectoral changes we mentioned earlier and structural changes in the home segment, which we will talk to you a little bit about just now. Op margin in the home segment came in at 9.1%. From a telecoms perspective, retail sales grew 7.9% and off a high base of +8.4% last year, with op profit up 37% due to the mix in terms of higher margin products sold and op margin coming in at 10.1%. Moving on to a view of space growth. The group ended up on 2,809 stores for the first half of the financial year, driven quite substantially by new store openings. For the period, we opened 121 new stores. The existing business opened 63 stores. As you can see from the bar graphs, momentum gained in the Mr Price Apparel and Mr Price Kids space, with 13 new stores opened, Power Fashion opening 18 stores, and the Mr Price Cellular standalone concept opening 12 stores. Studio 88 opened 58 stores in this period. Remember, that's across their five trading chains, so across Studio 88, Side Step, Skipper Bar, John Craig, and Specialty. All in all, the 121 stores really are split across our portfolio of 13 trading chains. A key point to note in terms of store returns, we are very satisfied with the returns that these new stores are generating. We've set thresholds for the return on operating assets, and these returns on stores are delivering results in excess of our thresholds set and multiples of our weighted average cost of capital. If you would remember in June when we spoke to you, we said that we had increased the thresholds for new stores to manage our capital allocation and to allocate capital to our best performing divisions. I'm pleased to report that this is still the case and our divisions are still generating good returns on these new stores. Net weighted average space growth was 28.5% and 5.6% up excluding Studio 88. One metric that we're really proud of is the group trading density of just over ZAR 36,000, a really superior return in the retail sector. Moving on to a little bit of more information on the gross profit analysis. On my income statement slide, I spoke to you about gross profit growing 22.5%. Total GP came in at 38.6% for the half, compared to 40.3% last year, down 170 basis points. The reasons for these include the inclusion of Studio 88, as we had mentioned earlier, and high growth from other acquired businesses that operate at a lower gross margin compared to the group. However, we were pleased that Power Fashion and Yuppiechef both grew GP margin on last year. Excluding Studio 88, the GP margin decreased only 100 basis points. As you would have seen in Mark's slide earlier, in Q1, down 350 basis points, but rebounding strongly in Q2, up 190 basis points. Looking at the merch GP at 39.4%, down from 41.2% last year, really impacted by the discussions we've had to you around the markdowns increasing in Q1 to clear the excess inventory and ensuring that we exit winter cleanly. Margin rebounded strongly in Q2 with fresh summer inputs. You would have seen in Mark's slide earlier where there were sea of greens, that the GP excluding Studio 88 in Q2 came in at 40.5%, in line with our medium-term targets. From a telco GP perspective, GP came in at 20%, up from last year's 19.8%. Due to the telco GP being lower than the merch GP, that has a dilutive effect on the total GP for the group. Positive merchandise mix changes helping that GP increase to last year. Other factors affecting GP included input inflation due to the rand depreciation. You would have seen 14.3% depreciation in the rand compared to last year, offset by some improved contracted freight rates, helping us contain costs on that side. Moving on to the overhead expenses analysis. As we mentioned on the income statement slide, total expenses grew 33% for the first half. Excluding Studio 88, this came in at 6.1%. Employment costs were really well managed at 5.4% up on last year and in line with CPI, with occupancy costs growing at 20.3%. Some reasons for that movement in occupancy cost came through from the NERSA increases of over 18% in electricity, together with the net weighted average space growth of 5.6% with the 121 new stores that we had rolled out, and some additional costs coming through from the backup power that we had to pay for. Also included in there were some timing from rental contracts coming through in the rental line. Group expenses to RSOR, you see at the bottom of that slide at 29%. That's a metric that we would really like to improve on. Later, Mark will share with you some of our key operating metrics and some medium-term targets that we have set for those. My key focus in the second half is actually to work on achievement of that medium-term target, trying to get down to a 28% expense to retail sales and operating income ratio. Moving on to the balance sheet. We've said this before and you have seen it, we have a resilient business model, which is backed up by a very strong balance sheet. Just looking at some of the key metrics on the balance sheet analysis, inventories excluding Studio 88 was up only 2.1%. We had significant focus from the management team in terms of ensuring we exited winter cleanly from an inventory perspective, and stock freshness at 81.7%, really in the space that we wanted it to be with aging of zero to three months in that freshness calculation. A key metric that I'm focusing on in terms of the inventory space is really that inventories, the stock turn, which again, we'll talk to you under our short-term, medium target view, really trying to get closer to a four stock turn in the medium term. From a debtors book perspective, trade debtors were up 5% to last year, coming through from an increase in credit sales of 3.3%. We've spoken to you before about credit not being a significant strategy for us, and really the increase in interest rates of 50 basis points resulted in a growth in the debtors book also. I'll talk to you just now about some of the key credit metrics that played out in the first half. Trade and other payables up 80%. Great focus on managing trade creditor payment cycles. The supply chain finance program gaining some good momentum in the first half this year, assisting with unlocking working capital. All in all, when you look at inventories, debtors, and trade payables, net working capital improved ZAR 324 million. The other big point to leave you on this slide is about the strength of our unencumbered balance sheet, which really provides strong platforms for growth for us into the future and in terms of how we allocate capital into the future. We're very proud of the long-term debt, excluding Studio 88 at zero, and really just some minor operational debt facilities in Studio 88 of ZAR 48 million, and our cash and cash equivalents of ZAR 1.1 billion, slightly down on last year, but due to the payment of dividends of ZAR 1.2 billion in July this year, showing significant return to shareholders at the 63% dividend payout ratio. The other big kind of allocation of capital from the cash resources has been over the last 2 to 3 years, the payment of our acquisitions of around ZAR 5.5 billion out of cash resources, which has been a significant capital allocation project for us. All in all, cash conversion ratio coming in at 81.4%, which we're proud of, in the range of the medium-term target of greater than 80% that we had set. Moving on to cash flow movements for the first half. We started the year at ZAR 1.4 billion of cash in March. The business then generated ZAR 3 billion in cash in the first half. I just spoke to you about the working capital movements, so the focus on inventory debtors and creditors that resulted in a positive working capital of ZAR 324 million. You'll see an outflow on the taxation line of ZAR 908 million, which really includes a payment based on timing that related to the last financial year of ZAR 263 million. Taking that timing out of the equation, we would have generated about ZAR 587 million in working capital. We then have an investing in PPE and intangibles of over ZAR 500 million. The big outflows that we spoke to you earlier about, the dividend payout ratios at 63% resulted in the ZAR 1.2 billion payout in July this year, and payment of lease liabilities of ZAR 1.3 billion, resulting in the cash balance at the end of the first half at ZAR 1.1 billion. In terms of allocation of capital, this is really a key focus for me also, and we're really pleased around our ability to fund all our capital allocation requirements currently from cash reserves. In the first half, we spent ZAR 637 million from a capital allocation perspective into CapEx. About 76% of the allocation went into our store environment, including new stores, expansions, revamps, and backup power. As we mentioned earlier, returns from the stores are significantly above our internal thresholds, and we're really comfortable with the return on operating assets in the store environment, and we will continue to allocate capital to that channel. We anticipate annual CapEx of ZAR 1.4 billion, and we are in line to achieve that by the end of the year. Just honing in a little bit on credit growth. As you know, we are a cash-based retailer with 87.8% of our sales coming through the cash tender type. We have a very conservative credit positioning with a 12.2% contribution of credit to sales, coming in at ZAR 2 billion in the first half with a 3.3% growth to last year. Some of the trends in the credit space has been the existing customer spend increasing by 3.7%, but new accounts decreasing by 26%, which is in line with our strategy that we had set in terms of conservative posturing around credit. While received applications of up 14% showed the appetite for credit from customers in the market, our approval rate came in at 18.6%, down from 27% last year, with the aim to manage the net bad debt in that credit portfolio. Backed up in terms of our strategy was the view from TransUnion's Credit Consumer Report, which recorded the lowest levels in the history in Q2 of F2023. As Mark mentioned earlier, quality of sales is really important to us. We will continue with a cautious approach in terms of the credit cycle. Trade receivables were 5% up on last year, but compared to March's balance at year-end, down 1.3%. Net bad debt came in at 10%, creeping up from 8.4% at year-end, and really through the higher bad debts from the very constrained consumer environment and customer affordability being strained. Mark spoke to you in the earlier slide around fuel inflation and food inflation that affects our customer base. Affordability is becoming a bigger challenge. Collections and recoveries were very challenging in this environment, and the bad debt will or is anticipated to improve into the second half due to the stringent credit granting criteria. The impairment provision coming in at 10.5% remains adequate, and we are sufficiently provided for write-offs. In terms of a market view of the health of our debtors book, the total good to total bad ratio from Principa's Face of Credit Report came in at 7.9 for Mr Price Group, compared to the clothing retail industry at 3.8. Our Cycle 4 plus balances came in at 4%, compared to the market at 14%, showing a really good performance of the Mr Price book, which is backed up by that conservative credit policy. In terms of the financial outlook now for the second half of F2024. Black Friday, actually, we call it Red Friday, is upon us, and that will play out tomorrow. Together with the festive season, we are likely to see a very promotional-driven environment. Our expected H2 recovery is off the back of the Q2 results that we spoke to you just now, where we expect improved sales trends and higher GP levels towards our targeted range. We have already seen some of that come through in market share movements in October, which Mark will talk to you just now about, where we gained 70 basis points of market share in October per the RLC, and a continued focus on lean inventory position. We anticipate to end the year on a negative inventory position. Big focus areas for me, cash generation and cost control initiatives that I have spoken to you about already. From a space growth perspective, we anticipate opening 140 more stores in the second half across our 13 trading chains. Weighted average space growth is expected to grow 16%, including Studio 88, and 5% excluding Studio 88 in the second half. I now hand you back to Mark, who will give you an overview of strategy and the outlook. Great. Thanks, Praneel. Let's dive in. The first slide really sets out the strategic pillars that we've got and that we run the business by. These have been previously communicated with you. I'm not going to talk to them individually, but what I do plan to talk to you about is how do we go about achieving our vision and what are the big drivers of that. Profitable growth, market-leading metrics, a commitment to sustainability, and then, of course, the unspoken, but the clearly obvious thing is underpinned by great culture and amazing people going about their business. Profitable growth, and there is some more detail on each of these, is first of all, to give investors the assurance that the primary objective is to focus on our core operations. That's where we believe that most of the upside sits, in addition to the acquisitions, obviously, but that absolute focus on the businesses that we've got right now. Extracting value from the acquisitions. I'll talk a little bit about some of the things that we have done. People often ask about integration, and we have got some really good movements there. Not only acquisitions, but also current organic opportunities, and I'll go through that in a bit of detail. We, of course, keep our eyes on the market. We've got a well-established strategy function, and big part of that is growth. We do look at other things from time to time. Really importantly, as I said with focus a minute ago, that any opportunity that comes along cannot come with management distraction on looking at the things that I've just mentioned. That's the growth side, but of course, there's the engine room and the internal metrics and how we run our business and everything that we do to make sure that we carry on being a resilient and an agile business in the face of heightened competition and a negative cycle that is currently negative, but as we know, these cycles do come and go, and at some point they will become positive. Market-leading metrics is very important to us. We talk to investors all the time about this. Fiscal discipline is in our DNA, and I don't think I could actually get it out of my thought process even if I tried. It's central to what we do in this business. I guess that's backed up by our proven history in what we've achieved over the years. Part of the integration I was talking about is, and we did say that the acquisitions we are making do bring growth. They are high-growth businesses. Their metrics aren't quite what the group metrics are. We knew that when we acquired them, but there'll be a steady program to see which ones we can get to the group metric. Of course, we'll very carefully think about the implications of getting them to that metric. It's not a get the metric at all costs. We'll take business into account as well. Now I'm really proud of what we've done on the sustainability front and what we continue to plan to do. It's not just about making profits, it's about doing good. I think the big message there is we tend to overshoot or overachieve, or relative to expectations of a value retailer, can we do those things? I think we're doing a really excellent job on that front. A nice balance between what we're doing, growth, but preserving metrics, but having a strong ESG stance as well. Just looking at profitable growth then, it has come up early in the presentation, the absolute focus on comp sales growth and profitable market share returns, market share gains. An EDLP model, we don't go in with the highest margins that some of the more premium players do. Any promotion or discounting that takes place above the level that we'd like does have an impact, and therefore the profitability of sales is very important. Praneel spoke about the new store opportunities across all the chains. We update it frequently. A lot of focus on it is what is the capital allocation and relative to the returns that are being generated by each of our chains, and then we start tailoring it accordingly. Our omnichannel strategy is a really important overall strategy for us. It's not all about e-com, not all about stores, because we know the interplay between the two. I think the track record there on e-com is that we were pioneers in the space many years ago, and that one of our primary objectives was to get that channel profitable as soon as possible. In our world, e-com's been profitable for many years, and we want to keep it that way. There's always a trade-off between what you spend on marketing and things like that. I guess there's some subjectivity of the interplay between e-com and stores. For us, it's really about making sure that we invest at an appropriate level. Really importantly, that's one thing saying what we want to do, what we want to do is informed by our customers, and it's the preference of the customers that will play out in terms of where we're going. When you look at the e-com contribution to our business, I think it's 2.2% or 2.3%. It's a very small contribution. However, it has got quite a big impact on the stores. When people pick up and click and collect, excuse me, the extent to which they pick up additional items. I think the point I'm trying to make here is it's always a level of responsible investment. We're certainly not here to start building platforms or focus entirely on e-com. I think e-com platforms globally have been struggling for sales and profitability of recent times, and we just really regard it as an important channel, but at an appropriate level of investment for us. Part of growth, as I was saying a little bit earlier, is re-engineering processes. Just making it, how do we find ways to make doing business more effective and more efficient? Certainly fit for value retailing. Our business has been hard at work. We call them internal synergy projects. The work is being presented to me in the first week of December on how we can actually go about achieving some of those efficiencies. Very importantly, it's about leveraging the power of our brands. At a recent investor conference, one of the investors asked, "Retail's not in a great shape. You've had your internal pressures, the economy's not exactly helping, but yet I'm sensing the sense of optimism in our engagement with you. Can you just share with us what is giving us or giving you that optimism?" Really that's what it's all about. I think we're clear in our communication, our expectations of the market, and how do we get those expectations? It's seeing on the ground. It's having intimate knowledge of our business and consumer behavior, and we're very, obviously, very influenced by external reference points. In other words, we're not caught up in our own internal thought process, but what's the customer and what's external surveys telling us? When you talk about the power and leveraging the power of your brands, this is to me, a critical slide, and this is the Kantar BrandZ Strategic Pricing Review. Just want to point out, this is not our view of the world. We haven't influenced this at all. On the one axis, you've got perceived price, and then on the other axis, the vertical axis, you've got pricing power. That's our customers and people outside of Mr Price Group telling us that we are the recognized value champion. We're the retailer, the only retailer, clothing retailer that's in that great value segment. When we talk about being the value champion, this is one of the things that certainly is corroboration that we're doing some of the right things and that we're in the right place. Okay. When you start looking at the brands that we've got, really for me, I guess it's a strength when you talk about leveraging the power of the brands. It's this halo effect that the Mr Price brand has on our current businesses and other businesses that we open. Two recent examples would be Mr Price Kids and Mr Price Cellular. That name, Mr Price translates, it's a name that's in the hearts and minds of consumers and is entrenched. The pleasing thing for me, it's not only entrenched because of what we do on the retail side, it's also on the ESG side, and I'll come to that later. There's various sources in these stats, but when you look at the Mr Price Apparel chain, they're the most shopped apparel retailer with 4.2 million customers. They're also number 1 ranked the most valuable apparel retailer in South Africa. They were voted the coolest clothing store in South Africa. In terms of the coolest clothing brands, Mr Price came fifth after those international names that you see there. Some great accolades there, but it doesn't stop at Mr Price. It goes on to Mr Price Home. Mr Price Home is the most loved homeware brand in South Africa. It doesn't stop there. We look at these metrics internally, but whether it's Mr Price or Mr Price Home you're looking at, again, brand equity, fashion value matrix, your position on that matrix, the conversion to purchase and shopper awareness, we highest in both those segments for each of our businesses, and that's per the latest June 2023 report. Although internally, we think we've been through a rocky road in the last 12 to 18 months, I said momentum is now changing. It just shows to the extent that our shoppers still believe in us, believe in the brand, and create that tremendous loyalty in their dealings with us. Still looking at the core business and it's really just building on that. Remember I was talking about that sea of green page a little bit earlier. This now specifically looks at market share and the trend of market share over the period stretching back as far as 2021. Period of market share gains in that period up to FY 2022. Mr Price Apparel in particular, had many, many months of gains in that period. We then got to that period up to F2023 and up until Q1 of the period that we're talking about now. That's for all the reasons that we documented now and in previous presentations how the market share came off. The great news was that the rebound that we've had in Q2, up 40 basis points again, back in the green. Just to let you know that although we gained share in August and September, in fact, Mr Price Apparel in September was the highest market share on record. That's a great achievement. That accolade was short-lived because in October it gained market share again and got to a new high. Post-trading period, the first month of H2, October, our market share was up 70 basis points as a group and Mr Price Apparel, sorry, the apparel segment was up 110 basis points. Good momentum in a month, which I'll talk about shortly, in a month that wasn't a good month for the sector at all. It's great that even in that environment, we can be gaining market share again. Mr Price Kids, the standalone concept, we've communicated this before, I'll just reiterate why we did it. I was talking about that halo effect of the Mr Price brand. That certainly came into our thinking when we were envisaging this concept. It's a great way to take the learnings from that baby trial that we had done. We've been in the kids sector for a number of years in our Mr Price Apparel stores, and to combine it into a new Mr Price Kids concept. When you did that, the plan was obviously to extract kids into its own standalones, not only did it present a much greater opportunity, it actually then gave more space to the junior and adult customers in Mr Price Apparel, that's a key part of the equation too. The great thing there as well is that this now gives us runway for a number of years with stores. I think you remember that we said that we had identified up to 300 locations already. Potential locations. Of course, identifying potential locations and being able to execute those are two different things. We set the target in the medium term as 160 store openings, I'm very confident it's going to go well beyond that. The great thing for this, it was spawned out of the Mr Price Apparel business. Although kids structurally does operate at a lower GP than the rest of the group, don't forget it's all private label assortments as well. The good thing is that it leverages off the Mr Price central costs, which are for all intents and purposes, let's just call them pretty much fixed. You get that leverage effect there too. Only opened two stores. I was talking about executing and getting the space, but there's good momentum going to H2 when we plan to open 17 more. Look forward to seeing those results. The early indications are that when I was talking about pulling kids out of the main store, the main store's operating according to expectations. In terms of the kids' standalone stores themselves, those results are exceeding feasibility on a much more expanded offer. That's some great read for us. Still staying with the core business, and this is now the home segment, and I've spoken before about the structural change and all the reasons for that that's taken place over the last probably two and a half years now. Post-COVID, there was that boom and that demand for homewares. Work from home was feeding it. Everyone's spending money on their house, and it just made it a very attractive place to enter for a lot of competitors. Big formal retailers as well as a lot of independents. Certainly what we've seen recently is that whole rate of store openings and the attractiveness of that sector is now starting to slow. We do find the discounting promotions from competitors are elevated levels, but as I said, the store openings are reducing. What we have seen, that although it's not at the level that we want to see it or necessarily in the black, the rate of the market share losses in that sector have slowed. Don't forget, we're still by far the dominant player. That'll play out in our resourcing and what benefits we get there. We still hold greater than 30% of market share. In terms of Mr Price Home, we are expecting to see enhanced differentiation of our fashion value EDLP model as that sectoral discounting reduces. In Sheet Street, we have been hard at work rethinking the merchandise mix there, and we are putting in some merchandise change in a test grid of stores in Q4 of this year. We'll be watching that one very carefully. Tough sector, and don't forget group results are what they are, including what we're seeing in a very tough sector, but in a position that we are still dominant, as I said. That said, the store returns that we're getting from the stores that we have opened are working for us. You can see Sheet Street, in the next six months, we won't get any new stores until we have that read on that product I was talking about. Mr Price Home, we're opening 10 stores, and Yuppiechef a further five in the second half of the year. The performance of our acquisitions is obviously top of mind with investors. For us, it's really about achieving the business cases when we acquire these businesses and making sure that we're on that runway and we're on that path. We had previously said that these businesses were earnings accretive, and some of the feedback that we are seeing is, "Well, don't tell me, show me the numbers." Here are the numbers. In the last 12 months, the acquired business have added over ZAR 520 million worth of operating profit. That exceeds the interest forgone on those acquisitions by over ZAR 100 million. That ZAR 100 million excess would probably go up to between ZAR 130 million and ZAR 135 million because that includes amortization of some of the intangibles on acquisition. It's not a cash flow item. To us, the true added profit would probably be ZAR 135 million. The interesting thing in that is despite a lousy retail environment and despite an increasing interest rate environment, we've still been able to weather those storms. If interest rates hadn't increased, obviously that accretion would have been much higher. Quite pleased on that front. In Studio 88, I'll let you go through the stats on your own. Sales growth healthy at call it 16.5% to ZAR 3 billion. Unfortunately, Studio 88, there is no RLC for those categories. We're unable to say how we performed versus the market. As Praneel was saying a little bit earlier, those earnings are material weighted to the second half. Power Fashion opened 18 stores, sales growth over 22% to ZAR 1.1 billion. It gained market share in each month of the half. In fact, gained ZAR 400 million of market share since we acquired that business. Going along very nicely. Yuppiechef only opened one store, but as you heard a little bit earlier, another five to come. It's quite strange. With sales growth of 17.4%, you can see there the comment under market share, that market share was maintained. That's really only because some of the areas that we've got growth in Yuppiechef isn't included in the RLC. That's why it's only market share maintained. Looking at additional growth opportunities, you remember that we've spoken to you about our investment matrix. Part of that thinking was where in SA do we want to invest, or where do we think there's opportunity, bearing in mind it is a market that we know very well. There's a longer-term plan to continue diversifying product and market segments. The really key thing is that we have to ensure that whatever we look at is appropriate in terms of timing, is appropriate in terms of what's on the plate already. The focus on cooperations is one of the things I've already said. Whatever we do or where we invest, it must result in scalable opportunities for the group. What we don't want to do is fill our basket, should we call it, with lots of small opportunities that don't provide that scalability with the thing that's going to get us to our vision, not clouding the environment with lots of small things. That applies to whether it's organic or acquisition. When I was talking about our well-developed strategy function a short while ago, we have looked at two businesses recently. Both very nice businesses. We looked at them at a very high level. Absolutely no management distraction. Have decided not to pursue them. I think if you really ask me for where we're going on this, I think we've got a key outcome next year. That's the general elections. I think this group is very unlikely to fire any big bullets. We're extremely unlikely to fire any big bullets prior to the outcome of those elections being known. As you've seen already, we've still got a number of things in play. We've got store growth, and it's low risk from the point of view that those business concepts, the categories, are entrenched in our business. We know how they operate. It's low risk in that front, but I guess it's the continued performance of the stores that we're opening. Will they continue to get our metrics? As Praneel was saying, we watch that like an absolute hawk. Store growth is going to be working for us. Then one of the things that we know we can scale, we've just spoken about Mr Price Kids and the opportunity there. Ensuring we are a resilient and agile business. First of all, technology is front and foremost. We're going to spend a lot more time and effort on that, particularly now that our ERP is bedded down and out the way. We can now start applying ourselves and our capital and our effort, to more of the AI, RPA, and data-driven decision-making processes, and that's certainly part of our plan going forward. Further investments in supply chain, and I think here I just wanted to point out that, in fact, there's a recent Sell Side article, a paper released in the last week or 10 days that actually was looking at the level of imports of the SA retailers, and that placed Mr Price as the second least importer of product as a percentage of their overall offer. It just backs up what I've been saying to the market for many, many years. Don't forget, we had initially put a target of sourcing 100 million units locally in South Africa. We've exceeded that number already. As you can see there, when you take what we source from SA and neighboring, let's call them neighboring territories, it's well over 50% that we actually source locally. When it comes to port disruptions or it comes to worrying about what's happening with exchange rate, I think we just need to just be very careful how we evaluate competitiveness amongst the retailers. Certainly, I think that Sell Side article put things into perspective and corroborated what we've been saying all along. What you are planning to do, I did say this is a very competitive environment. Our brand promise, that strategic pillar that I was speaking about a little bit earlier, is key to us. It hasn't had a dedicated owner in that front. The ownership has been fragmented around the trading divisions and then obviously through our group retail directors. But I am looking at appointing a dedicated owner there that's going to really get into looking much deeper into our customer care, the customer journey and elements of CRM. Not only that, Praneel spoke about our CapEx that we're looking at this year, and we hadn't invested a lot of money on revamps up until now. The simple reason that investing in backup power became the priority for obvious reasons. But now we'll get into that revamp cycle as well, which will add to that brand promise and also add to everything that our customers said they like about us. Although that, as I said, we've got a very strong strategic capability, we are adding further weight to it. There's a lot more operationally that we've been faced with, and we obviously have got a big vision, and we have to think very, very carefully about how we're going to realize that. We're just going to be increasing some capacity in that team. This is the DNA stuff. That's our investment and a part of our investment case that looks at our metrics versus the rest of the market, whether that's the JSE Top 40 or our competitors. You can see how just on these three metrics, ROE, return on assets or debt to equity ratios, how we stand out relative to the competition. We still have plans to push those on. Don't get worried about that debt to equity. We haven't snuck something in there that will go into the market for borrowings that we haven't told you. That's the lease liabilities. The core business has got no long-term structural debt borrowings, per se. Not only that, really strong long-term returns. Praneel was referring to what these metrics look like and how are we thinking about them. I think the great thing for us now is that all the acquisitions are modeled on these metrics. What we like to do is set medium-term targets, work towards those medium-term targets, and then start seeing if they're still appropriate or whether those targets need to be pushed on. I'll let you just cast your eye down that column, those medium-term targets and all the respective returns, still very, very healthy. Still puts us in a really strong position versus our competitors. Something that we will give absolute focus to, and I think you know us for doing that, and it is front of mind. Any structural debt, the thing right down the bottom there, we did say that we haven't got a complete aversion to debt. It would depend for what reason. There's no reason to suggest that it would be in the short to medium term anyway. Told you about the elections last year. If we wanted to go and incur debt because, for some reason, we didn't have sufficient cash, what we would think about very carefully is how we would then think about accretion relative to that debt, and it would have to be accretive, just like the other three we said they had to be. We go on to a little bit about the sustainability framework, and I said, this is our internal tagline, "Together we do good." We aim to be market leading and transparent in our communication. We achieved number one for investor relations in the consumer sector, and that's not our own accolade. That was part of the Intellidex survey. Our investor relations engagement score, this is an internal thing that we did, was 73% versus 55% of competitors. Just to let you know that for us, as I was saying a little bit earlier, at the end of this financial year, our acquisitions would have been in the base for the full 12 months. What we're doing now is applying our mind as to we think we've got a really good story to tell, got a number of growth vectors in our business. As we pull back, I guess, for competition purposes on elements of disclosure, that we probably feel that we're not doing ourselves and our story justice. To aid investors in assessing where this business is going, we are thinking deeply about how we can enhance disclosure, and any changes that you will see will then be effective at our year-end results that we'll publish in June. Just to let you know, ESG matters are firmly embedded in our remuneration/reward framework. How seriously we take governance and controls and processes. We've been granted the Authorised Economic Operator status, level 2 with SARS. I stand to be corrected, but I think we're the only retailer that has that level 2 accolade. That talks to the processes and the controls and the knowledge that you've got around the greater supply chain. That was great recognition for us. Very pleasingly, we were certified as a top employer in 2023 for the first time. Obviously a lot of work's been going into that area. Once again, great external recognition when I said we punch above our weight for a value retailer for our ESG initiatives. Whether it's ISS or MSCI or Sustainalytics, we actually place second out of the retailers on each of those. It's not just the apparel or home retailers, that includes the food retailers and the pharma guys. Then when you talk about social purpose and punching above your weight and making a real difference to people's lives, those of you that haven't been exposed to what we do at the Mr Price Foundation, either write in to us or we can point you to our website. There's so much good that we're doing in this space, this is one of the things that translates back to why people love the brand so much. Right now it's pretty small. I said we fight above our weight there. We can really do a much bigger job and a much more impactful job, our plan is to exponentially grow the Mr Price Foundation. Looking forward, operating environment. Don't want to dwell too much on this. It's going to be tough. Excuse me. Electricity supply is affecting us less as a business, but it's still an issue. The port and logistics instability is increasing. Whilst I spoke about market share gains in October, this is first month post H1, group retail sales, excuse me, for the group only increased 2.3%. I said before we gained market share by 70 basis points, but our comparable market sales declined 1.5% and the total RLC was down about 3%. Excuse me. November's fared a bit better. Group retail sales are up 6.2% for the first two weeks. As we go forward, how are we feeling about the business and the opportunities we've got? I think that that's the headline. Be cautious, but optimistic. Our internal challenges are behind us. The ERP is bedded down. Power backups in all our stores. We've got space growth opportunities across all our brands with strong returns. We've got a strong portfolio of businesses targeting broad income groups and heavily focused on private label, which I think is a good place to be. We've got a standalone kids offering that'll grow exponentially and also have a really good impact on the existing Mr Price store as you extract them. We've got differentiated fashion in this market that's really key, that we're not playing in a sea of sameness. It's not only about price, it's about the other things that make up price and, in fact, make up value. That whole value equation as we see it, price, quality, and by the way, in Mr Price Apparel, our quality, our AQL standards have the best, or they're now the best that they've ever been. Doing a really good job there. It takes into account fashionability, convenience for the shopper, and then how the customer experiences our omni-channel business. As I said earlier, we're the most shopped and most valuable apparel brand in South Africa. Although it's a very difficult trading environment, I feel that we've got great momentum going into H2. Thank you. Happy to hand over to Matt, who will then pose us some questions. Great. Morning, everybody. Thank you very much for the questions. There've been a lot of questions, we're going to do our best to get through as many as we can in the remaining 15 minutes or so. If I don't ask you a specific question, it's because there has been repetition, and I've asked somebody else's question. We'll try and cover as many of the topics as we can. I think, Mark, just to start with the first one on the ports. Just to give an update, there's been a number of different questions around it, levels of risk. Have we had to air freight? Is there an impact on cost per unit? Just generally, the timing of product coming in. Yeah. I think the only public comment that I've seen so far from other retailers is, "Have you got sufficient stock to trade December?" Our answer is yes. Have we seen additional costs come through? No, we haven't. Whether those will transpire at some point, who knows? Because what we've seen is quite a nice reduction in shipping rates in recent times. That's certainly one of the things that's been aiding some GP improvement. International shipping rates, container rates have just been coming down quite nicely. There is a threat that shipping lines are starting to think about imposing some kind of surcharge because of the efficiency in the port. We haven't seen that, it's not something that when the vessel arrives, it'll just hit you by surprise. These are long-term structural negotiations that would then take place. So far, we haven't had any. It certainly hasn't affected any vessel sailing at this point. I think longer term, it's worrying. I think what you're seeing is probably the risk being elevated over peak. When equipment's not what it needs to be and in a state that it needs to be or there's not enough equipment working, of course, that creates these creeks in the system. We'll probably see that subside when we get over peak. It's still going to be a lasting problem, probably into 2025. I think the acting CEO of Transnet has done a great job of refocusing, making sure the obvious things are in place, that they're getting spares, that the spares are going to be in stock. That's a really good place to be. Orders for gantries are in place. Some of those will be coming next year. When you look at the quantum of operational equipment and where that needs to be, it's still some way below par. For a value business, it's just totally inconceivable even thinking about air freighting stock in. The cost of that transport is a multiple of over 20 times what sea freight is. Even if you were prepared to pay that, the capacity just isn't there because most of the cargo is brought in on commercial planes, and those commercial planes allocate, I think it's just over 60 square meters, cubic meters, should I say, on each plane. If you just want to put that into perspective, that's roughly a 40-foot container when we've got vessels coming in with anywhere between 50 and 70 containers on it. You just can't match that kind of volume by air. Just sticking with the theme around festive, how are you positioned ahead of Black Friday in terms of stock as well as just your approach to the day? I think as Praneel was saying, Red Friday is what we're calling it. It's become Red Week, and in recent times, the whole month has been a bit disruptive. I'll just bring it back to the comment that was made on the stock. Have we got sufficient stock? Our risk was that we had two vessels still out at port with a lot of stock on them. One of them docked early in the week, I think it was Monday evening. The other one is expected to dock in a couple of days' time. That'll obviously be post Black Friday. It comes back, have we got sufficient stock to trade December? One day in Black Friday, we've still got a lot of stock to trade. When I was talking a little bit about margins and the quality of our sales and all that kind of stuff, of course, we're going to go in with promotions and offers and all that kind of stuff. We're not doing it on the back of heavily discounted margins. We think we can operate and get the result that we want out of Black Friday without going too crazy on that front. Just a question to Praneel. You've been in the role for four months. Can you give us a summary over this period and your focus areas going forward? Yep. It's been four months. It's been four busy months. I think landed at the right time, getting into our strategy setting, positioning in the last couple of weeks, now onto half year end. You would have got some hints from the presentation in terms of some of the areas that I'm focusing on. I'll talk about three of them maybe quickly. The first area really is around cash generation. The ability to focus on this working capital management to ensure that we're generating cash and meeting all the internal threshold targets that we set is really important. Why this is important kind of leads to my second focus area is around capital allocation. We've had a very proud history of a 63% dividend payout ratio. Our ability to generate cash obviously means that we can continue to allocate capital into returns to shareholders via dividends. Then the second piece in terms of capital allocation is investing back into the store environment. Mark spoke about our revamp strategy that we're looking at, that's an area of focus for us, the metrics and returns that we anticipate getting from the revamp strategy, really putting money back into customer experience in the store space. The other piece around capital allocation for us is looking at what other opportunities are on the table. Mark spoke about other organic opportunities and the benefits we've had from the halo of the Red Cap, also any other opportunities that could arise that bring value to shareholders. I think the other big investment area from a capital allocation perspective was we've done the ERP, which has been a significant project for us. Trust me, we've got a list of other projects that we want to get on from an IT investment perspective. Part of that, from a focus area perspective, is really interrogating the business cases and the benefits realization to ensure that capital we deploy into those IT projects brings the return that we require. Also, other investments into strategic cash holding and logistics and supply chain allocations is where capital allocation will be focused. Then maybe the third one I hinted at was around cost control. You know we operate a value business model, and to be able to put the best value in front of the customer, we have to make sure that we are as lean as possible. Where we've spoken about expenses to retail sales being at 29% in the first half and that we're not happy with that, a big area of my focus in the second half was to try and remediate that back into our medium-term target threshold. Amongst everything else, those are probably three of the key focus areas for me in the short to medium term. Yeah, that will keep me busy. Thanks. Thanks, Praneel. I think you've managed to answer three or four questions today, you've covered some good ground. Just one relating to working capital is talking about the sustainability of the supply chain finance program, if you could give some insight into that. Sure. We've had really good success with the supply chain financing program. To date, we've probably unlocked about ZAR 1 billion in working capital from our suppliers in terms of that program. We're definitely not complete. We've got a percentage of our suppliers onto the program, we are looking at onboarding other suppliers in the next probably six months, I'd call it. We've done a good job of onboarding local suppliers, there's still some runway to go with local and foreign suppliers in terms of that program. We're not done yet, we should continue to get some positive momentum from a working capital management perspective via the supply chain finance program. Great, thanks. Just back over to Mark. Can you comment on the slowdown in October sales for the markets and for Mr Price? Was it base effects, consumer impact? Just to give some insights around that. Look, I think following a really strong September, for all the reasons that we just mentioned, we obviously knew what our own performance in October was. In fact, we're quite relieved that when the market share information did come out, that we had gained. It's hard to say what absolutely drove it, whether consumers are starting to save for Black Friday. I personally don't believe it's that. I think trade was heavily impacted by the Rugby World Cup. We did some informal surveys in one of our chains, and with customers there, and posed the question to them, "Right, you're in the store now. Did you come last month, and did you buy, and why not?" All the people that we interviewed, without exception, said that the reason they didn't shop last month is that it was a trade-off for them. There's watching the rugby, there's the social side of it, there's food, there's alcohol, there's supporters gear. I think that really created a diversion of spend. That's the one theory. What we had seen in November, we're back up 6%. Even the first two weeks have been quite erratic. Really, really strong growth in that first week. Came off a bit in the second week and averaged six. I think we're just going to have to see it play out a little bit more. I think everything that I said a little bit earlier about the things we've done right, the things we've put behind us, the momentum, I'm still confident I suppose from a competitive position, that we're going to continue doing well into the second half. Great, thanks. Just moving attention onto Studio 88. Can you talk about growth and margin ambitions, as well as the impact of exclusive brands and deals in terms of the structure of the business? Yeah. I think Studio 88, they've done a great job. They're one of two with Nike, Adidas, and Puma. That's a really good position to be in. Really strong relationships there. That's the one side of the business. They've actually got exclusive brands to them, VW, Playboy, a few names. ellesse is a very successful long-term private relationship that they've got with that brand. That business will continue to look for those kind of opportunities. I think looking at long-term growth, this is not a store rollout strategy. It's continuously looking for those opportunities on the branded side, but also on the private label, which is still quite a small part of the business, really good opportunity there too. As that comes, it comes with enhanced margin. Great. Just sticking with just some widely asked questions, particularly around homeware. There's been significant pressure noted in homeware segment. What strategies are in place to turn this around from both a top line and a margin point of view in terms of historical margins? Some other questions just around where do we sit relative to historical margins, just considering competitive dynamics being fairly similar for the next 24 months or so? Yeah. That's why at the year-end presentation, when you talk about Homew ares, we did say structural change. That whilst there's so many positive stories elsewhere in the business, when you had almost 40% market share in a sector, you're really never going to hold onto that forever. COVID and the work from home thing, as I said, brought a lot of new players into that market. The whole trajectory of their store openings and our loss of market share is starting to reduce. For us, what's absolutely critical is all the things that have made Mr Price Home a successful business and Sheet Street, for that matter, with some changes to come, that we double down on our efforts on product and all opportunities around product to effectively differentiate from a lot of the stuff in the market. That's where our mind is. We don't want to play in the sea of sameness. There's obviously comp product that you can shop us or shop competitors, but it's also around differentiation, and once again, comes back to the power of the brand that we're number one in that space. Praneel, just a question on costs, a couple of different questions on costs. I'll just read out this one. How have you managed to grow employment costs, like-for-like employment cost below space growth, and what is the outlook for OpEx going forward? In terms of employment costs, we have a very performance driven remuneration model. We flex up when performance is there, and we flex down when performance is not there. It's really coming off the back of how we allocate STIs or the Short-Term Incentives. Our flexible REM model really talks to the performance-based business strategy, and that's how we're able to manage employment costs in cycles when the sales aren't on the table. In terms of operating cost growth, I mentioned just now we're going to obviously look further into opportunities to reduce those expense to sales ratios. There's a few areas we're looking into specifically. I won't talk to all of them, but at the high level, we are looking at opportunities from process enhancements. We have started projects from an RPA perspective and using bot and automation in terms of enhancing processes for quicker turnaround time and for reducing costs in those cycles. We have a whole list of projects that we're undertaking, and I think that's the key focus area for us in terms of how we manage costs. Obviously, the key thing for us is to trade, right? A key focus area is the growth ambitions of the business. When the growth is there, our ability to then manage and shape up that income statement in terms of where it needs to be becomes easier. Big focus on growth and putting sales on the table together with how we're managing that expense to sales ratio. Great. Thanks. Then just last question that we can squeeze in from a time perspective. If you can shed any detail on base effects in Q3 and Q4, in general, when do you think it will start getting easier for the consumer? Oh, I wish I had a crystal ball. If you had to look into the immediate future, I think it's going to remain tough for consumer for some time. There's negative real wage growth. Employment's not kicking on. I think we've got to start really waiting for inflation to simmer down. It's now heading in the wrong direction, but that'll turn at some point. When that turns, interest rates will follow, I think there's probably a lag effect for that to start coming through nicely for the consumer. When you're looking, I think you said something about base effects of Q3, Q4. When you look at going into H2, Q4 was in the base was our weakest performance out of the two, the weaker of the two. That's a weaker space. I think you must just consider that when we do come out with trading updates in January, that the weakest base is effectively still to come. Yeah. I suppose the next thing is then going to trade for next year. Any drop in margin that we had in Q1 this year creates an opportunity for next year. Great. Thank you everybody for the questions. We are out of time now. You are welcome to email those through to me, and I will come back to you in the next couple of days with responses, as well as to have time available should you want to talk through results further. We can book in some time over the next few weeks. Thanks very much for joining today. Thank you.