Barratt Redrow plc

So I'm going to make a start. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming along to see us this morning and welcome to Bad at Red Rose interim results presentation for FY26. This morning, I'm joined by Mike Roberts, our Chief Operating Officer, who will provide an update on our operational performance. John Messinger, our Investor Relations Director, who will update on our financial performance. And after John, I will then update on the market, current trading synergies, and also set out how well positioned we are for the future. First of all, I would like to take you through some of our key messages. Barrett Redwell's performance over the half was resilient, both operationally and financially. and that is despite what has been a generally subdued market. While the consumer did benefit from two interest rate cuts and mortgage availability improved, consumer confidence clearly remained low. Speculation ahead of the November budget caused many to postpone decision-making. but we have maintained our financially robust position and solid balance sheet. Importantly, the successful integration of RedRoll is near completion and our synergy target remains unchanged. And we are now operating from three distinct high quality brands. Building on all of this, our focus centres on business as usual for BAT at Redroll around both optimising our capital employed and fine tuning our costs to ensure that we drive operational excellence and efficiencies across the enlarged group. So that we're going to be well, we feel well placed for the full year and well positioned for future growth. If we look in more detail at the operational highlights from the half year, clearly embedding RedRoll into the business was of course a highlight. And we have started to see the benefits of this reflected in our performance with good progress on synergies that I'll cover in more detail later. Our land position is strong at 5.6 years, allowing us to be even more selective around land intake. We delivered 7,444 homes in line with our plans for the year, which was a good achievement given the market environment. I would also like to highlight some of our externally accredited credentials in the period. Our repeated success in the HBF ratings and in the NHBC Pride in the Job Awards are testament to the dedication of our teams across the business, as well as to the quality of training that we provide and the customer first culture we maintain across the group. This quality is also reflected in our Trustpilot scores given by our customers, which award all three of our brands with the highest rating of excellent. John will cover our financials in more detail, but just to pull out a few highlights. Adjusted PBT before purchase price allocation impacts was lower than last year at 200 million. due to higher net interest costs and lower joint venture profits. So return on capital employed, again, pre PPA adjustments, was in line with last year at 9.1%. We were particularly pleased that nearly all of our 100 million target synergies were confirmed at the end of December. And finally, we finished the year with a solid net cash position after organic investment, which supports our growth plans, also our dividend payments of 172 million and the share buyback of 50 million and a half. With that, I will hand over to Mike, who will now go through our operational performance in more details.

Thank you David and good morning everyone. I'd like to take a moment just to introduce myself. I've been in the house building industry for 32 years and I joined Barrett back in 2004. I've worked closely with Stephen Boyes as Managing Director of our North East Division and in 2017 I was appointed Regional Managing Director for the Northern Region. In July last year I was appointed Chief Operating Officer on Stephen's retirement and today I'll be taking you through our operational performance for the first half. starting with a private reservation mix on slide seven. There are a couple of points to highlight. Firstly, PRS. Given the budget uncertainty, the market became harder in the period and potential discounts increased, but we maintained our discipline and were less active. As a result, PRS reservations were a lower proportion of overall reservation volumes at 4% down from 9% in the equivalent period last year. Secondly, for existing homeowners, we saw a significant increase in the use of part exchange at 23% of our private reservations, up from 14% last year. We've introduced our industry leading part exchange skills into the Red Row brand. It offers a stress-free moving option for our customers. And at a time when conveyancing chains were a concern for many potential home buyers, it has proved a popular incentive. To be clear, it's offered as an alternative and not additional incentive. And it's worth noting that the combination of part exchange and second home movers remain fairly consistent year on year. Part exchange has been an integral part of our business for many years and stock levels are carefully managed. At the end of the half, we had just 180 units unsold. Turning to completions on slide eight. We delivered 7,444 homes, an increase of 4.7% on the aggregated performance last year. Both private and affordable completions were ahead, although this is more about timing, so our guidance for FY26 is unchanged. Underlying private completions were 1.8% ahead and PRS completions were up over 50% to 423 homes. This increase was largely a function of our order book coming into the year and as I said earlier, the market has subsequently hardened. Affordable home completions were up 26%, helped by the rebuilding of our order book in the prior year and are now 19.5% of wholly owned completions, which is in line with our expected affordable mix. Joint venture completions were lower than the prior year due to timing, but we are on track to deliver approximately 600 units in the full year. In terms of pricing, the wholly owned average selling price was up 4.9%. More detail is provided in the appendix, but this was driven by a combination of mix, producing a slightly larger average unit size, and geographical volume variances given the spread of average selling prices between the regions. There were some notable variations by region, with our central and east regions seeing the strongest average selling price growth. Now turning to sales performance here on slide nine, the underlying private rate remains solid at 0.55 reservations per week ahead of last year, with customers benefiting from an improvement in mortgage availability and affordability. This good performance came despite the uncertainties which overshadowed much of the period. PRS and other multi-unit sales effectively paused in the run up to the budget, and although we saw a pick up afterwards, this added just 0.02 reservations per week over the period down on last year. We operated from an average of 405 sales outlets below last year, but very much in line with our plans. David will cover our view on sales outlet evolution later in the presentation. Turning to the private forward order book, this was 10% lower at the half year stage. This partly reflected a high starting point coming into the year, but also the reduced reservation rate, lower numbers of sales outlets and increased completions in the first half, all of which contributed to the overall lower number. Given the solid start to the calendar year, we are confident that we can deliver full year completions in line with the guidance. I'd like to wrap up with our industry leading credentials around design, build quality and customer service. It's what underpins our brands and is key to our sales success. We achieved a five-star rating for customer service in the HPF survey for the 16th consecutive year. And our site managers have secured an industry leading total of 115 pride in the job awards and 45 sales of excellence. Reportable items per NHBC inspection have increased slightly following the red row acquisition, but with opportunities to share best practice across the divisions, we expect to see this improve. And finally, I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate Dane Mumford from our East Midlands Division, who was runner up in the Large Builder category at last month's Pride in the Jobs Supreme Awards, an excellent achievement. On that note, I'll hand over to John for an update on our financial performance.

Thanks Mike and good morning everyone. Today I'll take you through our half year 26 performance, an update on our land bank and also on building safety. Here is an overview of the half-year numbers. To be as clear as possible, we have set out here the adjusted pre-tax profits before PPA adjustments, then the adjusted profit before tax after PPA, and finally the statutory pre-tax after adjusted items. The first point to note is that both adjusted measures are now stated prior to the impact of imputed interest charges on legacy property provisions. We believe this measure provides you with the best view of the underlying performance of the business, moves us in line with peer reporting and includes the reclassification of £19.6 million of non-cash imputed interest in half year 26 and £18.4 million in half year 25, which has been added back in arriving at the reclassified results you see here. We also show the comparables and just to flag the aggregated and reported periods have seen minor restatements for the finalization of the purchase price allocation process, which was completed at the end of last year. I will focus on our performance relative to Barrett and RedRow aggregated for the whole of half year 25. And you will remember we consolidated RedRow actually from the 22nd of August. So adjusted profit before tax, before PPA impacts was down 13.6% in the half year to 200 million pounds. And I'll take you through the key drivers of that in a moment. The good news is that the purchase price allocation impacts largely fall away from next year, which will make all of our lives a lot easier. Slide 13, this slide looks at the margin performance in more detail, and there are several points to highlight. The increase in home completions coupled with an increase in ASP generated revenue growth of 10.5% to 2.6 billion pounds. However, the adjusted gross margin was 200 basis points lower at 15%, giving an adjusted profit of 394.8 million pounds. There were three drivers behind the margin movement. Firstly, while we benefited from growth in completion volumes, underlying pricing was flat. We then saw two headwinds on two fronts. Our targeted but increased use of non-cash sales incentives, particularly extras and upgrades to convert reservations against the challenging backdrop through 2025 was a negative to gross margin. These incentives added directly to cost of goods sold and had a direct impact on the gross margin. And we also experienced underlying bill cost inflation of approximately 1%, including procurement cost synergies. At operating profit, through both cost discipline and the benefit of cost synergies, adjusted operating profit before the impact of PPA adjustments was flat at 210.2 million pounds, with the margin back down 90 basis points to 8%. I'll cover margin movements in a moment, but just the final parts in the mix here. Adjusted finance charges at £12.4 million compared to finance income last half at £12.2 million. This reflected reduced average cash balances, utilisation of our RCF in the period, and the imputed interest rate on new land creditors relative to those being settled. And JV income, with lower completions in the period has reduced to 2.1 million pounds. As a result, adjusted PBT before PPA impact was 200 million, giving an adjusted earnings per share of 10 pence. And we have proposed an interim dividend of five pence per share with our two times dividend cover ratio in place for the full year. In summary, we saw good momentum on home completions and are pleased to see the benefits of red row integration coming through. Looking forward, there are clear opportunities to improve our gross margin, which David will cover. Turning now to our land bank on slide 14. A steadier pace of land acquisition, growth in completions, and a reclassification of some red road plots into our strategic land bank has seen the duration of our owned and controlled land bank move to 5.6 years in December. Our land bank is in a strong position and very consistent with our plans to optimize our capital employed, as David will set out. A key metric here on the slide, which we're increasingly focused on, is the average number of detailed consented plots on each of our sales outlets. This is clearly a function of the size of the outlet and the timeframe over which it has been actively selling, but we are looking to ensure our land bank is efficient. with sales outlets sized to deliver typically sales over a three to four year period. And with more than 27,500 strategic land bank plots submitted to local planning authorities across 103 applications, we expect to make further progress on strategic land conversions over the coming years too. Now looking at our embedded margin in the land bank. Here you'll see the updated plot distribution of embedded gross margins across our owned land bank plots. There are three moving parts to highlight. First, a positive 40 basis point impact reflecting the plot mix traded out through completions this half at a margin of 14.5% after including the PPA impact. Second, a negative 90 basis point impact from the flow through of flat pricing, build cost inflation and incremental sales incentives. And thirdly, a 20 basis point improvement from land acquired in the period at a 23% gross margin. As a result, the embedded gross margin ended the half 30 basis points lower at 18.9%. Improving the embedded gross margin is a clear priority. With little movement on pricing, we will do this best by managing cost-based inflation, driving development pace and buying land appropriately. To slide 16, here we look at our adjusted operating margin and the bridge. On a pre-PPA basis, including Red Row for the full 26 weeks, this was 8.9% for the combined operations in half-year 25, first column shaded here on the left. We saw a benefit of 40 basis points due to the gearing effect of higher volumes. The combination of flat pricing but underlying build cost inflation at 1% and the targeted use of non-cash incentives created a negative inflation impact of 90 basis points. Completed development provisions reflecting local authority delays in adoption of roads and public spaces accounted for a negative 40 basis points. The impact of cost synergies, which I'll set out in a moment, added 90 basis points, and these savings covered off both the underlying inflation in our admin expenses, as well as mix and other items. This has resulted in the operating margin before PPA impacts of 8% for the half. And finally, you can see the PPA dropping off to deliver the 7.5% margin on an adjusted basis. Turning to administrative expenses and adjusted items. We reduced our adjusted admin expenses by 5.4% in the half year to 184.8 million. When compared to the aggregated business last year, at 195.4 million. We also then show the adjusted items here in arriving at our reported admin expenses at 208.7 million pounds. This included adjusted items charges of 23.9 million with 18 million charged on further restructuring and integration and legal costs on legacy property recoveries at 5.8 million pounds. Whilst not shown here, the net impact of adjusted items in the period was £10.5 million, with significant legacy property-related recoveries from third parties of £13.4 million recognised in gross profit. It's positive to see both cash-based adjusted items falling away, as well as receipts coming in with respect to building remediation. Here is just a quick bridge in terms of the admin expenses. The movement in admin expenses from the aggregated base of 195.4 million to the 184.8 is set out on this slide and shaded light green. We saw an increase of 4.3 million pounds related to changes in national insurance contributions and a further 8.1 million pounds from total cost base inflation. Cost synergies then delivered a 23.2 million pound positive impact which were then coupled with a reduction of 0.2 million in sundry income which covers JD management fees and ground rents delivered the outturn at 184.8 million pounds. It is positive to see the synergies we identified at acquisition having a meaningful impact on our profit loss account. Turning to building safety where I'm pleased to report that there is very little to cover. There were no changes required to our provision position and having spent 77.8 million pounds on works across our building safety and reinforced concrete frame portfolios in the half and seeing the unwinding of imputed interest of 19.6 million, our total legacy property provisions just sat at just over 1 billion pounds. To cashflow. Slide 20 sets out the cashflow bridge for Barrett Red Row from reported operating profit on the left to the net cash outflow on the right. Really just a couple of cash flow numbers to point out. The biggest driver of cash outflow in the period was the seasonal increase in construction work in progress alongside part exchange investment, together equating to just over 313 million pounds. Three quarters of this is construction work in progress, very much following our sales cycle and construction seasonality. our net investment in land was relatively modest at £68.7 million and adjusting for the dividend payments of £172 million and £50 million in share buybacks, the net cash outflow was just under £600 million. We would expect an inflow of circa £300 million in the second half and for the year-end cash position to be in line with guidance at between £400 and £500 million. For ease we have included on the slide here, a reminder of some of the other relevant guidance points around cashflow. Turn to slide 21. Here is our usual balance sheet breakout. Limited points really to highlight, but over the 26 weeks, we saw a 21 million pound net investment in our gross land bank and land credit is reduced by just over 42 million pounds. giving a net land position at 4358 million, with land creditors funding 15% of our land investment. Land creditors clearly remain below our target range of 20 to 25%, but we are looking to add a larger proportion of land purchases on deferred terms to take us towards our target range, and also to manage our land bank more efficiently, as I alluded to earlier. The other balance sheet item to mention here As already discussed by Mike is our part exchange investment, which you can see closed out at £219 million with £74.7 million added in the half year period. Before I wrap up, I thought it would be helpful to remind you of our capital allocation priorities set out here. Our enhanced scale and balance sheet strength clearly put us in a strong financial position. but we are very mindful of the obligations we have, particularly with respect to building safety, how we are managing this appropriately. The Red Row acquisition has multiplied the opportunities we have to drive growth and value from the business. So we will invest in these, but at the same time, we will look to drive efficiencies in the way we manage both our capital employed and our cost base. And finally, we recognise the importance to our shareholders place on capital returns. We have a clear dividend policy and this is alongside an active 100 million buyback programme with 50 million pounds completed in the first half and a further 50 million pounds underway and set to complete in the second half of the year. So to summarize, our operational performance in the half year has been resilient, and that's despite the macro uncertainties faced. Our balance sheet remains solid, and we are capturing the cost synergies from the red row integration with our cost synergies confirmed. Turning to guidance, you will find a detailed slide in the appendices, but I thought it helpful to cover the main points here. As previously set out, we expect full year 26 total completions to be within the range of 17,200 to 17,800 homes. Underlying pricing is expected to be broadly flat, and we expect build cost inflation to be around 2%, including the benefit of procurement synergies. Reflecting the reclassification of imputed interest on the legacy property provisions, we anticipate an adjusted finance charge of approximately £30 million, with provision-related adjusted item imputed finance at £32 million for FY26. And our building safety programme remains in line with guidance at approximately £250 million of spend in the year. And we expect to finish the year with between £400 and £500 million of net cash. Happy to take questions later, but I will now hand back to David. Thank you.

Thanks very much, John. I'd like to start this section with an overview of the housing market. so we we've talked before about the fundamentals of the market which underpin our sector and these continue to be strong there is a long-standing imbalance between demand and supply the challenges for our industry are affordability constraints on the demand side and planning constraints on the supply side Housing and planning reforms are clear priorities for the government and we welcome the steps that they are taking to improve the planning environment. However, it will take some time for these reforms to feed through at a local level and with many local authorities having elections in May, the planning backdrop in those areas could remain challenging until the second half of the year. Meanwhile, some of the near-term indicators on the demand side are more encouraging uncertainty has definitely moderated post-budget markets are pricing in further interest rate cuts and mortgage availability continues to improve but consumer confidence remains weak and despite some slight improvements affordability remains challenging, particularly for first-time buyers needing to bridge the deposit gap. In this environment, we recognise that self-help measures are very important. As Mike outlined, we continue to develop our part exchange offer, particularly for RedRoll. And in the half, we also launched our own shared equity offer alongside our popular first-time buyer and key worker schemes. We continue to believe that the key to a sustained recovery in the housing market and volume increases across the sector is government support for prospective home buyers of the type which has been in place for many decades until two years ago. Overall, given the market context, recent trading has been resilient. We have seen encouraging consumer activity since the budget, but consumers are still taking their time. So our net private reservation rate over the five week period was down slightly on last year. The FY26 opening order book and slightly improved affordable housing sector backdrop means that year to date completions and forward sales are both ahead of the position last year. but there continues to be a lot of political and economic volatility at the macro level, which is clearly unhelpful for consumer confidence. So given the broader market context, for us to maintain a sharp focus on efficiency and leveraging the benefits of the integration is going to be key for Barrett RedRoll. So I'd like to give you an update on our synergy program. If we start with cost synergies, we have confirmed our target of 100 million of annual cost synergies. In FY25, we delivered 20 million of cost synergies through the P&L, as you can see on the chart. We expect to deliver a further 50 million through the P&L in the current financial year, having already delivered over 30 million in the half year. So we are very definitely on track for that cost synergy delivery. Looking at revenue synergies, Our target is to open 45 incremental sales outlets. To date, we have submitted 31 planning applications, of which 16 have already received approval. We are on track to submit the remaining applications in the second half of the financial year, and we expect the first sites to be ready for sales opening at the start of FY27. Moving on to outlets, as we've said, the planning reform is positive, but we do have to experience that improvement on the ground. So as we've previously guided, we expect average outlets to be flat in the current year, but we would expect to see a good uptick in FY27, both through organic growth and with around 15 synergy outlets coming on stream. This should bring average outlets for FY27 to between 425 and 435. Importantly, given the strength of our land bank, we do not have to make significant future land purchases to drive our outlet opening plan. It is primarily about using the land that we already have. So as you can see, our integration activity is largely complete. Looking forward, our focus is on two key areas, optimizing our capital employed and fine tuning our cost structure. This half, given the strength of our land bank following the combination and our land approvals in FY24 and FY25, we have substantially reduced approvals. But alongside some land swaps and land sales, we will continue to make targeted acquisitions. And we anticipate approval of between 10 and 12,000 plots in FY26. Dual and triple branding our sites means we can reach more customers, which should improve our sales volumes and help our asset turn. Turning to costs, given our scale and reach, we see opportunities to drive efficiencies across our supply chains and to make marginal reductions in our overheads. This discipline is business as usual for us. Pulling this together, we remain very confident that Barrett Red Row is best placed to navigate the market for all points of the cycle. Fundamental to this are our three high quality and differentiated brands, and we have the skills and experience to deploy them effectively. These brands allow us to operate in a variety of locations and local markets with the optimal divisional infrastructure to match. Our customer focus has been established by our numerous third party credentials over the long term. We are the reliable partner of choice across the private and public sector, allowing us to be flexible and innovative. Our reorganized divisional structure and brand portfolio positions us well for growth over the medium term. And finally, we remain financially strong with a robust balance sheet and a solid net capped cash position. So to wrap up, We do have three high quality differentiated brands. We have a strong land bank, we have clear visibility over our outlet opening program, and we are a leading platform for growth. Virtually all of the 100 million of synergies are confirmed, and we expect the integration to complete by April this year. Looking forward, our focus will be on continuing to drive our operational efficiency and using the opportunities we have identified to drive growth and value for all of our stakeholders. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. And we're now going to open up for Q&A. John is going to facilitate the Q&A, and he is looking forward to the large number of questions I know you're going to put his way.

We'll start in the front row, Chris, and I think we need to pull and press, basically. Great. Chris Millington. Thank you.

Morning everyone, thanks for taking the question. So I just wanted to ask about the pricing experience so far in calendar year 26 and whether or not you've seen any sort of improvement there, obviously with incentives and perhaps you can just put a regional overlay on that. Second one's just around the outlet opening profile. You know, it's a big ramp up you've got there. Now, if I understand what you said correctly, is you're going to be flattish in the second half, but then potentially up at 4.30 next year, so roughly about 8% growth. Now, if that's linear, it means the opening close is going to have to be 16-ish percent higher. I mean, it feels a big number with some of the uncertainties out there, but perhaps you can give me some confidence there. And the final one's just really about the gross margin in the land bank. It looks like you're taking the lower margin plots at the front end. That makes a little bit of sense because of the new land coming in at higher margins. But how long do you think you get to the average land bank margin? Because you're kind of under indexing, what, 400, 500 pips at the moment versus average. Thank you.

Chris thanks very much I mean maybe if I take in terms of pricing and incentives to start with and then I'll say a few words about outlet opening and then John will follow up in terms of outlet opening and then John will pick up in terms of gross margin so I think in terms of pricing and incentives I mean the first thing that I would just put in context is that If you went back to August 25, we started to see a lot of news flow about what may or may not be in the budget. And at the beginning of October, we made a very conscious decision that we needed to push harder in terms of incentives, not in terms of gross price, so generally keeping gross price as is, but pushing more in terms of incentives. And I think that's seen a step up in relation to part exchange, a step up in relation to related incentives. Coming into the new calendar year, post the budget, I just think we've seen a higher level of customer interest and we probably have a bit more confidence in terms of our ability to maybe gear back a little bit on incentives. Not in that we're going to move it 1% or something in a short period of time, but there is just more interest out there. And I think all of our divisions feel that that is a slightly better backdrop. with a possible caveat around London, which I would say is pretty much unchanged. And then, just before I pass over to John, in terms of the outlet opening programme, I think the really key point is that we have the land under control. In terms of our FY27 position, we're in the high 90s in terms of having a planning position in relation to that. And we would see some uptick in outlets late in this year, which will not impact reservations. And we overall will see quite a substantial uplift in FY27. But I think the key point is we don't need lots of planning to deliver that. And bear in mind, a big chunk of it is coming from synergy outlets, which are already under our control. John, do you want to expand on outlets?

Yeah, absolutely. David stolen some of my thunder with the synergy points but there you go uh yes if you look at where we are broadly at the end of this year to where we'll be at the end of next a big part of that is effectively 30 synergy outlets in there which will leave you with a balance of 20 to 25 that need to come through the organic group Chris and I guess we are certainly comfortable in terms of that profile coming through and when we look at the timing of it There is quite a significant outlet opening program clearly across 27, but there'll be certainly a decent boost in the second quarter, which will obviously lead us into the spring selling season for Q3. So part of it is very much kind of profile across the year, but we actually have a pretty useful program planned for that second quarter, which will obviously give us a January start into that new calendar year. The other one was around gross margin. Just to be clear, the embedded gross margin at 18.9 is post PPA, so it's an all-in, so the red road plots are in there, including their PPA component. So we expensed at 14.5, as you saw in the slides. The embedded is 18.9, so you've got a kind of 440 basis point differential there. I think when you look at the length of the land bank at five years, clearly the average To get there, we're probably talking about two and a half to three years realistically before you're going to hit that point, because obviously it's partly about the timing of when we purchased and when those new sites that are coming in at the higher gross margin start to really feed through in terms of volumes, not just in reservations, but in the completion mix. So I hope that's helped. Will Jones, Rothschild Redburn.

Thanks. Yeah, Will Jones, Ross Darlinko, Redburn. Maybe just three, please. But perhaps just touching base on build costs, I think your guidance for the second half implies about 3%, perhaps including some synergy benefit as well. So just the moving parts within the latest on build costs. Secondly, perhaps just more of an overview and reflection six months plus on from the formal integration, just your view of how the retro brand and business is performing post acquisition. And then lastly, if we just cover off on building safety, obviously could see no movement in the provision, but just your level of confidence as you assess the portfolio and what you may still not know about potentially as we look forward. Thanks.

Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you. Mike will pick up in terms of build costs and I'll pick up in terms of RedRoll and building safety. So I think in terms of RedRoll, we said at the time, we are admirers of the RedRoll brand We think it's an absolutely fantastic brand and getting Redroll really focused on the heritage brand because inevitably to grow the business, Redroll were doing more than just heritage. And we think Redroll really focused on the heritage brand. It's where they want to be and it's where we want them to be. And it is the premium brand in our portfolio. in combining with the business, they have a fantastic land bank. And so I think the opportunity for us to be able to take Barrett to the Red Row sites to work together and maybe Barrett deliver more of the affordable housing, for example, alongside the Barrett housing is a really big opportunity. And then where we have sites where perhaps we were already Barrett and David Wilson, and we might have, sold land to a third party, we can bring Red Row onto those sites. And we clearly have a number of those sites and both in terms of the synergy sites, but I mean, the synergy sites are just the start of the story. I mean, I think all of our land acquisition going forward, where all three brands operate in that geography, then we're looking for opportunities for those brands to operate well. So I really feel that in terms of the brand, the consumer proposition, and in terms of the build sales teams, it's really done well and really integrated well. So that's all positive. And I know we've touched on the synergies, but I think it's just pleasing to be in a situation that we've effectively banked 100 million of cost synergies. We're obviously looking for more, but the reality is that our main focus now is on the delivery of those cost synergies and then ensuring that we get the revenue synergies executed, which I think we're well on with. In terms of building safety, John said that we're pleased to really be saying nothing. I think that's a nice position for us to be in. I think it's too bold for anyone to say, we're absolutely comfortable with all our provisions and so on. I think everyone has seen that the evolution of this has been challenging. But we feel that we really have our arms around both building safety in terms of

remediation of buildings and also a concrete frame so both parts of it i think are are moving well and we will just continue to update on our six monthly basis mike do you want to pick up real costs yeah so we've we've guided inflation at around two percent for the full year we we estimate that that will be split between labor and materials one and a half percent labor 0.5 percent materials um labour generally we're seeing two to three percent price pressures really around national insurance and salary reviews as per would be the norm what we're not seeing is any inflationary pressure around scarcity of labour or labour availability so so there is no excessive pressure on the on the inflation for for the labour content the materials pretty variable actually we've obviously bringing the the red row business into the Barrett David Wilson team. We've improved our procurement capabilities, but we've seen bricks and blocks around 3%, unengineered timber up at maybe 10%, but lots of materials at flat line or very low digits really. So overall, we're pretty confident that we'll be able to land that at around 2% for the full year.

Okay, should we go to Emily or I'll come across? Emily at Barclays.

Morning, Emily Biddle from Barclays. I've got two, please. The first one just on how we should think about the margin bridge, I suppose, for the second half of the year. I'm conscious you've guided build cost inflation higher, but presumably the way that you account for that, you've sort of already reflected that in the first half margin. And then the sort of positive things around the potential for incentives to be a touch lower. Is that the way we should think about it? And then on top of that, can you just remind us the extent to which you benefit from fixed cost of goods and some leverage over that in the second half of the year? And potentially that little bit of land bank evolution, can you give us a sense of what the magnitude of that might be? And then secondly, I think David mentioned the sort of evolution of the Part X offering in Red Row. When we look at that on the balance sheet, is there a number that you sort of you're comfortable with it sort of ticking up to be? Or is that the way is that what you're sort of trying to tell us that it might actually be a little bit more on the balance sheet towards the end of the year? Or how should we think about it?

Emily thank you very much I think that first question you sort of asked and answered it at the same time yeah so you've given you've given John too much margin bridge yeah yeah yeah yeah so John will cover the margin bridge look in terms of part exchange I mean you know I think most of the house builders have a part exchange offer it is a fantastic way for us to compete in the marketplace. I mean, bear in mind that the vast majority of customers sell a secondhand home and buy a secondhand home. So where we are able to break into that, we are best to break into it with a part exchange offer. And I think you'll see that part exchange is two things for us. One is something that we would call move maker, where we would effectively give a commitment to buy the property, but we would primarily focus on the property being sold before we get to the point of completion on the new build house. And then we would then have a part exchange offer where either that move maker doesn't work or we agree to take the property from the beginning. The number of properties and the value of properties is not a huge concern to us. I mean, the operational and the financial risks are similar. And, you know, Mike touched on that. You know, we have about 180 properties that are not reserved, which I think when you look at the size of the group across 30 divisions or 32 divisions is a small number of properties. So the more part exchange we can do in the current market, the better. In terms of RedRoll, RedRoll did have a move maker equivalent and they did have a part exchange offer. But I would say that they were reluctant to use it. And we just see in the market that we need to do more of it. And so the red roll position in the underlying numbers has grown from what in the FY25 was round about 2% of their business was using the PX offer to it now being kind of above 10% of their business is using the PX offer. So yeah, we're very, very positive about that offer in the market.

Just to pick up on the margin bridge, Emily. So I think there are probably four aspects to this to keep in mind in terms of the bridge from last year to this year. First, plot mix wise, which was mentioned there. If we look at the delta, I guess that implies with 440 basis points from where we reported in the first half to the average in the land bank. that broadly equates to 80 or 90 pips per annum, thinking of that movement. So that's probably, call it 50 pips in a half-year period, if I was looking to try and work a number through there, Emily. Second one is then on bill cost inflation, and you're correct in terms of, given the accounting approach and margins on site-based approach, a lot of that cost inflation is already built into the margin that we're recognising, but clearly we've got to work hard in the second half. to control and limit that impact from bill cost inflation. But the positive on the other side of that is clearly from an incentive level where we added circa 1% to our incentives in the first half, that was very much driven by the budget and the need to convert people and to give people a call to action effectively to reserve and move through to completion. Obviously, as we work through the spring, And given we've had a pretty encouraging start, certainly in the four weeks of January, post the first week we had, then we'll be working site by site, literally trying to move and make sure that we're optimising both the balance of volume and value and that around the incentive that's applied. there will clearly be a push to try and work as well as we can to get that incentive lower. And then finally, on the volume gearing aspect, when you look at our volumes, we're broadly 40% more volume in the second half than the first. That mathematically obviously will come through in terms of operational gearing. And that should again help on the second half margin. But those are the four ingredients in terms of that movement there. Thanks. Over to the other side, Ainsley and then Clyde.

Thanks. Morning Ainsley. I'm from Investor. Just two, please. Just picking up on your comment actually around the sales rates, John, just I think you said the last four weeks particularly have been good. Just wonder if you had any more colour? Has it been progressively improving? And when you've maintained your full year kind of completion guidance, but I think you mentioned that obviously it's dependent on sales activity. How much risk is there? What do you need? to seeing the spring selling season to kind of meet that four-year completion guidance, I guess. And then second question on the provision, as you say, good to see it kind of stay around the billion level, but could you just remind us how long you expect to work through that and what the kind of annual cash outflow profile looks like during that period?

Okay, Ainsley, hi, good morning. I'll just make a comment on the sales rate and the sales risk and pick up on the provisions. I'm just going to answer them both. That's it. In terms of sales rate, I think that We had quite a bit of debate about this. Okay, so the reality is we've always said we're not going to split current trading, whether that's positive or negative, because it's such a short period. And then we get into saying, well, the first week was this and the third week was that and so on. So we're not going to kind of break with that. But I think what we would say is that our business is positive about what we've seen during the month of January. And December is always a tricky month. But when we come into January, we've just seen good consumer interest, good level of appointments and reasonable levels of reservation. Now bear in mind that we're not comparing really to last year. We're presenting the numbers compared to last year because that's the convention. but we're really talking about what was it like in October compared to what is it like in January and it is substantially better in January than it was in October that's that's the reality that October November period in terms of looking at the risk I mean we're sort of really working the basis that we need to sell at about 0.6 and we feel comfortable in terms of that sale and we um know we give ranges you're sort of it's a problem if you do and it's a problem if you don't so i would say that we've got a high level of confidence of hitting the midpoint of the range and we don't see lots of downside to that and potentially there's a little bit of upside but i think we've we've got to focus on that midpoint of the range um And then, sorry, provisions. Yeah, so the cash run rate on provisions, well, My sense is that there's another four years at least in terms of the runoff of the provisions. We would expect expenditure will start to accelerate in 27. So there's a huge amount of setup to be done to get the developments through the building safety regulator because all of these developments have to go through the building safety regulator. We see that that backdrop with the building safety regulator has improved from where it was 12 months ago. There's much more transparency about what is happening, but they have a huge amount to address in terms of the backlog. So getting stuff through the building safety regulator and therefore substantial expenditure in 27 and 28. But realistically on a 250 million run rate cash spend this year, I think we're very unlikely to be above that cash spend and we'll just run it off over the next three or four years. Clyde?

thanks clyde lewis at people on three if i may as well um probably following up on angie's question there about sort of recent activity i mean i'm still a little confused as to where we are because normally spring is the best selling season for for all house builders and obviously we've had the pretty shocking october november december period so there's a catch-up and i'm just again really trying to get a feel for whether it really does feel better than last spring or spring in 24 or spring in 23 compared to where you would have been in Q4. I understand clearly it's better than Q4, which it traditionally is. So just pushing a little bit more on that. On land creditors, I suppose, I'd be interested to hear how quickly you think you can get into that range. of 20 to 25 percent that you're talking about and inevitably there's a trade-off with chasing a higher gross margin on on new land sales so just interested in in i suppose probing that a little bit more and the last one was obviously can't not ask it was really the government support and david you've mentioned it others are increasingly mention it in their updates um Do you think the government is starting to move to think about this a little bit more? What I understand Treasury is the bigger blocker rather than maybe the political side, but be interested on your views there.

Yeah, okay. I feel I've sort of had to go at the sales rates and stuff, so I think I'm going to ask maybe Mike to comment on it, looking particularly at where we were October, November, compared to where we are now. I think that's really the key thing. But I would say on the sales rates, our forward forecasts are very much thinking, okay, we need to be at this level of 0.6, which we're not far away from. In terms of land creditors, I think probably just two comments. One, us increasing the land creditor position is obviously dependent on land intake. And our land intake in the first half or land approvals is obviously very low at the first point. Second point, I think when you look at the next couple of years, it would seem that there is going to be a huge amount of land coming through planning. So John referenced in his presentation that we have more than 100 strategic sites in for planning. So what I would see is that the ability to defer land payments will be greater if there is much more land coming into the marketplace, and we're already focused on the deferral of payments. So I think it's very achievable to get into that higher banding of 20 to 25% in terms of land creditors, but it will depend on land intake. In terms of government support, well, I think really two things. I think everyone would agree, I believe that everyone would agree that you have to address the supply side. If you don't address the supply side, then you are just going to create issues by putting in demand side support. So I think that's kind of been well documented. so the government have really got after the supply side now i understand it hasn't changed yet but from what we can see the supply side changes are far more powerful than the original Conservative government, national planning policy framework, et cetera. And therefore numbers can go much higher. We're back to top down and there's an obligation on the local authorities of some scale. That is not going to improve the position on affordability in the short term. Even if you believe that there'll be a lot more supply in the future, there won't be a lot more supply to change the affordability equation over the next 12, 18 months. So we do think the affordability equation is key if we want higher volume levels. So we're doing the self-help. We've got a shared equity offer. We're doing part exchange. We're providing good incentives to our customers. But government stimulus would be a game changer in terms of the demand side. And the industry is certainly bad at red roll, but I think the industry have been kind of uniform in saying that they're quite happy to pay. We launched the scheme with government back in 2012 and we paid for that scheme. So the reality is that we're very happy to pay for the scheme. But we think it would be a game changer, and that would be particularly true in terms of London and the South East. John, do you want to? Sorry, Mike.

You're panicking there, aren't you? Yeah, yeah. Okay, I feel like I might just be repeating what David said when he answered the question, but just trying to add a bit more colour. We certainly saw after the budget a level of interest and leads and web visits and the like from the market. I guess that's because there was no negative news in the budget around housing. I think that carried on through Christmas and we have seen an uptick since the October, November performance in the trade since Christmas. I think in the slides we say that it's very slightly down year on year. I think there's a slight anomaly maybe in the first week, but if you look at more recent trade in the last four weeks or so, five weeks, then that is in line year on year and gives us every confidence that we'll hit our full year completions. So really the message is year on year it's the same and we're confident with our completions.

Just Allison, I think, in the middle there.

Morning. Two questions from my side. So one is on this following up on the demand stimulus. Because if you said builders are happy to contribute to the scheme, do you think that it will probably increase the chance for the government want to actually launch something given right now there's a lot of political noise? going on right now as well. And the second is on the outlets. If I can follow up a little bit as well, because you said at 21.7, you're expecting average outlets around 4.25 to 4.35, right? So that's probably an incremental of around 20 to 30 year over year. But I might remember it completely wrong, but I think previously you are probably more getting around 30 incremental. outlets opening so I don't know if there's any color you can give maybe the planning environment or maybe why it's not hitting the 30 level instead it's 20 to 30 thank you okay so John will pick up in terms of the outlets

So, yeah, I mean, look, I think in terms of government, I mean, I do understand that, you know, the government position in terms of funding generally has got challenges. So I think the reality is that the house building industry, I mean, mainly through the HBF, our trade body, have been very clear that if there was a new scheme, then the house builders would expect to pay for it. And as I say, we launched the scheme in conjunction with government in 2012, pre-help-to-buy, and we paid for that scheme. So I don't think the idea that the house builder is paying for a scheme is unusual. So, yes, of course that will help, but there are clearly other considerations that the government have to take account of.

On the outlets, your maths is correct, Alison. So broadly 20 to 30. I think we were more at the 30 end of the scale. I think we still are, but we just have to be pragmatic in terms of... I think everyone in the room is aware that planning is taking time, and Mike mentioned it earlier, to see the actual on-the-ground benefits of that coming through. So we're shooting to deliver 30, but clearly setting a banded range there, 20 to 30 outlets, just looks a prudent position to be holding. But clearly all of our divisions and all of our teams are working damn hard to try and pull through outlets and get them open, because ultimately that's going to drive our top line and drive the volume growth as we look forward. Zayn next door and then I'll come forward to him.

Morning, thanks for taking my question. The first would just be on the PRS market, the view for the remainder of the year and what's in your expectations. And then secondly, I think you mentioned 31 planning applications submitted and 16 received back. Any anecdotes on how easier or quicker has those been since all the government changes? Thank you.

Yeah, of course. So if I pick up those, So I think in terms of PRS, and again, just in context, the PRS market was building a lot of momentum pre the budget in 2022. And the reality is that the funding costs for the PRS operators, as they did for everyone, changed fundamentally. So I think there was less activity in the marketplace, first of all, simply less people looking to buy PRS. I think we're seeing the return of more interest in terms of PRS. We announced in, I think in 21 and it became effective in 22, our cooperation with Lloyds Bank and Lloyds Living. And we have undertaken three groups of transactions with Lloyds Living. We've undertaken transactions with other PRS providers as well. So we felt that setting a range of five to 10% of our completions being through PRS was a kind of range that we felt comfortable with, which we set out last year. So we are definitely still looking to do PRS, but we're only looking to do it at the right price. It's something that can work very, very well for us in terms of return on capital employed, very well in terms of the efficiency of our build teams, but we've got to make sure that we are pricing it properly. I think in terms of planning in relation to the synergy sites, I don't think there's been any particular issues. I mean, bear in mind that these sites have already got a detailed consent. We would probably have expected to have been able to agree more plot substitutions rather than having to go to a full committee. But I mean, that kind of is what it is at a local level. So again, we're very confident we will get the planning and we will get those outlets through as we outlined in FY27.

Alistair down the front.

Rebecca.

Yeah, it's Alastair Stewart from Progressive. Three questions based actually on one chart on slide seven. In terms of the moving parts in the private reservation by buyer type, the biggest change was in part exchange, going from 14% to 23%. Obviously, Redrose greater uptake is a big part of that. But was it all, and within part exchange, do you get a sense of how many people using it in the second hand going into new is it they have to use it because they just get stuck in chains elsewhere and how much is it nice to have. Then the next one was first time buyers going from 31% to 33%. Do you get any sense in there how much is banking mum and dad and how much is using your own part exchange. And then finally, following on from the previous question, PRS and other, going from 9% to 4%, you said you were originally aiming at 5% to 10%. Is it going to take some time to get to the top of that range? Or are the financial costs for PRS investors just too high at the current moment?

Thanks Alistair. I've never had three questions on one slide. I think we're going to have a bit of a joint go at this one. So if I pick up in terms of PRS and first-time buyers and if Mike picks up in terms of the part exchange element of it, So I mean I think on first time buyers unquestionably the bank of family as I think it's referred to is very very important. Now I can't say this is the percentage because as you know we are separate from the independent financial advisors so we don't really get into the nuts and bolts of that. But I think it's well documented that that has become more and more important post-22 as interest costs have risen substantially. So it's good to see a little bit of a tick up generally in first time buyers. But as we've touched on in some parts of the country, particularly London and the southeast, are largely priced out of the market, even in some cases with bank of family. You know, looking at deposit levels that are well in excess of 100,000 pounds for a lot of purchasers, because they don't want to be in there on a 95% loan to value, they want to be in on a 85%, et cetera. So that's the first thing. In terms of PRS, we can unquestionably operate in a five to 10% range. The deals tend to be quite large. I mean, they might not all be delivered in the same year, but I think you would tend to be looking at deals that would be, for us historically, between 250 and maybe 750 homes. So that might be delivered over two financial years, but it can have a significant impact, one deal, in terms of the percentages. So at... The 4% percentage, we're obviously just outside that range. But we are hopeful of closing some PRS deals, certainly in calendar 26, which will materially alter those percentages. Mike, do you want to just talk a bit about PX?

Yeah. So we have introduced our PX proposition more heavily into Red Row, and that's seen an increase. So part of that increase volume that's coming through Red Row. It's not all of it by any stretch of the imagination. It's become a more popular incentive that our customers are utilising. I think the reason for their utilisation is that I think there's many factors. A lot of it is around just simplicity in that clearly we sell their houses eventually so we don't carry picks for the next 12 months that they can't sell. So we can sell their houses so they could sell their houses. It's just about simplicity. And there's an element of when somebody visits the site and set the heart on a plot, if they're not in a position ready to go, if they PX, we can take that reservation and reserve the plot that they want. So a lot of it is around consumer choice rather than necessity. Does that answer the question? I think that's it, yeah.

Great. Thank you.

Glynis? Got no red light. Can you hear me? John, I'm going to throw some at you actually. Just a few that hopefully are very short answers. I'll reel through them. Given the order book on the affordable, what should we anticipate in terms of the affordable private mix this year and maybe into next year? Second of all, the gross margin on your acquired land? Can you confirm what you're actually buying in at? Thirdly, just in terms of the completed development provision, what was it last year? Is it always around that level? If this year's was unusual, why? Next, the third-party payments for the built safety provisions. That's in the gross profit, but you're taking the legal fees for getting them in the adjusted, is that correct? And then two that require perhaps a little bit more colour. One, the size of the outlet. Is that to do with just the fact you're putting three ranges on it, therefore each size of site is three outlets? How should we be expecting that average size of outlet to progress? And then lastly, just in terms of the land approvals, obviously the guidance has changed quite substantially. Can you give us a bit of colour about why that's happened and what that might mean one, two years out?

Shall I? Yes. So if we start off, we can't do just one word on each, but we'll try. So order book, affordable through the mix. So I think if you look at 10 years for us, you would conclude that somewhere around 20, 21%, that sort of level is what we would deliver in terms of affordable housing. What we saw last year, was really quite an unusually low level of affordable housing, a lot of which was driven from Red Row because Red Row had been very high in the year to June 24. So in terms of the sort of pre-acquisition position, Red Row was very high in that year. So when you look forward, I would think that kind of 20, 21% is what we should look at. In terms of gross margin on acquired land, you know, we've said that We're acquiring on a gross margin at 23. We're very comfortable with that in terms of the forward acquisition position. And once all of our cost and procurement synergies are embedded, we should be acquiring on a gross margin at 24, which is just in line with what we said last year. The CDP I'm going to pass to John because I'm not sure I understood it. So I'm just going to pass it to John. And then building safety, I mean, anything relating to building safety should be in adjusted. So the legal fees in respect of recovery are in adjusted and any recovery of costs would be part of our adjusted provisioning and therefore is in adjusted. So we're not putting the recovery in gross margin and the costs in adjusted and everything else is all to you.

Right. Yes. Yes. So just on that one, gross profit, the ones I quoted here were excluding that 13.4 million gain. So, and we're obliged to recognise that through income rather than take it as a deduction against our provision as well, just the IFRS rules we operate within. On the completed development accruals or provision, that does tend to move around a little bit. If you look back at the full year, it was a credit. So it helped us at the last full year sort of results. It does kind of ebb and flow depending on sites and the number of outlets coming to kind of closure, basically, as well, Glynis. So when a site closes out, you obviously then have that period. It's waiting for local authorities to adopt is the big issue there. So it does tend to be up and down, but it's the incremental, that's the change year over year. So you can see that impact there, but happy to talk about afterwards. On the third party, sorry, I'm just looking at third party for building, sorry, outlet size, coming on to that one. If you look at the outlet size, we're talking, if we look at it, we think of developments and then we think of outlets. And clearly, as we look at particularly land deals that involve larger size developments, that's where the opportunity is for us to bring on two or three brands to optimize those at that kind of 140, 150 per sales outlet, which then gives you the lifetime of three to four years. So as we look at land opportunities and how that will be driven by development activity, it's looking at those and thinking okay well what can we do here that will optimize the brand choices and that that is kind of the differential there so it's all about trying to optimize the speed at which we're going to be there with the show home with the sales team building out and completing the sales on the the other one on approvals really more a function of just the opportunity in the market but also a deliberate point for ourselves is that that pipeline that david mentioned on strategic land conversions We've got a hopper there of about 27,500 plots. Now those have all gone into planning across 103 applications. The timeframe of which they may come through on planning is something we want to be prepared for and therefore the focus has been on really optimising the existing land bank because obviously we're sitting there in excess of five and a half years when you look back six months ago. For the last six months it's been about what can we do across the portfolio either splicing and dicing the current land, but also looking at that strategic and what's going to come through. So this will give us flexibility to infill and to look at the strategic stuff as that comes through and then look at elsewhere in the market. So I think that hopefully covers that one there.

And I think that covers a lot. So just on the consented plots number, I mean, you can see that over the last three reporting periods, it's reasonably consistent. but just to illustrate it, when we add in the revenue synergy outlets, what we should do is see an increase in outlets and no increase in plots. And therefore the revenue synergy outlets will drive that number down. So I do think that when you look at the land bank, number is very important because I mean that you know that is a kind of measure of the the sort of raw efficiency of the land bank or if you've got one site for a thousand plots the answer is a thousand and if you've got three sites on that thousand plots the answer is going to be 330. so I I I think it's it's an absolutely key measure in in terms of looking at that efficiency ratio Rebecca, then we'll a couple more after that, conscious of time.

Hi, just a couple from me. The first one, just wondering if you can talk to kind of how that net cash balance moves into the year end. I think you're sitting about 170, the half, but expecting 400 to 500, just some of the moving parts there, knowing that there's going to be some more volumes coming through, but then I guess an increase in WIP as you increase your outlet profile. And then just following on the approvals on the land bank question before, so would we expect to see the land bank I guess roughly stable here as I guess you're doing less approvals but getting more from your strategic land bank? And then on the outlet opening profile as well, just wondering how many of those 20 to 30 I guess increase in outlets you think that you'll be doing dual or triple branded outlets? how many of those are those outlets? Thanks.

Okay so if John picks up in terms of the net cash balance and how that will progress towards the year end and then I think I'd ask John to pick up on the outlet opening profile but what I would say on the outlet opening profile is that which I'm sure John will just restate that position, but we are talking average outlets. So therefore, if we were saying our average outlets are going to move from just above 400 to 425 to 435, we've also got to open a lot more outlets during the course of that year. But John can maybe just outline that in terms of figures. I think in terms of the land bank and the approvals, you know, we feel that we have a lot of flexibility. You know, we've set out what I think is quite a strong growth agenda in terms of our outlets profile. So to move from where we are now to a sort of... a net outlet position of around 500. So broadly, we're moving from 400 to 500 over a period of time. I think with our land bank at 5.6 years and the strategic sites that we have in for planning, we see that we have a lot of flexibility. So we've set a target, which we'll obviously keep under review, but we've set a target of between 10 and 12,000 for this year. We'd be happy to be at replacement level, so if in FY27 we were at replacement level, say, but the reality is we are very happy to shrink the land bank as long as we're delivering the required number of outlets. So I think we see that drive to 500 outlets as being the absolute key thing that we're trying to achieve.

Maybe just before going to cash flow, just finishing off on the outlets point. I guess certainly when we think about the 30 Synergy outlets that are opening, by default, those are generally going, they're dual because they're an existing site that's adding Red Row to it or Barrett or David Wilson onto a Red Row site. I will get hold of some numbers so I can always share them with you, Rebecca, but primarily it's dualling, but there are, I think, a handful of triple sites as well. So within that mix of synergy sites, some of them were already David Wilson and Barrett and are having RedRow added to them. So I think there's half a dozen that will be ultimately broadly triple site opportunities once we get through there. um but then on cash flow i guess three i think big ingredients really in terms of cash flow performance in the second half first is clearly operating profit in terms of driving the initial so our profit from operations in the second half should start as a significantly higher number if we look at our working capital and particularly the construction whip where we had that 313 outflow including part x broadly three quarters if not more of that should come back into the second half given the seasonality of our working capital cycle in terms of completions in the second half. The other one in there is then land where we would expect as David mentioned we're probably going to actually end up unlocking a bit of value in land in the second half. If you put those together plus the dividend obviously in terms of the interim going out which is probably 60 million and the buyback of 50, those together should get you back to that kind of somewhere between the 400 and 500 million net cash at the year end. Conscious, two more. Charlie, and then we'll go to the back, and I think that will probably be our time limit. Charlie.

Yeah, thanks, John. Thanks for taking the question. Charlie Campbell at Stifel. Just one, really. Just on mortgage availability, not something you've talked about today. There are clearly quite a few changes going on there. So just wondering what the banks are telling you in terms of mortgage availability for, I suppose, calendar 26. Any changes there? And I suppose just to help us think about that a bit more, any changes in the customer mix in January versus, I don't know, say July for the sake of an argument before people started to worry about property taxes in other direction?

Okay, Charlie, if I pick them up. So I think the mortgage backdrop is a gradually improving backdrop. I would say from probably three particular points. One, from a regulatory point, that there has been a free up of the regulatory environment in terms of, as an example, the earnings multiples that is allowed to be lent. So there's no question there's a free up of the regulatory environment, which is a positive, but it's obviously been a relatively slow burn. So, that is good. Secondly, I think generally there are more and more mortgage offers that are at 95%. Now, the reality is that that isn't necessarily fully addressing affordability because the 95% mortgages can be expensive. And therefore, if somebody is comparing that to renting or staying at home, it is And then I think the third area, which isn't particularly big for us, but it's certainly big in London, is that there has also been more of a movement to hire loan to values on apartments. And, you know, we came from a situation, albeit a long time ago, where most banks were lending perhaps 10%. different as a maximum LTV. So if they were at 90 on houses, they would be at 80 on apartments. So again, we've seen some freeing up in terms of that environment. I would say overall that there's not any big change in customer mix. I mean, to some extent, I know it's both product and customer, but we're giving some indication of customer mix on the slide that we went through in the Q&A. But I think there's two customers that can really just sit out the market. So in periods of uncertainty, one is a first time buyer who I would say generally can sit out. They would normally be living at home or renting and they can sit it out for some period of time. And the other category of customer who can sit it out is the downsizer. And the downsizer was a significant part of the Red Roll business. So I don't think that those are customers that have gone forever, almost by definition. The first-time buyer and the downsizer can come back into the market, but they can certainly sit it out. And Red Row have seen that in terms of maybe where they were on cash sales. So circa 40% of their business was cash sales, and they're now round about 30% of the business being cash sales. And that will be primarily first-time buyers sitting it out. Sorry, downsize or setting it out. Peter, did you have a question?

Yeah, thank you. Peter, I just had an idea from Morgan Stanley. It was a similar question really just in terms of the growth going forward, which customer segment do you expect to grow the fastest? Just because when I look at some of the metrics on first-time buyers, I think one in three now in terms of purchases in the UK will be first-time buyers. There's perhaps a notion that maybe not to disagree with you, but they can't sit it out because maybe they've got family formation or they'll do more to kind of get it done. And so just in terms of where you think the growth will come from if you know first-time buyers are starting to run too hot in terms of the level of um completions they make up in the uk and also maybe if you can give some color on where how down it is from the peak um for you first-time buyers in your business

Okay thanks I mean that's you know that's quite a big question so you know I think if you step back from it for New Build and for Barrett Red Room in particular I think a really big opportunity for us over the next three to five years is about the efficiency of our homes and the substantially lower running costs of our homes. And therefore, I think from a Barrett RedRow point of view, I would say that we mainly want to take market share from the second hand market. So we don't mind if they're first time buyers, second hand movers or downsizers. We should be actively seeking share and we can do that as we talked about through a part exchange offer for existing homeowners. But we can also do that through demonstrating substantially lower running costs and the running costs are not just about the heating or The running costs are also about you don't have to put in a new bathroom or a new kitchen within the first two or three years. So in cash terms, there are big, big benefits of new building. So that's the first area that we should look at. And then really in terms of the mix point, I would say that we should expect to see more growth on first time buyers and more growth on downsizers across the piece. And I do think for downsizers that there is more we could be doing in terms of part exchange offers with downsizers and that's something that we've been looking at quite actively because we would tend to say that your house can't be worth more than the house you're buying and therefore that precludes a lot of downsizers and I think that's something where we need to challenge ourselves in terms of how attractive we can be to downsizers. But I think you see on downsizers that a lot of what they want is low maintenance, low running costs and not having to think about replacing kitchens and bathrooms and so on. Great.

I think consciously we are 10 o'clock. Any last ones? Otherwise, thank you, everybody.

Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate all the questions. Thank you. And we will be back in April with a trading update. Thanks very much.