DFS Furniture plc

I'm Tim Stacey, Group CEO, and I'm here with John Fallon, our CFO. So today, I'll just take you through a brief introduction. John will go through the financials. I'll come back and give you a bit of an update on strategy and operation where we're at and finish with a bit of an outlook and summary and then take questions from the analysts in the room. So I'd like to start by highlighting three key themes that John and I will expand upon throughout the presentation. Firstly, with regards to the variables that we can control, we've made good progress on our key focus areas. We've got record customer net promoter scores were achieved in a number of areas, and we've maintained a very strong focus on the customer experience. We've consolidated the four percentage point improvement in our market share position since 2020, maintaining a clear market leadership position. And this has been underpinned by continued product innovation and new brand partnerships, such as our exclusive Ted Baker ranges in DFS. We've also seen significant advances in data-driven digital marketing, especially at DFS. Savings delivered from our cost to operate program have been delivered ahead of our initial expectations. Across both cost of goods and operating costs, we've delivered over £27 million of savings that are permanent. Secondly, you know, clearly last year it was very challenging with market volumes now nearly 20% below pre-pandemic levels. Now, we did expect the market demand to decline, but not to the extent that it has. And consequently, our sales and profits unfortunately came below our original expectations for the year. We do, however, expect the market to start to recover in financial life as interest rates and inflation start to come down. But to protect against any unexpected downside risk, we have prudently secured amended banking covenants to provide us with additional headroom. Finally, given our market share and our well-invested asset base, we are confident in our ability to capitalise on the market recovery when it does come. And there are some flickerings flickering green shoots of macroeconomic recovery. Given the operational leverage in the business, we remain confident that we will achieve the targets we set out of revenues of £1.4 billion and a PBT margin of 8%. On some headlines for the year, I'll just talk through these briefly. So order intake was down 1.8%, reflecting the tough market conditions. We have, however, achieved another year of gross margin growth, with gross margins up 140 basis points year on year. This, together with the cost savings I outlined earlier, have helped partially mitigate the very weak market. Profit before tax and brand amortization came in at 10.5 million, which was in line with the latest guidance we set out, but obviously below the initial expectations due to the scale of the market decline. We retained very good cash headroom, ending the year with over £80 million of available funds. And finally, we have achieved record post-purchase and post-delivery net promoter scores. Moving on to some market context. I mean, clearly it's been a tough year for the upholstery sector overall, and it's always pretty hard to forecast precisely. Our initial guidance at the start of last financial year, this time last year, was based on the market demand being down about 5% in volume terms. You may remember at our interim presentation, the market volumes were actually down 10%, and this trend continued into the second half of the year. Housing transactions, which are often seen as a barometer of the upholstery market, were down 9% year-on-year over the equivalent period. And consumer confidence levels last year remained relatively low and pretty volatile. The weak market demand clearly impacted our group. Our footfall was down 8% year-on-year. But strong conversion and average order value growth limited the order intake decline to minus 1.2%. As I said, market volumes through FY24 are now over 20% below the pre. Moving on to market size and share, the chart on the left illustrates my last point around the severity of the market decline. Blue vertical bars illustrating market value by year according to global data. The line on the chart illustrates our market share over time, and you can see that we've got a good track record of growing share. we do remain the clear market leader with at least 36 percent value share of the market. Now, this is global data's view, and it's slightly lower than previously quoted due to revisions that they've made to their historical market share figures. Nevertheless, and this is the key point, this shows that we've consolidated the four percentage point gain we've made since 2020, and we are the clear market leader over three times the size of our nearest competitor. The market has seen some home retailers developing their upholstery propositions more recently, and they have taken share from other specialists. We have, however, held firm, benefiting from the continuation of the long-term trend of independents exiting the market. So in summary, despite some new competition emerging, we've consolidated our share gains, maintained a clear market-leading position, and that sets us up well to capitalise on future market recovery. Looking forward, we are starting to see some green shoots from a macroeconomic. With around 80% of sofa purchases replacing existing sofa, consumers need to feel confident in their prospects to make big ticket purchases. We know that consumer confidence and the upholstery market tend to go hand in hand. The chart on the left here illustrates that upward trajectory for both the overall consumer confidence and the climate for major purchases, albeit we're conscious the scores are pretty volatile and there's been weaker scores even in September. However, the general upward trend does demonstrate the consumer sentiment towards discretionary purchases is showing signs of some recovery. Property transactions which drive about 20% of upholstery purchases have been well below pre-pandemic averages, and that's been a drag on upholstery market demand. However, HMRC data shows that transactions are on the rise and house moves are in year-on-year growth for the last four consecutive months. Indeed, Savills are forecasting strong growth in the calendar year 2025 of over 8%. Finally, you can see on the right-hand chart that real disposable incomes have started to recover, and the OBR is forecasting real disposable income growth over the coming years, In addition, household savings ratios have been in growth for the past four consecutive quarters. So in short, consumer balance sheets are starting to recover following the cost of living crisis. House moves are on the rise. Consumer confidence levels are starting to trend upwards. And we believe that these factors should combine to lead to an increase in demand for sofas. As a point of reference, global data are forecasting upholstery market growth of 5% in calendar year 2025. I'm pleased to report that we've started this new financial year relatively well, with order intake in both DFS and Sophology ahead and up on a strong period last year. And so we're well set up as we approach our important quarter two trading period in the run up to Christmas. I'll now hand over to John to run through the financials.

Thank you, Tim. Morning, everyone. So I'm going to start by taking you through the main financial headlines. For clarity, FY24 is reported as a 53-week period compared to FY23's 52-week period. The impact of that 53rd week on both revenues and profit is not significant, in part due to the Red Sea-related delivery delays in our final quarter. Revenue then was down 9.3% year-on-year, which as explained, reflected the challenging market demand as well as the Red Sea disruption, which delayed customer deliveries and therefore revenue. As expected, the year-on-year performance was also compounded by the prior year benefiting from a higher opening order bank converting into sales in FY23. We estimate the net impact of the 53rd week was around £7 million in revenue terms, and therefore not significant at a profit level. Underlying profit before tax of £10.5 million was in line with our most recent guidance, with gross margin improvements and good progress on operating cost efficiencies, partly helping to mitigate the impact of lower revenue. Underlying basic earnings per share is also down, consistent with our profit performance. Our reported loss before tax of £1.7 million includes £10.8 million charges in the period, including £5.1 million of cash-related non-underlying charges, which was consistent with our expectations. And I'll share a little bit more on those non-underlying charges later. Net bank debt closed the year at £160 million, and we therefore maintain good levels of cash headroom to our total lending facility of £250 million. Leverage per our banking covenant definition has increased by 0.6 times, to 2.5 times at June 2024. We remain within our existing covenant limits. As Tim alluded to earlier, we've also recently secured temporary amendments to our lending covenants, and I'll take you through this in more detail Moving on to sales performance then, gross sales declined by 7.9 percent year-on-year. That was driven by three main factors. Firstly, the lower order intake, which was down 1.8 percent year-on-year. Secondly, the prior year non-repeating order bank benefits, and then thirdly, the red delays. As Tim highlighted, market demand was down significantly, remained volatile through the year. We had a positive first quarter. We then saw order take declines in quarters two and three. And that was then followed by a return to growth in our final quarter as we annualized weaker trading in the prior year, but also as we took actions to stimulate demand, including offering four-year interest-free credit for promotional periods in DFS and new ranging and pricing in surfology. The Red Sea disruption has clearly impacted many retailers, and we were no different. In quarter four, we saw revenue of £12 million deferred into FY25 as a result of the . And whilst this has not necessarily lost revenue, it did impact the results for the year. Group revenue of £987.1 million was 9.3 percent lower than the prior year. That was a greater decline than gross sales and due to an increase of £14 million. in the cost of providing interest-free credit following the Bank of England base rate rises and a slightly higher credit participation. We partially mitigated that increase by moving to a maximum 36-month period for interest-free credit for the majority, which is something we've seen replicated across the sector. Looking forward, at current credit participation levels, every 1% movement in the base rate changes our interest-free credit costs by around £7 million to £8 million. on an annualized basis. So therefore, our reduction to base rates not only improves our revenue conversion, it's also going to help and stimulate consumer confidence and demand level. So before I move on to gross margin and operating costs, I'm pleased to report strong positive progress on our cost to operate efficiencies program, having set ourselves the target this time last year to deliver £50 million of savings by FY26. We succeeded in delivering £27.5 million of in-year savings in FY24, which represents faster progress than we expected at the start of the year. The savings have come across operating costs, product cost of goods and property costs, with all areas of the business contributing to deliver both efficiency savings and stronger cost management disciplines. On product cost of goods in October 2023, we took the decision to close one of our manufacturing sites and wood mills, redistributing this volume across our supplier base. This has helped us to negotiate better cost prices and improve gross margins at the same time as lowering our cost base. And the most significant of the savings have been made across the operating cost base, including restructuring our service operating model and further optimizing both our retail labor model and our group support model. We've also made significant productivity improvements in our operations, including rationalizing third-party delivery partners, which has improved service as well as lowering costs. And Tim will talk further on our progress in the sofa delivery company later. Across our property costs, we've worked closely with landlords to secure better terms on retail lease regears. We completed 14 regears in the year. achieving average savings of more than 20 percent per lease. And we've got a further 14 to 18 retail sites in the pipeline to be completed in the next two years. Property savings have also been achieved as a result of consolidating our district . So, overall, we remain on track to deliver that 50 million pound target with further savings expected over the next two years as we annualize the full benefits of the actions taken in FY24. and we continue to identify additional efficiencies across the group. And the objective here is to keep making DFS a better business, as evidenced by our record of improving NPS scores that Tim will talk to later, as well as a lower cost to run business. Now on to gross margin, and whilst cash gross margin for is down 41.4 million pounds as a result of the lower delivered sales, we are pleased with the progress that's been made improving our margin rate, which increased 140 basis points in the period to 55.8%. That improvement is in addition to the 170 basis points increase with FY22. As expected, the average freight rate across the period was lower. That added 250 basis points to the margin rate, and that benefit helped to more than offset the adverse movements on FX rate and interest-free credit. The underlying improvement in product margins of 110 basis points was supported by the manufacturing site closure in October last year and the associated redistribution of volumes across our supplier base, together with retail price increases that started to be realized in the P&L from May 2023. Whilst the improvement over the year remains positive, our second half margin rate was slightly below our expectations, driven by two main factors. Firstly, we took tactical decisions to temporarily offer 48 months interest-free credit to stimulate demand in key trading periods in the second half. And secondly, we did see some increases to freight rates in our final quarter due to the Red Sea disruption. For FY25, we expect margin rate benefits to come from continuing of Bank of England base rates, more favourable FX rates, and additional cost of goods improvements. And to reiterate, as I mentioned earlier, every 1% reduction in Bank of England interest rates results in a £7 to £8 million cost reduction at our current participation levels on credit. However, as you will have noted from other sources, freight rates are continuing elevated levels, and that does remain a key market sensitivity for us too. Year to date, though, we are seeing average freight rates in line with our budget assumptions, but future prices clearly are hard to forecast. That said, we're confident that our scale means that we'll continue to secure the best prices in our market on freight. Moving down the P&L then to operating costs, and as we've already mentioned, we made good progress on our cost base through efficiencies and disciplined cost management. Our operating costs, including depreciation and interest, have reduced by 21.3 pounds year on year, with anticipated increases from cost inflation and bank interest more than offset by savings achieved through lower volumes, marketing spend, and cost to operate efficiencies. Breaking that down in a little more detail, variable volume-related costs reduced by 8.8 million pounds as a result of the gross sales reduction. Our bank interest costs increased by 6 million pounds, principally as a result of the higher cost of debt servicing, but also due to the higher average net debt level through the period. Inflationary cost increases were contained to 12 million pounds, which is around 3 percent in aggregate, with the majority of this increase being linked to wages. Total marketing spend reduced by £3.8 million in the period, which primarily resulted from our decision to reduce marketing investment in beds and mattresses until market conditions. The remaining £26.7 million of year-on-year savings were delivered across the cost base, £22 million of which came from the cost to operate efficiencies that I've just covered earlier. The remaining 4.7 came from cost avoidance and one-off cost savings, including rebates on historical business rates and the non-payment of the group's financial performance-related bonus. Our focus on lowering our operating costs will continue into FY25, with the objective of mitigating new inflationary pressures as a minimum. Onto cash flows now, and there was a free cash outflow of £15 million in the 53 end of June 24. That compares to a £7 million outflow in the prior 52-week period. In addition to the reduction in underlying EBITDA operating cash flows, you can see cash capex was managed to £22 million in the year, down from £35 million in FY23. This was lower than our guidance at the start of the year of £25 to £30 million, which reflects a more disciplined approach taken to prioritising spend given the more challenging market conditions. Approximately 50% of that capital expenditure was prioritised on growth-related investments, including technology investment. And Tim will talk further a little to that later in the presentation. Interest payments are £8 million higher year on year as a result. the higher Bank of England base rates and net debt, and tax payments are £3 million higher in the period due to the utilisation of overpayments from prior periods in FY23. Total working capital outflows in the period of £18 million was partly driven by an expected additional VAT payment in the 53rd week, in addition to the cash flow impact of the lower level of trading activity. As a reminder, the prior year working capital movement of £40 million was mostly due to working capital balances normalising by 23 after peak trading and order bank levels increased customer deposits and creditors in FY21 and 22. We continue to expect that our negative working capital model will support strong cash inflows when market recovers and group order levels start to grow. It's also worth noting that payments on lease liabilities also includes an 53 rent payment of £8 million, as was previously guided, which is expected to reverse in future periods. After accounting for non-underlying cash outflows of £5.1 million, the reported free cash outflow was therefore £15.1 million. And for clarity, the breakdown of non-underlying items is included in the appendix to this slide deck, covering both the in-year P&L impact of £10.8 million and the in-year cash flow impact of £5.1 million. And the most significant non-underlying cash items relate to payments associated with manufacturing and group support restructuring decisions, together with the costs associated with the refinancing of our debt facility, which took place in September 2023. Which brings me on to net debt and covenants. Closing net debt has increased by 24.5 million pounds to 164.8 million pounds in the period. At this level, You can see we retained good levels of cash headroom to our total lending facility of £250 million, and we fully satisfied our banking covenant tests at June 2024. At the end of FY24, our leverage ratio under our banking covenant definition was 2.5 times, and the fixed charge cover ratio was 1.57 times. We do remain focused on improving the flexibility in our balance sheet position to address the short-term risk. We're pleased to report that at the start of this month, we secured a temporary widening of our covenant ratios with our lenders. And whilst we expect to stay comfortably within the existing facility covenants, this temporary widening provides additional headroom in the event of an unanticipated downside scenario in market volumes and lower EBITDA. In addition, the Board has proposed there's no final FY24 dividend on the basis that the interim dividend paid has substantially covered the implied full-year total dividend. And also, given our leverage levels currently exceed our target range of 0.5 times to one times. Whilst the covenant amendment agreement includes some limited restrictions on the payment of future dividends, this is not expected to constrain the group from recommending future dividends consistent with our existing dividend policy. Looking forward, we remain committed to reducing net debt levels and bringing leverage with a target range of 0.5 to 1 times. And with that, I'll now hand you back over to Tim.

Thanks, John. I should guide you through some headlines of our strategic and operational progress across, firstly, our three retail pillars, being DFS, Sophology, and Home. Starting with DFS, and despite market conditions resulting in lower footfall year-on-year, the brand has performed relatively well, with year-on-year increases in both conversion and average order values, supported by new product developments and data-driven marketing activation. Sophology's performance wasn't as strong through half one, and we took some steps to refresh the product proposition, which turned out to be very effective, and almost instantaneous improvements to the brand's performance in trading from quarter four onwards. Both brands have also achieved some record high MPS scores, which I'll come on to later. Before I move on to provide some further details on these, I just wanted to touch on home. So in short, there's no change to what I said back in March at the interims. We've already invested in developing the foundations to facilitate further growth, implementing a stock management system and a drop shipment solution. And we've continued to improve the profitability of our home proposition through gross margin and operating cost improvements. But further investment to drive sales remains on hold until the core upholstery market shows signs of recovery. By the way, I'm pleased to announce that last night we won the Bed Retailer of the Year at the National Bed Federation Awards, so credit to the teams for that. I know they were celebrating. Moving on to DFS. The brand, I just wanted to illustrate something. The brand has broadened its appeal over time through a number of initiatives, which has... For example, back in 2014, we started our exclusive brand partnerships with leading brands, which include House Beautiful, Country Living, French Connection, Jewels, and Grand Designs. And we see our exclusive brand portfolio as a key differentiator for DFS. You can see on this chart that order intake from our exclusive brands has grown significantly and now makes up over 40% of our overall sales in DFS. Earlier in the year, we announced a new exclusive partnership with Ted Baker and launched three ranges which have landed very well with the consumer. And I'm pleased to announce that we've just partnered with Lazy Boy, adding another excellent brand to our growing list of exclusive partners. We haven't stopped innovating either, and I'm really pleased with the CineSound offering which was recently launched in DFS, which includes surround sound speakers and 4D vibrating seats, which has gone down well with home cinema lovers and gamers. We've also continued to innovate and lead with DFS marketing, building on our brand platform, which has seen strong performance in both consideration and trust with our audience targets. The advances in data-driven marketing activation have mitigated some of the volume challenges, and this advanced data and AI-driven approach will help us continue to lead the category. Moving on to Sophology, we believe that the Sophology brand offers a group great potential to grow and might overall And although performance was subdued in half one, albeit in line with the market, we made some changes to the retail pricing and importantly introduced a number of innovative new product ranges, a few of which are shown here. In addition, the website has been redesigned and new promotional tools have been adopted, such as limited editions and introductory pricing that have driven conversion. And we're pleased with the results. Sophology's performance has picked up considerably in quarter four, outperforming the market, and we've seen online conversion increase by 38%. I'm pleased to say that that stronger performance has continued into FY. NPS scores I mentioned earlier for both brands have improved, with some records being achieved. Both brands' post-purchase scores have achieved record highs. That's been facilitated by new sales training programs that we've rolled out. Finally, our established customer scores, which are carried out five months after purchase, are all And it's recovered now from the post-pandemic impact that saw significant delays in customer orders. And I'm pleased to report that these scores have continued to improve since our year end. So overall, customer service and experience levels are strong and improving. Moving on to our platforms. On manufacturing and sourcing, as John mentioned earlier, we took the difficult decision last year to close one of our manufacturing sites on a wood mill. And that decision allowed us to redistribute products across our existing suppliers to optimize quality and reduce costs, contributing to the gross margin increase that John mentioned earlier. On technology and data, we continue to prioritize investment to improve the efficiency of our operations and also the customer experience. We've successfully launched our proprietary intelligent lending platform that we developed for DFS now into Sophology. This broadens the number of lending partners available to Sophology customers and increases the probability of those customers obtaining the right credit for them. We've also implemented some advanced AI-driven tools, leading to an improved customer experience. One example of this is the implementation of Google's Contact Center AI platform in Sophology, which has replaced a number of legacy systems. And that will enable us to use AI to further improve customer service levels and performance. I'll come on to our logistics platform on the next slide. On people and culture, our people continue to be the group's most important asset, and we work very hard to ensure that we offer a best-in-class employee value proposition alongside a collaborative and inclusive culture, and we believe that's critical to our success. Ensuring that everyone feels welcome in the group is really important to us, and we've established six colleague networks. We've partnered with diversity in retail, and that's enabled us to collaborate with other businesses and benefit from adopting best practices. And I'm pleased to say we've achieved accreditation in the inclusive employer standard. On sustainability, in June this year, we submitted our net zero strategy to We made the decision to shift our net zero target to 2050, aligning with climate science and also the UK government target. I'm pleased to say that this year we've secured commitments from our manufacturing partners that cover 59% of our scope three emissions to commit to developing their own science-based net zero plan. We continue to push forward with our net zero journey, and I'm proud that elements such as the consolidation of our delivery fleets, AI route planning software, driver efficiency training, as well as removing gas from our retail estate has delivered a significant reduction in our scope one emissions. Circling back to logistics, last year we completed the remaining integration activities to combine and rationalize the logistics assets from both the DFS and Sophology brands. Now, the sofa delivery company, which fills deliveries for both brands, utilizes the same systems, the same distribution centers, the same fleet, and the same workforce. And it's performing very strongly with all key KPIs, such as vehicle fill, labor productivity, and delivery failure rates improving. This has both driven down costs significantly, which are 8% down after adjusting for deflation, as well as an improved customer experience with the post-delivery MPS scores reaching record We're really pleased with the team and what they've achieved in the self-delivery company and the benefits from integration that have come from it. I believe we've created an incredibly valuable asset for the group. Okay, just the last couple of slides to conclude then. So clearly, it's been a tough period for the group over the last couple of years with market record lows. However, there are signs that the market should start to recover. And looking forward to FY25, trading today has been bang in line with expectations, with order intake in growth. And that's despite the strong comps that we had in July and August. As we've mentioned during the course of the presentation, we do expect market volumes to slowly recover by a few percentage points in the year. And we see this recovery strengthening over the course of the year. Therefore, we expect our profit to be second half weighted and in line with analysts' consensus expectations. We will at this time continue to take a disciplined and prudent approach throughout the year, with a strong focus on cash flow generation and improving our balance sheet. We intend to incur a similar level of capital investment in the year just ended, with around 20 to 25 million of cash capex spend, and we expect to incur 4 million of underlying net cash costs, non-underlying net cash costs. And the majority of that cash cost will relate to a landslippage that we have experienced in one of our manufacturing sites, with the remainder to facilitate some of the savings planned as part of our Cost to Operate programme. OK, as we're seeing some more macroeconomic green shoots emerging, we thought it was pertinent to reiterate the longer-term profit group. You may remember this illustrative scenario from our interim results, which emphasises the impact on our profitability of a market recovery, given our operational leverage. The facts still remain the same. Even if markets don't fully recover, and we've no reason to believe that they won't, we are confident we'll see a significant increase in profitability. For example, if market demand only recovers to, say, 5% below pre-pandemic levels, we can see a clear route to 7% PBT margin. This doesn't reflect the impact of expected higher gross margin rates as interest rates fall or any growth in our home proposition. And as such, we see a clear route to the 8% PBT margin target we announced back in our capital markets day in early 2022. In addition, given the established asset base and negative working capital model, we expect to generate strong free cash flows when the market demand returns. So that concludes our presentation for today. John and I will now take some questions from the analysts we have in the room.

Thanks. Jonathan Pritchard from Appeal Hunt. A couple of three. Just on the replacement cycle, I suppose, is there a chance it has actually fundamentally gone out? Perhaps sofas are being constructed a bit better, they last a bit longer. Is there a chance that that's a thing? Perhaps you could just speak a bit more about Lazy Boy and the opportunity there, because that sounds to me like quite an issue. And not unconnected to that, perhaps a few words on how you see the new ownership of SCS and FAB playing out and any changes to strategy that you've seen from there and how that could impact you.

They're all mine, aren't they? Yeah, I think the replacement cycle we've tracked for a while based on qualitative surveys we do, and I said before that It oscillates between 6.5 years in good times when consumer confidence. We saw that back in, it was a long time ago, 2015, 16 to 7.5 years when that drifts out and consumer confidence is low. I think we're over seven years at the minute based on the last research that we've done. I think there's no reason to believe that the replacement cycle has fundamentally changed at this stage, although For many years, people have been offering lifetime guarantees and 15-year guarantees on frames, and sofas are well-built across the world. But there's nothing we're seeing in the data that says, as consumer confidence returns, disposable income comes back, that people won't come back into the market. And we're seeing a little bit of signs of that at the moment, Jonathan. But, yeah, it's a watching brief. I think on Lazy Boy, we're really excited to sign them up. a really successful brand across the world, very innovative. They've got UK manufacturers as well as Far East manufacturers. We've got three of some of the best-selling models that exist in the UK coming into DFS in mid-October, and we'll put a lot of support behind that, both in-store and online, to drive that business. I think it was a big proportion of SCS's sales in the past, and it complements the recliner brands and some of the innovation that we have. So we're pretty excited and can see a big opportunity there. In terms of, I suppose I can speak more about SCS. I haven't really seen a lot that's happening in fab yet. You know, we have huge respect and we know the owners of Poltroni so far very well. They're really good people. And they're in the middle of transforming the SCS offer from what it was, which was very successful, $300 million of sales, to a slightly different model that's based on what he's been successful with in Italy. But I guess what we're seeing on the ground is a little bit of disruption in the short term, as you would do as you're closing stores and refitting and slightly changing their proposition. So we see that as a short-term opportunity, but respect the fact that as that happens, as he's transformed his offer, he'll become a strong competitor. We welcome competition. It makes us better as well. So we'll see what happens. I think our teams are enjoying at the moment a little bit of disruption to them, which is helping drive some of our business.

Great, thank you. Matthew Abraham from Berenberg. Thanks for taking my questions this morning. First one is just in reference to your end market assumptions. You're talking to low single digit growth over the full year and PBT to be second half weighted. Is there the underlying assumption that H1 end market will be negative growth? And if so, to what extent? Second question, just in reference to Q1 trading, you've referenced that that's in line with expectations. How does that compare to the 9% year-on-year growth that you were running at in Q1? I appreciate that there will be a conflict there. And third question, just in reference to covenants, you've referenced a couple of times this downside scenario you're protecting against. Could you put that in end market volume terms? What does that look like numerically? Thank you.

Yeah, so back to covenants. Like you say, we very much see it as just putting some additional security in place for that downside scenario. You know, we're expecting our leverage based on consensus to improve this year. And in terms of trying to put that into some kind of scale, it gives us some quite significant downside and market would need to be down by approaching double digit levels again over the course of this financial year for us to get close to breaching those new temporary covenants at the end of this financial year. So I think it gives us quite significant security.

I think in terms of market assumptions, What we've assumed over the course of the whole year is probably 2%, 3% volume growth. But probably the triggers for that will be things like interest rates coming down, inflation stabilizing, consumer confidence coming back a bit. So I think everybody that we speak to to try and help us calibrate this suggests that that's more going to be calendar year 2025. And I think global data say a 5% improvement in the market. We're probably expecting maybe flat market volumes, which is what we're seeing at the moment year on year. in half one and starting to improve maybe two, three, four percent in half two. That's how we see it at the minute. Best read that we've got. I think in terms of trading, because of the kind of volatility sometimes of our business in terms of quarter by quarter, two year. So if you look at the year on two year growth, quarter four, quarter one actually is pretty strong. So it's kind of high single digits. So I think that kind of it. kind of evens out the oscillations that we see. Quarter four was eight, nearly eight, nine percent, but that was because we were very weak comparatives in FY23, which was very warm spring. So if you look at it over the whole, that last six months, we're pretty pleased. It's overall, it's up year on year and up year on two years. So and that's kind of a pattern of trend now that's been settled now for the last six months, which gives you a bit more confidence as you go into. Makes sense.

Hi, Andy Wade from Jefferies. A couple for me. First one, in terms of NPS, you talked about reaching record high there. Just interested to any extent to which you can sort of disaggregate which have been the drivers of that because you obviously got the delivery element to it. And so for delivery company, you've got some shorter lead times in there as well. You've got the range changes which you've put through development there. Maybe there's no way you can disaggregate that, but some of it you can get from the pre and post, I guess. So any color you can give on that, that's the first one. The second one you talked about... new entrance into the market in terms of this sort of upholstery market there. Just to clarify, we're talking about the likes of Dunelm, just to clarify who we're talking about. Not new, but a bit harder. Just to clarify who we're talking about there exactly. And do you see that as a bit of a concern over the coming years that you've been taking a lot of share and then consolidated as they've pushed on a little bit? That's the second one. And then the third one on Manoir. I think there have been some sort of vague talk about potentially a partnership in the past and developing a closer partnership with them. Is there anything you can give us in terms of update on that? Those are the three. Good questions.

NPS. So I think what we see with NPS is to understand what's driving it. On post-purchase in both brands, Sophology and DFS, we've rolled out a new sales model which has been really successful in terms of driving post-purchase NPS. So as customers walk out the door having purchased or online having purchased, we can see record scores there. And that's a new selling model, new training models delivering consistent experience. So that's the post-purchase element. The post-delivery element is at record highs largely because The sofa delivery company, in terms of how they're delivering to customers, just continue to get better and better, delivering on time with a level of professionalism that's just going through the roof. We're doing a lot more through our own fleet and a little bit less through third parties. But even the third parties that we work with, we bonus them on NPS. They're very aware of the culture that we want. And that team is 1,300 people working day in, day out, delivering 15 times a day. And we're all over the data. So it's very data-driven in the sofa delivery. On established customer, we have over 200 people out in the field helping people fix sofas, repair sofas. And now what we're seeing is post-pandemic, there was a huge boom and there was a big outstanding service book. It's now coming back down to pre-pandemic levels, which allows us to get out to customers quicker if they've got a slight problem. So the guys are out there fixing within a few days, getting the parts. So that's helping on a post-service level. So all aspects of the customer journey. And I think it's really important. We have been taking quite a lot of cost out of the business. But the thing that we're trying to make sure that we, the first thing we do, which is our first value is think customer. And we have to make sure the customer experience is spot on. So when the market comes back, they think of us first. So that's the kind of the first thing. Do you want to talk a little bit about the new entrants?

Yeah, I mean, we've talked already about SCS, which, whilst not a new entrant, is a sort of change in the market. I think we have seen the likes of the category home retailers, Next, Amazon to a degree, Wayfair, all just slightly nibbling away and starting to build a little bit of their share, but they're coming from relatively low bases. But they're definitely adding more competition into the market. I mean, at the end of the day, they're offering a slightly different offer, quite a significantly different offer. It's not an assisted service model like ours, and they can only put a certain amount of space towards it. And clearly, we think our online proposition stands up as good as any across the market as well. So at this stage, it doesn't feel like it's been a major factor in terms of our overall One we'll keep watching as well. And the other thing that we've continued to do is build our stocked proposition as well so that we're in a position we can offer a shorter time option for customers who are looking for that. And that's where we've seen perhaps, you know, like I said, done Elm Next and Amazon be a little bit more successful. So we feel like we can introduce that into the mix to maintain our competitiveness too.

And that kind of links to, man, while we work, you know, we have a, I mean, we have strategic partnerships with all of our big suppliers and Manoir are very similar. We've grown them in the last few years, particularly on the short lead time products. We work very successfully with them, importing products that are great for customers on five to seven day lead time. But we're also expanding our made-to-order range with them and looking at our home category. So they're a great partner, along with some of the other big Far Eastern suppliers as well. There's nothing more formal than a very strong relationship that we've built with them, and we can see opportunities there. They are, I think, the world's largest furniture manufacturer, and therefore, as the market leader in the UK, we should be working with them and being successful together. So, yes, lots of opportunity there, I think. Any more questions from anybody?

Matt again. Sorry, just a quick follow-up to that comment there on the build-out of the stocked proposition. Will that change the working capital dynamic at all? And if so, should we expect that same working capital benefit as we build up through the next demand cycle?

Yeah, so it doesn't change the working capital because it's not stock that we're buying from them. So they're holding it at their expense in their warehouses and we call it off as we sell it. So it doesn't change the working capital model. It actually helps us convert sale into cash more quickly. because of the shorter lead time, so it won't impact on the dynamics. Okay, any more questions? Back into the rain. All right, thanks very much for your attention and coming today. Appreciate that, and nice to see you all. Thank you.