Foxtons Group plc

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining the Foxton's 2024 half-year results presentation. I'm joined by Chris Huff, our group CFO, and we look forward to answering any questions at the end of the call. Before moving on to the body of the presentation, it's worth taking a minute to recap on the Foxton's journey over the last 24 months to really put these results into context. The group saw a multi-year period of underperformance from 2016 to 2022, including a significant market share loss, no organic growth in lettings, and underinvestment in the business, all while focusing on the wrong strategic priorities. Consequently, the business's financial performance suffered as reflected in the share price. Since then, the business has changed significantly, led by a refreshed executive team, chairman, and board of directors. And at the beginning of 2023, I presented and implemented an operational turnaround plan, including a new set of strategic priorities with a medium term target to deliver 25 to 30 million pounds of adjusted operating profit. Throughout 2023, we rebuilt the Foxton's operating platform, strengthening some areas and building entirely new capabilities in others. With the rebuilding stage complete, we are totally focused on delivering growth and accelerating performance to meet our profitability targets. And I firmly believe that these come through in our results today. Moving now to the key highlights for H1. We delivered revenue and profit growth despite the London sales market remaining flat on the historically low levels that we saw last year. Growth has been driven internally by the operational improvements that we have implemented and as our leading position in London and UK estate agency supported significant market outperformance. Particularly pleasing was a substantial 30% increase in sales exchange market share and double digit growth in lettings new business volumes. And we also grew productivity, improving revenue per fee earner by 6%. and revenue per branch by 15%. Productivity growth has been enabled through a laser focus on improving staff retention, best in class training and upskilling, and generally rebuilding Foxton's unique high performance culture. We continue to improve the robustness of our business with non-cyclical and reoccurring activities generating nearly 70% of revenue in the period. And finally, Although the rebuilding stage of our plan is complete, we have not stood still. We continue to deliver operational upgrades to strengthen Foxton's operating platform and widen our competitive advantage over our competitors. In the half, we focused on upgrades to improve lead generation and drive service and productivity levels, all of which support further revenue and profit growth. Turning now to slide seven and an update on the London lettings market. On the chart on the left hand side, we have indexed tenant demand and property instruction levels to H1 2019, considered the last normal period before COVID-19. As you can also see on the graph, supply and demand dynamics have continued to normalize in 2024 with increased levels of rental stock and moderating tenant demand. Positively for our business, The increase in available stock on the market enables us to use our industry leading technology and data to grow our share of the London lettings market. Rental prices remain at the elevated levels we saw in 2023, and we expect this dynamic will continue to be underpinned by the long-term trend of high levels of demand and limited new supply of rental properties. We especially welcome the government's commitment to building 1.5 million new homes across the country. At the same time, the government must also ensure that there is a healthy and robust lettings market. Encouraging new landlord investment into the market will support improved levels of supply and better meet tenant demand levels. A strong and well-functioning private rental sector is vital to underpinning the country's economic ambitions over the coming years. Turning now to slide eight and an update on the London sales market. The wider London market for exchanges remains flat versus the prior year and at historically low levels, 15% below the 10 year average. Pricing was broadly flat in the half. An hour delivery of a 28% increase in exchange volumes is therefore highly impressive achievement against this backdrop. More pleasingly, the market is showing early signs of some recovery from these historically low levels. It's worth remembering the process for a property transaction. The property is first listed on the market and after completing a large number of viewings, a sale is agreed between a buyer and a seller. Following roughly three to four months due diligence process, the property ultimately exchanges and the transaction completes. And this entire process can take anywhere from six months upwards. We've seen good growth in the early stages of the sales process, with property listings and buyer activity both growing. And the output is new sales agreed in H1 were up 18% on the prior year. This growth is expected to drive year-on-year growth in exchange volumes in the second half. In my view, key drivers for this growth are signs of mortgage rates beginning to come down, but more importantly, it reflects the pent-up demand in the market. After a period of subdued activity, buyers are now weighing up high rates in the medium term against their needs-based requirements as ultimately life must go on. Turning now to slide 10 and an update on progress against our strategic priorities. Upon my return to Foxton's, I laid out a medium term target to deliver 25 to 30 million pounds of operating profit. against a background of circa £9 million operating profit the year before my arrival, and with the sales market becoming considerably tougher, this was ambitious, but I felt it was achievable and reflected the potential that I knew was locked within the business. The strategic priorities we set for each business reflects this ambition, and I'm pleased to report that we are on track. In lettings, We've achieved 6% annual organic growth since H1 2022. In H1, we delivered double digit growth in new business volumes, including a doubling of deals and revenue in bill to rent. This represents a fantastic performance in the typically highly repeat lettings business. Growth has been delivered through leveraging our data-driven lead generating capabilities. win new property instructions and most importantly letting them to tenants through our highly motivated sales force aided by best in class technology and process. A key feature is our digital lettings platform introduced and developed last year. It has created a highly efficient digital journey which allows us to lead score and prioritise inquiries to drive the productivity of our fee earners and is entirely proprietary. This growth in new business volumes has allowed us to offset an expected temporary reduction in tenancies re-transacting this year, following our strategy to increase average tenancy lengths since 2022. In fact, tenancy lengths have increased by 20% over this period and are key to improving client retention and growing our portfolio of reoccurring revenues. On the acquisition side, We completed the integration of Ludlow Thompson in June. This has been completed ahead of schedule and reflects the great work of our technology and lettings teams. We are now well placed to really drive returns from this superb acquisition. Our prior acquisitions continue to perform well, delivering returns comfortably ahead of our expectations. And. Through an increased focus on driving client retention and new business opportunities, I am pleased to report landlord retention rates and new business volumes from more recent acquisitions are trending well above historical levels. In sales, we delivered an impressive 30% growth in our market share of exchanged deals, allowing us to significantly outperform the market. Market share in H1 was 5.1%. And going over this 5% is an important milestone for the company. We've achieved it ahead of schedule and is a testament to the power of the machine we've built. We're driving value from the largest database of London's property owners through our industry leading data capabilities. And through rebuilding Fiona headcounts and our unique culture, we are selling these properties at a rate well ahead of the market. I'm extremely confident we have more growth to come. We continue to grow our listings market share, the first stage in the process, and today we have nearly 8,400 listings across London for sale. With good growth in our under offer pipeline in June, we are well placed for the year ahead. Finally, to financial services. Unsurprisingly, Growth over the last two years has been significantly impacted by the turmoil in the mortgage market. However, operation upgrades meant that we were able to deliver a 7% year-on-year revenue increase in H1, despite the market remaining challenging. And finally, to slide 11, where the benefits of our strategy can clearly be seen. we've grown our portfolio of non-cyclical reoccurring revenues, which has totally transformed the group's financial profile and resilience. In H1, this supported both revenue and operating profit growth, despite the sales market remaining weak. And the level of transformation and robustness of the group today is illustrated by a comparison with 2019. We delivered over 8 million pounds of operating profit this half versus nearly a £1 million loss in 2019, despite identical sales market volumes and a significant inflationary cost pressure over the past three years. These results show solid progress against our plan to deliver further profit growth and reduce the impact of sales market cyclicality. I'll now pass over to Chris, who will run you through the financial review.

Thank you, Guy, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to report that following a period of rebuilding the business, we're now firmly into the growth phase of our plan. And this can be seen on slide 13, which provides an overview of financial performance. Revenue grew 11% to 78.5 million, with sales market outperformance being the main driver of growth. We delivered 8.5 million of adjusted operating profits, which is 24% higher than the prior year. Our adjusted operating profit margin grew by 120 basis points to 10.8%. This outsized profit growth versus revenue reflects the inherent operating leverage in the business. Adjusted EBITDA, which is defined on the same basis used to calculate the group's RCF covenants grew by 25% to 10.5 million. Statutory profit before tax was 7.5 million up 24% on the prior year. There was a 0.9 million net free cash outflow in line with the expected seasonality of the business, which was an 80% uplift in net free cash generation compared to the prior year. Finally, the board has declared an interim dividend of 0.22 pence per share, an increase of 10% versus last year. In terms of guidance, the four-year outlook remains unchanged as continued sales market outperformance is expected to drive further year-on-year growth in the second half. Turning now to slide 14 and an overview of the income statement and an explanation of the key movements that drove 24% increase in adjusted operating profit. The group delivered 7.6 million of revenue growth driven by improved volumes and incremental year-on-year revenues from the 2023 acquisitions. I'll talk to the key revenue dynamics in each business over the next three slides. Direct costs were £1 million higher, reflecting increased revenue linked staff commissions and a 5% year-on-year increase in fee and headcount. Headcount has been rebuilt over the last two years and is now broadly at the right levels to drive further growth. Overheads were £4.1 million higher, reflecting a number of key items. Firstly, incremental operating costs from 2023 acquisitions, primarily relating to Ludlow Thompson, which we acquired in November last year. Ludlow Thompson is now fully integrated into the Foxen's operating platform and approximately 1 million of annualised synergies are expected to be realised over the next 12 months. Secondly, we have made selective cost investments to support continued growth. mainly enhancing our performance marketing and lead generation capabilities. And thirdly, continued inflationary pressures, which we partly mitigated through cost savings, as we identify ways to reduce costs without impacting the growth targets within our turnaround plan. Depreciation, amortisation and share-based payments were 0.7 million higher, primarily driven by additional intangible amortisation related to acquired lettings portfolios. Turning now to slide 15, a performance in lettings. Lettings revenue grew by 2.6 million to 52.4 million, driven by 0.4 million or 1% of like-for-like revenue growth and 2.2 million of incremental revenues from 2023 acquisitions. Like-for-like revenue growth was resilient in the period, underpinned by double digit growth in new business volumes, reflecting a continuing focus on driving organic new business growth. This new business growth offsets an expected temporary reduction in the volume of our existing tenancies re-transacting in H1 as a result of longer tenancy terms being signed across 2022 and 2023. As Guy mentioned earlier, since 2022, tenancy lengths have increased by 20% and securing longer tenancies is part of the group's strategy to improve client retention and grow our portfolio of recurring revenues. As expected, rental prices for new deals were flat as year-on-year rental price growth moderated as supply and demand dynamics continued to normalise, but with prices remaining at elevated levels. Like-for-like revenue growth also benefited from £1.1 million of additional interest earned on client monies, which supports the operating costs of managing client accounting. Contribution grew 5% to £39.3 million, reflecting revenue growth and a flat contribution margin of 75%. Adjusted operating profit reduced by £1.2 million to £12.9 million, reflecting an increase in allocated central costs primarily related to the selective cost investments and cost inflation I referred to on the previous slide. Moving to slide 16 and an update on the sales business. Sales revenue was 28% higher as we outperformed the market and delivered 30% growth in our market share of exchanges, taking our exchange market share for the period to 5.1% from 3.9% for the period last year. Key drivers were a 28% increase in deal volumes despite flat exchange volumes in the London market. Average sales prices were flat in line with the wider markets. And finally, our sales commission rates were robust at 2.16% versus 2.17% in 2023. Our commission rates continue to represent a significant premium against our competitors as we have rebuilt market share of volumes without compromising our premium fee position. The adjusted operating loss in sales narrowed to 3.7 million, an improvement of 41%, reflecting the inherent operating leverage in the business. By continuing to deliver market share growth, supported by some normalisation of market volumes, the business is now set up to progress towards profitability. Finally, the under-offer pipeline at the end of June was 21% higher than the prior year, as by-demand in the market improved in the half, supported by Foxen's growth in the share of new sales agreed. The higher under offer pipeline will support continued year-on-year revenue growth in the second half. Moving on to slide 17 and financial services. The mortgage market remains challenging as interest rates remain at elevated levels. Despite the market dynamics, financial services delivered 7% revenue growth. This was driven by an 8% increase in mortgage transaction volumes, driven by good growth in new purchase mortgage units. Average revenue per transaction was flat, as a 2% increase in average loan size was partially offset by an adverse product mix, with the share of product transfers continuing to grow. In H1, 44% of revenue was generated from non-cyclical refinance activity, and 56% was generated from purchase activity, and other ancillary revenue sources. Moving now to slide 18 and cash flow. There was a 0.9 million net free cash outflow in the half in line with the seasonality of the business, which benefits from strong free cash generation lettings over the summer months. The operating cash to net free cash flow bridge on the left hand side shows the items contributing to the 0.9 million net free cash outflow. The key items to call out are 16.6 million inflow from operating cash before working capital movements. A 7.1 million working capital outflow, which represents more normalised levels versus 2023 as the impact of shorter landlord billing terms, mentioned at the four year results, eases. As a reminder, shortening landlord billing terms is a strategic initiative to enhance our competitiveness and portfolio retention. offering shorter billing terms for those landlords opting to lock into longer tendencies. The group also paid 2.8 million of corporation tax and made 6.5 million of lease liability repayments in the period. And 1 million of cash was used in investing activities, primarily relating to branch fit-out capex and internally generated software development. Looking at the opening to closing net cash bridge on the right-hand side, We started the year with 6.8 million of net debt and ended the half with 11.3 million of net debt. This reflects the 0.9 million net free cash outflow, 1.3 million of acquisition deferred consideration, and 2.1 million of dividends paid. In the half, we successfully increased the size of the RCF facility with our existing lender, increasing the committed facility from 20 million to 30 million extended the term by 12 months to June 2027 with an option to renew for a further year. The interest cover and leverage covenants have remained unchanged and at the period end the leverage covenant was 0.6 times, counted below our covenant limit of 1.75 times. Finally for the half we have announced an interim dividend of 0.22 pence per share. This is a 10% increase on the prior year under the group's new progressive dividend policy announced in March this year. I will now hand back to Guy, who will provide an operation update.

Thank you, Chris. In the last results call in March, I explained the unique advantages of our totally re-engineered operating platform brings to the business. We haven't stood still this year, continuing to forensically review the business and challenge ourselves to always improve. On this slide, I've summarized some of the key upgrades we've made over the last six months. Starting with technology. Property instructions are the lifeblood of estate agency. And many of the upgrades we've made to the platform are aimed at driving higher levels of lead opportunities and improving the conversion of these leads into sales and lettings instructions. A new AI driven lead scoring platform has been developed and deployed across the Foxton's branch network to drive lead generation levels from our estate agency staff. The platform compliments lead scoring deployed in our customer prospecting center last year. By expanding the capability to generate high quality leads more widely across the business, we are creating a highly powerful foundation to deliver continued growth in instruction levels and to drive continued growth in our market share. We've also overhauled our website, completely rewriting the underlying code to both modernize it and ensure it is future fit. Our website is the most visited estate agency website in the UK by a significant margin against even national operators and is one of our largest sources of new customer leads. Early progress is promising with a 30% increase in user engagement on the website in June versus the prior year. And finally, we've developed a new app from the ground up to streamline the tenant move-in process. In addition, we have aligned remuneration with the actual move-in of the tenants. Together, these have significantly improved the tenant experience as part of our mission to always deliver best-in-class customer service. It's worth reflecting on the great progress that we've made in our technology over the last two years. we've had a significant effort to rebuild our technology and overcome a significant level of tech debt. We are now fully caught up and have a best in class system and have a roadmap to deliver market leading products to further cement our number one position. Moving now to data. As highlighted in March, we have built a whole new state of the art data platform over the last 18 months. platform brings together rich but previously inaccessible databases with the ability to ingest external sources and perform advanced data science and analytics. And this platform is creating a sea change in how we operate as we transition to becoming a totally data led business. I'm incredibly impressed with how the business has adapted to this new way of thinking as we create an operating model that is genuinely unique in the industry. As an example, in H1 we developed a comprehensive new marketing data and reporting suite to drive a forensic insight into our activities and reinforce our data-driven marketing approach. The new system will significantly improve customer targeting and drive improved returns on marketing spend. In addition, a new real-time productivity reporting system has been created and deployed across the business. This significantly improves the visibility of fee earner output and will drive productivity growth as we improve workforce transparency and motivation. Moving now to brand. We've overhauled our customer-facing marketing, including a new program of marketing campaigns to drive customer engagement and reinforce the brand's value proposition. The campaigns are themed. and refreshed regularly, making a total departure from our previous marketing strategy and setting our brand apart in a highly competitive sector. And I'll provide more detail on the next slide. We continue to deliver upgrades to our leading hub and spoke model with a focus on driving productivity and customer service levels. At the heart of our hub and spoke model is property management. Here, We have a vision of delivering a level of customer service excellence not seen anywhere else in the industry. And I'm always challenging the business to create an ecosystem that delivers a 10 out of 10 level of service. Our new customer satisfaction software allows us to better understand service delivery and even align remuneration with service delivery. We're also overhauling selected processes in light of our customer feedback to ensure that we're always providing best in class service. Finally, we continue to develop our out of London property management centre of excellence. With a structured transition process at a measured speed to ensure no impact on customer experience and service levels. This is a huge task and we've made significant progress to date and ultimately together all of these will continue to drive landlord retention levels. Finally, onto our people, culture and training, a highly important area of focus as estate agency remains at heart a people business. Fee earner headcount has been rebuilt to reflect the size of the opportunity and a 5% increase in the prior year. At the same time, we continue to drive retention rates, which is driving both fee earner tenure, experience and productivity. And this can be seen in the 6% increase in the average revenue per fee earner despite a challenging market backdrop. Fee-earner headcount is now broadly at the right levels to continue to drive growth, and through our upskilling programs, I expect further productivity gains over time. Onto slide 21, which highlights some of our new marketing campaigns. The brand campaigns reinforce our brand promise, we get it done, and are a clear call to action for customers, and leaning back into the latent Foxton's brand awareness the agent that gets results. Campaigns are highly topical and most importantly fun. They are run for limited periods of time and are constantly refreshed to ensure that we cut across to customers in a highly crowded sector. And the campaigns are driving good levels of customer engagement, including a 27% increase in year-on-year brand preference in Q2 and a 30% increase in our web user engagement. And ultimately, this is about driving property instructions. Supported by improved operational capabilities, we have driven a 15% increase in Foxton's stock on the market in June versus the prior year. And it is this stock of properties that will be the foundation for our future growth. And finally, to slide 23 and a look at July trading and the outlook for the rest of the year. lettings is trading in line with expectations rents have remained stable as supply levels continue to recover supporting our organic growth ambitions for the rest of the year and offsetting the expected reduction in existing tenancies re-transacting as a result of longer tenancy lengths in sales the market recovery in new sales agreed coupled with our continued market outperformance has driven a 21% increase in the value of our under offer pipeline at the end of June against the prior year and to its highest level since the Brexit vote in 2016. We've seen limited impact from the general election earlier this month, either in the run up or immediately afterwards, with trading in July remaining robust. The increased under offer pipeline continues to transact in exchanges and will support further growth in H2. Financial services will remain resilient with the large portfolio of refinance activity creating a solid repeat business. Through continued market outperformance, the group's expectations for the full year remain unchanged and is on track to deliver its medium term target of £25 to £30 million of adjusted operating profit. That concludes the formal presentation today. Thank you all for joining us. Chris and I look forward to meeting with many of you in the coming weeks. And I will now pass over to the operator for any questions that you may have. Thank you.