InterContinental Hotels Group PLC

Hello and welcome to IHG's 2025 Half-Year Results presentation. I'm Stuart Ford, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations at IHG Hotels and Resorts, and shortly you'll be hearing from Ellie Malouf, our Chief Executive Officer, Michael Glover, Chief Financial Officer, and Jolie Fleming, Chief Product and Technology Officer. Before we proceed, I'm obliged to remind all viewers and listeners that the company may make certain forward-looking statements as defined under US law. please refer to the accompanying results announcement and the company's SEC filings for factors that could lead actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by any such forward-looking statements. In addition, the presentation will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Once again, please refer to the accompanying results announcement and SEC filings for reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable line items within the financial statements. The results announcement, together with the usual supplementary data pack, as well as the presentation slides accompanying this webcast, can all be downloaded from the Results and Presentations section under the Investors tab on ihgplc.com. Now over to our H1 2025 Highlights Reel, followed by Ellie.

Hello, I'm Elie Malouf, Chief Executive Officer of ISG Hotels and Resorts. Welcome to ISG's 2025 Half-Year Results presentation. I'll kick things off in a moment by sharing highlights from the first half, a period of strong financial performance and excellent execution against our strategic framework. Michael Glover, our Chief Financial Officer, We'll then provide a financial review, after which I'll cover some important areas of strategic progress. We'll then hear from Jolie Fleming, our Chief Product and Technology Officer. Jolie will provide an update on the outstanding progress we're making in the development, evolution, and deployment of our leading connected technology ecosystem across our global hotel estate. The first half of 2025 was another strong period of financial performance and important progress against a clear strategy that is unlocking the full potential of our business for all stakeholders. Global Ref Bar grew by 1.8%, reflecting the breadth of our geographic footprint, the strength of our brands, and the resilience of our operating model. We had an outstanding period of development activity. We added over 31,000 rooms to our system, a record, taking our total estate to 999,000 rooms across more than 6,700 hotels. And in the weeks since, we have reached 1 million open rooms. This significant milestone demonstrates the enduring appeal of our brands and the strength of our enterprise platform. With record openings, gross system growth was 7.7% year over year, and net system growth was 5.4%. We signed more than 51,000 rooms across 324 hotels. This was 15% higher than 2024 levels when excluding M&A and large portfolio conversions. This takes our pipeline to nearly 2,300 hotels, up 4% year-to-date. Our fee margin grew 390 basis points, contributing to a 13% increase in EBIT. Adjusted EPS grew 19%, supported by our share buybacks. We are pleased to declare an interim dividend of 58.6 cents, consistent with our 10% growth rate in each of the last three years. Dividend payments, along with a $900 million share buyback program, are expected to return over $1.1 billion to shareholders in 2025. Altogether, we delivered another period of excellent results. demonstrating the strength and resilience of our model and the power of our growth algorithm. 1.8% rip-off growth, 5.4% net system growth, margin accretion from positive operating leverage, and the step changes in ancillary fees collectively drove a 13% increase in EBIT. And with the strength of our cash conversion, which funds our share buybacks, we delivered adjusted EPS growth of 19%. This performance is above the top end of what we laid out as the compound average that we are targeting over the medium to long term. And we are confident we will continue delivering on this growth algorithm going forward. Now, let me hand over to Michael, who will take you through the details of our financial results.

Thanks, Ellie. I'm Michael Glover, Chief Financial Officer for ISG Hotels and Resorts. Let me take you through some more detail on the great set of results delivered for the first half of 2025. I'll start, as usual, with our reportable segments, which is the fee business together with the owned and leased portfolio of 17 hotels. Revenue was $1.2 billion and EBIT was $604 million, growing 6% and 13% respectively. Within this, fee business revenue increased 7% and fee business operating profit increased 14%. On an underlying basis, which adjusts for a $7 million liquidated damages receipt, and is at constant currency, fee revenues were up 6% and profit was still up 14%. Fee margin increased by 390 basis points to 64.7%. I'll touch on this outstanding performance in more detail shortly. Adjusted interest increased to $91 million, putting us on track for our full-year guidance range that we've narrowed to between $195 million and $205 million. Our effective tax rate was 26%, down one percentage point. This was predominantly due to the timing of certain items such as non-deductible foreign taxes in the U.S. We still expect a full-year effective tax rate of 27%, unchanged from previous guidance. Earnings per share includes the accretion benefit from the $900 million share buyback program for this year, as well as the annualization of the previous year's $800 million program. Through this combination of strong revenue growth, fee margin progression, and accretion from the buybacks, adjusted earnings per share increased 19%. The interim dividend is increasing by 10%, consistent with the growth rate in each of the past three years. Moving on to a summary of Repar performance. America's Repar for the half grew 1.4%, with occupancy up 0.1 percentage points and rate up 1.3%. After strong Repar growth of 3.5% in Q1, the region moved to a decline of 0.5% in Q2. This was expected given the impact from the shift in timing of Easter between March and April and the broader impact on certain types of business and leisure travel in light of macroeconomic developments. In EMEAA, rep part for the half grew 4.1%, with occupancy of 0.8 percentage points and rate of 2.9%. Strong growth of 5% in Q1 eased to 3% in Q2, in part due to fewer international events compared to the prior year. By major geographic markets, half-won red par ranged from being down 0.8% in the UK to growth of over 5% in each of the Middle East, continental Europe, and East Asia and Pacific. The latter continued to benefit from higher levels of inbound leisure travel from greater China, on top of very strong increases last year. In Greater China, red par for the half was down 3.2%, with occupancy up 0.3 percentage points and rate 3.6% lower. The red par decline of 3.5% in Q1 was followed by 3% in Q2, helped by an easing in the strong comparatives. Half 1 red par was down 1.1% in Tier 1 cities, and down 6% in Tier 2 to 4 cities due to lower groups and business demand and increases in international outbound leisure trips. This slide presents the business, leisure, and group demand drivers showing a breakdown of booked revenue split by room nights and ADR. In the half, global rooms revenue for business bookings grew 2% on a comparable hotel basis, driven by a combination of room nights and rate. Groups revenue also increased 2%, predominantly due to rate, and leisure bookings grew by 1%, driven by room nights with rate held flat. So on a global basis, all three demand drivers showed positive rooms revenue growth. Turning to system growth, openings produced 7.7% gross growth year-on-year as we added 31,000 rooms in the first half of 2025. This was 75% more than last year, a record level of openings, and that's still the case even when adjusting for the non-organic Ruby additions. 20,000 rooms left the system, equivalent to a 2.3% removal rate when adjusting for the Venetian. This is a little higher than the 1.5% average we generally expect, but we do not consider this an indicator of a longer-term trend. A temporary higher removals rate in China reflecting the lagged effect of some hotels exiting post-COVID, combined with the somewhat lumpy nature of hotel exits elsewhere, has resulted in this fluctuation above the mean. Taken together, year-on-year net system growth was 4.6%, or 5.4% when adjusting for the Venetian. We signed over 51,000 rooms in the half, up 15% when excluding the initial signings from the Ruby acquisition and last year's Novum agreement. Conversion activity predominantly drove this performance, with signings up 27%. Pleasingly, new build signings were also up by 9%. Normally at this point in the presentation, I move straight into our margin performance. But before I do that, I want to touch on the strength of our cost control. As you can see from the slide, ISG has maintained a highly disciplined approach to cost management for a long time now. This is a continuous mindset which underpins how our business operates. Ellie and I have been looking at efficiency and effectiveness in our business since day one in the job, and there are always ongoing actions. Through process redesign, greater leverage of centralized support, and enhancing our use of technology, particularly AI, we are driving a highly efficient and scalable cost base with savings that are sustainable in the long term. Setup expenditure to realign our business in this manner resulted in exceptional costs within the fee business of $3 million in the first half, and which we expect to be over $10 million for the year as a whole. These costs are expected to have a cash on cash payback within 12 months, with savings building further beyond that. We have seen these actions, as well as those taken in previous years, already yield results. Our fee business overheads of $318 million in the first half of 2025 was $15 million less than 2024, a reduction of 4.5%. Moving to fee margin, which was up a very pleasing 390 basis points, this has been achieved through a combination of improving our core operating leverage, which includes the tight discipline on costs I just illustrated, as well as step-ups in ancillary fee streams. As a quick reminder on those step-ups, we announced last year that revenue generated from the sale of loyalty points would come to IHG. Initially, 50% of these revenues were recognized in 2024, representing an incremental $25 million to IHG, with 100% of revenues and therefore a further $25 million step-up to be recognized in 2025. We are on track, and therefore, this is equivalent to a margin uplift of 50 basis points. We've also seen a step up in co-brand credit card fees. When we announced the new arrangements in November last year, we said that we'd expect to see an incremental $40 million of co-brand revenue in 2025. Again, we are on track, and this is equivalent to a margin uplift of of a further 80 basis points. It's worth pointing out that historically, ISG's central costs had always outweighed central revenues, and there had always been a central loss. The step-ups in revenue from point sales and co-brand credit card arrangements now mean that this segment generates a net profit after other central overheads. So, there was the combined 130 basis points of margin improvement from the step-ups in ancillaries, and our operational leverage and cost actions drove the other 260 basis points of margin improvement. Pleasingly, improvement was seen in each of the Americas, EMEA and Greater China. Moving on to cash flow. Adjusted free cash flow was $302 million, an increase of $171 million on the first half of 2024. This was driven by progress in trading performance and ancillary revenues, an improvement in working capital, and a $41 million swing in the system fund result. As you may recall, cash outflows for the system fund were higher last year due to the planned spend-down of its prior cumulative surplus. Across the year, IHG typically converts approximately 100% of adjusted earnings to free cash flow. though it is usual for cash generation to accelerate in half too. The year-to-date conversion rate of 80% is therefore very much in line with where we would expect it to be at this point in the year, and conversion on a trailing 12-month basis has been over 100%. A quick look now at capital expenditure in more detail. Key money spend of $86 million was the same as 2024, As we explained at our full year results announcement, increased development activity, particularly in the premium and luxury and lifestyle segments, as well as the novum conversion portfolio, means that key money in 2025 is expected to be in line with last year. We therefore continue to expect key money in maintenance capex of $200 to $250 million annually, and our guidance for gross capex remains at up to $350 million a year. Our strategy for uses of cash remains unchanged. After investing to drive long-term growth, which is the foremost priority. We look to sustainably grow the ordinary dividend. After that, we then look to return surplus funds to shareholders. This year's $900 million buyback program is 47% complete, which has repurchased a further 3.8 million shares, or 2.4% of the share count. The dividend payments to shareholders in 2025, together with the buyback program, will have returned over $1.1 billion, which is equivalent to just under 6% of ISG's market capitalization at the start of the year. On a prospective basis, given consensus expectations for growth in EBITDA and cash generation in 2025, Together with the share buyback program and the cash outflows for the Ruby acquisition, leverage at the end of 2025 is expected to be around the middle of our target range of 2.5 to 3 times net debt to EBITDA. Our guidance remains unchanged from what was communicated at our 2024 full year results back in February. except for a slight narrowing of the forecast range for interest costs. For reference, this slide also shows a summary of our growth ambitions over the medium to long term. With that, let me now hand back to Ellie.

Thank you, Michael. I'll now share an update on our strategic progress in the first half of 2025. I'll group these into five areas. First, we continued to drive excellent development activity across our brands. Second, we expanded further into priority growth geographies. Third, we strengthened hotel owner returns. Fourth, we delivered a step change in ancillary fee streams. And finally, as Michael has covered, our success in each of these four areas delivered increased profits, dividends, and the return of further surplus capital to shareholders. So let me start with excellent development activity for our brands. Over the last decade, we have doubled our number of brands from 10 to 20, capturing more guests at more price points than ever before. At the top end, our ultra-luxury brand, Six Senses, is delivering exclusive, one-of-a-kind experiences in sought-after leisure destinations and driving average daily rates that are roughly 10 times higher than our essentials brands. Our recently acquired premium urban lifestyle brand, Ruby, further enriches our portfolio with an exciting, distinct, and high-quality offer in popular city destinations. And our newest essentials brand, Garner, is rapidly scaling and further broadening our presence in the affordable mid-scale space. This expanded brand ladder not only diversifies our customer mix, it also brings more owners and property types into our system. Ten years ago, our brand ladder consisted solely of hard brands. More recently, we have introduced three conversion-friendly brands, Vignette, Voco, and Garner, that allow greater flexibility while still leaning into brand hallmarks left by guests. These three brands alone represented one-third of our conversion signings in the first half of 2025, with the remaining two-thirds across our other brands. Our expanded brand portfolio, which builds on our industry-leading established brands, is diversifying our system mix and our growth opportunities. And we continue to consider options to further develop our portfolio in the future. In the first half of 2025, our established brands still drove the majority of our development activity. Among these 10 brands, we opened 126 hotels, representing 65% of total room openings. We also signed a further 199 into the pipeline, representing 59% of total room signings. The Holiday Inn brand family alone opened an impressive 72 hotels during the period, and a further 119 were signed into the pipeline, as owners continue to invest behind these industry-leading brands. While our established brands continue to drive system growth off a large base, our newer brands are scaling quickly. These 10 newer brands account for 9% of current system size, but 22% of the pipeline. During the first half, we opened 81 hotels across our newer brands and signed a further 125 into the pipeline. Within these newer brands, Garner, our mid-scale conversion brand, reached 138 open and pipeline hotels across 10 countries less than two years since launch. Vignette Collection, launched in 2021, is ahead of its goal of reaching 100 hotels in its first decade. Our versatile and flexible VOCO brand focused on premium conversions has now exceeded 100 open hotels across almost 30 countries since launching in 2018, with a further 102 in its pipeline as signings continue to accelerate. Ruby has also contributed to the signings and opening strength across our newer brands. At the time of acquisition, Ruby had 20 open hotels, and we added the first 16 into our system in the second quarter. The second phase of the integration, including transitioning the hotels onto ISG's guest reservation system, is expected to begin later this year. And we expect the remaining open hotels to join our system by early 2026. We are pleased with the brand's growth momentum in recent months. In addition to the 10 pipeline hotels at the time of acquisition, a further four hotels and sought-after destinations, Geneva, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Malta have been signed. We see excellent opportunities to not only expand Ruby's strong European base, but also take this exciting brand across Asia and to the Americas, where we are on track to have Ruby franchise-ready in the U.S. this year. Turning to our luxury and lifestyle and premium brands. These higher fee per key brands now account for a greater share of our system size and openings. In 2019, Luxury and lifestyle and premium rooms represented just under one quarter of our openings. Over the most recent 12 months, this rose to 45%. Luxury and lifestyle and premium represent 29% of current system size, but they are 43% of our pipeline, representing future growth of 52%. So, these higher fee-per-key brands will continue to account for a larger share of openings and system size growth relative to history. Beyond the fee revenue accretion that comes from these hotels, the brands also enhance the value of IHG's master brand, enrich the loyalty proposition of IHG One Rewards, and drive incremental high-margin ancillary fee streams through point sales, co-brand credit card fees, and branded residential opportunities. We also continue to invest behind our powerhouse essentials and suites brands. For our world-leading Holiday Inn Express brand, we recently launched a new marketing campaign, a new bean-to-cup upgraded coffee service already rolled out to over 1,000 hotels, and the fifth generation of the product model and lobby design. This Gen 5 format is more efficiently constructed for optimized operational management, boosting both investment returns and guest satisfaction. Now let's turn to priority growth geographies, where impressive signings and openings activity is powering strong development across a well-diversified footprint. With more than 6,700 hotels in over 100 countries, we are well-positioned to capture guests wherever and whenever they choose to travel. The U.S. and Greater China, our two largest markets, account for 65% of our system size and roughly 60% of our global pipeline. highlighting the scale of future growth still to come from these large and growing economies. We also have a sizable and growing footprint in the rest of the Americas, Europe, India, the Middle East, Africa, and East Asia Pacific. These markets together account for around 35% of our system size and around 40% of our pipeline as we continue to deepen our presence in existing markets and expand into new ones. Now, taking a closer look at our largest market, the United States. Development momentum continued to pick up in the first half as franchise applications, ground breaks, and openings all increased on last year. We opened seven hotels, driven by further openings momentum across our premium essentials and sweets brands. We also signed a further 85 hotels into the pipeline. And more than half of these openings and signings were delivered in the second quarter, highlighting owners' continued confidence in investing behind our brands despite uncertain macro conditions earlier in the year. In Greater China, we delivered another record period of hotel development activity in the first half, with 55 hotels opened and a further 93 signed. On top of strong new build activity, conversion momentum has stepped up as owners recognize the strength of our brands and the benefits of joining our enterprise platform. Conversions represented 40% of room openings in Greater China, up from 29% in the first half of 2024. And higher conversion activity means we are taking even greater share in this vast market. We expect our record development activity in the first half of the year to continue for the full year. And we remain confident in the long-term structural growth drivers of greater China, which are underpinned by technological innovation, a rising middle class, continued appetite for both business and leisure travel, and the underpenetration of hotels per capita. Turning now to EMEAA and focusing on four of our largest markets where we are also rapidly scaling our footprint. Together, Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and India represent 28% of our system size in EMEAA and 37% of our pipeline. In the first half, we opened 36 hotels across these four markets and signed an additional 54 into the pipeline. This included the launch of Candlewood Suites in Europe our first signing for even hotels in the Middle East, and further expansion of our conversion-friendly brands in Japan. Over the coming years, we aim to double our presence in each of these large and growing markets. This not only brings more hotels into our system, but also drives outbound travel and scale benefits across our entire enterprise platform. Now, turning to the important progress we're making in strengthening our commercial engine to deepen guest loyalty and drive hotel owner returns. Starting with IHG-1 rewards, record enrollments grew 22% versus the same time last year and were 64% higher than 2019 levels. Globally, loyalty penetration is now approximately 65% of all room nights booked, and this figure is even higher in the U.S. and Americas at around 70%. Reward night redemptions, a key indicator of member engagement, increased 5% year-over-year, and are 65% higher than 2019 levels. The strength of ICHE One Rewards and our ICHE Managed Channels is driving increased total enterprise contribution. This is generating more high-quality revenue for owners and lowering their costs. Our enterprise, across all the channels and sources we manage for our owners, is now providing hotels with 83% of all the room's revenue booked. We're also laser-focused on driving more direct contribution to our hotels through the strategic marketing of our IHG MasterBrand. In the Americas, IHG's MasterBrand awareness reached its highest level ever, rising approximately 5 percentage points from the same time last year. We're also better leveraging all customer touchpoints, including rolling out the Buy ISG endorsement for our hotels across digital channels and physical signage. This endorsement increases ISG's master brand awareness and drives greater direct contribution, which is key to reducing hotel owner costs. Beyond improving owner returns, IG1 Rewards members are also an essential driver of valuable ancillary fee streams. We've said before that our loyalty members typically spend 20% more on our hotels than non-members and are around 10 times more likely to book direct. Our co-brand credit card holders stay even more frequently and spend more in our hotels. The number of card customers rose at a double-digit rate, and total card spend continued to grow. We also recently expanded the ISG Chase partnership to give ISG1 reward status to Chase Sapphire Reserve customers. And a new co-brand card is in discussion for the UK, as we actively work towards expanding our co-brand offering to other priority growth markets. This continued growth in the program, together with the new agreements between ICHE and our U.S. issuing and financial services partners, is driving the step-changing co-brand credit card fees that Michael spoke about earlier. We are also very pleased with the growth in ancillary fees from loyalty point sales. This is driven by consumers actively engaging with ISU on rewards and buying and redeeming points across our global estate. We expect this fee stream to continue growing in the future as our loyalty program and system size expand further. Finally, We continue to see meaningful fee growth potential from branded residential developments. The number of properties in this industry segment is forecast by Seville's to double by 2031. And our industry-leading luxury and lifestyle brands give us an advantageous position to capture that growth. We currently have more than 30 open or selling projects in the market across 15 plus countries. More properties are in the pipeline, and several of these projects are expected to launch sales later this year. I will now hand you over to Jolie Fleming, our Chief Product and Technology Officer. Jolie has spent more than 25 years as an experienced and inspiring leader in technology-first businesses spanning multiple industries. Jolie joined IHG in 2021 as Senior Vice President, Guest Products and Platforms, where she was instrumental in leading the tech design and development of IHG One Rewards, as well as the new mobile app and hotel websites. In 2024, Jolie was promoted to her current position, leading the global products and technology function. Jolie, over to you to share more about your team and the outstanding tech evolution underway across our global business.

Thank you, Eli. Today, our global technology team manages a powerful and highly complex ecosystem. We manage hundreds of applications 24-7 across 20 brands for 6,700 hotels in 20 languages and in more than 100 countries. Our team is dedicated to running a secure and stable technology environment. And at the same time, we are committed to evolving our products and solutions to drive business growth, value for our owners and memorable experiences for our guests. As we review the technology strategy today, I want to try and strip out some of the complexity of the actual technology and instead talk in terms of the business value we're driving through that technology. When we think about our technology, we think about it in three simple areas. First, how is our technology helping to promote our hotels? We need to do all that we can to show the breadth and depth of our hotel portfolio to our loyalty members and prospective guests. Second, how are our technologies helping hotels to optimize their operations and commercial performance? We want to ensure that our owners have the best technology in place to run efficiently and to generate best-in-class ROIs. Third, how is our technology helping hotels engage effectively with their guests? Enabling high-quality personalized connections with guests and delivering memorable experiences drives loyalty, which keeps guests coming back. These are the three core ways we think about our technology. Technology that promotes hotels, technology that optimizes operations, and technology that enables engagement with guests. That is the simple framework that frames our thinking, guides where we spend our time and where we choose to invest, and it reminds us every day about why we're building technology. We are here to solve real business challenges for guests, for owners, and for IHG. Now that we've shared the framework, let's discuss our actual technology solutions in each of these areas and highlight where we're making significant upgrades. Starting with promoting our hotels, we have our award-winning IHG One Rewards mobile app. We also have our websites. This includes IHG.com, each brand's website, and thousands of individual hotel websites. And we have the technology supporting our other distribution channels, such as the customer reservation centers and our distribution partners, and then to meta providers like Google and Facebook. Together, these IHG managed channels drove enterprise contribution to represent 83% of all room revenue booked, as Ellie mentioned earlier. Now we are taking it to the next level to further elevate how we promote our hotels. We're working with a third-party supplier to overhaul our digital content platform over the next 18 months. This new platform will enable us to quickly and effortlessly add compelling content for each of our hotels and showcase them in new and exciting ways. I'll come back to this in more detail shortly. In the optimized space, when you look at the core mechanics of what it takes to run a hotel, there are many different systems. But the three largest are the Guest Reservation System, or GRS, the Revenue Management System, or RMS, and the Property Management System, or PMS. These three platforms work together to optimize pricing, take bookings, and manage check-ins, checkouts, and hotel operations. You've heard us speak for some time about our GRS and our long-standing partnership with Amadeus. This partnership has been a great example of IHG acting as a first mover to bring leading technology to our hotels at a lower cost to owners ahead of peers. The rollout of the GRS system was completed in 2018 And now we're evolving it to further unlock new revenue streams for our hotels. Alongside that work, we're now laser focused on scaling a new revenue management system and rolling out the new property management system across our global estates. On the Engage side, we're building from a very strong foundation with IHG-1 rewards. We are also building upon our robust Wi-Fi network and our award-winning Wi-Fi auto-connect capabilities. From that strength, we're developing and investing in a new loyalty and customer relationship management platform in partnership with Salesforce. This new CRM will give our hotel colleagues greater insight into guests before they arrive and serve them when on property. Our goal? To drive more memorable moments between our hotel colleagues and guests while enhancing the guest experience from check-in to check-out. It is this highly connected technology platform that we are building in partnership with best-in-class providers that will position us to accelerate our growth and portfolio expansion. Ultimately, our aim is to ensure our hotels have modern, AI-enabled, cloud-based technology to run their hotels. And by leveraging our scale, we are delivering these solutions cost-effectively to our hotels. Now let's go a bit deeper on some of our key initiatives. As I mentioned, in the promote area, we are well underway in building a new digital content platform. In partnership with a third party, we're building a modernized content platform that's simple, easy to use, and unlocks new capabilities for owners. It will enable more engaging content types, such as videos, 360 degree views, and floor plans to really bring a hotel to life. It will also be faster for our hotels to upload that content to our channels, making it easy to keep the content current and compelling. And it allows us to leverage AI to drive commercial performance and enhance the guest experience. For example, we will support AI and machine translations for all hotel content, allowing us to promote hotels to even more global guests. This, in turn, will create new and exciting ways for guests to discover and book IHG properties, while enhancing operational efficiency and supporting our direct channel growth. The new platform is being finalized, and we will be rolling it out across the estate in 2026. turning to our optimized pillar. There has been significant investment in this area, which we are now leveraging and further evolving. As mentioned earlier, our guest reservation platform has been fully deployed across our global estate for several years. This means that now we can continue to evolve and enhance that core system to drive incremental, high-margin revenue growth for our hotel owners. These advancements have increased the number of guests seeing upsell offers while booking an upcoming stay. Remember, approximately three years ago, our hotels had little to no upsell capabilities beyond offering certain room categories. Last year, 25% of guests were seeing upsell offers for larger rooms and better views at some point as they move through their booking journey. Today, that figure has reached approximately 50%, and we are working on extending upsells even further throughout the travel journey. And we're not stopping there. We continue to expand GRS capabilities, making it easier to book one room, multiple rooms, different room types, and add-ons, all to further generate commercial advantage for our owners. At the same time, we've rapidly deployed a new, highly sophisticated revenue management system called N2 Pricing across our global estate. This product was developed in partnership with a specialist revenue management firm and is proving to be a game changer for our hotels. You've heard us say before that the platform uses modern data science, forecasting tools, and machine learning to deliver advanced insights on pricing and distribution channel recommendations to our hotels. But more importantly, the platform has delivered results. the system is having an immediate and positive impact on top-line commercial performance through revenue uplift and market share gains. User feedback has been strong, and N2 pricing is enabling our hotels to focus more time on strategic planning, on guest engagement, and on operational efficiency. As of June 30th, N2 pricing is live in over 5,000 hotels, an impressive achievement considering only 1,700 properties had N2 pricing this time last year. This is a clear demonstration of our commitment to deliver solutions efficiently and at pace. With the rollout already 80% complete, we expect the system to be fully deployed across the eligible estate by the end of 2025, and we will continue to optimize going forward. Turning to the property management system. We're moving from an on-site hotel property management system to a new, modern, cloud-based platform that is highly efficient, portable, and easy to use. So what does a new PMS unlock for IHG? The new PMS allows hotels to manage operations from anywhere, meaning guests can be checked in from a mobile device. The new PMS is intuitive and easy to use, making it simpler to onboard and train hotel colleagues and complete routine tasks like night audits. The new PMS is also in the cloud, which enables better above property technical support, rapid centralized system updates, and additional security measures. And it will connect seamlessly with other systems, unlocking further capabilities such as our new CRM system. All of this takes work off of a hotel and enhances the guest experience. And lastly, the new PMS moves the relationship from the hotel owner and the third party to IHG and the third party. This means we can leverage our global scale to negotiate on behalf of our 6,700 hotels to deliver cost-efficient and in many cases cheaper solutions for our owners over time. So far, we've partnered with two PMS providers. They are HotelKey in the Americas and EMEAA and Shiji for Hotels in Greater China. We are also currently piloting additional global solutions. It's important to note that generally we aim to deploy enterprise-wide solutions that could be standardized and adopted across all IHG hotels. However, we also have to recognize the breadth of our global footprint and the depth of our brand ladder. By partnering with a few leading providers, we are ensuring we have the right technology solutions in place for the right properties. And here's another delivery proof point. As of June 30th, the new PMS solutions are live in over 1,200 select service hotels around the world. More than 600 hotels have been deployed this year alone. We are targeting to be at 2,000 by the year end, and we expect to continue this accelerated pace until full rollout. An additional solution is currently in pilot, and if successful, we expect to begin rolling it out to the estate in 2026. Ultimately, these three cloud-based solutions, GRS, RMS, and PMS provide our hotel owners with industry-leading core technology to achieve best-in-class returns. This will ultimately drive greater owner satisfaction, unlock future growth opportunities for IHG, and bolster our asset-light, fee-based revenue streams. Last but not least, there's engagement. Today, we are working to reimagine our loyalty and customer relationship management platform to deliver a unified view of each guest, create elevated guest experiences, and drive faster loyalty benefit delivery. A new AI-enabled platform will empower our hotels to know each guest before they arrive and provide more personalized experiences and offers. This will make their stay feel more personal and more memorable. The new CRM tool will seamlessly connect into our overall tech ecosystem so that hotels can easily access a guest stay preferences, recognize milestone events, and more easily celebrate loyalty with gestures like room upgrades and welcome amenities. Our reservation and customer care colleagues will also be able to see guest information when a guest calls elevating how we service them in those moments. The automated tooling will also make it simpler and more intuitive to use for our hotel colleagues. Another example of the many ways in which our solutions are not only unlocking commercial value and better guest experiences, but also driving better operational efficiency. The platform is currently in development and we aim to launch in 2026. We believe elevating our core platforms will further strengthen IHG's leading position. Our focus on cloud-based technologies removes operational burden from our hotels. Our focus on AI across our platforms will help colleagues work more efficiently and effectively while unlocking new areas of growth. Our focus on value-based solutions will create upside for hotel owners and will contain costs along the way. And our intentional shift from homegrown solutions to best-in-class third-party solutions will ensure IHG stays at the leading edge in technology for our guests and for our owners. Collectively, the developments that I've talked through today will transform how our hotels operate, how we deliver more direct bookings, drive deeper guest loyalty, and enhance owner returns, and how we widen the competitive moat. We are incredibly proud of the delivery to date, and we are excited about the next phase in our evolution to promote hotels, optimize operations, and drive guest engagement. Thank you so much. With that, I'll hand it back to Ellie.

To conclude, we are very pleased with the strength of our financial performance, the growth of our brands, and the progress made in the first half of 2025 against a clear strategy that is unlocking the full potential of our business for all stakeholders. The strong performance in H1 went beyond the growth algorithm, delivering REVPAR growth of 1.8%, net system size growth of 5.4%, and 390 basis points of fee margin expansion. We're on track to return to shareholders over $1.1 billion this year. and this culminated in adjusted EPS growth of 19% in the first half of 2025. We remain confident in our ability to continue delivering the growth algorithm over the medium to long term, driven by... High single-digit fee revenue growth. 100 to 150 basis points of margin expansion per annum from operating leverage. Approximately 100% adjusted earnings converting into free cash flow. Sustainable dividend growth. Surplus capital returned to shareholders while targeting financial leverage between 2.5 and 3 times. And ultimately, delivering 12% to 15% adjusted EPS growth as a compound annual growth rate. And with that, we thank you for listening to our first half 2025 results presentation.