Inchcape plc

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm here with our CFO, Adrian Lewis, and Head of Investor Relations, Rob Gerner. I'll give an overview of trading in the quarter, our strategic progress and outlook. I'll then hand over to Adrian, who'll give more detail on our regional performance, and we'll take your questions. First, on strategy, we recently announced an agreement to divest our UK retail operations to Group 1, the US dealer group, for a cash consideration of £346 million. This is expected to complete in the third quarter. This transaction will complete our strategic transformation into a pure play distribution business, which is capital light, highly cash generative, higher margin and globally diversified. When proceeds are received, we intend to conduct a £100 million share buyback, and as a result, UK retail will be treated as a discontinued operation, and we will focus our comments today on the performance of the distribution business in the first quarter. We delivered a positive start to the year with continued momentum across APAC, further outperformance across our Europe and Africa region, and key markets stabilising in the Americas. Reported revenue growth was 5% and organic revenue growth was 6%. This performance is another demonstration of the resilience and diversified nature of our business. We made good strategic progress with several contract wins to help build market share in existing markets and develop our OEM partner portfolio globally. Contract wins included Ford in Estonia and a Chinese commercial vehicle brand, Forland, in Ecuador. We also made further progress in building a robust pipeline of additional contracts, and there was positive contribution from recent distribution contract wins. Last year's acquisitions in APAC also made a positive contribution in the quarter, and we are already seeing good commercial and operational benefits from the integration of these businesses. Finally, from me today, on to the outlook, where we are reiterating the position communicated earlier in the year. From our continuing operations, we expect a year of moderated growth in 2024 at constant currency. We are confident about the medium to long term and continue to expect to return to higher levels of growth supported by recovery in many markets. With our global market leadership, disciplined approach to capital allocation, digital and data capabilities to support our OEM partners and our highly cash generative characteristics, Inchcape is well positioned for the future. I'll now hand over to Adrian to take you through the details of our performance during the period.

Thank you, Duncan, and good morning, everyone. During the period, our continuing operations delivered a positive performance, particularly against tough comparators. The group generated £2.3 billion of revenue, up 11% at constant currency, with 6% organic growth and a 5% contribution from acquisitions. These factors were partly offset by translational currency headwinds of 6%, which meant reported growth was 5% for the quarter. Now let me give you some colour on each of our regions. In the Americas, key markets were stabilising in Q1, consistent with the trends of the second half of last year. And across Central America, we continue to see both market momentum and outperformance. In Asia-Pac, the strong momentum seen in 2023 was continued, with broad-based growth across a number of markets, including Hong Kong and Singapore. The region also benefited from the contribution from the acquisitions we made last year. In Europe and Africa, the region outperformed with accelerated supply supporting an order bank unwind. in certain markets in Europe against a backdrop of muted new consumer demand. And as Duncan mentioned, we have agreed to divest our UK retail business for a cash consideration of £346 million, and on completion of the deal, we will initiate a £100 million share buyback that we expect to complete within 12 months. The remaining proceeds, together with organic cash flows, will continue to pay down debt and reduce leverage as we create capacity to invest consistent with our capital allocation policy. But importantly, we will maintain a disciplined approach to those investments. So to summarise... Our performance in Q1, the group delivered a positive start to the year, highlighting the resilience and diversified nature of the business. And I think, George, we're ready to take some questions.

Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you wish to ask any audio questions, please do press star 1 on your tablet keypad and just, again, limit yourself to two questions. We have our first question coming in. It's from Arthur Treslove calling from City. Please go ahead.