Inchcape plc

good morning everyone i'm duncan tate group ceo and i'm joined by our group cfo adrian lewis here's today's agenda i'll give an overview and market context adrian will then run through our results and outlook for the full year and i'll give an update on our strategic progress and sum up today's presentation is available on our website and a recording of today's session will be available later today after the presentation we'll take your questions so let's begin inchcape continued to deliver on our accelerate plus strategy during the first half amid an evolving market backdrop supported by our diversified and scaled market and brand portfolio Our growth was driven by distribution contracts won in recent years and last year's bolt-on acquisition in Iceland. We remained disciplined on capital allocation. We completed the acquisition of Silver Star in Bulgaria on 1st July, underlining our ongoing focus on value accretive M&A. And we made progress with our £175 million share buyback programme launched in March, which we have today increased by 75 million pounds to 250 million pounds and this highlights our highly cash generative business looking ahead we expect to continue to deliver in line with our medium term guidance of greater than 10 percent eps growth this slide shows the key developments in our industry and how inchcape is addressing these trends through our agile approach across our scaled and diversified business Firstly, our industry is evolving at pace, with the rise of Chinese OEMs and an acceleration of the adoption of their products around the world. These OEMs, many of whom Inchcape has close relations with, are challenging the industry status quo. Traditional players are now looking for new ways to enhance competitiveness, including collaborating with them in areas like manufacturing, technology and product development. This cross industry collaboration will remain a key theme in the coming years. In addition, we will continue to focus our investments, efforts and resources on our OEM partners who we believe will be the industry winners and fit with our business model. Our strategy is based on providing the best delivery for our OEM partners by collaborating with them to drive customer satisfaction. This is particularly relevant for the second trend on this slide, the transition to new energy vehicles or NEVs. While this is a long-term story supported by infrastructure, government incentives and consumer appetite, we see a two-speed world. Many of our markets are well behind the EV curve, while in others like Hong Kong and Singapore, EV penetration is well over 50%. And with that in mind, we continue to prepare for the NEV transition by upgrading our network and ensuring our people are ready for the changes to come in areas like training and health and safety initiatives. Our role is to support our OEM partners with the optimal product mix, pricing and positioning in a market in line with the local pace of transition to new energy vehicles. So ultimately the NEV transition is another opportunity for Inchcape to deliver value for our partners. Finally on this slide and partly driven by the other two trends here, manufacturers are increasingly focused on efficiencies across their cost base and supply chain to drive margins and protect cash flows. We are following suit through continued cost discipline across the business and an ongoing focus on value-added services, in particular finance and insurance, servicing and parts. This approach will help us to deliver against our medium term targets of 6% operating margins and 100% free cash flow conversion. Our industry is evolving at pace and Inchcape will continue to be at the cutting edge of these developments by remaining agile to consistently deliver for our OEM partners and shareholders. Turning from the industry to the markets on this slide, I've set out some of the market context for our first half results. Overall, market volumes across our markets grew by 8%, and Inchcape outperformed the market, growing volumes by 9%. The key overall trends across our regions are the rapid growth of Chinese OEMs and the continued adoption of new energy vehicles. Of course, these trends are connected, given Chinese OEMs' specific focus on NEVs. It is worth noting that 25% of our volumes are now with Chinese OEMs, excluding BYD and Belux. And during the first half, our Chinese OEM volumes increased by around 40%. Moving west to east and starting in the Americas, TIV or market volumes was up 21%. Our volumes were slightly lower at 18% due to our market share weightings in certain markets like Colombia, which grew substantially, where our market share is around 10% compared to 25% in Chile. We grew market share in other markets, including Chile, which saw solid market growth. Our America's market saw a 48% increase in Chinese OEM volumes over the last 12 months. We are benefiting from this trend as a result of our long-standing relationships with the likes of Chang'an and Great Wall Motors. Finally, in the region, there was some short-term disruption to vehicle supply as a result of shipping delays related to the Middle East situation. In Europe and Africa, TIV was up 4% and we outperformed significantly. growing our volumes by 13%, including our Iceland acquisition, and 9% excluding that deal. Europe is seeing moderate EV adoption, but Chinese OEMs have grown share from 7% to 10% over the last year. We are benefiting from their entry into the market, particularly on the top line, having won multiple contracts with the likes of Xpeng, BYD, Chang'an, and GAC Ion in recent years. southern and eastern european markets continue to be resilient while africa remains robust in apac tiv grew by four percent while our volumes were down sixteen percent tiv growth in asia was higher at seven percent with australia remaining at lower levels of growth NEV adoption in the region continued to accelerate, with Chinese OEMs rapidly gaining market share. The region remains highly competitive in most markets, particularly in Australia, as I mentioned in March. NEV penetration there has grown from 20% last year to 35% at the current time, and EV penetration has grown from around 8% in January this year to around 23% in June. In many of our APAC markets, we are underweight with Chinese OEMs, but we do have a number of relatively new relationships with the likes of Photon, which we continue to develop. I'll come back to our management action plan for APAC later. As always, we continue to support our longstanding OEMs with their product lineups, pricing and positioning to ensure we have the optimal mix in each of our markets. Here I've outlined why Ingecape remains the independent distributor of choice for our OEM partners across our scaled and diversified footprint. We manage the cost of complexity for our partners across the value chain with our local expertise supported by our global capabilities. Our AI driven sales and operational planning processes remain our key differentiator to drive market share gains for our OEMs. our long track record performance is evidence of our leading market position and looking ahead you can track our future performance against a clear set of medium term targets published last year in summary against an evolving market backdrop inchcape will continue to be a global winner in the automotive industry that's it from me i'll now hand over to adrian

thank you duncan and good morning everyone i will take you through our results for the first half of 2026 and our outlook for the full year we generated revenues of 4.7 billion pounds with reported revenue growth of nine percent up seven percent in constant currency which includes organic revenue growth of five percent our top line performance was primarily driven by supportive market conditions and the contribution from distribution contracts won in recent years Adjusted operating margins were down 40 basis points to 5.3%, driven by margin contraction in APAC, but partly offset by margin expansion in the Americas and Europe and Africa. While operating profit was flat year on year at £248 million, adjusted PBT was £188 million, down 10% in constant currency, due to higher net finance costs. as a result and with a slightly higher effective tax rate in the half offset by the impact of share buybacks adjusted eps was flat at 35.5 pounds free cash flow to profit after tax conversion was higher at 65 with free cash flow of 84 million pounds generated and our balance sheet remains in good shape with closing leverage of 0.5 times EBITDA, slightly higher than the full year 25 close, but down from the 0.6 times in June 25 and well within our self-mandated ceiling of one times. In summary, at a group level, we saw progress in the first half of 2026 driven by the Americas, Europe and Africa, mostly offsetting a challenging Australia. Here is the revenue bridge with the building blocks of our 9% revenue growth. We grew 5% organically with a further 2% related to our Iceland acquisition. In addition we benefited from translational currency tailwinds of 2% and at prevailing rates we expect broadly similar currency tailwinds for the second half. volumes grew by nine percent on an organic basis as well excluding our acquisitions and disposals last year and we saw a small change in the average selling price due to the mix of regions and brands As I mentioned earlier, operating profit was flat and one of the benefits of our diversified geographic profile is that lower operating profit in APAC has been offset by the operating profit growth in the Americas and Europe and Africa, together with around £6 million of translational effects. Operating margins declined by 40 basis points on a reported basis to 5.3%, with margin expansion in two regions offset by margin reduction in APAC, principally Australia, which I will cover in more detail shortly as part of my regional review, starting with the Americas on the next slide. In the Americas region we saw continued positive momentum as conditions were overall helpful and especially so in Colombia and Peru where we saw strong market tailwinds supporting our growth and good performance in Chile where market growth was in the mid single digit territory. In the region market volumes were up 21% and our volumes were up 18% and organic revenue growth was 13%. The variance between our volume growth and the organic revenue growth was due to a price mix across our product ranges. This highlights the benefits of our scaled and diversified brand portfolio across a broad range of leading European, Japanese and Chinese OEMs. The latter of which now represents over 40% of our new vehicle volumes in the region and demonstrates the benefits of acquisitions and investments made in recent years, in particular, Durkheim. operating margins were up 50 basis points to 6.5 percent reflecting resilient gross margins operating leverage from higher volumes amid cost disciplines it is also notable that there was some late disruption to vehicle supply across the industry in the region during the period as a result of shipping situation related to the middle east And for the full year, we expect the environment in key markets to remain supportive, driving further momentum and profitable growth, with the usual seasonal weighting towards the second half. In APAC, market volumes were up 4%, while our volumes were down 16% and our organic revenue declined 7%, reflecting some mix into higher-priced markets, especially in Singapore and in Hong Kong. There was a stabilising of our position in Asia supported by the impact of management actions. Australia performance was weak and below our expectations at the start of the year. This was down to a unique set of factors at play during the period, directly connected to the Middle East situation. There has been significant fuel disruption both on price and availability, which drove a rapid shift in consumer purchasing trends towards lower priced and new energy vehicles and as Duncan mentioned earlier, with NEV rapidly expanding to 35% of total sales. our key brand partners performance was further impacted by supply constraints affecting our product mix and competitiveness leading to our operational underperformance it's worth noting that our chinese brands in australia photon and depow continue to ramp up during the period and as a result of lower revenues and gross margin compression particularly in australia adjusted operating margins contracted by 290 basis points to 3.5 we made good progress on management actions in the regions including cost reduction plans and enhanced collaboration with our oem partners duncan will discuss these management actions in more detail later on Across APAC we are exiting 13 immaterial distribution contracts which contribute revenue of around £140 million on an annualised basis and these contracts are dilutive to profitability. For the full year we expect that management actions with further contract exits and a reduced cost base will positively impact half to margins and free cash flow and will enhance our product range across the region. asian markets will continue to stabilize but we expect ongoing competitiveness in key markets australia is expected to remain weak but our second half performance will be supported by the impact of management actions improved product availability and bix from our key oem partner on to europe and africa where we again delivered underlying market outperformance supported by the growth from contracts won in recent years and the iceland acquisition Market volumes were up 4% and we outperformed with organic revenue growth of 7%. Our Icelandic acquisition contributed a further 7% to the top line growth in total and our volumes grew by 13%. Our growth was broad based across the region with another strong performance in our southern European markets. Adjusted operating margins were up 20 basis points to 5.1%, with gross margin resilience and scale offsetting the dilution from early stage contracts and some minor supply disruption in Africa related to the Middle East situation. For the full year, we anticipate continued operational execution and momentum, with further growth from contract wins and the impact of Silver Star acquisition in Bulgaria in half two, which completed on the 1st of July. This is expected to offset the region's typical half one weighted seasonality. Onto our income statement, where I wanted to touch on some of the key items. Net finance costs increased by 14 million pounds, driven by higher interest rates, increased levels of inventory financing and the impact of currency timing in the prior year. There are adjusting items of 64 million pounds, 62 million of which relates to the significant restructuring underway across the business. Included in this is 28 million pounds in relation to the de-recognition of some of the value of the distribution contracts we are exiting in APAC. There was also 22 million pounds related to site exits and headcount reduction, particularly in APAC, and a further 12 million pounds in inventory write downs. Of these restructuring costs, we expect around £18 million to be cash items, of which £13 million has already been spent. Onto tax, our underlying tax rate increased to 31.4%, slightly above our guidance range of 30 to 31%, driven by geographic mix. Adjusted EPS was unchanged at 35.5 pence, reflecting lower profits and a higher tax rate offset by the benefits of share buybacks. This slide shows our net debt bridge over the last 12 months, which highlights our strong balance sheet supported by consistently strong free cash flow generation and underlines the half-to weighting of our cash flows. As I said earlier, cash conversion in the half was 65%, but looking back at the last 12 months to the end of June 2026, it's been 112%. on an ltm basis we generated 327 million pounds in free cash flow and maintained our disciplined approach to capital allocation share buybacks amounted to 167 million pounds dividend payments were 116 million pounds and we invested 38 million pounds in acquisitions mainly the iceland transaction and after a £39 million impact from FX and other items, the net of these elements saw leverage fall slightly to 0.5 times net debt to EBITDA from 0.6 from the prior year. Which brings me to our disciplined capital allocation approach. We will continue to pay dividends at 40% of basic EPS with the interim dividend representing one third of the previous year's total dividend. So this means an interim dividend of 10.8 pence up 14% from the prior year. We will continue to act with discipline to balance capital allocation between value accretion from share buybacks and bolt-on acquisitions with leverage below one times EBITDA. We are 40% of the way through our current £175 million share buyback programme and we are today increasing the programme by £75 million to £250 million. This top-up highlights our disciplined and balanced approach to capital allocation. We expect the programme to be completed by the end of February 2027. And on M&A, we integrated our Iceland acquisition and completed the Bulgaria deal earlier this month. and we will continue to focus on value accretive M&A to support future growth. To sum up this slide, our capital allocation policy remains focused on shareholder value. Turning now to the outlook for 2026. We expect to deliver a year of strong EPS growth in line with our medium term guidance of greater than 10% EPS growth through to the end of 2030. For this year, this will be driven by organic volume growth at the top end of our 3% to 5% guidance range, and we expect to deliver operating margins for the year of circa 6%, supported by scale and cost discipline. Given our strong free cash flow performance in the first half and our expectations for the rest of the year, we are now targeting free cash flow conversion of over 100%. Our performance this year will continue to be supported by our disciplined approach to capital allocation with an increased share buyback program and the contribution of our recent value accretive acquisitions in Bulgaria and Iceland. This slide shows the regional drivers of our outlook this year and highlights the benefits of our diversified geographic portfolio. We expect a stable performance at constant currency with positive momentum in the Americas, Europe and Africa and a stabilising Asia, offsetting a weak Australia. Growth in 2026 will include translational currency tailwinds at prevailing exchange rate and the contribution from the Silver Star acquisition. As we have mentioned previously, we continue to expect that our performance in full year 2026 will be half too weighted. expect to deliver an uplift in new vehicle volumes of around 20 000 vehicles in half two from the 180 000 vehicles we distributed in the first half and this is very similar to the volume uplift from half one to half two that we achieved last year this year the uplift will be supported by the usual half two weighted seasonality in the americas In APAC, our half two volumes and margins will be supported by improved product availability and mix, with margin benefits coming through from the actions we are taking in that region. We expect a stable half two performance in Europe and Africa compared to the first half, with the region's typical first half weighting seasonality offset by the contribution of the Silver Star acquisition in half two. So that's it from me. I'll hand back now to Duncan.

thanks adrian here is a reminder of accelerate plus our strategic framework that has enabled our performance as we continue to scale and optimize our business and we will continue to deliver against our medium-term ambitions supported by our strategic enablers outlined here we continue to execute against our accelerate plus strategy in the first half Our objective is to develop our OEM portfolio and geographic footprint, thereby enhancing the resilience in our earnings profile. Starting with scale, so far this year we have won five new distribution contracts with Volvo in Ecuador, Deepal in Barbados, Subaru and Xpeng in Brunei, and GAC Ion in Romania. The Silver Star acquisition in Bulgaria strengthens our market position and expands our brand portfolio in that market. With Mercedes-Benz, Daimler trucks and buses, our acquisition in Iceland continues to perform well. We continue to optimize our business in a number of ways to drive operational execution. We are focused on commercial discipline and let me give you three examples of this in the first half. Firstly, we significantly rationalized our brand portfolio in APAC with 13 contract exits, as well as two exits in the Americas, all agreed with our OEM partners. Our clear and decisive portfolio management enables us to focus on our priority brands and markets and will support our future financial performance. Portfolio management has been part of the Inchcape story for a while as we continue to filter out those contracts that we do not think will provide the requisite value for us or our OEM partners. They also enable our teams to prioritize and focus on the high value and high potential contracts. The 15 contracts exited in H1 are immaterial to the group. Last year in aggregate, they represented around 5,000 new vehicles, equivalent to approximately 1.5% of the group's total volumes. Secondly, we further leveraged our third party retail network, enabling broader in-market coverage in a capital efficient way by exiting or selling our own retail sites across our regions. thirdly we continue to drive the penetration of value-added services in particular growing our distribution of relatively high margin oem certified parts as well as developing and delivering finance and insurance products by utilizing our global scale and partnerships We also optimized our business by further collaborating with our OEM partners on product and inventory management, supported by our consistent execution and technology-based sales and operational planning processes. We have also taken decisive action on our cost base, driving efficiencies and tackling challenges in certain markets. This included a management action plan in APAC, which I'll now discuss. Our actions in APAC were initiated last year to address the challenges we are facing in the region. Some of these challenges relate to the increasingly competitive environment and some are a result of our operational underperformance in certain markets. We have made excellent progress with these actions to date and we are building momentum in restructuring our business in the region as we rebuild a platform for future growth. Our plan is focused on two areas, operational execution and enhanced collaboration with our OEM partners. I want to thank Phil Jenkins, our interim APAC CEO and his executive team in driving our actions in both of these areas and in helping position our APAC business for its next phase of development. With Phil returning to his role as our Chief M&A Officer, last week we announced the appointment of Ian Burton as our new APAC CEO. Ian, who officially starts with us next week, is a highly experienced international business leader with more than three decades of leadership experience across APAC, Europe and Africa. I'm looking forward to working with Ian in developing our APAC business. We also made a number of new management appointments across the region in H1, both at the regional headquarters and in a number of key markets. In addition, we are significantly reducing our headcount and assessing a number of non-core businesses for disposal including the exit of some of our retail operations. These actions will help us become a leaner and more agile organization, a business that is better equipped to drive enhanced collaboration with our OEM partners. To that end, a key focus for our APAC team this year has been the orderly exit of 13 distribution contracts to help drive efficiencies, profits, and cash flows. These contracts, all agreed with our OEMs, are immaterial and dilutive to profitability. They include Stellantis brands in Australia and the Philippines, LDV and KGM in New Zealand and Aura in Hong Kong. In addition, our JLR business in Thailand has been classified as an asset held for sale in our accounts today. We expect more contract exits to come in the second half and into the future, including some of our more recently won contracts. We are also collaborating with our OEM partners on a refreshed approach to product mix across the region. We are working with our partners on the launch and repricing of models, ensuring we enhance competitiveness and agility in a fast-evolving market environment. To sum up, we have made excellent progress in our management action plan for APAC and there's more to come. I expect continued challenges in the region in the short term, but I remain very confident about our long-term prospects. We have long-standing OEM relationships with the likes of Toyota and Lexus, supplemented by new partnerships in the region including Photon in Australia and Mercedes-Benz in Indonesia and the Philippines. With that in mind, our management action plan, supported by the strength and increasing diversity of our OEM partnerships, is building a strong platform for future growth. Just to sum up today, we made good progress in the first half of the year amid an evolving market backdrop. We continue to deliver against our strategy, exercising further discipline in our approach to capital allocation. Looking ahead, we expect to continue to deliver strong EPS growth this year and beyond in line with our medium term guidance. Finally, here's a reminder of our medium term targets which we are reiterating today. To the end of 2030, we expect to generate 2.5 billion in free cash flow. We will deploy this free cash flow to drive shareholder value with a consistent dividend policy and more than 10% compound annual growth of EPS. That's it for the presentation, so let's take your questions. Starting with questions over the line, and then from the webcast via our head of IR, Rob.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for a brief moment, thank you.

we will now take our first question from james whitcroft of jefferies your line is open please go ahead good morning to you both um two areas i'd really wanted to explore really just looking into the outlook a bit more i mean firstly just digging into australia a little bit better to understand the issues there and the actions being taken to improve going forward especially in the second half and then sort of related just thinking about that that 2h waiting i know it's something we saw last year is there any sort of additional color you can add to build out the background for that second half ramp up please

very good morning james so look i'll take the first question around australia then hand to adrian for how we build into h2 look in australia we had a confluence of issues in the first half the first one we flagged at full year that we still have supply issues from our main oem in in australia they'll come through a bit better in the second half but the second thing was around the iran crisis and frankly that has changed consumer behavior in australia particularly related to what happened to fuel fuel prices rocketed and the second thing fuel availability was also limited throughout australia hundreds of fuel gasoline stations had at least one fuel type out and that has certainly changed consumer behavior and if i give you an example in january ev penetration in the australia market was just over eight percent in june it was nearly twenty five percent and the portfolio of vehicles we'd landed was out of whack frankly with where the market was we expect that to get better in the second half and those issues caused an underperformance for us on the top line and the bottom line in in australia

edwin i'll hand to you for thanks duncan thank you and thanks for the question james um if i think about the half one half two building blocks very similar to last year we spoke about that 20 000 additional units um we've got the same broadly the same story for this year we've done 180 000 units in half one we're anticipating around 200 000 units in half two um a big component of that is the america's seasonality you saw it on the america's slide that half one half two split um we're anticipating a a similar story for this year in terms of a natural second half seasonality and then as duncan's been uh has was articulating all of the work that have been that we've been doing in a pack broadly across the region both in terms of cost in terms of contract exits but also that Australasia story of slightly higher market share but also a better mix of vehicles supporting and improved margin profile is the other material building block of the second half and then of course in um in europe and africa normally that's a half one weighted story this year we expect to see performance more more brought more a flatter picture across half one after with the acquisition of silver star that bulgarian mercedes business that we acquired that completed on the first of july so we've got uh that benefit which will support a stronger second half uh in europe and africa james hopefully that gives you the building blocks of how to build into second half guidance and second half waiting okay thank you thank you thank you james thank you we will now take our next question from abby bell of ubs your line is open please go ahead

morning both just two from me firstly thank you for the color on australia could you give some more detail on apac x australia in particular how should we think about underlying demand in hong kong and singapore given you flagged the pool forward in hong kong early in the year and therefore what should we expect for volume trends and profitability in the second half and then secondly on the contract exits this seems a bigger step up than prior portfolio actions could you talk through the rationale for these exits and particularly why now and as you have as you have flagged further exits in h2 should we expect these to be in similar brands or markets or something else entirely thank you very good thank you abby and good morning edwin do you want to cover the first point and i'll talk about contract exits sure um abby across the broader picture in asia we've seen a stabilizing effect um our businesses in indonesia and in the philippines as in have improved um

in terms of their momentum the market hasn't really changed in terms of that premium segment that you see in the market tracker indonesia has seen some growth but the premium segment remains remains depressed but the teams that that have been working in that region have been doing a super job in terms of the cost base to bring a stabilization to our performance in that area as well as in singapore in hong kong you're you're absolutely right some regulatory change pulled forward the market and you can see very very strong market growth we'd anticipate that being a half one half two split and we would expect to substantially lower hong kong in the second half albeit i don't think that will materially impact underlying performance across asia and those building blocks i've articulated are why a second half waiting in that region still stand despite hong kong being a slightly stronger in the first half duncan over to you

thank you very much so i'll be so on contract exit so you're right 15 exits in the first half 13 of those related to our plan our management plan for asia pacific look essentially what you see inchcape doing and we've been more bold about this over recent quarters is real bold portfolio management to make sure that we are delivering for our oem partners and for our shareholders in each of those contracts If I talk briefly about the performance, we are seeing great performance in our new contracts. You can see that coming through in the Americas. You can see it coming through in Europe. But we look at each of these contracts about, can we deliver for our OEM? Can we deliver for our shareholders? And that's led us to conclude that some of those contracts we have, particularly in Asia Pacific, we have a market misalignment with some of those OEMs and it's right that we take bold action on them now being inchcape of course we're going to collaborate greatly with our OEM partners to make sure those exits are smooth we have to look after customers in that transition as well as our OEM interests but we are being bold and we'll continue to look at our portfolio right across our business and you should expect this to be an ongoing discipline with inchcape let's not forget by the way we've also won another five contracts in the first half all of which we believe will deliver for us like expung which is an ev brand into brunei for instance and our other contract winners like gaci and in in europe which is an ev brand will take into romania that's super clear thank you thank you excellent

Thank you, we will now take our next question from James Baileys of Barenburg.

morning guys just one from me please on after sales i see the gross profit there's up five percent constant currency year on year um despite issues in africa can you give us a bit of color and what's driving that is that to do with the the mixed benefit from where you've exited dilutive contracts and where you've been focusing new contract wins or is that representative of actual i guess new initiatives and kind of a genuine drive on your existing contracts thanks so much

Very good. Morning, James. I think I should take that, Mr. Lewis. So James, so we have a, we've seen, if you look at the, so first of all, let's acknowledge that our after sales business is up. I'm super pleased to see that we're continuing to grow our after sales business. We'll talk about more about that in Q4 in an investor day for you. After sales in APAC is down a little bit, I don't think that'll be a big surprise based upon our narrative of recent times, but we've seen good growth in Europe and Africa and in the Americas. It is a result of some group-wide initiatives we are running to increase our penetration or our retention rate of customers over the first 10 years of a vehicle's life. and other initiatives we have in our after sales business so i would hope we will continue to see momentum in our after sales business not just into the second half but to subsequent years this is a result of the actions we're taking across our business we'll tell you more about that during the fourth quarter thanks thank you james thanks

thank you we will now move on to our next question from andy robler of bnp paribas your line is open please go ahead uh hi good morning um a couple from me if i may um firstly just on the oems you talked about them their focus on efficiency to what extent is that impacting pricing uh and their relationship with you are they are you a potential source of cost savings some of those oems that are under pressure um and then secondly just on inventory i saw an 18 million pound write down that's that's higher than it's been in the last couple of years um could you just talk through what what drove that and what your expectations are for for the second half thank you good morning andy thank you very much i'll do question one and hand two to you if adrian that's okay

So look, it's clear, isn't it, Andy, which OEMs are under pressure. So the Chinese OEMs, although they're taking market share, are not hugely profitable. And a lot of the Western OEMs at the same time are also lowered margin guidance for the year. You can see some of the guidance from some of the European OEMs in the range of 1% to 3% of the operating profit level. If I take a step back, when we set our midterm targets, we gave guidance of operating margins of 6% over the medium term. We were a little above 6% last year. We're guiding to around 6% this year. That is a reflection of two things. it's a reflection of the fact that this industry for oems is incredibly competitive they're under cost pressure and margin pressure and therefore we should expect a little bit of downward pressure from oem partners and then at the same time through our other initiatives inside the group around efficiencies in our cost base the growth of our value-added services businesses in finance and insurance and after sales will give us a little bit of upward pressure. So I think this is exactly what we expected to happen in the industry. We've been flagging it for some time. We'll create some upward pressure in margin. I think we'll see a little bit of downward pressure from OEMs at the same time. Hence the reason we've said 6% operating margins into the medium term.

And in relation to inventory, the first thing to say is, look, inventory is in excellent shape. If you look at the level of inventory in the group, just over £2 billion, very consistent with where it was at the start of the year and lower than it was at half time last year. And the business has grown its revenues by around 9%. So I think absolute inventory we look at in broad terms as being in excellent shape. The benefits of all the work we're doing around SNOP really coming to bear fruit there. You're right about the inventory write downs. When we step into the contract exit conversation, particularly around APAC, we have seen a need to take some inventory write downs relating to those contract exits, 13 exits in the half. in the region response to a very dynamic and changing market situation it is slightly higher than we would normally expect to do and it is related to to those contracts that we're going to get out so this is about us making sure we've got the right portfolio making sure we've got the right inventory on the ground the market's shifted very dynamically in across APAC which is why we're taking the steps we're taking across the board whether it be around contracts inventory and our cost base

Andy, hope that's helpful. Thank you very much. Thank you.

We will now move on to our next question from Arthur Truesler of Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thanks so much for taking my questions. Excuse me. So first one, sort of big picture question. So it seems like the Chinese OEMs are causing you significant problems in Asia. and yet are a key contributor to your growth in latin can you just run us through once again how this can be the case and it would be great if you could explain the key differences between your value proposition to them in latin versus say what it would be in asia or indeed what it wouldn't be in asia and second question um around toyota so are you able to just remind us how you're getting on with toyota new product launches so um in particular how is the electric vehicle progressing in hong kong and singapore and also how are we getting on with the new rav4 launches launches so has that happened in greece belgium romania um and indeed hong kong singapore and how are those things um influencing performance thank you

thank you very much offer that looks like that's two questions for me uh... often with these types of questions i should be charging you money So to your point around Chinese OEMs, 25% of our group now, our volumes from Chinese OEMs, that's grown 40% year over year. And that's reflective of the acquisitions we've made and the contract wins we've had. Actually, across our business, including APAC, we've seen super strong performance in the americas super strong performance in europe excluding byd and belux by the way we still have super performance in in those in those businesses and then we have seen we don't talk about it very much but if you look at australia where we're growing that photon business that it's not even yet a year old but really growing quite nicely for us depal gaining share as the market moves to more to ev our value proposition to chinese OEMs is super duper like it is to all of our OEM partners which is we'll help drive performance for you in small to medium size and more complex markets and that's exactly what inchcape does i was in china with romeo and the rest of the group team just a few weeks ago and the Chinese EV brands where they want to go is exactly matching with inchcape which is we'll run small to medium size and more complex markets for them while they get on with the super big markets now there is a difference in Asia we were a little slower with contract wins in Asia than we would have seen previously But over the last year or so, we've added more Chinese OEMs into that APAC business. I've mentioned Deepal. I've mentioned Photon. You've seen us announce Xpeng today in Brunei. So I think our value proposition is absolutely intact. But in some of the really, really big markets, and I'll give you an example of Philippines or Thailand, these are much bigger markets. I think the Chinese are much more likely to take those directly themselves. Now to your point around Toyota, look, Toyota is an incredible OEM. We've worked with them for over 60 years. what i would say as follows in terms of product launches we've seen very promising take up of those evs that toyota is launching bz3x in hong kong has been really strong for us we'll bring that brand into other markets for us in apac we're launching around mid-teens new products into singapore including ev brands and we've seen brands like CHR plus which is an EV brand for Toyota launch in Europe and other places so that Toyota portfolio is moving quite nicely for us and to your final point around RAV4 that is a super successful product And as you can imagine, Arthur, we are fighting to get more RAV4 in each of our Toyota markets, whether they happen to be in Asia or in Europe and Africa. That's a very successful product. And if Toyota could manufacture more, we'd certainly take them. I hope that's helpful, Arthur.

Very helpful. Thank you very much, Duncan. Thank you.

We will now take our next question from Tim Rumskill of Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

thank you morning gents i've got three please so uh two are focused on a pack and one on the americas so on on a pack uh if we look sort of this half versus two years ago your profitability is down around about two-thirds um and i guess i'm interested in your thoughts around how much of that can be recovered so to what extent are the factors that you identify uh you think short-lived i just interested in how we could potentially get back to where we once were And then secondly, you've talked quite a bit and there's been a few questions already around contract exits. They can just help us with the phasing, partly because you've talked about about more exits. So how much of what you've done has already landed in the first half, how much will come sort of second half and also then into 2027, just some sense of the shape of that. And then finally, as I said, third question on the Americas performance is extremely strong, just a little bit nervous that we might be here in 12 months time talking about

how tough the comps were so just interesting your thoughts on the sustainability of that performance in the americas thanks very good tim yeah uh thank you and thank you for the amusing point on question three so uh i'll hand to adrian for the first two and i'll pick up on the americas

Hi, Tim. When you look at the first half performance, I think we've been very clear there's a, you know, Duncan used the phrase, a confluence of issues in Australia impacting performance, whether it be a very rapid shift in customer demand profiles arising from a fuel product crisis compounded by supply interruption of the right product set to address that market we've seen over the last couple of years substantial changes in customer purchasing trends particularly in premium segments in places like indonesia philippines um and so i think that you should you we should think about all of the things we have been doing whether it be addressing our cost base whether it be managing our portfolio as part of rebuilding asia back towards uh where those heady days of 2024 and and prior to that um so i think the recovery process will not be a short-term recovery you shouldn't pencil us in for getting back to that level either in the second half of this year or indeed next year this is going to be a longer term recovery because some of those shifts you'd have to think of as structural when we think about the exits a lot of those we've been you know duncan used the word collaboration earlier speaking with our oem partners making sure we preserve those global relationships and manage those exits in a in an orderly fashion so those will those will have been affected in the first half and we'll take and will happen and will effectively operationally happen through the second half um so there'll be a bit of help in the second half but more materially so into 2027 and to your question around is there more to come or sort of inference of their more to come uh look we've been clear actually we're continuing to discuss certain contracts with oem partners and you'll have to forgive us we'll update you when it's right for us to do so around those steps but you know in line with all of our other communications we'll be as clear and as transparent as we possibly can be

So Tim on to the Americas then Look, I'll take a step back if I may and then answer your question directly You know, our midterm guidance, where our midterm guidance ultimately ends up in EPS growth of greater than 10%, one of the inputs to that is how fast do we think our markets can grow on our outperformance. Our guidance on unit volume growth is 3% to 5%. And that reflects the fact that we have a diverse geographic portfolio of markets, and we'll always find some up, some down, and some flat. Columbia and Peru are growing like topsy at the minute, above 40% year-over-year growth. Do I think that's sustainable into the long term? No, I don't, because they're approaching their historic highs in terms of the market size. Now, there is some supportive politics in that that we think over the medium term, but they're starting to top out in terms of compared to their historic norms. At the same time, we have Chile, which is actually at the lower end of its historic norms. This year, we think it'll be somewhere between 320,000 and 330,000 TIV. New political regime in place, looks set to grow a little bit faster in the medium term. So let's see. So to your point, um will we be saying there's tough comps in the americas next year maybe but we're here to deliver a geographic portfolio globally that enables us to deliver the intent the greater than 10 percent eps growth can i just squeeze in one that's great kind of squeezing one very quick follow-up just around around contracts i think in your pre-prepared remarks duncan that we've watched you talk about how uh you're actually sort of considering

exiting certain contracts you've only won relatively recently maybe i've got the wrong end of the stick there but interested in just sort of as you think about new opportunities in light of what's been quite a lot of ins and outs how are you thinking about you know assessing new opportunities are you thinking any differently to what you might have done a few years ago

i think we have learned a lot if you look at the you know if you go back just a few years ago we had a very stable uh... portfolio of contracts and we've not seen very many ins or outs the last four years we've seen over i guess it must be close now to sixty contract wins with a higher number of exits than you've seen as we continue to learn about how to make sure that our contracts work for us and our oem partners So we're going to continue to do that. I think we're getting better and better at portfolio management. We're getting better and better at winning contracts and making sure they work for us and our OEM partners. We'll give you a view about that in a little bit more detail during the fourth quarter at an investor day when we'll talk about how these contracts have performed over time. But we're going to we are increasingly disciplined about the way we we think of contracts you can see that in the first half with 13 exits in a pack two in the americas but don't forget let's take a step back what you do see is very strong contract growth for us right right across the business excellent appreciate the answers thank you thank you thanks very much thank you we have no further questions on the line i'll now hand over to rob for webcast questions Thank you, Laura.

Thanks, Laura. Good morning, everyone. We have a couple of questions. Firstly, on tax, Adrian from Julian Daly, one of our private investors. Why is the effective tax rate for the half year higher than the guidance range?

Thank you Julian tax rate 31.4 was the effective tax rates we guide 30 to 31 it's essentially a geographic mix point. I hire profit contribution from the Americas, where tax rates are naturally higher and we also have to consider. withholding tax on dividend repatriation so that gives you the reason 31.4 incidentally is exactly the same as the full year last year on an effective tax rate so very consistent trajectory there

thanks adrian a couple of questions from david brockton at deutsche bank numis are these a few duncan i think um firstly going back to tim's question on brand exits how many of the exited brands are with chinese oems and what gives you the confidence the new chinese oem contracts are better placed compared to the more traditional brands that we're winning business with very good so rob there was a

broad set of exits across of course our brands in in in a pack you could see uh five or six with stellantis brands but there were some with chinese brands there was two as i recall with chinese brands and look if you the way we think about our oem partners we're clear about who we want to build our business with globally you'll forgive me if i don't say that on a on a public call And you can see us win more and more contracts with those. I was in China just a few weeks ago. You can see us winning more contracts with Chang'an and with Great Wall Motors. We referenced Xpeng earlier on this call. We know we can build good businesses with those, and we'll continue to do that. But at the same time, we've been winning contracts with European OEMs and with Japanese OEMs like Subaru. We know we can make these work across our portfolio. And I'd remind us all on the call our growth through these contracts is coming through quite nicely you can see it in the americas and you can see it in europe and africa thank you and also from david is the rapid shift in their products in australia temporary or structural and have we got the right product mix and portfolio in in the second half and beyond to allow us to serve that market well i think this is a great question so when you look at how we planned the australia market adrian and i were there just in january to listen to this and he and i were there just a couple of weeks ago that market has fast forwarded three years in six months so if you look at ev penetration in january at just over eight percent in june nearly 25 percent that shift we expected to happen towards 20 back end of 28 20 29 do i think that shift is permanent yes i do july you can see that tick up a little bit further where are we with our portfolio in australia we have two super uh chinese brands that we've launched with depal and photon both building up they're in their early phases but building up and then in the second half we see more launches from subaru in new energy vehicles and ev which which will improve our our top and bottom line performance in in australia

very good and final questions from ellie is our white oak capital how does ev penetration influence your strategy and are you seeing pure ev manufacturers looking for independent distribution in your markets well look i'll give you a view to let me answer the second question first rob i think their view is exactly the same as ours

you should use distribution in small to medium size and more complicated markets that's what we do we can really add value to oem partners and the really big markets uk germany they should run them themselves and and integrate their value chain in those markets and then remind me what the first question was how does ev penetration in our markets influence strategy Well, our strategy, whether you look at EV penetration or growth, it comes down to the same thing. We need a portfolio of OEMs in each of our markets that enables us to move at the pace that the market moves to a lower carbon mobility future, to use my jargon in that regard. So it's important for growth and for us managing our markets that we have a good portfolio of OEMs. And we like OEMs that can provide us with EV and hybrid. and ice products and in some cases hydrogen to enable that that move so multi-drive train multi-oems in markets really suits inchcape on that note no other questions if you wanted to sum up duncan thank you very good listen thank you very much for joining our webcast today join the first half inchcape continue deliver on strategy with really disciplined capital allocation and as we look out to this year and future years we reaffirm our midterm guidance of growing our EPS by greater than 10% per annum. If you have any further questions, please follow up with the wonderful Rob. In the meantime, thank you for joining.