Kingfisher plc

I will then update you on the progress being made against our key strategic objectives, including our plan for France, before we open up for Q&A. So there are four key things I want to highlight about our performance. And first is market share. We see this as a key indicator of our progress beyond the macroeconomic trends. And I'm pleased with our performance here. Kingfisher delivered market share gains in the UK and Ireland, in France and in Poland in the year. That market share growth is being powered by our group's strategic initiatives and strong execution against our plans. Point number two, we have seen strong delivery in two key areas of the group strategy, trade and e-commerce. Our trade sales penetration is up 4.9 points to 17.9%, supported by the development of our trade proposition in all banners. Group e-commerce sales penetration is now 19% compared to 8% in 2019, partly driven by our successful marketplaces, which are now live in all markets. These are two group-led strategic initiatives that we successfully implemented in the UK first. They are the blueprint for Kingfisher's strategy, and we are now actively rolling out this recipe of success to all our other markets. And you will see this demonstrated across today's presentation. At the same time, we are accelerating our restructuring plan at Castorama France. By the end of this financial year, we'll have completed, or been in the process of completing, works on 24 low-performing stores. With our financial performance, we stayed disciplined against the challenging market backdrop. Our adjusted profit before tax and free cash flow was in line with or ahead of the initial guidance we set last year. And we have a strong grip on the operational levels of our business. Gross margin was up 50 basis points. And as guided, we delivered 120 million pounds of structural cost reductions. We also reduced same-store inventory by 107 million. So overall, Kingfisher is in its best operational shape for years, and we remain confident about the growth opportunities in our business. So let me now hand over to Bhavesh. Thank you.

Thank you, Thierry. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. It's great to meet so many of you in person. I'm now two months into my role as Kingfisher's new CFO, and have spent time meeting colleagues across the business and visiting stores across our banners. I'd like to thank all the teams for the warm welcome I've received. I've been impressed with what I've seen and heard, particularly the enthusiasm and commitment of the teams across our markets to delivering a great customer proposition and our strategic priorities. Kingfisher is a company with a clear strategy driving our market-leading businesses. It's highly cash generative and in excellent operational shape. I'm particularly excited by the opportunity to grow our trade business and drive our e-commerce growth. Two key pillars of the Powered by Kingfisher strategy that you'll hear more on from Thierry shortly. While early days, as I look forward, my priority areas will be first, building on our strong disciplines and cost and cash management. Second, maintaining a strong focus on returns as we invest for growth. And third, delivering attractive cash returns to our shareholders. while maintaining a strong balance sheet. Let me start with the key financial highlights for the year. Total sales for the group in constant currency were 0.8% lower, with like-for-like sales declining 1.7%. I'll speak in more detail on this shortly. We delivered a gross margin of 37.3%, up 50 basis points versus the previous year. Adjusted profit before tax was £528 million, decreasing 7% versus the previous year. Group statutory profit before tax was £307 million, reflecting non-cash impairments in some of our stores in Goodwill. Our free cash flow was strong at £511 million, reflecting good progress in reducing inventory levels. Net debt, which is mainly property leases, was just over £2 billion, with net leverage at 1.6 times EBITDA. We returned £453 million to shareholders via dividends and share buybacks, up 14% on the previous year. We proposed a full-year dividend of 12.4 pence in line with last year, And given our strong free cash flow and confidence in our future cash generation, we're announcing today a new 300 million pound share buyback program. Turning to sales across our core categories. We saw an improving trend through the year, driven by repair, maintenance, and renovation activity. Overall core like-for-like sales were 1.1% lower across the year, with the second half showing an improving performance with like-for-like at minus 0.3%. Like-for-like sales from big ticket categories, which include kitchens and bathrooms, were 4.5% lower for the year, reflecting broader market weakness. In Q4, we saw some encouraging big ticket trends across all our key markets, with like-for-like sales up 1.3%, supported by successful new kitchen and bathroom range reviews and campaigns. In our seasonal categories, which include outdoor furniture, barbecues, and heating and cooling products, Like-for-like sales were 2.6% lower impacted by unfavorable weather in May and June. For the group overall, we saw flat retail price inflation and a negative mixed impact on the average selling price from lower big ticket sales. Overall volumes are lower, but with an improving underlying trend in core category volumes as we move through the year. Let me now walk through performance across our regions, starting with the UK and Ireland. Our UK and Ireland businesses delivered total sales of 6.5 billion pounds, up 1.2%, and like-for-like sales up 0.2%. B&Q, TradePoint, and ScrewFix all delivered market share gains in the year. These gains were driven by our strong performance in trade and e-commerce. At B&Q, TradePoint like-for-like sales were up 6.4%, while ScrewFix grew its like-for-like by 1%. And e-commerce sales across our two businesses were up 8.7%. Gross margin for the UK and Ireland increased by 20 basis points. And UK and Ireland operating costs increased by 2.1%. This includes a one-off benefit of £33 million of business rates refunds at B&Q related to overpayments between 2017 to 2023, of which £8 million was received in H2O. Retail profit for the UK and Ireland was 0.6% higher at £558 million, with a retail operating margin of 8.6%, 10 basis points lower than the prior year. In France, our banners delivered total sales of £3.9 billion, a like-for-like decline of 6.2%, amidst a weak home improvement market which declined by over 7% in the year. Both banners gained market share, driven by strong new range launches and trade customer sales. At Casa Rama, our like-for-like sales were lowered by 6.6% for the year. Sales trends improved in the second half of the year across all categories, with big tickets seeing a notable pickup in Q4. At Brico Depot, like-for-like sales were 5.7% lower. Overall sales trends improved in H2, supported by strong sales growth in the kitchens category at Q4, where like-for-like sales were up 4.9%. BRICO also made strong progress in developing its trade proposition, with trade sales penetration reaching 12.8% in January, up 4.2 percentage points. Gross margin for France increased by 80 basis points, and operating costs were tightly managed, decreasing by 1.6% year-on-year. Overall, France retail profit was £95 million, with margin 80 basis points lower at 2.4%. Thierry will talk shortly about our actions in France to both continue our relative outperformance whilst improving profitability. Poland delivered total sales of £1.8 billion, up 3.2%, supported by the opening of five new stores and market share gains. Like-for-like sales were marginally down by 0.1%. Big ticket categories delivered growth year on year, with underlying core and seasonal category sales both improving in the second half. Like our other markets, Poland has made good progress in driving its trade business. Trade sales penetration reached 24.5% in January, up 19.1 percentage points. The business also successfully launched its e-commerce marketplace in January 2025 with positive early results. Poland gross margin increased by 80 basis points and operating costs were up 5.4%, reflecting higher staff costs and new store openings. Retail profit for the year was 8%, higher at £90 million, with the retail profit margin 20 basis points higher at 5.1%. Looking briefly now at our other international segment. First, Brico Depot Iberia, where like-for-like sales were up 6.1%, with retail profit for the year increasing from £6 million to £8 million. At BricoDepo Romania, the retail loss improved to 11 million pounds versus 18 million pounds in the prior year. In December, we announced the sale of the Romanian business for an enterprise value of 70 million euros, equivalent to around 58 million pounds. The sale is expected to complete in H1. Screwfix France and other, which includes our franchise and wholesale business, recorded an overall loss of 35 million pounds. Majority of this was driven by Screwfix France as the business continued to invest in the opening of new stores. Finally, our Turkish joint venture Kostas contributed an overall loss of £15 million after tax and interest against a highly volatile macroeconomic and trading environment. Kostas swiftly initiated a comprehensive restricting program in response to these challenges. including a reduction in headcount of 900 people and the closure of 106 stores, which is around 30% of its estate. We're monitoring the performance of our Turkish joint venture closely to ensure the business gets back on track. Now, turning to group profit, starting from the left of the slide. Lower like-for-like sales at a constant gross margin rate contributed to £85 billion of profit decline. This was largely offset by a gross margin rate improvement of 50 basis points, which added £60 million to profit. The impact of staff pay rate inflation was £94 million, with an equal weighting across H1 and H2. Technology and other cost increases were £64 million, driven by higher technology investments in H2 and investment in marketplace and advertising spend. We delivered on our guidance of 120 million pounds of structural cost savings, which span across the gross margin improvement, technology cost, and operating cost reduction bars on this chart. As I mentioned earlier, business rates refunds at B&Q were 33 million pounds. And the ineffective foreign exchange hedges in the prior year resulted in a 10 million pound year-on-year benefit. Our central costs and net finance costs were 3 million pounds lower. And finally, our share of the Costash JV was 14 million pounds lower year on year. A key strength of the business is its strong cash generation, as you can see on this slide. Starting on the left, we generated EBITDA of just under 1.3 billion pounds. Good work has been done on inventory management, which reduced by six days. This drove a working capital inflow of 108 million pounds. Net rent paid was 512 million pounds. Tax, interest and other cash outflows were £58 million, including £23 million of tax phasing benefits and refunds. Capital expenditure was £317 million, representing 2.5% of sales. This was circa 12% lower year on year due to the timing of project spend. Overall, free cash flow for the year was £511 million. We paid an ordinary dividend of £228 million and executed a further £225 million of share buybacks. Kingfisher has a strong balance sheet, which we'll maintain through our disciplined capital allocation framework. Our priority is investment in organic growth, where we see a compelling return profile. We target capex of around 3% of sales per year, which may vary slightly year on year, depending on the phasing of projects. We aim to grow our dividend progressively over time, reflecting our firm focus on growing EPS over time. We target dividend cover in the range of 2.25 to 2.75 times. As of last year, we may move outside of this range from time to time. Kingfisher has a strong track record of returning surplus capital to shareholders. with £1.9 billion returned to shareholders since 2021 by dividends and share buybacks. That's over 40% of our current market capitalisation. Our financial resilience is underpinned by our solid investment-grade credit rating, keeping our leverage with a maximum of two times EBITDA and maintaining strong liquidity headroom. Total liquidity as of 31st January was just under £1 billion, including an undrawn RCF of £650 million and cash of £336 million. As we look to the year ahead, we'll maintain our laser focus on cost discipline and cash generation. We have multiple gross margin opportunities. Some examples include work underway on product component costing across the group, to help our banners achieve savings through product design and to negotiate better prices with common vendors. And we're making further reductions in our distribution center space in France and Poland, building on the significant reductions already achieved in 2024. On OPEX and inventory, we have programs already underway to unlock savings in the year ahead. We continue to enhance the productivity of our stores, for example, through more self-checkout terminals. We're also further streamlining our head offices. In Casa Rama, France, the annualized savings from the restructuring will be around £9 million. And we're expanding the use of our in-house developed supply chain visibility tool to further improve our stock forecasting, driving lower inventory, better stock turn, and ultimately more free cash flow. Let me turn now to our FY25-26 outlook and guidance, first with our market growth scenarios. In the UK and Ireland, we observe a relatively resilient consumer, supporting repairs, maintenance, and existing home renovation. However, we remain mindful of the near-term uncertainties facing households. Our outlook for the UK and Ireland home improvement market in 2025 is somewhere between flat and low single digit percent growth year on year. In France, while repairs and maintenance activity is supportive, we remain cautious on consumer sentiment and the housing market in the near term. Our home improvement market outlook is for a low to mid single digit percent decline in a low case and flat year on year in a high case. And in Poland, while consumers expect to see real wage growth in 2025, we're mindful of the uncertainties continuing to face households. In the very near term, we see current geopolitical factors having an adverse impact on the Polish consumer. For the year as a whole, we expect the home improvement market in Poland to be somewhere between a low single-digit percent decline and a low single-digit percent growth year on year. On profit, we expect full-year adjusted PBT of between 480 million to 540 million pounds. The bridge from last year's PBT reflects a number of moving parts. First, the 33 million pound cost rebuild related to B&Q's business rates refunds last year. Second, a 10 million pound year-on-year benefit from the sale on Romania. We then expect to fully offset higher inflation, wages, and taxes totaling around 145 million pounds with gross margin and OPEX mitigations. These include structural cost and productivity initiatives already underway, which I highlighted earlier. And finally, operating leverage or deleverage from our market growth scenarios. Within this, we're assuming some level of sales transference in the UK from the closure of home-based stores. On free cash flow, we expect between 420 million to 480 million pounds, supported by further inventory reductions, but also reflecting the reversal of some capex and creditor timing benefits. The board and the management team remain confident of the cash generation capabilities of the business, which underpins our new 300 million share buyback program. Let me now hand back to Thierry.

Thank you, Babesh. And I would now like to start by taking a moment to remind you of the fundamentals of Kingfisher's investment case. And this underpins our conviction in the medium to longer-term outlook. We have number one and number two leading positions in our markets, and those markets worth £160 billion have attractive and structural growth drivers. Secondly, our Powered by Kingfisher model gives us distinctive competitive advantages. We have diverse banners with formats and propositions that address different customer needs. Within our banners, we have a balanced exposure to trade and retail customers. Our own exclusive brands are industry-leading and a powerful competitive advantage. We have leading-edge technology and e-commerce, bringing our customers speed and choice, including fast fulfillment in our online marketplaces. And as a group, we have scale. This means providing buying and sourcing synergies to our banners and leveraging the group to invest in technology. And then we drive market share gains through our strategy growth initiatives. We are building out our exposure to trade customers, which is now very much a proven strategy with clear runway to keep growing. On e-commerce, we have an ambition to reach 30% sales penetration, and we are well on track to achieve that. With retail media, we are targeting additional revenues of 3% of total e-commerce sales, and we are opening new stores, primarily through the continued expansion of Screwfix and the growth opportunities we see in Poland. So our medium-term target is for new stores to contribute 1.5 to 2.5% to sales growth. So bringing all these elements together, we are committed to our financial priorities, which you can see along the bottom of these slides. Turning to slide 18, I want to come back to how we have grown our market share in all key regions last year. First, we continue to strengthen our core proposition. We maintain strong price indices supported by effective management of our product cost. We have also maintained high stock availability driven by smarter inventory and logistic management. We have leveraged the power of our own brands to strengthen product ranges. Our banners delivered many successful range reviews during the year, like bathroom and kitchen at B&Q, and eating and kitchens at Brico Depot in France. And we have made significant improvements to the omnichannel customer journey reflected in strong and improved customer net promoter scores in all regions. In parallel, we are leveraging our group strategic growth drivers. Over the next few slides, I will cover the success we have seen with these initiatives in the UK and how we are accelerating the rollout in all our markets. And starting here on slide 19. And our trade point has benefited from the group strategy for trade. We know that trade customers visit our stores more frequently and spend more on average than retail customers. Our group plan, therefore, centers around six key pillars to develop a compelling proposition for tradespeople. Trade-specific ranges, dedicated new loyalty programs, people, value-add services, digital and stores. Importantly, this plan leverages our assets, pushes up store sales densities, which is limited to no capex. TradePoint achieved strong market share gains last year, and its sales now represent 23.4% of BNQ, nearly 5 points more than 2019. TradePoint now has 1.4 million active trade customers, strongly up year on year. The business has a presence in 70% of B&Q stores, and we are now finding ways to expand TradePoint into smaller footprints, leveraging click and collect. In October, TradePoint launched its first ever mobile app. The customer response has been strong, with app sales already accounting for 16% of TradePoint's online sales. Arguably, the most important differentiator is our TradePoint colleagues. We have recruited 44 trade sales partners in our stores, a sales force who build close relationships with local trades and have a degree of freedom to strike deals on the shop floor. Stores operating with trade partners are strongly overperforming stores without. We are therefore accelerating new sales partners' roles this year and expecting further positive impact on our sales. Over the medium term, we confirm our ambition to reach over 1 billion pounds of sales at TradePoint. To slide 20, and we have applied this group framework in France and Poland with strong results. In France, trade penetration at Brico Depot is now 12.8%, up 4.2 percentage points since early last year. Brico rolled out dedicated trade service desks and colleagues across all stores, complemented by a popular new loyalty program and mobile app. At Castorama, we have been testing our trade customer proposition, Casto Pro in eight stores, seeing a very strong uplift in trade sales as a result. Following this successful trial, we have decided to accelerate rollout to the entire Castorama front store network. In Poland, we have seen impressive growth in trade sales, growing by 19 percentage points to 24.5% in the last year. This was supported by Castorama's new trade loyalty program, which saw an average of around 900 membership signups per day in 2024. The business has also introduced dedicated CastoPro trade zones at 12 stores, following a concept similar to TradePoint, with a further 15 stores to come this year. The group has provided support to all countries, for example, through the introduction of new trade-specific OEB ranges and the technology to support new digital capabilities. So you can see we are really excited about the trade opportunity in France and Poland, which is supporting market share gains in both countries. Over the medium term, our ambition is to double trade penetration in France and achieve a trade sales penetration of at least 30% in Poland. As with trade, the group has provided the blueprint for profitable e-commerce growth in the first instance with our UK banners. In five years, B&Q's e-commerce sales penetration has tripled to 15%, while at Screwfix, penetration has gone from 33% to 58%. This growth has driven consistent market share gains at both banners. Our group e-commerce strategy is defined by speed and choice. With speed, our national coverage enables us to fulfill orders quickly we have decided to largely rely on stock picking, facilitating 93% of our first-party e-commerce orders. We have set up 53 B&Q digital hubs. These are larger stores with extended ranges, which service over 90% of UK home deliveries. Our click and collect offering is also market-leading, as under one hour for B&Q and just one minute for Squofix. And secondly, choice. We know the vast majority of customer home improvement journeys start online, and so having a strong online experience is crucial for conversion, either online or in stores. At B&Q, 309 million pounds of sales are from Marketplace, representing 41% of its total e-commerce sales, with over 2 million SKUs. And at Screwfix, the overall assortment has increased to 72,000 products with the extended ranges available next day. So to slide 22, and we are applying the group's proven e-commerce framework across France and Poland, driving further market share gains. Castorama France has grown from an e-commerce sales penetration of 2% in 2019 to 7% last year. As with B&Q three years ago, we expect Castorama's online sales to move up quickly following the launch of its marketplace platform in Q1 2024, which is already up to 14% penetration. An additional 700,000 SKUs are now available for customers. This marketplace leverages the technology built by Kingfisher and applied first to B&Q, and so the rollout incurred minimal cost. In addition, 10% of Castorama's online sales now originate through its AI virtual assistant, HelloCasto, which was developed by Kingfisher and launched at Castorama in 2023. At BricoDepot France, e-commerce penetration is now up to 5%, and we look forward to seeing the results of its new website set to launch in Q2. And at Castorama Poland, we launched our e-commerce marketplace in January 2025 with positive early results. App sales also progressing well with participation up to 12% from 7% in the prior year. So with marketplaces live in all our markets, we focus this year. Our focus this year is to scale up the number of SKUs to accelerate the onboarding of cross-border merchants and start offering click and collect for marketplace orders. Our target for group e-commerce sales is to reach 30% of total sales with one-third of this coming from marketplace. And we are well on track. So on to slide 23 and the very real opportunity for Kingfisher in data and retail media is which are now scaling up across all markets. These initiatives started three years ago and are having a tangible impact on sales, margin, and cash. I would like to highlight our AI-led markdown and promotion solutions, which were built by the group and first deployed at B&Q last year. The solutions created more than 1,500 bespoke campaigns last year. They resulted in significant improvement to B&Q clearance product margins, as well as a more efficient sell-through of its stock. Our next priority is to quickly expand these solutions in France and Poland with implementation already underway at Castorama France. We are also continuing to scale up our retail media proposition, making big strides over the last year. So far, the return on advertising spend that we are generating for over 500 vendors and marketplace merchants is above 600%, significantly ahead of industry averages. We look forward to launching RetailMedia at Screwfix and further tests of in-store RetailMedia campaigns. Our ambition for RetailMedia Income is to reach up to 3% of the group's total e-commerce sales. We believe this is a very reasonable target given the success we are witnessing in US non-food retail, where RetailMedia is one step more advanced than the UK and Europe. Turning now to slide 24, and before we discuss the Scrufix rollout in France, I wanted to remind you of the proposition we have built in the UK and its runway for growth. Scrufix has a proven model that delivers industry-leading returns on capital employed. With 952 stores and 58% e-commerce sales penetration, Scrufix possesses arguably the strongest omnichannel proposition in UK general retail. Over the last five years, sales at Scufix have grown from 1.8 to 2.6 billion pounds, with a CAGR of 7.6%. Over 80% of these sales come from tradespeople. Our store estate has grown by 40% since 2019, and store sales densities are two times our closest competitor. Since then, we have added 2 percentage points of market share, and our customer net promoter score has increased by 8 percentage points to 88. This success is driven by unbeatable ranges, prices, and convenience. On price, we index about 2% cheaper than our competitors. On convenience, we have truly innovative capabilities, enabling one-minute click-and-collect and one-hour home delivery to site, which now covers 60% of the UK population. I hear anecdotally that tradespeople have started to use screwfix as a verb on sites. When a pro needs something quickly, they just screwfix it. And we are not standing still. With further growth top of mind, our share of wallet with customers is only 15%. We are developing plans to therefore increase loyalty and share of spend with us. We are also building on Scufix's assortment of 72,000 SKUs, for example, through ranges fulfilled directly by vendors. And we are exploring a number of enhancements to our fast delivery propositions. With our stores, we have validated the blueprint for a new format, Scufix City, which is performing ahead of our expectations. We are aiming to open up to 100 of these stores in the coming years. So with Kingfisher's backing, Scofix has made significant investment in the last five years to support its current position, and the business is primed for strong and profitable growth. So now to slide 25, and we are exporting this successful model to France. So in short, we are pleased to see the rollout progressing in line with our expectations, despite the challenging consumer backdrop in France. We believe the key to its long-term success is leveraging all the things that make ScrooFix great in the UK, the best prices, fast fulfillment, and a wide selection of products. We are seeing clear momentum across all KPIs with stronger customer retention, growing national brand awareness, and over 11,000 sign-ups to the new trade loyalty program. Screwfix in France currently generates 54% of its sales from trade customers. The business opened 10 new stores last year, taking us to a total of 30 with up to five more this year. And most significantly, the sales trends of all store opening cohorts are progressing in line already for expectations. We have a clear roadmap to profitability with a measured approach to the pace of store openings in the coming years. So to reiterate, we see the potential for more than 600 screw fixtures in France over time. So turning now to an update on our plan for France and starting here on slide 27 with the retail profit bridge year on year. By far, the biggest factor has been the home improvement market decline in France, down by over 7% according to JFK, due to a weak French consumer against a very uncertain political and economic environment. Against this backdrop, we have stayed focused on delivering against our strategic plans and managing effectively our gross margin and cost. Through a combination of market share gains, the gross margin improvements that Bhavesh discussed earlier, and cost reductions, both structural and short-term flex, we managed to fully offset the profit impact of the market decline. Finally, higher pay rates, order inflation, and investment we made in technology to support our growth ambitions were a total of 42 million pounds. why we are pleased with the self-help done in 2024. There is still much to be done. On slide 28, I want to reiterate our clear path to achieving our medium-term margin target of 5% to 7%. And you can see here our four self-help initiatives. One. to simplify the organization and structure in France, where we have already made significant progress. Two, grow sales entities at both banners, including through the rollout of our group trade and e-commerce initiatives. Three, create productivity and operating efficiencies. And four, restructure approximately one-third of Castorama's stores network, which is well underway. We appreciate the gap to 5% to 7% is larger than it was one year ago, but you can be confident that our self-help initiatives are starting to bear results, as you can see in this presentation. We also firmly believe the severe market decline seen in 2023 and 2024 will at least reverse over the medium term. Now, to give you a little more detail on how we are building on our momentum and accelerating our French growth and self-help initiatives. First, we completed the simplification of the French organizational structure in April last year. We shifted the responsibility for centralized decision to the individual banners. We also strengthened the leadership teams with six strong new appointments at Castorama, including in commercial, digital marketing, and technology. In November, we started the restructuring of Castorama's head office, which will yield £9 million of annualized cost savings in 2025 and 2026. Second, we continue to drive higher sales densities at both banners. Key range reviews in kitchen, bathroom, storage, and heating were completed in the year. For example, our new Pragma kitchen range offers a unique solution to customers looking for a simple kitchen. It was launched at Brico Depot France last year, driving strong sales outperformance compared to other ranges. So given these successes, the new team at Castorama will accelerate strategy and range reviews in the year ahead. And as you have heard in detail, we continue to drive our trade and e-commerce propositions. Castorama Pro program will be quickly rolled out to all stores this year, and we have high expectations for its e-commerce marketplace as well as for the progress of ProSales at BricoDepot. Our third focus area is improving our productivity and operating efficiency. We achieved significant structural cost reduction last year, with the total operating cost down 1.6% in France. 75% of Kingfisher's inventory reduction last year was in France. And Brico Depot achieved a 9% reduction in its logistics space, with a further 1.5% at Castorama, which will support lower logistics costs going forward. So looking to the year ahead, Bhavesh has already discussed the group-wide programs in place to further reduce our structural cost base. On top of this, both banners will be scaling up Kingfisher's markdown and promo AI solution, as well as retail media. These are all accretive to gross margin. And finally, we are making rapid progress in restructuring and modernizing Castorama's store network. By the end of this year, we will have completed or have works in motion on 24 of its lowest performing stores. As a reminder, we said last year that we are targeting one third of Castorama's estate. We expect these actions to gradually achieve structural increases in profitability. So I want to be clear that the performance in France is not where we want it to be, but this plan demonstrates that we are taking comprehensive action to drive top line and market share, create efficiencies, and quickly address the store network as we return France to profitable growth. So to summarize here on slide 31, Kingfisher gained market share in all key regions against a challenging backdrop. We achieved this by strong execution against our key group's strategic initiatives of trade and e-commerce, with the success at our UK businesses now being replicated in France and Poland. In France, we are growing market share and delivering on our self-help actions against what was a very weak market for the second year in a row. We deliver profit and cash in line or ahead of our expectations, thanks to a strong financial discipline And following over 900 million pounds of share buyback, we have today announced a new 300 million pound program. And finally, we remain confident about the medium to longer-term outlook for the sector and the growth opportunities in our business. Home improvement is an exciting and attractive market, and we are uniquely positioned to win. With that homage, over to you. Thank you.