Marston's PLC

Thank you for taking the time to join us. Marston's interim results for financial year 25. My name's Justin Platt. I'm the chief exec. And with me is Hayley, who you all know is our CFO. Take you through the results today. We'll do the following running order. I'll touch on the headlines. Hand over to Hayley. She'll give you the detail of the financials. And then I'll come back to give a bit of colour on the progress we're making on the strategy that we outlined in October. And then we'll pull it all together and take some time for questions. So a really good first half for us. A first half when we're really seeing the results now of the strategy being implemented. Good light for light revenue growth at 2.9% year to date. Importantly, we're converting that. So despite the headwinds, we've grown our margins. So it's the EBITDA's at 86 million, which is 14% up year on year. And really... That's about the progress we are making with the strategy. Whether it be driving the operating model and the execution of the operating model, the progress we're making on our new formats, but also increasingly the opportunity that we're seeking to unlock on digital transformation. All these things are starting to get momentum now and the benefits are starting to accrue. And we only really see the results from all of that work starting to accelerate. And for that reason, we're feeling very confident in our outlook for the year and very committed to the targets we laid out. We're very much, hopefully you'll see today, we're very much now in delivery mode. And the early signs on that delivery are good. Hence, we're feeling very good about the outlook. So that's the headlines. I'll hand over to Hayley and she'll take you through the financials.

Thanks, Justin. Good morning, everybody. I'll take you through for the next few minutes the financial performance for H1. So if we start off with the highlights then, total revenue of £427 million, which is flat year-on-year because it includes the impact of the disposal programme versus last year. More importantly, the graph on the right-hand side shows you like-for-like sales performance, where you can see there's been growth in each of the quarters. and particularly in the last five weeks, culminating in a like-for-like sales growth of 2.9% over the 31 weeks. Coupled with our cost efficiency programme, you can see that EBITDA is nearly 86 million, as Justin said, 14% growth year-on-year, and EBITDA margin to 20.1%, which is nearly 250 basis points improvement year-on-year. And I'll come back to that shortly. I've got a graph to show you some of the details. An underlying PBT of 19 million, which is significant growth on the previous year. With recurring free cash flow at 6 million for H1, which has the impact of working capital and a timing adjustment, which we expect to unwind in H2. But more importantly, the extra 9 to 10 million of capex on changing our formats as set out at the Capital Markets Day. So within that, we've got interest cost reduction from the sale of CNBC and the reduced contribution to the pension as we previously set out. So this gives us confidence in achieving the 50 million of recurring free cash flow in the near to medium term as set out in October at the Capital Markets Day. And as a reminder, that near to medium term was sort of 12 months to two years, so good progress so far. So H1 performance gives us that confidence in the full year outlook. Already talked about EBITDA margin growth. Pub operating profit growth of 20% increase to 63.3 million in the period. Savings and interest and that profit before tax of 19 million versus a small loss in the prior year. And an earnings per share of 2.2 pence in H1. And as I've said, we've focused on Our targets from the Capital Markets Day, so margin expansion is one of them, that 200 to 300 basis points over the medium term. And our disciplined execution in H1 to deliver this. So H1 last year, 17.6%. We all know that April last year, national living minimum wage went up by 9.8%. And what you can see is we've laid out our productivity initiatives and the gains that we're going to get for the remainder of the year, starting to offset some of that. Savings in energy costs predominantly down to the rate and purchasing power year on year. But generally across all of our P&L focused on making sure that we have tight cost control to deliver further efficiencies there in point four. But the margin benefit isn't just from cost efficiencies. You can see there 1.2 from revenue growth initiatives, and Justin will talk to you shortly around what we've done on strategy and what's driving that, which delivers the 20.1% in H1, that 250 basis points improvement. But as we move into the second half, as we know, profitability for Marston's is around You know, more weighted to H2, 60% of it come in more in H2 than H1. With national insurance and national minimum wage increasing from April just gone, we fully expect to offset that this year with our productivity gains. We already know what our food and drink costs are for the remainder of this year, and we've got pretty good cost control across our P&L. So therefore, on track to deliver the 25 EBITDA margin in line with market expectations today. From the profit growth, that's led to a underlying cash flow performance that remained strong. Again, a reminder of that H1 to H2. Last year, we did 7 million of recurring free cash flow, increased profitability, savings and interest, reduction in pension, but we were able to spend a further 9 million on the strategic CapEx related to the formats that Justin will take you through shortly, and then I've already touched on working capital. which means we ended up around 6 million of recurring free cash flow, broadly similar to last year. For the full year in FY24, we delivered 44 million of recurring free cash flow. So we expect and we are confident in achieving that 50 million in the near term. Clearly, all of that cash has helped us to invest in pubs, but also continue to de-lever. But the balance sheet is also supported by 2.1 billion of property assets which is 83% freehold. And as a reminder, we have a revaluation in H2, not in H1, profits moving in the right direction. We've had the sale of CNBC, which means net debt has reduced overall year on year to 881, meaning that net asset value per share has moved up 13% to £1.07. And on debt, what we've got is clearly a long-term trend. stable position. So we have the securitisation of 540 million. That is out to 2035. It has a liquidity facility that we've not utilised, so plenty of headroom there. We've got the long-term leases from a sale and leaseback point of view, but also the IFRS 16 leases. And then within Q2, we extended our bank facility from July 26 out to July 27, and at H1, that was 40 million drawn. And as you can see from the graph on the right-hand side, leverage has continued to reduce over a number of years. And we are now at prior of 16, leverage below five times. So long-term debt, stable position, and we continue on that leverage reduction program as set out at the Capital Markets Day and our capital allocation rate, investing in pubs, reducing debt as the first two. So in summary, H1 performance has been really strong. It gives us that confidence on the full year outlook that we've set out today. Trading has been strong in H1 and up to 31 weeks. Sustained like-for-like revenue growth, our focus on costs and productivity in labour and across our P&L means that we've delivered margin improvement and efficiency gains, but also underpinned by some of the revenue initiatives that we've set out today. And that has led to an improvement in cash in terms of being able to reinvest in the business, a long-term strategy, alongside deleveraging. So on track to deliver FY25 performance in line with market expectations. I'm going to hand back to Justin, and he's going to give you a little bit more colour and flavour on how we've done that and what's to come.

Thank you, Hayley. So... In October, we outlined a strategic refocus. As I said earlier, we're very much now in delivery mode. So what I'll do on the next few slides is just give you some evidence of what exactly we've been doing and how that's contributing to the results we're now seeing. You will remember we set out to be a high margin, highly cash generative local pub business. And we will do that by driving growth from five key value drivers. So by executing a market-leading operating model, it's the bread and butter of running a pub, using CapEx to create differentiated formats, complementing what we do with some digital transformation, continuing to expand our successful managed and partnership models, and in time, leveraging the synergies we create in targeting acquisitions. We'll spend a bit of time now on the first three of those and things we've been doing in the last six months to drive value. So first of all, on the operating model. Of course, the operating model is the balance between getting it right between driving revenue, efficient management of cost, whilst at the same time ensuring you drive guest satisfaction such that people have a great time when they come and visit your pubs. So first of all, in terms of revenue, as we said earlier, good light for light momentum ahead of the market Partly that's about capitalizing on those big trading days. So we had a record Christmas day and a record Mother's Day. But you can't just rely on those big trading days. You've got to give people a reason to come and visit your pub all around the year. And that's the reason we've been focused on building these consumer-driven events that give people a reason to come. And these have proven really, really popular. We deliberately set them to work across different demographics. So the example there on the chart, The darts event where we partnered with the world number one Luke Humphries, this worked really well for our local pubs and our local sports pubs. An event that ran for two months, with a different story and a different reason to come every week around that, proved really, really popular and supported us through the winter months on a reason to come for darts. Equally, we had a partnership with the filmmakers of Paddington in Peru, and we ran a Paddington event in our family-based pubs with Paddington-themed menu, Paddington events for families. So deliberately working across different demographics to give people a reason to come, proving really popular with our guests. but also proving really popular with our general managers because it allows them to drive some interest in their local. So working really well, and you'll see more of that to come in the second half. So good picture on revenue. As you know, we've worked very hard on cost. Hayley said earlier about what that looked like in terms of numbers. Initiative-wise, you would expect it works across labour, it works across food and drink, but also energy and estates. Labour. Labour and particularly our variable labour is probably front and centre of our efforts on this in the last six months. We've done an awful lot of work on our labour scheduling, some of the technology that supports our labour scheduling with our teams. The example on the right there, that's one of our general managers in a pub looking at the way they can get the right people at the right time from their labor scheduling tools. And there's the capability now that within a shift, the GM can act, use the data, use the tools in order to adjust labor. And that's really helping us on the productivity. So good strides on labor scheduling, a constant journey for us though, always looking to improve that. Food and drink. The formats here are helping us. Because we're being really clear now that we've got five formats, of course, that drives what your product range should be. So your product range of food and drink looks quite different in a family pub than it would look in a sports pub. And that's allowing us to be really clear and really simple in what product range we offer in each of those. And that then drives efficiencies. So of course, we're always rigorous in our approach to the input cost. But really, our overall strategy on product offer helps in terms of management and cost. Fixed price electricity contracts help us on energy, but I think the crucial one there is on estates. Again, as we start to spend more investment capex and we look at our investment capex, that gets us more efficient on reactive maintenance. So we're spending less on reactive maintenance because we're being more forthright and more ahead of the game on investment capital. So, done well on revenue, really good progress on cost, but importantly, Our guests still want to come and see us and enjoy us when they do. You will remember there's a high correlation. Once you're up in the high 700s of reputation, there's a high correlation to sustained revenue growth. So we've been able to grow versus the same period last year to 800. And a whole raft of initiatives on this. I mean, look, this is simply about are your guests having a good time when they come? Do they want to come back and visit you? So we continue to agitate with our menus. We should continue to work really hard on our menus. We've partnered with Tom Shepard, a Michelin star chef, on the best ever pub pie. That helps us from a news point of view, gives people a reason to come and visit, but also helps our food scores and helps people's satisfaction with the visit they get. The order at table service, which I'll come on to at the moment, is improving the way we deliver. But really, the biggest driver of reputation is always about the local general manager, and the extent to which that local general manager is creating a great atmosphere and giving great service. And our job is to do that consistently across 1,300 or so pubs. And so constantly, relentlessly, what the operational team are focused on is ensuring we find lots and lots of different ways of doing that and doing that consistently. So far, we've got that really right and balancing that well with revenue and cost. So good progress on the operating model. That was value driver one. But you'll remember Value Driver 2 about the formats was something we talked a lot about at the Capital Markets Day. If anything, this has gone a bit quicker than I anticipated and a bit smoother than I anticipated. So the picture on the left is the first one we launched. So back in February, we opened the Glassworks. The Glassworks is in Stourbridge to the west of Birmingham. And since then we've done another 17 so far. So 18 of the new types of format so far this year. Really strong results. So revenue improvement of new pub versus old pub across those 18. Revenue is up more than 30%. Guest feedback's really strong too. So in our best performing ones, that reputation score, rather than being 800 across the state, the estate is north of 850. So really good from a revenue point of view. Really good from a satisfaction point of view. It is worth saying it's still early days. Some of these have been open three or four weeks. Some of them have been open a couple of months. So we need that to settle before we can be clear what the extent of the returns is. But early signs are very good. You'll remember we talked to five formats. The locals pubs and the adult dining that we refer to as signature pubs are largely already out there. The three on the chart that you can see now are the ones that are, if you like, new. And they're the ones that we're focused on delivering new ones this year. We will launch across each of these this year. So, so far, the two-door has dominated. But during the rest of this year, we will also have Grandstand, which is the local sports pub, and Woody's, which is the family pub. So we will have launches across all of them. That, to our point about test and learn, will allow us to read how effective each of them are being, how they are in terms of driving returns, and crucially, that then guides us decisions for future years about where we may choose to spend that precious capex. But so far so good in terms of that rollout. So of the 30 this year, that we will do this year, probably about two thirds will be on Tudor. And that's because Tudor's the one that we've got the most conviction of at the early stage that it will deliver. So I thought I'd just give you a little bit of color on what that Tudor launch looks like on the next slide. So let me take you to Bradford. The Flying Squirrel opened just outside Bradford in the middle of April. There's about 250,000 people live within a three-mile radius of the Flying Squirrel. And prior to this conversion, we were only able to access 40% of that market because it was largely a family dining pub. The opportunity that we identified was that if we could find a way of appealing to an adult drinker audience as well as a family eating audience, that we could double our appeal from 40% of that audience to 80% of that audience. And the simple way to do that is to zone the pub so it appeals to both demographics concurrently. So that's about building a wall down the middle creating a great environment that families want to eat on one side, and a great environment, like with a pool table and a dartboard, that adults want to come and drink on the other side. Don't need to spend too much capital on that. Approximately £250,000 a time. It varies. Some pubs are a bit more than that. Some pubs are a bit less. If you can do that, That's the way you can access both audiences. And that's the reason Tudor so far is showing really good signs for us. It really is two pubs in one. You're able to offer both propositions concurrently to both audiences and deliver for the needs of what they want. I mean, really, it's not too dissimilar to the old-fashioned lounge side and tap side of a pub, but it works. So really positive progress on the formats. We're really pleased with how that's going. More to come later this year, and at that point we'll then be in a clearer position to outline how we think we should be investing further in two-door grandstand family. The third one that I said I would touch on is digital transformation. So we launched our new order and pay platform in late March. This is a much slicker, much cleaner, much more customer-friendly platform to drive order from your table. can make a big difference in terms of upsell, but also in time, the opportunities for us for data capture are very, very important, because obviously we can build that into our marketing programs. Really pleasing so far. So far it's about 750 of our pubs have got it, so we're in the process of rolling it out and driving adoption through our teams. As you would expect, we've got high hopes for this for the summer. We've got really good beer garden space. Not having to come all the way in from the beer garden to the bar and being able to order at your table can make a significant difference, as I say, both from a service point of view and from an upsell point of view. And our data to date proves that. Guests using the app are spending 10% more than guests ordering at the bar. So it's very early days on this, but it is one that we think will start to get benefits from this year and we'll then really capitalize on it in time. So that was value driver three. in terms of progress on digital transformation. So all of those together leave us feeling good about the rest of the year. From the revenue side, we've got a lot of conviction we can continue to drive demand to build that revenue growth. So the events that we've talked about, and there's some examples of it around the room in here, there'll be more of that to come. We've just agreed a partnership with Hasbro So we'll be doing a big activation on Trivial Pursuits in the second half of the year and a number of other demand driving events through half two to give people a reason to come and visit our pubs. We think that will complement us in terms of our outdoor spaces. Our outdoor spaces in this weather, as you know, are very popular. So that gives us big hopes for the summer as well. And as I've just touched on, we really think order and play can play an important role. On the right-hand side, lot of confidence in our cost management. It's the same areas I talked about before. We're really clear we can deliver on those cost management commitments as there's a step up in the second half with national insurance, etc. So great opportunity on revenue, very confident in cost, leaves us feeling good about H2. So in summary, strong H1 performance, encouraged about the full year outlook. We're getting real momentum now on the value drivers, hence we're We're confident in our delivery. And I'd just emphasize we are very much now in delivery and execution mode. We're very much now about getting the results for the strategies we've put in place. And so far, so good. Thank you very much. And take as much time as you like for questions.