PayPoint plc

Welcome to our interim results presentation. We've set out here our familiar agenda for this morning. Rob and I look forward to taking you through the key highlights of our first half ahead of answering any questions. Overall, I think we've delivered a really resilient first half performance with strong underlying performances from parcels, from our card processing business and from open banking, and a return to growth for both our Christmas savings and also love to shop. I think for us, the results and our prospects as we look forward say a lot to the transformation of the business over the last three to four years, particularly against an economy and its headwinds and our legacy energy sector where we saw net revenues down 20% in the first half. As a business following that position, we appreciate the clearly more seasonally weighted to the second half Rob will talk about that more later. I'm really pleased to say we've started the second half well. Energy volumes are better and the momentum across the business is really strong. This certainly gives us confidence in delivering further progress this year and trading in line with our expectations and those of the market. This is clearly a very busy slide which sets out our first half financial performance. The key call-outs here are underlying. Net revenue growth is up 4.7%. Our underlying EVDA growth is 9.9%. And then across the individual business divisions, shopping net revenue growth is up 4.2%, with growth in all of our product service estates. Really, another outstanding performance from our e-commerce business with further estate growth. supporting net revenue growth of nearly 72% and parcel transaction growth of 82%. In payments and banking, we saw a 2.3% decline in net revenue, which I think reflects a robust performance in the face of a decline in cash and net revenue, and in particular energy, which in total were down 9.3%, but very much mitigated by further good progress in our digital payments business. which was up in net revenue to 9.1%, and a first-time contribution from Black to Shaw. With that, I'd like to hand you over to Rob, who will take you through the financials in more detail.

Thank you, Nick, and good morning, everyone. If I can start with the financial highlights slide. Net revenue for half one is up 34.1%, from 59.5 million in the prior half to 79.8 million I'll give more details on this growth shortly, but essentially 17.5 million of this is the inclusion of our locked to shop segment, which wasn't included in the prior half, and the remaining 2.8 million growth is from the pay point segment. Underlying EBITDA increased 9.9% to 31.1 million, and this is driven through 2.6 million higher interest, 4.9 million higher DNA, and that's dampened by lower reported profits of 3.8 and lower exceptional charges of $0.9 million. Underlying PBT is down 7.5% to $21.8 million. I'll cover this on the next slide, but this is all driven by the inclusion of love to shop, with this segment loss making for half worn and all profits coming through in the second half. The pay point segment is flat half and half. Reported PBT of $17.2 million is up to $4.6 million at the 4 million of amortisations of acquired intangibles and 0.6 million of intangibles. The underlying diluted EPS is 22.1 pence. This is down 20.2% on the prior half, with this drop in EPS a combination of low reported profits, which is driven by the seasonality and lot to shop, higher tax rates, 25% versus 19%, plus an increase in the weighted average shares in issue. And that's primarily the 3.6 million shares we issued for the loss of short acquisition. Lastly, on this slide, we had 15.6 million of cash generation from ordinary activities and net corporate debt at 83.2 million. Again, I'll cover this in the slides to follow. Moving on to the waterfall slide in profitability, this shows profit progression half and half. The first four bars on the left reconcile reported and underlying profits for the prior half. to give a comparable of 23.6 million. The next four bars show where the 4.7% pay point segment revenue growth comes from. That's mainly 1.3 million from shopping, 2.1 million from e-commerce, plus 1 million of interest. And this growth is part dampened by 1.6 million revenue decline in payments and banking. Further to the right of this chart, costs are up 2.4 million, along with finance costs of 0.4 million. So aggregating this gives underlying profit of 23.6 million for the pay point segments, same as the prior half. Finally on this slide, the last two bars capture an underlying loss of 1.8 million for Love to Shop, which as I've said is seasonal, and we will see Love to Shop profits coming through in the second half. Combining these two segments gives an overall group profit of 21.8 million. This slide gives more detail on revenue. So starting at the top, Shopping revenues are up 1.3 million, or 4.2%, on prior half, coming from, firstly, 9% growth in service fees to 9.7 million, driven by 481 revenue-generating sites increased half and half, plus a 7.3% increase in the average service fee per site. Secondly, we've had 3.1% revenue growth in card payments to 16.4 million. Again, this comes through continued growth in sites, plus an increase in card transactions, but that's been partly dampened by a lower average transactional value. ATMs and counter cash is down 0.3 million, and that's really from a 5.6 fall in transactions. And lastly, on retail, the other category has grown by 0.3 million, and that comes from positive growth in our FMCG campaigns. On e-commerce, we've had strong revenue growth of 71.8%. And that's from a substantial increase in the transactions. We've got 42.1 million for this half versus 23 million in the prior half. Plus, we've also seen site expansion, an increase of 1,372 sites, half on half. For payments and banking, revenues are up 0.5 million for digital, plus a further 1 million growth in other, which is driven by higher interest on client funds. And this growth has been more than offset by 2.1 million decline in cash bill payments and top-ups, with a 14.4 million fall in transactions versus the prior half. Combined, this gives 62.3 million revenue for the pay points segment, and adding in love-to-shop revenues of 17.5 million gives the overall group revenue of 79.8. An important call-out to make is our continued shift away from reliance on cash and bill payments. which now only accounts for 19% of group revenues, and that's substantially less than the prior half, where this accounted for roughly 28% of revenues. The next waterfall is on costs. Again, a half-and-half comparison. On a like-for-like basis, the Paypoint segment has seen a 2.8 million increase in costs, with this coming from asset leasing, up 0.9 million, investment and sales growth, half a million, People costs up 1 million, and that's really due to salary inflation and filling in vacancies. Plus we've had 0.4 million more of interest, essentially higher base rates. Loft to shop segments are 19.3 million, and that includes roughly 2 million of interest allocation from group. And combining this gives an overall group cost of 58 million. The next slide is on cash generation. and we had 15.6 million coming through operating activities in the half. I've covered PBT and exceptional items already, but DNA is up due to an increase in intangibles, with roughly 40 million more following the Loughdeshaw acquisition. Working capital is a 12.6 million outflow, and really the key items that are driving this, number one is we've had a 2 million accruals reversal post-year end in respect of acquisition costs. We've had 2.7 million increase relating to extended payment terms for a key customer, but largely the remainder is love to shop related, specifically an inventory build, which will wind in the second half. After tax, capex and dividends, the corporate debt increased from 10.8 million to 83.2 million. This increase was anticipated and will fall in half too, with the full year expected to be in line with expectations. Very briefly on balance sheet, net assets for the group of 110.8 million and marginally down on the March year end position. The big swings that you'll see on this slide are 62.5 million extra assets and liabilities from client funds and retailers deposits, which is all really seasonal movements. Borrowings are up to support the cost of the acquisition and working capital. But as I've said, this will come back down in the second half. Lastly, before I pass back to Nick, on financing, the existing term loan of 5.4 million is due to be fully repaid by February 2024. The new term loan of £36 million announced earlier this year plus the £75 million RCF facility has a duration out to February 2026. In the second half we anticipate a cash outflow of £13.8 million for dividends plus circa £10 million of extra capex. On dividends you can see from the right of this slide we're proposing an interim dividend of 19 pence per share which is 2.2% off on the final dividend for FY23, which was 18.6 pence. This is consistent with our progressive dividend policy and will be payable in equal instalments on the 29th of December 2023 and the 5th of March 2024. I'll now pass you back to Nick.

Thanks Rob. I'm turning now to really a strategy update. This first slide The strategy section really is a reminder of how the business has evolved over the past few years. And the structural focus we have today on essentially number one, our payment platform and our broadening range of payment capabilities. And secondly, our SME and retailer network and supporting propositions we're now able to offer today. In blue on this slide, we've highlighted the areas of our business and capabilities that we're going to give particular attention to today, and as they are the key areas that we see as drivers to the business achieving our target of 100 million EBITDA by the end of financial year 2025-2026. The common theme to these focus areas are firstly the opportunity to consolidate our market position in each of these key sectors, to enhance our business platform and be more joined up as a business as a whole, leverage our capabilities better to drive new opportunity in new and existing markets, and then well executed, the opportunity these gives us to really deliver accelerated growth in each of our business segments. Turning really firstly to parcels. Today, I think we've got a great CUDA network. It's based on excellent coverage across the UK and supported by invested technology excellent compliance and customer service, and a really strong set of carrier relationships across each of the major carriers. We continue to see outstanding growth opportunities for this business, and I'll talk in a moment about our recent NELS partnership with Yodla and Vinted. To support this growth, we need to expand the network further to enhance coverage. And to this end, we've identified three key growth areas. We're going to add to our transport locations to support commuter consumers, our universities network to support students, and develop a home hub network, utilising our very best Park Christmas Aging community as agents. Our volume growth in parcels that we look forward to over the next two to three years is likely to be really significant. And it's key that we have the network in place and the supporting investment to deliver on this. Consistent with our growth plans is the recently announced strategic partnership with the Overland Vinted. This is a multi-year agreement for the Collect Plus Network to support the significant volume of growth from Vinted by both our store-to-store and store-to-home parcel services. Our expectation is that the store-to-store will be the primary driver, given its reduced carbon footprint and preferred method for Vinted customers. Underway currently are detailed operational plannings alongside both Yodel and Vinted as we deliver our network capabilities of what's necessary to manage a really significant step up in volume, which we're already beginning to see. Secondly, we've described a number of times before the importance of the work we've done over the past three to four years to develop a multi-channel payment platform. really with digital capabilities at its heart. Having built this platform, as we've said before, the key to our success is now building and onboarding a pipeline of new business. And as this then captures new opportunities in new sectors, it takes us beyond our energy legacy relationships and into housing, into charities, local and central government. This slide highlights three examples of new wins and progress we've made in the first half to achieve the early stages in this objective. Firstly, looking at the success in Poble Housing, our multi-pay solution now supports Poble across direct debit, cars and cash. It's helped them rationalize four payment providers into one. It's offering a better payment service to their customers, and it's very much simplified the back office processes that Poble has today, delivering efficiencies for them as well. With Sheffield City Council, we provided the open base solution, which supported them in the distribution of the household support funds and local assistance scheme funds. It's leveraging our cash out and love to shop essential vouchers capability, removing for the council the use of checks and backs. It's clearly a more convenient and cost-effective way for residents to receive their funds quickly. And then finally, with the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, again, we've used our open pay solution to distribute over 600 pounds of cost of living support to what they call continuous cruisers. That in reality meant the issuance of over 40,000 vouchers, which had a 97% opt-in through open banking for bank account deposit, all of which was delivered in two weeks from start to finish. We expect to have a significant number of additional new wins during the second half to announce the full year, again, across these key target markets. Our partnership and investment with OB Connect, as we look at open banking, has been the key to our growing presence and the provision of open banking services to a growing number of new and existing clients. To this end, we're focused on three key open banking services, namely confirmation of payee, an account information service using open banking tools, and a payment initiation service. And I think as you can see from this slide, our progress in growing client list is strong. We're already one of the leading open banking payment processors in the UK. Our early success in this area and growing set of opportunities is a great example. of our business identifying investing in the right partnerships to deliver market leadership and new growth opportunities. And you'll hear much more about this as we progress through the year to the year end. Our acquisition of Appreciate was essentially predicated on two key arguments. Firstly, our ability to deliver significant revenue synergies from leveraging the PayPoint network and our client base to deliver new sales channels for both Park Christmas Saving and Love to Shop. And secondly, with the right support and investment, the recognition of considerable growth opportunities within both Park Christmas Saving and Love to Shop in their existing markets and existing sales channels. On this slide, we've highlighted the first two new sales channel initiatives we've implemented across Park Christmas Saving and Love to Shop. As you can see, we've now introduced a lot to shop into over 2,600 of our multiple retailer sites. Growth in that sales channel is growing quickly, and the good news is actually this has been rolled out in time for Christmas, and we expect a better report on our progress again at the full year. In part Christmas savings, we've now gone through 1,500 retailers recruited as park super agents and now our focus is on supporting those resellers as they grow their own community savers for the 2024 Christmas saving season. We expect more initiatives to be underway and rolled out during the second half to further leverage our pay point network and client relationships to grow billings and channels of billings for both Love to Shop and Park Christmas Savings. And I would say the progress in both of these areas is well ahead of plan Good examples of how we grow incremental billings within Love2Shop make the most of the current capabilities are well-exampled here on this slide. In short order, we've developed the necessary APIs to integrate into our corporate client base to improve their user experience and also added Love2Shop to the framework of a number of government procurements. Both initiatives are already leading to incremental billing opportunities and better service delivery to our clients. Further ahead, we're working with Cardfactory to roll out a joint greeting card and gift card proposition across the Paypoint independent network. In addition, as phase two, rolling out physical gift cards into the independent retailer network to replicate what we've now done with our Maltz clients. The last two focus areas are centered on how we continue to engage and support our retailer partners. and their vital role in communities across the UK. Firstly on this slide, a key reminder of the enduring importance of cash and its access to cash in communities. The statistics on the left of the slide are strong. 5.4 million adults are still cash dependent and 1.1 million consumers mainly use cash every day. On the right, the vital role our banking services provide to our retailers is very clear. With neobanks, we, in 2022-3, had over £318 million deposited through our network, and in the first half of this year, that number has risen to £210 million. We're currently working with Monzo, and we have Chase and Revolut coming on during the second half, which will further strengthen our presence, actually, in the neobank market and the importance of our retailer network for the branchless bank networks in the UK. Countercash. which is our cash without purchase and balance service, which is offered at the till, continues to grow. We had 42 and a half million pounds withdrawn last year. In the first half of this year, we're at 32.1 million pounds in the half year. And our digital disbursements of cash via the PayPoint network was over 318 million pounds last year, the DWP. I hope it's clear that our banking and cash services key area of focus for our business as we look forward over the next three to five years with a number of new banking services coming on as we actually grow this presence on the high street. Looking further as to really what being a Paypoint retailer means today, if we turn to the divisional review, firstly turning to shopping, headline performance in shopping was up 4.2% in net revenue. both retail services and card processing delivered net revenue growth, with growth in all of our pay point estates, both our live card payment books of Lloyds Card, Net and Evo in growth, which again was very encouraging. Our focus on the first half has remained on enhancing our SME and retailer proposition. In particular, we've made some great progress in FMCG, with a number of great branding partnership campaigns in the first half, making further progress in the development of our car processing business. In a challenging market, we've grown our estate, we've grown our sales team, we've strengthened our areas of governance, we're increasing the use of our AI tools, particularly around predictive behavior, and we're really growing a really strong, a really well-disciplined ISO business. We're growing in the other areas of retailer and SME business, such as counter cash and business finance. And we are finally moving into pilot our foreign exchange ordering and collection service in partnership with Eurochange. So it's a great progress in shopping in the first half. In e-commerce, we've really delivered a stellar first half performance, building on the progress we achieved last year. Net revenues, as we've said already, up 72%. Parcel transaction volumes up 82%. And our focus remains on delivering technology in store, delivering a great service to our partner carriers and their consumers, and being at the center of PUDO growth, channel shift from delivery to having. As I was saying, in terms of parcels, we have already described earlier in the strategy section, our plans here, it's around clearly building on the strong foundation we've established, growing the Collect Plus network, strengthening further our carrier partnership relationships and ensuring in the short term a great peak for both customers and carriers. In payments and banking, overall net revenue marginally down 2.3% in the first half. And within this performance, digital remains strong with the continued growth in the number of new client wins in open banking and housing and our first major win in the charity sector. Cash through to digital is broadly flat, and within this, as I said already, good growth from our neo-banking services, with over £210 million deposited in the first half, with the prospect of further growth from both Revolut and Chase into the second half, and more importantly, into next year. Our cash activities in the first half were weak. with energy bill payments particularly so, minus 20% of net revenue, although clearly we've seen a better performance in the early weeks of the second half. And it's important to note that net revenue growth per transaction, we've seen that growth in every product in our service category across payments and services. As I've already highlighted earlier in the presentation, growth in digital payments business is our key strategic objective. As you can see on this slide, in the first half, we've delivered some really notable new client wins and sector wins. And importantly, our pace of onboarding new business across all sectors into the second half has really quickened. As a result, our new business run rate into the second half and into this next year will be strong, while our new business pipeline is also continuing to grow rapidly. In the meantime, our legacy energy sector top-up activities are stronger in the second half, after a weak first half, although clearly as our new business grows, this is becoming less important to the business as a whole. While the first half is less seasonally important as a period for both Park Christmas Savings and Love to Shop, it's really pleasing to report our confidence in billings for both of these businesses, and we expect to see growth in both segments in the current year. Clearly, we're in the peak for both currently in terms of Park Christmas Savers taking delivery, and our preparations are already underway to launch the 2024 savings campaign. And we're in the peak ordering process now in period four. We'll have to shop into the corporate sector. Already in Park Christmas Savings, our attention is turning to building on this return to growth in the current year as we start our focus on 2024. We've got a great savers campaign planned for the additional energy of our recently recruited pay point part, Utala Super Agents. Love to shock, we've strengthened our sales team and our proposition. And again, as we're focused on building momentum into the new year, the early signals are that we will achieve growth in both of these businesses in a meaningful way in 2024. As an organization, we continue to focus on being a great place to work, making progress on our ESG program, supporting our people, and investing to improve the resilience of our service and IT delivery. Finally, turning to the outlook for the second half and beyond, our first half across the business is a strong platform from which to deliver on our expectations for the year as a whole. As we look into the second half, whilst we're not underestimating the weakness in certain areas of the economy, the challenges faced by consumers, we have great momentum across the business, and the second half has started well. Our product estates in 8.1 in cards are growing. The pace at which we're onboarding new client business is quickening. Performance in energy is much better in the second half. The parcel volumes remain very strong and growing rapidly. Overall, we're confident in delivering market expectations for the year as a whole and our growth targets beyond. And with that, we're very happy to open up for questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to submit a question, please press 9 followed by the star on your cell phone. If you want to remove your question, please press 9 followed by the star on your cell phone again. If you want to submit a question now, please press 9 followed by the star. First question comes from Tony Brent from Liberum.

Yes, Joe Brent. But three questions, if I may. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. Sorry.

Excellent. Three questions, if I may. Firstly, just on parcels, sounds like a lot of growth. What volumes do you think you can get at two? And do you think at some point you can revise that 100 million target? And then secondly, on love to shop, can you just remind us of the working capital profile over the year and how the year end might compare to the interims? And then finally, can we just talk about the investment in the P&L? Clearly, there's a lot of investment in growth. We can see that in the first half. Can you give an indication of what further investment is required and when you think the business... investment stabilizers and the operational leverage really starts to come through.

Thanks, Joe. If I may, I'll take questions one and three, and if you're happy, Rob, to take the working capital profile. So certainly starting with parcels, I mean, we want to be just cautious in the sense that clearly there is the prospect here of really substantial growth and I think one of the things that's really evident is that there is a channel shift taking place from delivery to home, delivery through PUDO and out of home. I think that Collect Plus is probably uniquely placed to be at the center of that channel shift. I think you're right that whilst it's very early days, I think that target of 100 million parcels now looks very modest. I think what we would like to see is just how the momentum builds, particularly in the recently announced Vinted-Yodel partnership. Certainly the volumes that we've been talking about and the prospect for growth alongside our two partners there is really significant. And I think it's probably wise of us to probably wait and see how that unfolds over the remaining weeks of this calendar year and into next year, our final quarter financial. before we comment further, but I think it's fair to say that 100 million target parts of transactions now looks very modest in the context of what's in front of us. In terms of investment in the P&L, I mean, inevitably, we have made a number of key investments during the first half. You will see that we now have a sales team across both pay points and handy pay of strength. That's required some investment, inevitably will lead to stronger performance across that, and you're beginning to see the growth in our estate to reflect actually the strength of that team and the investment we've made there. A number of the initiatives around Love to Shop, whether it's Love to Shop into Malts, whether it's actually the creation of the Park Super Agent Network as required investment ahead of return, and clearly we've taken that investment straight to the P&L. I think going forward, I think the primary area of immediate OPEX will be around ensuring that we've got the investment in the parcels network that we need. That's probably more call center support, more operational support in the field, and potentially some more technology into the stores. And all of that will clearly take over the remainder of this financial year to begin to get benefits into next year. So that's where the thinking is around investment. Much of this is important to actually sort of And I think it's centered around the really key growth areas that actually are going to drive us to the 100 million EPA number. Do you want to just pick up the laughter shot?

Yeah, thanks, Joe. I mean, yeah, I think just as a recap, we said there was a working capital outflow for the group of 12.6 million and half won. And that outflow really is driven by a stock build that we see and love to shop in half one. I mean, it's over 5 million inventories build for the first half of the year that we do see unwinding in half two. We have had, as I said, other movements from a group perspective around receivables and kind of a reversal of accruals from a group perspective. But in terms of the kind of working capital, we do see a full unwind in capital input perspective so when you look at it from a kind of full year perspective you know we'll be below the you know we believe we'll be below the 72.4 million where we start the year in terms of net debt you know but we hope to kind of you know have a net debt number at the end of the year that starts with a six rather than a seven so you know we're very much controlling our working capital looking at you know stock unwind receivables and people managing that in the second half I suppose just to follow up on that the part because your savings is not part of your cash anyway so it doesn't affect working capital is that right That's right, yes.

Yeah. That's obviously money Joe's held in trust and sort of entirely separate from actually sort of the cash held by the business corporately.

Thank you. The next question comes from Orson Root from Barclays.

Yeah, thanks for taking my question. The first is just on Love to Shop where I saw that you had 8.1 million of non-redemption revenue. I was wondering if you could give there an expectation how much or from a proportion perspective you expect this non-redemption to be for the full year. Is it right to think that in H1 that's a bit more weighted than in H2? That's the first question. The second one is just around the 100 million EBITDA targets that you put out last fall year. I was wondering if you can give some sort of an expectation range for EBITDA for fall year 24, because if we expect a mid-70s EBITDA, that then implies sort of mid-teens EBITDA CAGR to get to those targets. And obviously, if we look at PBT this year, half year we had no growth. So I was wondering if you could give some color regarding how you expect profitability growth to bridge from where we are currently to sort of that mid-teens that is probably required to get to the 100 million target in terms of growth. And then maybe one final one just on regulation. Of course, in the past, The PSR review has been sort of a key topic on HandyPay specifically. So I was wondering if sort of the vast majority of the drag there is now behind us and if we're now sort of on a clean basis with HandyPay, obviously having accelerated revenue quite nicely in H1. And if you could finally also touch on the consumer duty regulation and in what parts of the business that may affect you, that would be super helpful. Thank you.

I'm doing my best. There are an awful lot of questions there. Certainly on redemption income, I don't think there's any reason to think that the pattern that you've seen historically in love to shop as owned by appreciation There's no reason to believe that that pattern is going to change. So I think that what we've given you there is a fair indication of what should expect looking forward. And as you know, that's one of the three key elements of actually the love to shop business model. So that shouldn't in itself be a surprise to you. In terms of think if I can get the order right, your question around how do we get to the 100 minute EBITDA? I mean, look, I think you'd be wrong for us to do our models for you. But what I would say is that if your starting point for EBITDA in the current year is mid-70s, then probably your starting place is wrong and it's probably too low. I think that you see in the first half of this year, our EBITDA growth was 10%. So I'm not sure, but that's not flat. And then thirdly, if you begin to look at the bills, what I've tried to do at the start of our presentation is identify the areas which we think will generate the momentum that gets us to 100 million pounds of EBITDA in three years. I mean, clearly a primary driver is parcels. I think our growth in open banking and the speed with which we're onboarding new business is reflected in the underlying growth rate in digital payments of 10% in the first half. We expect that to quicken from here. I think you'll see the continued growth in our estates, whether it be pay point one, whether it be our car estates, And I think they too will actually contribute to actually the growth we see in our business as a whole. And I think, as I said already, you know, the banking proposition that we're developing and already sort of landing well in our estate is probably another leg to actually where the growth comes from. So I would argue this is not a business that's not growing. I think it's evidenced in the first half. We are investing. where we believe we can grow further. As I said, they've both loved to shop and parked us for savings, both being growth for this current year, which again is actually a step away from history. And certainly we expect that growth to quicken through us opening up new channels as we actually go into years two and three in the ownership of that business. So it's entirely consistent with what I said at the start of the presentation in terms of What are the five growth levers which will actually deliver the outcome of £100 million within three years? And hopefully, you can draw your own conclusions as to the rate at which they will grow and importantly, your confidence and our ability to deliver. In terms of regulation, I think you're right. I think the impact of the PSR The directives are now behind us and certainly the way in which we engage with prospective merchants, the way in which we have open disclosure is actually very clear. It's changed clearly the contract nature between ourselves and our merchants in terms of duration. And I think we've managed that really well. And I think importantly, that's put the focus on the quality of our proposition, the quality of our engagement with our merchants. And I think you're beginning to see that come through in the way that we're growing our estate. So I would agree with you that actually I think we've got some good tailwinds in the first half. And that's reflected in the financial performance of the handy payer state and also in the growth of that estate as well. I think there was one other question at the end, I think, around consumer duty and how that impacted various areas of our business. I mean, clearly, we take consumer duty very seriously. We're very focused on transparency around all of our contracts, whether they be with the merchants, which I've already described, whether they be with our retailers. And in our love to shop business, and importantly, actually, in part to the savings, we've given a full review as to the whole engagement we have with our retailer and then with our consumer saver community, thinking firstly about consumer duty, and also around the regulatory aspects and our obligations there in terms of trust, re-inventing funds, ensuring that actually our savers get value. So I think that we've given it absolute prominence in the way we think about our engagement, and we're confident that we're getting to the right answers.

Okay, that's great. Thanks a lot.

All right. It seems like there are no further questions. So I will hand over back to you.

Okay. Thank you very much, everybody, for joining us this morning. My apologies for one or two technical hitches there, but hopefully the key messages as to our progress over the first half have come through clearly. We look forward to talking to you during the course of the second half and at the full year beginning of next year. Thank you.