PZ Cussons Plc

Good morning or good afternoon all and welcome to the PZ Cousins Half Year Results Call. My name is Adam and I'll be your operator today. If you'd like to ask a question during the Q&A portion of today's call, please dial in and press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad to join the queue. I will now hand the floor to CEO Jonathan Myers to begin.

So Jonathan, please go ahead when you're ready.

Thanks Adam and good morning everyone and thank you for dialing in to our first half year results presentation for PZ Cousins Financial Year 2026. I'll start off with an overview of our performance and provide colour on some of the drivers behind it and how we are moving to be a more focused and more resilient business. I'll then hand over to Sarah to take us through a review of the financials before we finish with the time for your questions. As many of you will be aware and certainly are joining, we are hosting a capital markets event this afternoon in London which is intended to address many of the questions that may be on your mind about the future of plans for this afternoon. So, let's get going with the results we announced this morning then. Overall, we delivered a strong financial performance in the first half of the year, with broad-based growth and a healthy balance of price mix and volume. I'll come on to more of this in just a moment. In December, we announced the conclusion of the strategic review of our after-operation, following our own I'll provide an update on TantraPay in the coming minutes, but the consequent spell of our sharing the T-BED Wilmar joint venture through Wilmar, along with the ongoing disposal of other non-core assets in Africa and Asia, has resulted in a significant difference in balance sheet, and in T-BED becoming a more focused and more resilient business. While all of this was in place, we have also worked hard to reduce our cost base. savings in FY26 in line with previous guidance. Combined with the overall business performance today and our outlook for the remainder of FY26, we are increasing our operating profit guidance for the full year. Let me say a little bit more now about our overall business performance. It has delivered broad-based growth across our three reporting regions, each of our four new markets of the UK, Australia, Indonesia and Nigeria, and each of our top 10 brands in those markets. Obviously, we're pleased with this momentum, but we know we still have much more to do, especially translating our increasingly exciting multi-year growth plan into sustained in-market performance, year in, year out. Coming back to our first-half performance, though, it's worth calling out that our revenue growth of 9.5% is balanced between price and volume, including in Nigeria, where volume has returned to growth after several rounds of pricing that are niching enough volume to decline. We'll hear a lot more about our African business later today, so let me give you a couple of examples, outside Africa, of what has been driving the momentum elsewhere. In the UK, countries far through double-digit We've been learning and optimizing our plans each year. This year we shipped 98% of our Christmas packs before December and have more than doubled Christmas gifting as a revenue building block in our annual plan versus just two years ago. For example, it was one of the needle gifting brands in the Golden Gifting Quarter in St. Louis this year, beating Link, Nivea, for real leather, and custom creations as well. Slaving more price points, pushing higher and lower, and driving more slaves in store. As you can imagine, we're already well on with finalising plans with retailers for Christmas 2026, and all I'll say is, look out for the 100-pound sanctuary-style gift set. Living in Australia now, whether it's the new and improved auto-dish format for Morning Fresh, or a new flavour for Raffi's Gardens, Innovation has played an important part in driving revenue growth on our top three brands, with each brand growing market share over the last 12 months. And the good news is we're growing share in categories that are also finally back in value growth in the latest quarter, after a prolonged period of the Aussie shopper feeling the pinch. Beyond our top three brands, We have also used past format and various innovations on original sorts to launch a one-year-old pump pack onto shelves. In Australia, the UK's market-leading 250ml size that is common in our bathrooms is regarded as a paradise for all the pumping thrown into the gym there. Instead, the market is in larger packs, often with pumps. So, rather than shipping sizes shoppers don't always want halfway around the world to buy a UK factory, We're now manufacturing a consumer-preferred pack size in an all-matter meter pump from our individual factory, alongside morning fresh with a trading market.

Had all of this progressed together, the AMZ business delivered its third consecutive quarter of revenue growth. Let me come back to Ashley to strengthen our balance sheet and focus our business.

We've made good progress over the past five years in reshaping the portfolio, Most notably, in this reporting period, we announced the sale of our 52nd station to the Edwamang, our non-core Nigerian joint venture. To date, we have received £48.5 million of cash proceeds, with a small additional amount from our auxiliary land assets expected shortly. This has delivered a material improvement in our credit network, fareable through the three.

In June, we confirmed our decision to retain

and set a new strategic direction for the business. You didn't see Tantra Pay amongst the top 10 brands on the chart just now. And that's because the seasonality of some of the 10 categories dragged the app completely at the new game, and Tantra Pay falls just outside our top 10 when looking at our third part in isolation. It didn't grow overall revenue in the past, very much highlighting the work in progress to turn the brand around. But we did grow plus 4% in the US We clearly had more fuel up weather, where revenue was down over 30%. This was in part due to high levels of inventory coming into the year. We were already reducing that inventory as we moved through this year, and then the need was to win back retail and support for the brand. It's still too early to call this even yet, but we're seeing strong support plans agreed for the new innovation this summer, and a special plan and activation plan 30th anniversary of the brand. For example, the latest shell-free pair of merchandising materials, Boots, has seen a return to retail sales growth since the change was made just a few weeks ago.

Suffice to say, there will be much more to come on Sun Tropez as we move through the season. And with that, I'll hand over to Sarah to take us through the finish.

Thanks Jonathan, and good morning everyone. I'm going to take you through the Tuesday's financial performance for the first part of FY26, starting with a summary of the key group metrics, then moving on to the detail in each geographic region, before covering cash flow and net debt, and finally, our guidance for the full year. And as I've stated, the numbers I will refer to are on an adjusted basis. To tell you first the headlines, Group revenues increased to £269 million, up from £249 million in the prior eight-year period. On a life-for-life basis, revenues grew 9.5%, reflecting broad-based growth across each of our three reporting segments, each of our four new markets, and each of our top 10 brands. Adjusted operating profits increased to £36 million, up from £27 million last year, a 240 basis points improvement in margin. There is no profit contribution to the disposed PZ Wilmar edible oil insurance venture in this past number, so it has also excluded from the comparative period operating profit increase from £22 to £36 million. Of this £14 million improvement, around £6 million is the result of FX revaluation gains on US dollar denominated value sheet liabilities in Nigeria, resulting from the appreciation of the Naira in this first half as compared to the currency's sharp decline in the first six months of FY25. On a statutory basis, operating profit was £40 million. As those gains recognised on surplus non-operating asset sales, and a book-loss in Part 1 on the Wilmar proceeds received in that period, this figure also includes FX gains on the group's historical equity-like capital loans to its Nigeria particular, previously accounted for in the balance sheet. Consistent with the change in accounting treatment for FY25, during the strategic review of our African businesses, when the value was depreciating in value, they are now shown on the face of the Eton Statement, but to date adjusted out by virtue of them being deemed to be short-term in nature. Adjusted profit before that increased to £30 million, up from £20 million last year due to a reduction in the interest charge as well as the improvement in operating profits.

Adjusted earnings per share was £4.37, compared to £3.

lower than the growth in profit before tax, due to a higher gross tax charge and minority interest leakage in Nigeria. The higher tax is due to two factors, and is now more representative of the rates going forward. Firstly, the geographic mix of profits, with more coming from Nigeria, where the tax rate has normalised now that we have moved past the statutory losses, experienced since the 2023 currency line motion, when only a nominal amount of tax was paid. It's also explained by the disposal of T-Bed Wilmar, which has always been equity accounted, meaning we reported our 50% share of the joint venture's post-tax profit into operating profits, rather than the associated tax charge being recorded separately in the group's tax line. A dividend per share of 1.5 pence is unchanged from last year. Pre-cash loans, 23 million pounds, which, when combined with cash proceeds from stonewalls during the period, resulted in a significant reduction in net debt, down to 84 million pounds. The group revenue breach shows an adverse foreign exchange impact of 4 million pounds. relating to the depreciation of the Australian dollar and the Indonesian rupiah. The Nigerian naira are pre-sorted in the period. As usual, these FX movements and the corresponding impact on revenue are shown in the appendix to this presentation.

These are the right-to-right revenue growths of each of the three reporting segments, which I will come on to in a moment.

On the continuing operations basis, excluding EZ Wilmar from the base period, adjusted operating profit margins increased 413 basis points. Gross margin declined due to geographic mix, as Nigeria was a structurally lower margin through revenues faster than other parts of the group. The majority of the overall operating margin improvement was from a reduction in overhead. This would be a combination of the FX revaluation gains and balance sheet liabilities in Africa, plus group-wide cost savings. And in addition, market investment was, as we have found, lower as a percentage of revenue. But this will reverse in the second half of the year. So turning now to the region. Revenue in Europe and America increased to 102.5 million pounds. with like-for-like growth of 1.7%. We saw growth across most of our brands, including 30% growth that is thankfully far from its successful triple-sticky range. This was despite challenging trading generally, as the UK market remained highly competitive, so this showed no immediate signs of impact. Financial pay revenue declined 11% overall. Excluding this range, overall growth in the region would have been 3%. Adjusted operating profit increased by 2 million pounds, reflecting the integration of Charles Bond business, as well as marketing investment, weighted 2.2. In APAC, revenue was 88 million pounds, with growth of 5.2% on a life-to-life basis, but flat in reported policies, with the Australian dollar and Indonesian rotea depreciating against those. The jobs of nations were encouraged by the Australian share gains in categories which are back in growth, and with the 9% right-to-right revenue growth in individuals. Just the operating profit, however, declined £1 million, including some relatively VAT charges in our smaller Asian businesses.

African revenues increased to £79 million,

MicroEye grows with 28% from both the annualization of pricing, taken in FY25, and the return to volume growth. We saw the people grow to 30% in reported currency, as the NIO had moved from a period of stability to now appreciating imbalance. This afternoon, Adario will take you through the tiered plans to grow the business over and above the parking order's equation.

which in Nigeria has continued to moderate to now around 15%.

Removing the P&L Wilmar JV contribution from the FY25 base, operating profit grew by £7.6 million. Of this, as I mentioned, £6 million was due to FX revaluation gains and balance sheet liabilities denominated in US dollars as a result of the line of strength versus its depreciation in the prior year period. And whilst the first half margin of 14% does also include the carryover benefits of prior year pricing, whereas half 2 will not, assuming the Naira rates remain unchanged from current levels, and assuming no change in underlying business performance, low to mid-team margins should be sustainable going forward. Our current treatment for these FX devaluation impacts is consistent with prior periods when the value was depreciated. You'll recall we took a significant effectual charge in FY24 due to forest losses related to legacy lineabilities built up over many, many years prior to the devaluation when it was not possible for UK corporates to legitimately access the US solid requirements to settle such liabilities and repatriate the cash. The headline names I'm describing today relate to liabilities incurred as part of recent trading, exactly as we put to the FX losses from in-year operational liabilities in the prior FY24 and FY25 financial years, where we executed multiple round price increases to protect local coppability. Finally, turning to what we call the central reporting segments, Specially an internal cost centre. The third part of FY26 has seen a £4.6 million reduction in the adjusted loss we report here. Partly due to favourable intercompany FX movements from the Naira and partly due to people's cost savings and process efficiencies reducing the external audits. In plan to review our presentation of these central costs in future reporting periods to better isolate a true corporate overhead from costs directly attributable to other parts of the business. The higher statutory loss represents the disposal of the teenage Wilmar James, reflecting the receipt of only some of the total cash proceeds in the first half of the year.

Turning now to the balance sheet, leverage has reduced further from both three cash flow generations

and disposable clothes. Free cash flow is 23 million pounds. After the seasonal working capital cash outflow from our past one reporting date, falling immediately before peak trading periods in both Nigeria and Singapore at the beginning. So, the high inventory and deficit additions typically unwind during our third quarter. Capital growth at 1 million pounds.

due to the staking of a number of projects, but we anticipate full-year investments to be more in line with normal levels.

The half-point cash flow includes £3.6 million of cash adjusting items, primarily relating to costs associated with a concluded strategic rhythm. Beyond neutralisers, with a £2.6 million cash add-back, representing share-based executive compensation schemes and non-cash pension charges. We received a total of £27.6 million of cash proceeds from asset sales and materials. This requires £15.8 million gross proceeds from the sale of surplus non-operating assets in Africa and Asia, and £11.8 million from the initial completion steps of the 2Z Walmart explosion. This resulted in reported net debt down 84 million pounds, with net leverage of 1.15. As one of our new guardrails to better protect the business from future adverse currency impacts, the Capital Allocation Policy Bureau announcing today now refined our leverage metrics as net debt excluding any cash balances held in Nigeria. And on this more conservative basis,

would have been 1.4 times at the end of the first half.

The timing of the receipt of the Wilmar cash proceeds has been split across a number of individual components, with consideration received for our equity holdings, the repayments of loans, and also for additional assets in the transaction perimeter. Since the end of November 2025, we have since received a further £37 million from Wilmar, giving a pro forma past one net debt position of $48 billion and leverage below one time. As we noted in this morning's release, trading to the end of January has continued in line with our expectations, and this line provides updated guidance on some key items, including an overall increase in full-year operating profits, up to a range of between £53 and £57 million, compared to £50 to £55 million previously. This guidance does imply a year-on-year decline in profit in Part 2, a phasing profile that we signalled in our AGM training update in November. Largely attributable to retirement and marketing investments, with a significant step-up in spend from the second half. We've also provided firmer full-year guidance on leverage, given the progress to date, and we expect to end the year at the lower end of our new capital allocation policy range. Today will be the last time I defend the P&A company's results, and so I would like to thank colleagues for their unwavering support, our advisors for their wise counsel, and during some challenging times, and to wish external stakeholders all the very best for the future. I'm pleased and proud to be leading the business in festive financial shape and with a more encouraging outlook. And with that, I'll hand it back to Dan.

Thank you, Sarah. So, we can turn the microphone over to you now. And as I mentioned at the beginning, ideally, let's keep the questions posted to this, get your results, and we'll happily answer questions on the broader strategy and future plans that are eventually coming to you. So, Adam, I think it's over to you.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question on today's call, please press star 101 on your telephone keypad to join the queue. If you're joining us online, your dial-in details can be found to the left of the slide.

Once connected, press star 1.

And our first question comes from Matthew Webb from Vestec. Matthew, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you. Morning, everyone. I've got a few questions, and maybe I'll do them one by one. The first is on Indonesia, where a student has been... both in social unrest and economic instability and I think Moody's has downgraded the outlook for the country recently. I just wondered whether you're seeing any impact of that on trading and also whether that's changing how you think about how you run that business, how you invest in that country. That's my first question.

Matthew, it's a good question. Maybe I can talk to some of the financial aspects and then I'll hand over to Jonathan on some of the commercial trading points. So, Matthew, you're referring, of course, to the news is downgraded in terms of the nation's overall outlook. The news, of course, is an emerging market, markets which bring some inherent volatility. I think what I would do, though, in terms of financial perspective is to It's amazing to talk a little bit about engineers in our business there, which is first and foremost to say, for us, it's a structurally advantaged business. We are in the baby toiletries business, where there are still four to five million newborn babies born every year. It's a high-margin business for us, and Jonathan will elaborate on some of the characteristics of our business there. But the reason I say that is it's highly cash-generous for us. We don't have local borrowings. while the currency is coming under stronger pressure, the forex markets were relatively rational, so we can both better hedge against any local exposures, but also repatriate cash in an efficient way. So I think, you know, as distinct from some of the challenges we've had in Nigeria, we would describe it as a, you know, below-risk profile for key hedge puzzles. We are ever vigilant to make sure we can generate the hard currency returns that our shareholders demand. John, do you want to talk a little bit more about that, Brian?

Let me say a couple of things. So the first is, just because of the social unrest, Matthew, we have not seen disruption as a result of that. There has been a little bit of disruption in Indonesia in the recent months, but actually much more of it related to flooding, particularly in the north of the country, where some of our businesses, some of our retail partners, in fact, want to provide a place where it's practiced. But we haven't seen anything impacting our business as a result of social unrest. Now, if I come a little bit to where you were taking the lesser part of the question about how you think about our risk appetite in the business, well, actually, one of the first things we are working on is how do we reduce our reliance on one brand. We're very exposed to customs baby. We're very pleased with the progress of customs baby. We're working hard in the background on which will be number two or number three brands, and it's coming up. We will update you on that. But actually, the risk, Indonesia and Southeast Asia, but it also produces a lot of our morning fresh from Australia. So, in a sense, the good news that we'll talk about this afternoon is that we refer to a blended supply chain, where we intentionally invest at scale in our own facilities, but we also have a good network of third-party manufacturers who give us more agility than in this case. guardrails to help us manage and mitigate that risk, we're going to be adopting that kind of framework to our business and industry as well, which is that we would like a very positive and healthy way to address and manage our risk and the size of the translates into future projects and future investments. So on our radar screen, we are not

Excellent. Thank you. My second question is a slightly technical one. The 6 million SX benefits in Nigeria, am I right in thinking that that's sort of a swing rather than a 6 million benefit all in this year, as it were? And if so, whether it's possible to break out to what extent that's a credit this year and versus a debit last year, if I've understood that correctly. Thanks.

Matthew, let me try on, obviously, one of my favourite topics. So, is the six million, if you like, real? What does it relate to and what can we expect going forward? So, it's real to the extent, you know, any income statement is the change between two balance sheet days and the accounting is entirely consistent with that which we've followed previously. It does, as you say, reflect a base year impact in terms of the steep Naira depreciation of the first half of last year versus the relative stability of this half year. So that 6 million year-on-year swing is a 2 million credit this year versus a 4 million credit last year. I think what I would have you think about is two things. One is that it's a proxy for the overall economic environment. i.e. the denial of stabilising signifies an environment in which our brands can generate meaningful and sustainable value for us. But what you probably shouldn't do is expect another two or six million pounds necessarily in the second half of the year, because, of course, those liabilities on the balance sheet are something that we have already and are looking to continue to extinguish because it's volatility either on the ups or the downs. But it's not helpful. So we are going through a very determined program to recapitalize our local Nigerian subsidiaries and extinguish those liabilities.

And I'll be back if that helps. And the next question comes from Damian McNeill from Deutsche Bank.

Damian, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yeah. Hey. Morning, Jonathan. Morning, Sarah. Hey, Damian. Just on the guidance, sort of following up from Matthew's question, what is included in terms of FX gains, if any, in the second half to get your increased guidance, is the first question.

Good question. Let me go ahead and characterise the guidance more broadly and then... and then later in on the specific questions. So, we sit here with a little over three months of the financial year left to go. So, I would say we have a good line of sight into the year end. But, of course, you know, still some things left to navigate. Most notably, some volatility in the Naira, but also, as Jonathan talked to in terms of financial pay, we have our first big U.S. season season since deciding to keep the brand, which of course has a range of outcomes. We're expecting positive outcomes, but there is a range of outcomes of what is a relatively very profitable brand for us. The overall guidelines include effects as we see it today, is how I'd answer the question in the broadest terms, that it doesn't include another two million credits relating to those first half balance sheet liabilities. Mainly because I can't be certain the rates will hold, but actually because we are going through the process of extinguishing those balance sheet liabilities, which have in the past been a hurt, having the first half been a help, neither of which is particularly helpful. So we are going with our local Nigerian board colleagues through a series of steps to extinguish those liabilities. Do they wipe us? Do they get the ecstasy? Do they wipe the issues? Various capitalization steps to effectively reduce the sensitivity in our P&L to movement in the Nile. Which, if you remember, maybe 18 months ago, was something like every 100 moves between the Nile and the US dollar was giving us something like 8 million of P&L sensitivity. That number today is close to 4 million. So in any one-year period, probably about $2 million of a translational impact and $2 million from that balance sheet effect. The latter, we are trying to extinguish for all. So it doesn't assume another $2 million over the next seven or eight years.

Okay. That's pretty clear, I think. Thanks, Sarah. Just carrying on with the Africa theme, I don't know whether you will touch on it later this afternoon, but... Is there an updated position on how you view the minorities of PZ Nigeria?

We will follow lots of that up this afternoon, Damien. We are not spending a lot of time on the ownership structure minority shareholders, and at the moment we are making that work for us.

David, you might be referring to two, two and a half years ago, where we contemplated buying out our minorities and delisting. We may contemplate something similar again and consider it as we would any allocation of surplus capital to any acquisition of an earnings stream. We consider, as we do, that Nigeria... you know, brings with it a bright future, you may choose to put some capital down to acquire 100% of those future earnings. Because, as you rightly, I think, are pointing out, our operating profit down to earnings per share is due to some of these future results.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's very clear. And then, if I may, one last one. UK performance in core washing and bathing looks to be pretty solid. Can you give an update or some background colour on the competitive environment and what your market share gains have been across the period, please.

Yeah, so let me do that then. The way you use there is the perfect articulation. We have a solid performance. We're really pleased with the financial delivery As you all remember, we combined it with our previous beauty business. We have integrated it with our European setup. And we have also integrated into it more fully our child's farm business, which for the first two or three years of our ownership, we kind of kept it arm's length. So we now have a very strong financial structure, which will give us the ability to invest efficient marketing money to ensure that we are nourishing and nurturing our brands for the future. Which is a good thing, because we're going to need it, right? Because the market is not getting any less contested. In general, without overdoing the hackneyed phrase, we continue to see the bifurcation of the UK shopper. We have an awful lot of people hunting for value and looking for cheap localised or private label or going down to the discounters. Equally, we have people who are willing to splurge And you continue to see that very dynamic but value-focused shopper environment. Within Washington, D.C., we see two things. You continue to see scale players, most notably Unilever, really fighting to try and make their brands start to buy the price they're asking. do have a higher value share, and they charge a higher price per mil, but that's something we need to make sure, if we want to, our brands can do, and I'm sure you will have seen the Unilever self-sponsorship of Bridgerton recently as an example of we can never rest on our laurels versus the big multinational. But actually, as recently as our board meeting just yesterday, we were reviewing exactly the competitive nature of the UK and Washington daily market, and the real change in the last 24 months Growth and acceleration, the explosion of, you know, gen-dead or gen-output startup brands, which are getting onto the shelves maybe three, six, 12 months, disrupting, and either surviving or dying quickly or being replaced. So it is really contested. We have growth shares in some subcategories of washing and bathing. We have not yet really nailed shower, which is why the staff are thinking a little bit more about what we're doing under shower categories,

The next question comes from Sahil Shah from Singer Capital Markets.

Sahil, your line is open. Please go ahead. Morning, Peter.

Team, can you hear me? Yes, Sahil, yes. Hello. Yes, good. Well done. Good set of numbers. Good share price reaction. Three questions from me. Can I just start with the dividend? So, optically improved balance sheet, EBIT guidance ways, Just help me understand the rationale for holding the dividend flat and does that sort of reflect some prudence ahead of investment in H2 or does it signal a more cautious stance on cash generation?

Phil, let me take that question. Thanks for your interest in key-led customers. You may also have seen this morning we put out a short R&S ahead of our capital markets where we set out a new capital allocation policy. Essentially, in here, what we consider to be a prudent leverage range. We're then going on to say, use of surplus capital will first and foremost be focused on a progressive ordinary dividend policy, then with any bolt-on M&A opportunities and more one-off returns to shareholders being considered alongside each other. So, in the first half of this year, we have reported 12% increase in earnings. As we look ahead to the full year, a little bit as I touched on in terms of the structural dynamics of our Nigerian growth, that acts as a slight tether to our overall earnings per share outlook for the full year, and therefore we felt it was prudent to not increase the dividend on the first half of the year, but Through the cycle, you will hear us talking about this afternoon, a very clear and confident commitment to a progressive dividend policy by which we define it as an absolute increase over time. So I think more to come, Sahil, is how I would answer your question.

Good answer. Thank you. Clear. Second question. Africa earnings. So I think I heard this correctly, but split out the 6 million FX. How should I be thinking about the underlying run rate margin in Nigeria? Are we looking at around mid-teen sustainable on a normalised basis? That sort of currency headwinds going forward over the short to medium term?

Another good question. I think you might give another good answer. I think you should be thinking about 14% as being coming together of a number of positive factors. Some beyond our control. many, many within our people. So we are very, very proud of having over the last five years moved that business from a position of local currency loss to local currency profitability. So we are benefiting from the carryover of pricing that was necessary and successful through the significant inflation that we saw during the devaluation, while also continuing to invest behind their brand so they were then relevant to consumers And therefore, we're very keen to return to volume growth in the first half of this year. So I think the 14.7% is a ripple on the upside of what I would suggest is a sustainable range going forward. Low to mid-teens through the cycle is probably a better option.

Got it. Clear. Final one from me. So a central base. So in the US you saw, I think I read, 12% growth under the Amazon partnership, rest of the world remains weak. Looking forward then, what does success look like over the next 12, 18 months? Is it revenue stabilization, margin improvement, or both?

Great question. So, you're absolutely right. So, as part of the U.S. transition where we're changing our operating model, partly as a simplification a market operator called the Emerson Group. And thanks to a lot of our internal work, we managed a smooth transition from setup A to setup B. But more importantly, Emerson has fantastic access to retailers in the US, from Ulta and Sephora to the top end of DC, right through to Target and CDS and Walgreens. So we have not only seen a lot of transition, we have also begun to see good of the retailers that I mentioned just now. So, in effect, the double-digit declines that we saw in the previous year in the US, we have now reversed to double-digit gains. The issue is more broadly in the short term, and I'll come to your question on what is the successful price. The short term, it is elsewhere, has been more a question of burning through some quite high inventories, most notably, actually, with Amazon in the UK, where we saw, again, last year. And the good news is our revenue performance is worse than their e-cost or retail sales performance, which is a clear indication that we are burning feed in between. And we're seeing quarterly sequential improvements in our numbers outside the US. So when it comes to whether it's successful or not, the first thing is we want to see progress in the coming season. It's a really seasonal business, right? After seven months of our financial year, So it's a little bit like an ice cream company waiting for the good weather, right? So we are very confident that we've got good plans for this year. We have new product innovation. We have special packs to celebrate 30th anniversary of Sanford Tech, Sanford A. And we're also seeing some good traction with some of the retailers where we are re-engaging with more positive intent, most notably with the UK, where we've seen a return to their retail sales or e-post growth. have an indication of this year of have we seen good revenue and are we tracking through the year on a quarterly basis back to revenue growth. More broadly though, we want to see next season, which will be the season when a lot of the work on this year's innovation behind the scenes will then hit the ground that we've been working very closely with retailers so that we then see really what is the first full year of anything in action, our innovation in action and our activation in action and we will constantly be looking forward to absolutely revenue growth and over time also profitability improvement as we step up our investments to be sure we're getting a good return on the market required in a brand at that time. So we have a very clear return on milestones but as a board we are holding ourselves

Now, final question today is a follow-up from Matthew Webberton, Best Tech.

Matthew, please go ahead.

Thanks. Yeah, I've just got two more, please. First, just going back to Nigeria, obviously Pythamix was a big driver in the first half, although obviously Pauline's strong as well. But you've cautioned that Pythamix is going to be less of a factor in the second half. But, you know, inflation's still quite high in Nigeria. I just wondered... First, whether there is still some annualisation of previous price increases that will help you in H2. And also, probably more importantly, what sort of price increases you're going to be taking going forward. Presumably, you will still be taking some price. That's my first question. And then the second is just on the guidance you've given on marketing being H2 rated. Can I just be clear on that? Is that as in more H2 weighted than normal? And if... you know, if you could put any last numbers on that, that would be helpful, just in terms of how we think about, you know, that very strong ACON performance and the four-year guidance on operating profit. Thank you.

Let me take a moment, Matthew, I'm so interested in hearing back from all. I thought we were off the hook, but there's no relaxing here, right? So, let me now demonstrate, we're absolutely ready for it, right? So, in terms of Nigeria, so, a little bit on last year. So we took a lot of pricing, we talked before about 20 plus rounds of pricing through the year, where we saw some volume impact in the initial phases before we get into that situation, that much pricing. But over time, the consumer gets used to it, they're seeing a lot of inflationary pricing in stores, and therefore we have now seen in the last two quarters our volume come back. As we annualize that degree of pricing, Our very clear intent is always to be driving revenues in line with or slightly ahead of inflation and how much will depend on how much we want to push pricing versus volume, but if our ambition is to drive and our intent is to drive real growth, we need to be able to demonstrate that using all means of revenue growth management that we are nudging up not only our challenges. The one thing that is important for us to stay really close to is as more than nine exchange rates, particularly when it comes to sporting or commodities, affect the ability of our competition to drop prices, what do we do? We are working very hard on where is it right for us to spend more on marketing money and But we are clear that even though the pricing machine momentum will run out a little bit in terms of cycling through that historic space, our goal is to make sure that we're pricing one way or another in line with a slightly higher inflation. In terms of your marketing question, we are very specific. I'll give you an example. So last year we invested some central pay money off Seagram in the pursuit of trying to improve momentum. We didn't take the return on it, so we didn't repeat it. And we intentionally back-weighted our central pay money, a little bit like the ice cream analogy, to make sure we're investing in the run-up to endurance season. So that's one big driver of the H1-H2. But actually, we have also been looking at how do we step up our investments we can be confident, either of a reasonable rate of return because it's activity that we've invested behind before, or actually, where are we putting perceived money out there so that we can test and learn, and if we see something work, we can then reinvest more aggressively, or if we see something fail, or haven't spent too much money on it, we can then move on to the next thing that we want to invest behind. So actually, in our second half, you'll be seeing not only more investments in our base business here in the UK, For example, for the first time in many years, we'll be investing above the line in New Zealand, not just in Australia, where we've had changes of culture, and we have seen real fractional in the last four or five years, because we are absolutely trying to walk the talk on resilient brands, and we're ready to invest behind them.

Great, thanks very much. I look forward to seeing all of you this afternoon.

Brilliant. Well, you stole my guilt there, actually, Matthew. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone who is coming this afternoon, so thanks to all of you for dining in this morning. Listen, we are obviously feeling upbeat about the performance we have reported. But we're not getting carried away. Our feet are firmly on the ground. We can never give up, and there's always more to do. And there are a little bit of big stuff debating. There are always new competitors coming to take our share. So there is a very healthy degree of paranoia in the business. But we are confident in our ability to drive performance and to deliver over a long term. So for those of you joining us this afternoon, we're fortunate to see you. We will be checking out a very new strategy. We'll be updating you on our innovations and brand buildings. And we'll be giving you a very deep dive into our hat consistency.

So I look forward to seeing you there. Thank you very much. This concludes today's call. Thank you very much for your attendance. We now disconnect your line.