Vertu Motors plc

Welcome to the results presentation of the interim results of VirtuMotors PLC for the six months ending August 2025. My name is Robert Forrester, Chief Executive, and I've got Karen Anderson, our long-serving CFO, who's going to go through the financials. If we turn to the investment case for Virtue Motors, we continue, we believe, to do the right things to create a very strong business within UK motor retail. We believe scale drives benefit, and actually we believe these benefits are increasing over time, particularly in the area of the ability to invest in technology to drive productivity increases and cost reductions, and the benefit of having large single brands across the national space to drive brand awareness. In the period, we've announced today the appointment of two new managing directors, two new roles for internal promotions, who will take the operational responsibilities of the divisions and provide greater bandwidth at a very senior level. We continue to focus on delivering great colleague and customer satisfaction levels. Our customer experience scores, as measured by the manufacturers, are well above national average. We continue to invest in technology, and this is proving absolutely pivotal in the cost initiatives that we are driving through, not only to lower costs, but also to make us more efficient and to help the customer journeys. We have delivered in these results excellent cost trends despite the headwinds, and that focus on costs through the use of technology will indeed continue. Portfolio management and capital allocation remain an absolute priority. We are clearly seeking to manage the growth of Chinese brands within the UK market, but also the need to modify the portfolio to recycle capital from low return to high return activities, which we've continued to do so in the period. Our share buyback continues, and clearly that's important, especially given our tangible net assets have grown to 76 pence per share. The UK consumer space is clearly challenging. The sector itself has issues around the government's electrification agenda and they do provide headwinds. However, the group has delivered a strong operational performance as we seek to focus on what we can control. We have delivered market share gains across all channel of vehicle sales. We have been absolutely focused on cost control, and we had a 0.3% rise in core costs despite noticeable headwinds. Our battery electric vehicle retail sales have increased 82% in the period against a market growth of 55%. We're gaining share in that all-important market. What we did not anticipate at the beginning of September was a global one-off event, being the cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover, one of our major partners. That has caused major disruption to our 10 dealerships in the UK, but I'm pleased to report the situation is now easing. The attack impacted our September profitability by £2 million. And when we look at the potential full-year impact in the current financial year, and this is clearly highly uncertain and dependent on getting systems back, getting back to normal trading, we anticipate the result could be impacted by up to £5.5 million in total. This year, we extended our cyber insurance risk to business interruption from third-party outages. Clearly, we are now working with our advisors to progress a potential claim where possible in respect of the losses that we have incurred in relation to this JLR outage. We have appointed forensic accountants to help the group to work with our insurers on this. We will clearly update shareholders on the impact over the next few months of the cyber attack and indeed on the impact of any potential upside from an insurance claim. Moving on to current trading and outlook and particularly the September result, which is a plate change month and therefore very important for the delivery of NH2 results. I'm pleased to report, excluding the impact of JLR, that September was a good month with profits up on last year. We had a strong use and after sales performance. Used cars, for example, were up 5.3% like for like, a much stronger rate than in the previous months. Acquisitions positively contributed on top of the core performance. New cars remained a challenge. Motability sales were down 15% in volume terms and that clearly impacted gross profit generation for the group. Manufacturers without grant support on electric vehicles faced competition from manufacturers with grants and indeed utilised some of the retailer margins to compete with strong consumer offers. That clearly impacted our margins. We also saw a market that shifted quite considerably to high pre-registration activity at the end of the month, which I think will impact registrations in future months. Overall, however, it's pleasing to see that the group did deliver an increased retail new car volume on a like-for-like basis of 1.8%. Also on the positive side, we saw a 25% increase in fleet car volumes, aided by significant BEV sales, and indeed the impact of the grant, which isn't just for retail customers. There's probably going forward, in Q4 calendar, less pressure on the manufacturers this year around BEV targets, which is a good thing. The ZEV mandate has seen some extra flexibilities, and the grants have clearly led to an increased consumer demand and uptake of battery electric vehicles. That should make quarter four easier than last year. Turning to motability, which has been weak throughout H1 and in September, we now see comparatives at a much reduced basis going forward. In addition, we expect the motability market will recover from March next year due to the timing of renewals. Overall, excluding JLR, we expect full-year profits to be in line with market expectations, but the board are mindful of a cautious outlook on the consumer side and business sales side. The autumn statement at the end of November is clearly of key interest. If we turn to the strategic update, the group has had a consistent strategy and was recently reaffirmed by our group strategy day with the board in September. If we take growth in particular, we will see further growth in Q4 in outlets. Our expansion with BYD, which is the leading Chinese manufacturer, it gathers a pace. We will open our former Citroën dealership in Nottingham as a new Skoda business, which we're excited about. And we will see some further small-scale acquisition activity. Our cautious outlook means that our focus in the near term will be very much on maximising our existing portfolio in the remaining months. If we look at sector trends in the near term, it's interesting that of the three trends we're going to talk about, we are not talking about the rollout of the agency model as one of the big three. We have BMW planning to launch agency in the UK in 2027, but there's been a general rollback and ceasing of agency as a strategy. Clearly, electrification is the big issue facing the new car market. There is still pressure from the ZEV mandate and the targets going forward and indeed in 2025, where the government set a target of 28%, are not going to be achieved. This is a headwind on the new car market and, indeed, profitability. I think we're more optimistic than last year. The ZEV mandate flexibilities, the EV grants, have gone down well with consumers. The demand for the Ford Puma, for example, was absolutely startling in September, and we've got a future order bank for that product. There are far more affordable cars available. some less than £20,000 that are battery electric vehicle in the market today. This was not the case in the new car market in the prior year. Products like the Hyundai Insta, the Dacia Spring are two that spring to mind. However, Volkswagen brands are also bringing out much more affordable product into the marketplace. Electrification is the long-term answer and it will come, but it will not come for the government's pace. The second issue to discuss is the role of Chinese new entrants into the marketplace. The starting point here is that the Chinese domestic car market is in carnage, well-documented carnage, oversupply, price wars, discounting, and a trend now for natural selection amongst Chinese domestic manufacturers. The UK is seen as the go-to place for the Chinese to come. Why? Well, we haven't got major tariffs on Chinese product, and there's no clear national champion amongst UK manufacturers, as in other countries, except perhaps JLR. You'll have recently read that the UK is now BYD's biggest market outside of China. The Chinese cars typically have great technology, fantastic electric vehicles with great battery technology, and their hybrid cars are also much sought after. However, there will be a somewhat break on the exponential growth of the Chinese in all likelihood. We've got a lot of new brands coming into the United Kingdom, all requiring six-car showrooms, but there's no new build showrooms being put in place. This will limit growth. How many spare six-car showrooms actually are there? And we as Virtue need to balance chasing market share and growth of car sales with making money. And we will play the long game here. We will assess new entrants and we will assess in the short term whether we want to invest. You've got to remember, for a Chinese new brand, there is no high margin after sales. We have concentrated and will continue to do so on MG and indeed BYD. And we will clearly assess others over time. The third and topical discussion is around Finance Commission. The Supreme Court sat in the period and indeed did curtail the wildest aspects of potential claims against lenders in relation to Finance Commission in the auto sector. In what was perfect timing, last night the FCA released a consultation paper on any redress scheme. We're now in a period of consultation and we will be diligent and respond to the FCA in a very structured way. The FCH focus on redress is likely to be levied, at least initially, on lenders. We will, as retailers, be key to providing the data to actually calculate that redress scheme. We will continue to assess the position, but we do not currently consider the need for provisions. Our digitalisation strategy has always had two components. One is a push for technology to increase productivity and indeed control costs, and secondly to increase our sales and marketing effectiveness. We have to do both, though in this period, given the cost pressure, we probably put more effort into the cost control. Our finance efficiency project, which has been going on for the last 12 months, is now really bearing fruit and we're starting to deliver significant cost savings. We have reduced significantly the amount of invoicing between internal departments, and particularly we've developed technology to make sure cash processing doesn't need manual involvement for a lot of intercompany transactions, but also for external transactions. So we now have internet-based payment systems that are seamless, that a service customer can now pay, and the cash gets automatically posted into our dealer management system. There is more of this to come and more savings to be had. In terms of data and AI, our data warehouse is complete. Our customer data platform has gone from concept to reality, and we are now delivering multiple use cases to make us far more efficient and effective in personalized marketing. If you go onto the web and you abort a function such as trying to book an online service booking, you are likely to receive a personalized piece of marketing to get you back on track. This is delivering a good ROI. There is no doubt in our business that AI is actually real. The executive sat down and defined a strategy, which now our development teams are implementing. We have a formal AI policy to protect the business from AI issues. We actually held a competition for our 60-strong development arm, a Dragon's Dentite competition with a £10,000 prize to flush out great ideas that were capable of immediate implementation. And we are implementing them. Examples of use of AI. Use of customer-friendly technology to reduce calls into our contact center. We're using AI email systems to prospect service bookings from our database, and those bookings are effectively all done via email correspondence, and the booking goes straight into our dealer management system. One of the big areas to look at is that email sales inquiries are historically very low converting, and there's a lot of human effort gone into corresponding by email with potentially little reward. We're now starting to use AI to warm up those email sales leads to get them to a sufficiently hot prospect to enable humans then to finish off the job. We are at the start of the journey on this for sure. Third element is our new website, which We now have one single brand of virtue, and we therefore took the opportunity to revamp our website. We're doing it in modular stages, so it's not a big bang approach. We have made massive progress in terms of search engine optimization and user friendliness, and the full website will be redone by mid-2026. An area of weakness, I think, in our offering online is YouTube content, particularly around new and used vehicles, and we've certainly developed a strategy to make sure that we address that. Turning to brand aspects, the single Virtue brand is now in place, and I think we've avoided the major pitfalls in moving our major brand of Bristol Street Motors into Virtue in April. In September, the Virtue brand had a UK-prompted brand awareness of 11%. That has grown to 19% in September, and we fully expect us to hit 30% during the next financial year. The reasons for this growth is very simple. Having one brand increases our ROI on marketing activity. Team Virtue, with its fantastic BTCC racing team, were at Brands Hatch last weekend and won many trophies, including Best Driver and indeed Best Manufacturer. This then affects 191 sales outputs. The EFL Trophy at Wembley is a massive exercise in brand building. 75,000 people attended, never mind the early rounds, and it affects every single one of our dealerships. In recent weeks, to support the Virtue Trophy, I've had the pleasure of going to Barnet and MK Don's for the early round games, and it's great to see the Virtue brand very prominent. This isn't only about brand awareness, though. Our partnerships with the Manchester concert venue of Colt Live and the EFL gives us access to marketing databases with which we can then do direct marketing. In July, we took the step of having our first ever group-wide used car event under one brand. We used the full gamut of media, including a TV campaign, to drive increased inquiries through our dealerships, and a good time was had. We got a lot of excitement into our businesses, and we saw like-for-like used car sales in July up 12%, which is no mean feat. Next year, we intend to extend this strategy of having two 10-day used car events, but also having three new car events. The first time that we've used the power of the Virtue brand to have one event across the entire estate to drive new car sales. I think it will be a success. Finally, before Karen deals with the financial performance, I wanted to update you on a senior management structure change that we intend to make from the 1st of January and which we have announced today. The three founding directors of the business, myself, Karen, and our COO, David Crane, have been in place from 2006 when we formed a cash shell and we now lead a 5 billion revenue group. My span of control, I think, has been too large. I don't think it's fully amended the fact that we now run a highly complex and very large group. All the operation divisions report directly into me. And I think it's time to augment management. From the 1st of January, two of our trusted group operations directors, one who currently runs the BMW division and another who currently runs the Jaguar Atlanta division, will be promoted to managing director roles with the operator divisions reporting into them. This will give us greater bandwidth and will allow me to focus on the strategy and execution, particularly around growth and portfolio changes, seeing more of the manufacturers, which as a franchise operator is a very good thing, spending more time in the dealerships and indeed developing our senior leadership team. I am excited about this. I think it sets us fair for the years ahead. Karen.

Thank you, Robert. Slide 13 shows a summarised income statement for the group for the period. Group revenues grew by £35.4 million, with this growth attributed to acquisitions, particularly the Burrows acquisition, which was completed in October 2024. Core group revenues declined £49.2 million, predominantly in new vehicle sales due to lower motability vehicle volumes and the move to agency in the group's mini-dealerships. Gross margin increased to 11.2% due to the increased mix of higher margins after sales revenues. Costs grew as a percentage of revenue, however, were tightly controlled with core group costs rising just 0.3% or £0.7 million on prior year, despite the cost headwinds we faced. Adjusted operating profit reduced on prior levels, driven by the reduction of profitability from the new car channel, with this reduction flowing through to EPS. The group's interest costs grew slightly, with increased manufacturer stocking charges and lease interest partially offset by increased deposit income and the impact of reduced interest rates on our borrowings. Non-underlying costs represent redundancy costs, as the group applied technology to improve the efficiency particularly in the finance function, which moved to divisional accounts processing hubs in the period. In addition, exceptional non-underlying costs include the cost of closure of two of the group's dealership locations. Turning over to slide 14, here we have a profits bridge of the adjusted profit before tax compared to prior year for the period. Core group gross profit declined by a million pounds over the prior year period. And clearly the standout negative here is the 4.4 million pound reduction in gross profit from new vehicle sales. This decline was driven by a significant reduction in motability sales volumes consistent with the market decline in this channel. as well as significant discounting of battery electric vehicles, which impacted new vehicle margins. Offsetting this shortfall was the significantly improved gross profit generation from the group's resilient and high margin after sales operations. Our service department here benefited from an increase in the internal rate charged to the vehicle departments in the preparation for vehicle sales, which did actually move some gross profit from new and in particular used car sales into after sales. Used gross profit generation exceeded prior year levels. even after having absorbed the additional cost of preparation from service. Margins and volumes were broadly stable in the period, with the improvement in overall gross profit generation arising from improved gross profit per unit, which was aided by the group's used vehicle algorithm valuation tool. Core group operating expenses, as I said, grew just 0.7 million pounds, and I'll cover those movements in more detail on my next slide. Contributions from dealerships acquired or started up represents the year-on-year movement of £0.2 million. And this was expected given the start-up nature of some of the dealerships within this category, with improved returns expected as these dealerships mature. Turning to slide 15, we've given you further detail on the core and total group underlying expenses. Overall, core group operating expenses rose just 0.3% over the period, despite a significant increase in cost of employment driven by the autumn 2024 budget, which increased national minimum wage and company NIC costs considerably. The biggest single cost of the group is salary costs, remembering that the figures on this slide actually don't include the productive cost of technicians, which are in cost of sales. Salary costs in the core group in operating expenses rose just 0.3 million pounds over the period. And this reflected the impact of the group's cost saving initiatives, which we completed largely by 28th of February to offset the impact of that autumn budget increase, but also reflects some of the cost savings we've done in the current year in respect of things like finance efficiency. The greatest percentage cost rise was seen in marketing costs, which rose £2.1 million over the prior year in the period. The group invested in marketing both in the moot of a single brand virtue in the period and also in a 10-day used vehicle sale event for which there was no comparative in the prior period, which helped drive used vehicle sales volumes in what was undoubtedly a subdued market. The group delivered a saving of £1.9 million in vehicle and valet costs, reflecting cost-saving activity in this area, and Robert will cover this in more detail shortly. But this actually was combined with tight cost control in respect of the group's demonstrator and courtesy vehicle fleet. The group's chair-based payments charge now in underlying costs has increased as a result of the increase in number of management colleagues in the group to which awards are made following the acquisition of the Burroughs dealerships in October last year. Turning to slide 16, we've summarised the group's balance sheet. It remains very stable and strong, underpinned by the group's freehold and long leasehold property portfolio of £336 million, which is carried at historic depreciated cost. The increase in current assets compared to August 2024 relates predominantly to the movement in inventory shown here. New vehicle pipeline inventory, much of which is funded by our manufacturer partners, has increased since that date, while the group has been successful in reducing both used vehicle and demonstrated inventory levels again since August 2024. Used vehicle inventory has, however, increased by 17 million compared to the position at the year end at the end of February. And this relates to the tight supply of particularly three to five-year-old vehicles in the market. And as a result of that, the group took the decision to retain higher inventory levels at the 31st of August than we did at the end of February to ensure that the group had sufficient inventory to enable a good sales performance in September. And the 5.8 like-for-like growth in used vehicle sales volumes in September was undoubtedly aided by this decision. Crucially, though, used vehicle inventory was lower than the position at August last year, despite the acquisition of Burroughs. Tangible net assets per share are 76.1 pence, and this clearly reflects the strong asset backing of the group, and it's also increased on the level in February due to the shy buyback programme. Turning over to slide 17, this highlights the group's cash flows in the period. We generated a free cash inflow of 0.4 million. which was impacted by a £21.2 million cash outflow from working capital compared to the position at the end of February. The main elements of this outflow were a £14.5 million outflow relating to the increase in used vehicle inventory and our decision to retain higher inventory levels at the end of August, and an £11.2 million outflow from reduced deposits on forward orders. Deposits at February reflected the strong March order take, ahead in particular of vehicle excise duty changes in April, whilst at the end of August, we saw some customers deferring orders pending clarification on EV grants. This explains the comparative difference here in vehicle deposits held. Sustaining capital expenditure of 8.5 million was spent in the period, with this partially offset by proceeds from the sale of surplus properties of 3.3 million pounds. A further £2.5 million was spent on the period on capital projects which enhanced the operating capacity of the group. And this includes a new off-site vehicle preparation facility in York, together with, for example, the expansion of our Toyota outlet in Chesterfield. Net debt at the end of the period was £78.3 million, excluding lease liabilities, representing a £5.6 million decrease on the position last August, despite expending £22.5 to £2.4 million on the borrower's acquisition. Slide 18, which is my final slide, covers the group's capital allocation discipline. We remain focused and thoughtful around capital allocation, looking to achieve a balance between investment in growth and shareholder returns. When we look at growth, we target returns in excess of work at that weighted average cost of capital. And with our strong asset base and low gearing, we believe we can successfully balance both growth and shareholder returns. A key element of the group's approach to capital allocation is our pruning process. This is where we constantly review dealership operations to ensure an adequate return on investment and contribution to group profitability. Following such reviews, the group has exited a fiction outlet in Nottingham in the period, and the leasehold premises will be re-franchised to the Skoda franchise in November. In the period, the group also took some of these recycled properties held for resale and realised cash of £3.3 million, 10.7% in excess of book value. The group actually has a good track record of disposal of surplus properties, in particular at values in excess of book value, and this really reflects the policy of carrying our assets at historic depreciated cost. The group has had a programme of share buybacks in place since FY17. The group spent £5.6 million in the period on share buybacks, and since the start of these programmes has now bought back over 19% of issued share capital. The group announced a £12 million share buyback programme in February, and to the end of September had spent £7 million of this programme, leaving five remaining for the rest of FY26. As a reminder, the group has a stated full-year dividend policy of 2.5 to 3.5 times fully adjusted diluted EPS. And bearing that in mind, the FY26 interim dividend has been held at 0.9 pence per share. It's worth remembering, though, that the cash cost of each of our dividends is reducing as a result of the share buyback programme in action. I'll now hand back to Robert for a more detailed update on the group's trading in the period.

Thank you, Karen. So let's turn to the group vehicle sales performance. We're pleased to report we gained market share in all channels. In addition, margins were stable in new and used cars. There was a slight dilution in fleet and commercial, and this was a mix issue because we saw substantial growth in fleet cars and a decline in vans, and that mix impacted gross profit per unit. We saw weak growth returning to the new retail market. Now, this was after a very strong March, and it got weaker as the period went on. I think the government grants that have been introduced in the late summer are starting to reverse that. Motability saw continued weakness due to the renewals timing and indeed manufacturers having pressure on their margins and trying just to pull back. The 16.6% increase in fleet car volume is clearly to be applauded, and we took full advantage of the vibrancy of the fleet market, particularly in battery electric vehicle growth in areas such as leasing and salary sacrifice. The group has a core competency in the fleet channel. The van market was weak. It was down nearly 10% in the UK, and we think this reflects weak business confidence. We therefore saw overall a reduced gross profit in that channel. The used car market actually exhibited continued supply constraints, which held back volume for franchise retailers, especially in the three- to five-year-old park. This is the post-COVID new car supply problems working its way through the park. At some point relatively soon, we should see that work its way into five-year plus, and that affects independent used car operators more than franchise. We should see a franchise market share recovery. Trade prices, reflecting those supply constraints, have remained strong and stable. It's fair to say, though, that the subdued consumer probably put a lid on the extent to which retail prices could rise, and they didn't rise in proportion to trade prices. This led to the potential for some margin compression. If we take the group as opposed to the market, we're delighted, actually, that the group delivered increased gross profit in the used car channel and stable margins. We think our virtual analytics algorithmic pricing helped to navigate the market successfully. In addition, the July event saw a considerable difference being made to gross profit generation and volume, even to the extent of slightly weaker margins. But overall, our margins in the period were stable. The £600,000 increase then in the period in gross profit on a like-for-like basis in used cars was despite a significant shift in costs from the service department onto the used car department as a result of putting up our internal rates. This, we thought, was the right thing to do to reflect higher technician wages. We turn to the UK BEV market. There is growth in battery electric vehicles, but it is nowhere near getting the industry to the 28% ZEP mandate target that the government has set for 2025. It's fair to say that the private channel remains the weakest when the period reported 13.4% of registrations in the retail channel were BEVs, but the EV grants in August did boost interest in BEVs and increase the rate of growth. Clearly, we are absolutely delighted that while in the six months that BEV private retail sales were up 55.2%, the group delivered 82.4%, and that was on the basis actually of very strong growth in H2 last year as well. So we've had two six-month periods now of excellent performance in gaining market share in the BEV market. I also should probably note, just updating for September, the grants did lead to an increase in BevMix. Overall, BevMix rose to 23% in the month of September, compared to 21% in the six-month period, but we are still a long way short from 28%. If we turn to group after-sales, clearly another very strong performance from the after-sales side of the business. The start performer again was service, £3.6 million worth of increased gross profit in the core business, albeit £2.1 million came from higher internal charges to sales departments. Our vehicle health check process is being tightened up. Our pay later product is making a significant difference both to conversion of repair work identified and to the margin. We think there is still more to come if we can get more consistency across our businesses. We increased some prices in the service department and that also aided average invoice value. Turning to the parts department, there was half a million pounds more profit coming out of this in the core business, albeit on slightly weaker margins. We have appointed in September an internal promotion to group parts director to give us more focus on this channel. If there was a weakness in after sales, it came in the accident repair side of the business. Our smart repair business is still in growth mode, and we are adding vans both to our internal smart repair business for used car preparation and in an increasing business to external customers. The pressure came in accident repair centres. This is quite easy to explain. There has been a significant double-digit reduction in the number of accidents in the UK, which we are putting down to the increased technology within modern cars which prevent accidents. My car just stops quite often, far quicker than I would respond to risks. We are seeing, as the work has got reduced, lower margins, as people in the sector reduce margins to try and gain some volume, our accident repair centres continue to perform at a high level. If you look at more detail at service repairs, we've given some more data here. We've discussed the impact of the internal rate change, where we increased the labour costs that our used car department and new car departments had on internal work. So when a used car comes in, we spend two and a half to four hours of labour time on each car to prepare it for sale. Clearly, that has transferred costs to the used car department. We're delighted that used cars more than absorb that. And indeed, 58% of the lifelike service profit growth actually came from this change, which we think is right. There's no question that retention into our after sales business is absolutely critical. And how do we build retention? If this is clearly multifaceted, the first thing we've got to do is sell cars from the dealership locally in the area. No one travels 100 miles for a service. We've then got to deliver excellent customer experiences, not only on a sales visit, but then subsequently on a service visit. And more often than not, we do. We have excellent CRM processes, including now some AI components to make sure we're contacting the customer in a user-friendly way to actually get that booking back in. But retention products are also absolutely critical. We have 160,000 customers with a service plan, which means they've prepaid for their service over two to three years. We have a target that of the used cars that we sell, 50% have this retention product, and we're delivering on that metric. It's probably obvious, but as a vehicle park ages, and we've seen a significant aging over the last five years, older cars need more work and have higher bills, higher average invoice value. As you can see, over three years, old cars have a £375 average invoice value, less than three years, £275. The average age of a car in our workshop is now 4.85 years, which really goes against the perceived wisdom that franchise dealers only deal with cars in the warranty period. Our search for cost savings has been extensive. We believe that we cannot afford to do things for customers that are free, certainly if they involve labour, due to the impact of the national minimum wage. Historically, when you brought your car in for a service, we've given you a free wash and back. Not a valet, but certainly a wash and vacuum. This is now expensive. We've had a two-pronged attack to try and make sure we can control this cost. The first is used in behavioural science to give customers the reason to opt out from that service of a free washing vac. 60% of our customers actually check in for a service now prior to the visit online, and we then use a behavioural science to promote opt-outs. In addition, one of our core divisions actually piloted a charge for a washing vac, so ceased to do a free washing vac, and we charged £6.99. This led to a 60% drop in the demand for the free washing vac, and clearly we could then remove resource that was actually going to do that. That one division in the period saved £400,000 and had no perceptible increase on crystal experience scores. We're now rolling that out in the next few months over our non-premium businesses and expect further cost savings, both from an annualised perspective and across more businesses. So we believe the group is well positioned. We are a scaled group that's stable from a management perspective, well capitalised and certainly asset backed. We have the firepower both from a managerial perspective and from a financial perspective to expand our operations and indeed grow our scale. The digitalization strategy, which we've always had, is gathering pace. Certainly, AI transforms, I think, what we are capable of to the benefit of productivity and indeed customers. We remain a very people-focused business. AI will not change that. We have excellent people in the business up and down the country, from Glasgow to Truro, and aided by our technology, they can deliver for our customers. They are motivated to do so. They can also deliver for our manufacturers, and if manufacturers like what we do, we can get more franchise businesses. We are focused on doing the right things and working hard to win.

Thank you. We've had a number of questions pre-submitted and submitted live. And just as a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please type them into the Q&A box situated on the right-hand side of the screen. And the first question that we have is, what has been the specific impact on dealer profitability given the recent increase in employer NI charges? And what actions do you envisage taking to mitigate against further potential external employment cost increases?

We clearly have mitigated the £10 million that we disclosed in relation to the last autumn statement. Karen can sort of just outline which areas we've hit. In fairness, I think it would quite serve in the presentation. I think the key question there is the future. There are some more cost headwinds coming around national ending wage again in April, around changes to the ECOS scheme, which were all disclosed in the statement, and anything else that's conjured up in the autumn budget. Clearly, we're on a journey on cost. We've got some ideas that we haven't fully operationalised, washing back point being one of them. And then there's the role of technology. And actually, where we end up next year, at this point, I don't quite know, because I don't quite know what government's going to do and the extent to which we can operationalise speedily the ideas and initiatives that we've got. And we will clearly get into that in business planning in the next couple of months. But our aim is to race to try and mitigate as much as possible, just like we did this year when the FACS started. A £10 million hit due to the budget, but operating costs only up 0.3%, which I think is very good.

Thanks Robert. How is Virtue positioned to weather the ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty?

Well, I think we've got some positives. We've got a very stable management team. The management changes we're proposing help us, I think, in terms of giving us more bandwidth to deal with situations as and when they arrive and to take advantage of opportunities macroeconomic headlines will give us opportunities actually and i think we're quite cognizant of that and when the time is right we will we will action them um the fact we've got an in-house technology arm with stable management means we should know how our business operates we should be able to identify the areas we want to action from a technology point of view And I am convinced, having seen it in action and actually impacting productivity and cost, that technology in general and AI within it is quite an opportunity for us. So we'll certainly be focusing on that.

I think the move to a single brand helps us in terms of the marketing message as well. in terms of the scale of X group-wide.

Should give us more marketing ROI and give us efficiencies. We've got a job to do at the moment to rebuild the Promptly Grounded Awareness in the UK for marketing, but it certainly helps make us more efficient and productive.

Thank you. Next question is around the FCA announcement. Could you give us more detail on your thoughts on the FCA announcement yesterday and its impact on Virtue? I'm not sure I've got much more to add than that.

be put in the presentation really. The situation is relatively clear of what the FCA's position is. The redress schemes are primarily directed, that are directed at motor lenders. You would see further announcements from motor lenders about the need for increased provisions from themselves. We're involved in discussions with the FCA and we will be looking at the document We will make sure we respond in a structured and measured way within the timeframes. And I don't think, I think things have moved on, but I don't think our fundamental views on liabilities, where they sit, et cetera, change. And the board don't consider at this current point that we need provisions in relation to the redress.

I think the best thing is the removal of uncertainty, actually, as well. So once this is finalised, the uncertainty that's been hanging over the sector and potentially holding up acquisitions, certainly we're reticent sometimes, is gone. So we've got more certainty.

It would be much better when this issue was off the table, and I think actually that's the view lenders are taking, that, you know, let's just get this thing done and move on. Yeah.

Thank you. How do you see OEM manufacturer relationships evolving as the market transitions to agency models?

Well, the market isn't transitioning to an agency model. It's clearly a fallacy. We have seen some manufacturers move in that direction, Volvo, Mercedes, Smart Franchise. has moved towards agency. We saw MINI in the UK move towards it in March and BMW are set to move there in 2027. There is no general move in the rest of the sector. In fact, the reverse. Land Rover proposed it and then reversed. Volkswagen, Brands, Audi actually introduced it and reversed. So I don't think this is a major theme we're going to have to deal with.

Thank you. Next question. The balance between reinvestment in the business and returning capital to shareholders. How do you manage this?

I think we've got the strength in balance sheet and the cash-generative ability to manage it quite well. And we try and strike a balance between growth. Clearly, it's one of our strategic objectives to grow. But we're quite measured about growth. It isn't growth for growth's sake. It's making sure that whatever we spend our money on gives us a return in excess of wasted average cost of capital. And we like to balance that up with share buybacks and dividends. I mean, one of the arguments is... The share price of the group being what it is compared to our tangible net assets value means that we can effectively buy ourselves at a discount. We can't really do that for acquisitions. So I can see the argument for sort of balancing it more towards share buyback. But we think we want to maintain our position as one of the bigger players. We think scale is important and therefore it's vital we balance up the two.

Thanks, Gail. A technical question around the share buyback. The question is, your share buyback, what is the average price you've paid since you started the buyback, including pension shares?

Including which pension shares?

Including pension shares.

Share incentive plan shares. Not sure about the share incentive plan shares, but of the 78 million shares we've bought back since the programme began, we've paid an average price of 54 pence.

Excellent, thank you very much.

And the employee trust shares are bought in and then sent back out again, so I don't think that's particularly relevant, it's not a buyback one. Yeah, 54 pence, which is actually significantly lower than tangible net assets per share.

Yeah. Thank you. Next question. Robert, you mentioned the management changes so that you can focus on more strategic elements of the business. Is this also an element of success?

succession planning yeah i think that i don't actually agree that the the change has been made for me to like to look more strategic um i think it's a little bit more nuanced than that i aim to spend my time actually more with manufacturers of which we've got over 34 a lot of new manufacturers coming on i think it's important i build relationships with them and i haven't spent enough time in my view with manufacturers um i actually want to spend more time in dealerships and actually get closer to the action and understand what's going on for colleagues and for our customers. The two new managing director roles will take responsibility for the operation directors who currently point to myself. They will do the monthly reviews and hopefully execute tighter within the business. I think we've been lacking a bit of bandwidth. We are literally a five billion pound business and we were broadly running it a bit like it was half the size so i think this is the right thing to do there is clearly a succession planning element to this but i think that is you know not willing a long time off not a short time off but actually making the step up say to ceo we would envisage would be much easier from an md role than it would be from a group operation director role and actually one of the key focus areas is for me to spend time with senior management and executives and continue to develop them. Both Leon and Anthony have come out of our Next Generation programme. We've got a new round of Next Generation, 12 people who are being put through their paces for senior development. And I think that's very important for the sustainability group and for us to generate value for shareholders. I wouldn't get too excited about succession planning just yet, but I think there is a general direction.

Thank you. We've had a lot of questions relating to Jaguar Land Rover. Robert, maybe you could talk us through what we should expect to happen next. Well, surprisingly, I have not got a crystal ball.

So I think the main thing to say is nobody knows, actually. All we can set out is the impact in September, which was marked, £2 million impact on profits. And a statement, which is fact that things have eased in the last 10 days. We're getting far more parts now. Clearly, production has just started, but there's a question mark over the extent to which we'll get new car product. And there clearly has been a gap, and there's an unknown about that. And we've done an assessment of the full year impact. We think, we hope, we've erred somewhat on the side of caution with the 5.5 million. The words were up to 5.5 million, but the answer is no one knows. And when you look at the history of other cyber impacts around M&S, it's taken them quite a while. So I think we are pretty cautious and flagging that there clearly is an issue. There was an issue that two of the 5.5 is literally banks. So there is continuing disruption, though it has actually eased better than I expected, I think, in the last sort of 10 days, and I think our assessments reflect that. Clearly a completely unfortunate one-off event. Now, we do have, as we flagged, an insurance policy that colours us for business disruption from third-party outages. clearly is a positive thing. The £5.5 million up to does not include any recompense from any insurance policy. So it's potential that we'll have some upside thereafter. We have appointed forensic accountants to help us put together the claim and are clearly working with insurance. But you can't finalise a claim when you haven't finalised the impact. So this will clearly be covered in further announcements in due course.

Thank you, Robert. Slower than expected EV adoption has been in the news. How are you managing the potential impact? There's an additional element to that as well, so I missed that. And how have the recent EV incentives affected the market was the other part to that question.

I think there's a short-term and a medium-term element to this. I think we've been quite vocal that, you know, There's more chance of Burnley staying in the Premier League than there is of it in these EV targets. There is no chance of the industry hitting these EV targets. So the target for 2025 is a battery electric vehicle mix of 28%. With the electric vehicle grants clearly aiding the September market, they definitely did aid the September market, and they'll aid the market for the rest of this year, maybe into next year. the industry at 23% or just over 23%. So clearly, no one's going to hit those targets. In the short term, I am more optimistic today than I was 12 months ago about the near-term prospects for the rest of our financial year. I think there are three reasons, which I outlined in the presentation. First off, the government has improved the amount of flexibility within the ZEV mandate target, so manufacturers can effectively not hit 28% and still not pay fines. That's positive. That takes a bit of pressure. Second, the EEV grants that were put in place, which are not for everybody, in terms of not every manufacturer has got them, but they have led to increased consumer demand for battery electric vehicles. Now, there's a fascinating debate about whether this is making people switch from petrol and diesel and hybrids into battery electric vehicles, or whether it's actually augmenting the overall market. I think there's probably a bit of both. The third element is we are now getting desperately what we needed, which is our cheaper battery electric vehicles. I outlined that in the presentation. That helps. So in the near term, I am optimistic. However, I wouldn't like investors to think that this whole electrification thing has got kicked into the long grass and has gone away. It hasn't. The targets are unachievable. This is a headwind on future manufacture profitability and therefore, by definition, sector retail profitability. We look at our last three targets. periods of six months we've seen new retail and motability profitability decline in each of those periods quite markedly actually so clearly there is a headwind and a sector issue and i think the industry manufacturers and retailers predominantly manufacturers will come back to the government at some point because the pressure will build again And we haven't even really talked about the van mandate targets, which I think are even worse. I don't think white van man won't say electric van. So near term, a bit happier. Medium term, still concerned. And the whole thing will have to get revisited. There is a global move back to petrol and hybrid. Started off in the US under Trump, but it's actually well advanced now in Europe. There's a lot of thinking going on in Europe about extending timescales. It's fair to say our governments are not at the front of the queue in rethinking the policy. But the zeitgeist noise among certainly the opposition parties is this has to be tackled because it is not creating value. So I think it's one to watch, really. The problem has not gone away. But I am more confident, actually, in the short run than I was this time last year. That is for sure.

Thanks, Robert. I'm just conscious of time at the moment, so maybe we'll go for a bit more quickfire questions at the moment, as we've only got sort of four minutes left. Karen, given the strong balance sheet of freehold, favourable leasehold properties and cash position, would you consider relisting as a property company with a healthy cash balance generating tenants?

Never thought about it, no.

I don't think it's a serious question, let's be honest. Successful retailers have always had high levels of freehold property and those with only leasehold property tend to find problems. We are an operational business primarily, albeit with a very, very strong property portfolio. So I understand where the question is coming from.

It's just not on the agenda. Thank you, Robert. Can you expand on potential BYD and Chinese manufacturers in the UK?

Well, I think we will expand. I think that's what the question was asking. We will engage with the Chinese manufacturers because I think they will take some share. That share will be limited by the number of showrooms available in the United Kingdom. We've got to be very clear that we will prioritise profitability in the short and medium term rather than go and chase market share. Remember, Chinese operators have no after sales and a lot of our profit comes from after sales. So we will not go chasing shiny new toys. We will make financial decisions based on investment hurdles. And if that means we're slower in adopting Chinese brands, then so be it. It doesn't preclude you from then acquiring them later on in acquisitions. And I suspect that's where we'll end up. We are very confident on BYD. I think it is an excellent technology company that makes cars and their marketing is excellent. So I think we're very confident in that. We will grow with some others, but I don't think we'll be at the front of the queue actually.

And with limited historic vehicle parts in um sorry just which has disappeared for me it's there sorry we'll move on to a different one that's there and what impact will increased um bv vehicles share have on high margin service revenues in future due to their reduced service stroke repair requirements uh that's a good question and i think the standard avians are obviously ahead on the curve um i think it switches between parts and labor you get less parts

Oil filters being a classic example, oil being another example, but there's still a labour requirement. When things go wrong, they go wrong big and they go wrong with heavy labour. We make 75% labour margins and we make 20% fast margins. So actually, we can afford for average invoice values to come down, but that makes us still protect profitability. The key question is... Will modern cars be serviced and repaired by franchise retailers or by independents or not at all? And I think we're pretty confident, actually, that the technology is so sophisticated that if something goes wrong with one of these modern cars, they're coming back to the franchise retailer. And I've seen very little evidence to say that isn't going to happen.

Thanks Robert. Last question. The potential regulatory changes to employee car ownership schemes could increase costs by around £2.5 million per annum. What mitigation strategies are being explored?

None. That's the point, isn't it? There's no mitigation strategy. That is a fact. What we'd have to do clearly is, as I said in the early question, is a race, isn't it, of structural cost changes and then trying to find structural cost savings on the other side, which we have been spectacularly successful this year. But clearly it is an exceedingly unhelpful development and symptomatic of this government's policy towards British business.

Well, Robert and Karen, thank you very much for the questions today. Robert, just going to hand back to you for any closing remarks at the moment.

Well, I'd just like to say thank you for giving up your time. I know your time is very precious. There are a lot of companies you could spend time looking into and investing in. We feel we've got a very, very strong operational business. The UK is not the easiest place in the world to do business at the moment, but one day the clouds will clear and we will have an exceptionally strong, large business with which then to expand and do very well in. Thank you.

Thank you very much. That concludes the Virtu Motors investor presentation. I'd like to thank Karen and Robert for that. Please take a moment to complete the short survey following this event. The recording of the presentation will be made available on the Engage Investor platform. I hope you enjoyed today's webinar. Thank you.

Thank you.