Wickes Group plc

Good morning, everyone. It's great to have you here with us today, whether in the room or joining us online. Welcome. Over the next 20 minutes or so, myself and our CFO, Mark, will walk you through our first half results for 2026, breaking down our business performance, exploring broader market trends, and sharing how our proven growth levers continue to drive market outperformance. Overall this has been a strong period for the business. I am pleased to report that in retail we have continued a strong volume led sales growth trajectory despite a deflationary pricing environment as more customers turn to Wix more often. Within design and installation, customers continue to react positively to the enhancements made to our kitchen and bathroom proposition, resulting in our fifth consecutive quarter of positive like-for-like growth. Together, Group revenue increased 2.1%. The benefits of delivering sustained volume growth alongside our productivity plan resulted in a 1.1% increase in adjusted profit before tax to £27.6 million. All delivered in the absence of any market tailwinds. A clear demonstration of the strength of our self-help growth levers. Looking ahead, continued sales growth and our productivity programme will further support profitability in the second half. Our proven growth investment in our store estate continues. In the first half, we refitted and refreshed eight stores with a further four planned in the second half. We also remain on track for four to five new stores within the year to go, whilst building a strong pipeline to support our accelerated ambition of 300 stores. We are delivering attractive returns to shareholders and have announced today an increased interim dividend of 2.8% to 3.7p, signalling our intention to grow dividend and dividend cover as profits increase. We have completed the £10 million share buyback and also funded a further £9 million worth of share purchases for the Employee Benefit Trust. As anticipated, trading so far in Q3 has shown a significant step up with mid single digit light for light revenue growth in retail as we remain on track to meet market expectations for adjusted PBT this year. Before I hand over to Mark, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of my brilliant colleagues for their incredible work in delivering these results. Thank you.

Thank you David and good morning everyone. As David mentioned we had a good first half with growth in both sales and profits. This slide has a summary of the highlights but as we cover all of these points in other slides I'm going to skip over this one. So on the next slide we have a summary of the P&L. We grew sales in the first half by 2.1%. In retail this was 0.8% growth and design and installation 5.7% as we worked through the healthy order book built up during 2025. Gross margin rate was broadly flat with just 0.1 percentage point movement. Operating costs grew by 1.9% with productivity helping to offset some of the cost inflation we've experienced. A couple of examples of productivity initiatives that we've delivered in the first half. In design and installation, a new online journey for booking appointments has improved the customer experience and lowered our customer call centre costs. Also in design and installation a big focus on right first time from design to delivery is reducing costs and improving customer satisfaction. Also within operating costs is a step up in investment in tech and in property and a bit more detail on this in a moment. Overall, the PBT margin in the first half is flat year on year. With an uplift in both sales growth and productivity in the second half, we expect H2 to show a good step up in profit year on year, and as a result, deliver an increase in PBT margin for the full year. So let's look at the P&L drivers in a bit more detail, starting with sales. In retail, we've seen an improving trend across the year so far. In Q1, adverse weather meant sales were in slight decline, but this improved in Q2. And as David has mentioned, we've seen this step up significantly in Q3 so far. In all quarters, we've seen good volume growth with deflation in the business of between two and 3% in the first half, as you can see on the table there. Now we expect to see inflation turn positive in Q4. It's also worth reflecting on the two year like for likes, because we were lapping a good H1 last year. As you can see in the table, even with very tough trading conditions in Q1, the two year like for like for the half was still 6%. In design and installation, we've now had five consecutive quarters of delivered sales growth, following a strong performance in ordered sales last year. In the first half of this year, we've seen an increase in the number of new projects sold. However, with a shift in mix towards lower AOV projects, bespoke bathrooms and lifestyle kitchens in particular, overall ordered sales have been slightly down. This will result in a flatter profile for delivered sales growth in H2. So now turning to the profit bridge, which helps highlight the key drivers of our H1 performance. The 2.1% sales growth gave us 10 million of margin upside, offset by 5 million of volume-related costs. In terms of other operating costs, you can see here that inflation remains a headwind. And whilst we've continued to deliver some good productivity savings, they have not fully offset the cost inflation. The further cost savings shown separately here is that we've saved about a million pounds in business rates in the first half and this will be about two million in the second half. We continue to invest in the business to drive future growth and productivity and as you can see here in aggregate this has stepped up by around five million pounds year on year. This is mainly investment in technology and the opex costs of our property development plan. So a good performance on profit given the challenging trading conditions and the inflationary headwinds. So turning to cash, we are a cash generative business and even in a challenging economic environment, we can generate cash to reinvest in the business and deliver good returns to shareholders. We ended the period with £152 million of cash. Now, as you know, the half year is a high point for our annual cycle and the significant improvement in working capital in the first half will unwind in the second half. A couple of other things to note on this bridge. CapEx this year will be H2 weighted with much of our property programme happening in the second half. In H1, we had £11 million of cash out for CapEx and we expect around £40 million for the year as a whole. Also in the first half we've returned £26 million to shareholders, £16 million in dividends and £10 million in share buybacks. We've also funded the EBT by a further £9 million. So overall a very healthy cash position enabling us to fund our growth strategy whilst also delivering good returns to shareholders. I'll end with some comments on outlook and guidance. So far in Q3, as anticipated, we've seen a significant step up in performance with retail sales in mid single digit light for light growth. This strong sales growth plus the additional cost savings expected in H2 mean we are on track to meet market expectations of around 10% growth in PBT for the year. Now we've also provided here the usual guidance on tax and capex etc. And just as a reminder on dividend, we plan to grow the dividend and the cover as profits increase. And as David said, we've started today that process by announcing a 2.8% increase in our interim dividend from 3.6 pence to 3.7 pence. So in summary, the business has had a good first half and as we move into the second half with improving sales in Q3, we are well placed to deliver another good year of profit growth in 2026. With that, I'll hand back to David.

Thank you, Mark. This slide simply illustrates the clarity and consistency of our strategy that is working so successfully, enabling us to drive growth and market outperformance while supporting our purpose to simply help the nation feel house proud. Over the next few slides, I'll share how we're investing in these growth levers to continue to win in the market. But before I do that, let me share some headline insight into current consumer trends that we are seeing through our monthly Mood of the Nation survey. Encouragingly, we see a high degree of stability of where the customer is right now. Local trades still tell us they are busy with around 30% having a healthy 12 month plus pipeline of work. One in five customers in the market plan to take on a new kitchen or bathroom project and spending plans have remained stable over the last few months. We can see in our own performance data that customers are looking for more affordable solutions for bigger projects. and in DIY people remain keen to improve their homes with one in two consumers planning to decorate a room over the course of the next 12 months. Speed and convenience continues to be important to them as seen in the growth of our 15-minute click and collect, home delivery and Wix rapid propositions. We are particularly pleased that sales growth in retail is purely volume driven and this is all down to more customers shopping with us in store or online. Our TradePro membership scheme goes from strength to strength with sales up 5% driven by a record level of 671,000 active members. Our market share in retail has increased again year on year, with a number of key range reviews driving out performance, in particular in decorative, which is an all-time market share high, and gardening and timber, all supporting growth in our DIY customer base. We continue to focus on what matters most to our customers, certainty of value, clarity of choice, speed and convenience. Our digitally led service enabled model delivers that promise seamlessly, driving 7% growth across click and collect and home delivery. We know that customers value the products and services we offer and we see this very clearly in our customer satisfaction metrics. For example, 86% of customers rate our 15 minute collect and collect service as excellent or good and that rises to 90% for our home delivery service which we uniquely operate from all stores. As we turn to design and installation, delivered sales in this part of the business have been strong for the last five consecutive quarters as customers react positively to our breadth of offering across good, better and best ranges. We have achieved volume growth across the total number of projects served, a result not just of great innovation in the more affordable segment of the market, where we now offer 23 ranges of lifestyle kitchens, but also encouraging customer engagement in our top-end, hand-painted, paint-to-order range. and in bespoke bathrooms we've seen success with a new bayswater collection which you can see on the right and a host of new fitted and modular furniture. Crucially our customers are telling us that we're hitting the mark. 96% rate us excellent or good from lead to order. We have successfully re-based the Wix solar business and are now backing growth through high quality lead generation and customer journey with strong conversion. In addition, we will install solar on a further five Wix stores this year and have some interesting B2B opportunities in the pipeline. Turning now to investment in our store estate, the strong performance of our existing and new stores, alongside our proven ability to operate successfully in smaller footprint stores, led us to announce earlier this year our scaled up ambition to reach a network of 300. Our plans are on track and in the first half we have refitted or refreshed eight stores with 84% of the estate now in the new format with a further four to come in the year. We also plan to open four to five new stores in the second half with Saffron Warden opening this week. We continue to strengthen our future property pipeline focusing on white space opportunities and underserved larger towns and cities. For 2027 we plan to open between seven to nine new stores and we will accelerate to 10 plus per year from 2028. Moving on to our Responsible Business Strategy, which is embedded deeply within our business. When some of you join us on store tours, you can often meet leaders who started at WIC straight out of school and now run £10 million stores. We are incredibly proud to be a destination for early talent, with around 30% of our store colleagues aged 16 to 24. Through our dedicated training programmes, we are actively equipping the next generation of retail leaders. Tool theft affects over a third of UK tradespeople, costing them £2,500 on average, impacting their ability to work and in some cases really affecting their mental wellbeing. In the first half we stepped up for our trade community, pledging to protect well over a quarter of a million power tools across the UK this year by providing free tool marking kits in stores. and we are well on our way to hitting our two million fundraising target for our charity partner Calm, having already raised an incredible 1.3 million to date. and it is fantastic to be recognised for all of the work we do as part of our responsible business strategy with highly positive ESG ratings. We maintained our AAA rating in MSCI and we continue to be included in the FTSE for Good Index having improved our latest score from 4.2 to 4.4 out of 5. So to conclude, we have made great progress in the first half, growing volume, sales and profits through the strength of our own self-help levers, really demonstrating our value-led and highly differentiated business model. Our growth momentum through the first half has continued to build in Q3 and whilst we are winning market share and growing volume, there is still so much more to go for. Today we hold just 5% of the £35 billion addressable UK home improvement market. The headroom for growth is tremendous. That is why we are accelerating our property ambition, going further and faster to expand our store footprint by 30%. This is all underpinned by a strong cash flow generation enabling us to invest in our proven growth leaders and deliver attractive shareholder returns. Thank you for listening. Mark and I will now be happy to take any questions.