Whitbread plc

Good morning all, and thank you for joining us for the Whitbread FY25 interim results live Q&A. My name is Carly, and I'll be your call coordinator for today. If you'd like to register a question during the call, you can do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad, and to remove yourself from the line of questioning will be star followed by two. And I'd like to hand over to your host, Dominic Paul, to begin. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Carly. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining myself and Hemant Patel, our group CFO for our half-year results call. Hopefully, you've had a chance to read through our release and listen to our results presentation this morning. Before we open up the call for Q&A, I thought I would pull out a few key points. Firstly, I'd just like to cover the progress we've made in the first half and what we are seeing in current trading. And secondly, how that is underpinning our confidence in the medium-term outlook as set out in our new five-year plan. As you've all seen, the UK market has been a little bit softer than last year, where demand was particularly strong, and we outperformed the rest of the mid-scale and economy segment by some margin. This year, despite being up against some really challenging comparators, we stayed ahead of the market on accommodation sales. And whilst revenues were impacted by our decision to transform our food and beverage offer through our accelerating growth plan, with an improved performance in Germany, we delivered a robust performance during the first half. As we moved into quarter three, after a softer start to September in the UK, recent trading has been more encouraging and with an improving trend relative to the market in both London and the regions. As we look forward, I'll just note a few things. Firstly, our commercial initiatives are starting to land, evidenced by our outperformance versus the market that stepped up in the current trading period. Secondly, our forward book position is positive across the rest of October and November. And thirdly, comparatives for the remainder of the year will start to get easier. Food and beverage is performing exactly as expected and we continue to make good progress on our accelerating growth plan. We're also really pleased with the progress we've made on efficiencies and have increased our guidance this year to deliver 60 million pounds of cost savings, a 10 million pound uplift. We see significant opportunity in Germany. We're really pleased with the strength of our performance in the first half, which has continued into the current trading period, and we remain on track to break even on a run rate basis later this year. This performance and our excellent progress on the key initiatives has increased our confidence in the medium-term outlook, as summarized by our new five-year plan. The five-year plan will deliver an additional £300 million more profit over the next five years. And by keeping net capex at £500 million per annum after proceeds from property-related transactions and leverage in line with current levels, this will generate more than £2 billion for dividends, share buybacks and, if suitable opportunities arise, additional high-returning investments. Now, for illustrative purposes, Our plan only assumes that UK like-for-like sales growth and efficiencies in our plan equals UK cost inflation. Obviously, we can't predict inflation and UK market growth, but we have controllable levers through our efficiency and commercial programs that will help us to grow margins over the life of the plan, and we feel confident in doing so, driving returns and profits even higher. We're executing really well. We're confident in the outlook as reflected in our increased dividend per share and further £100 million share buyback. Before we move into Q&A, in the interest of time, could I ask each of you to keep your questions to a maximum of two, please? Thank you. And with that, I'll hand you back over to Carly to host the Q&A.

Thank you very much. We'd now like to open the lines for Q&A. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. And to remove yourself, it will be star followed by two. Our first question comes from Jamie Roller of Morgan Stanley. Jamie, your line is now open.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. First is, just on the long-term profit target, I'm sort of intrigued as to why you've announced one. You've not had one before. So why come up with one and why now? And the second question is on the two billion pounds of excess free cash flow. Would you encourage us to incorporate a share buyback each year into numbers or do you want to keep the door open for M&A? Thank you.

Thanks, Jamie. I guess, you know. Obviously, we've spoken to a number of investors over the last kind of 12 or 18 months. And one of my observations has been that whilst we've announced a number of really interesting, exciting strategic initiatives, I could see that people were struggling to put them all together and therefore work out what it actually meant for the business moving forward. I mean, we're super excited about Woodbred. We think this business has got an unusual number of levers at our disposal to drive improvement. But we could see that people were struggling to put all of those levers together and work out what it meant for the business moving forward. The beauty of the five-year plan that I think we've outlined is that all of the initiatives that we're talking about that drive a material step change in our returns and profit are already underway. And we've got high confidence in our ability to deliver them. So we take each of them in turn. Accelerating growth plan, we've already announced that. removing loss-making restaurants, replacing with high-returning hotel rooms, building integrated food and beverage operations that are best for our guests overall. We have a high level of confidence on what those extensions return because we've done many extensions in the past. The efficiency plan, I mean, Hemant has stood over a super detailed piece of efficiency work which gives us really high confidence in what we can deliver from an efficiency point of view. Germany, going from a headwind to a tailwind as we move the business into profitability and add material, more room growth moving forward. Again, we haven't been able to have the data to support our confidence in Germany over the last 12 or 18 months. You can see now that data is really supporting that confidence, which enables us to feel very confident about what we're building in Germany. All of this underpinned by that room growth that we've underlined today, again, which we can be really confident about what it pulls together. So putting all of that together, we felt it was actually the right time to talk about our five-year plan targets. We've got all of those initiatives in trail. We've got really good momentum building between each one. And then with things like our new reservation system in place, we're also building the confidence about being able to pull the commercial levers to drive our REVPAR and revenue moving forward in both the UK and in Germany. So we felt it was the right time to pull all of that together and talk about what the next five years can look like, because we think it's actually a super exciting story that A, delivers strong growth. enables us to take advantage of this structural undersupply in the UK hotel market, prove that Premier Inc can grow internationally by driving performance in Germany and generating very material shareholder returns. The £2 billion is just under 40% of our current market capitalization. So we felt it was the right time to put all of that together. In terms of the question about share buybacks, I mean, Hemant can probably build on this if appropriate, but I think Hemant has outlined a very clear capital allocation framework and our track record, I think, speaks a lot. Since April last year, we've returned over a billion pounds to shareholders. We've utilized both dividends and share buyback. We'll continue to utilize the capital allocation framework that we have laid out. But I think we've been very clear on our focus that this business should generate at least £2 billion over the next five years. To be clear, the plan that we've outlined today is fully funded from a CapEx point of view. So to your question about kind of future M&A, we would only do something if we felt it was a material opportunity for Whitbread overall would drive returns upwards. But we currently have no plans in that area. and have outlined within our plan today significant overall growth, which is fully funded within the five-year plan numbers that we've outlined.

Thank you. And you're not going to reveal the annual send, lease, back or disposal proceeds going forwards within the £2 billion, correct?

No, no, we're not going to. But what we have done, which is, again, the first time we've done something like this, we've outlined a net capex number. So within that, it's obviously an assumption that there will be some recycling of capital within it. We think that overall shows a great level of, you know, shows capital discipline, but also shows us smartly recycling capital within the business. And then we're really pleased to be able to, as part of the announcement today, we outlined that we'd very recently just done two sale and leaseback transactions, a blended yield of 4.1%, which we think are good data points for us to underline the strength of our covenant and the strength of the WIPREG business overall, which I think is very supportive to this view of recycling capital moving forward.

I know what our journey is. We have this year's disclosal proceeds, so between 175 and 225 million for the certainly facts that Dominic's mentioned, the 56 million pounds of certainly facts we've already transacted, the previous proceeds from the accelerated growth plan and other other disposals and asset improvements as well. So we will dispose as we know, but the reality is we think it's sensible to leave a little bit of flexibility in the framework because we don't know exactly the timing of when we'll be able to send lease banks, et cetera, and some of the capital plays in particular to go into the after years of the plan. But rest assured, the net £500 million is the average we're committing to over that five-year period.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Jamie.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Vicky Stern of Barclays. Vicky, your line is now open.

Yeah, morning. First one's on Germany. Hi. So the five-year plan obviously gets you to 70 million of PBT by 2030. Just trying to get a sense on how you're thinking about the shape of that delta from where we are today. And specifically just thinking about the ramp-up then into next year. Obviously you're confident in break-even on a run rate basis this year. Any sort of nervous in terms of the macro backdrop setting you back in any way as you sort of look into next year or you're confident enough in the sort of self-help pieces that you talked about and that ramp up coming through that you definitely think it's going to be sort of incremental positives. I guess consensus has about a 10 million in profit for next year for Germany. So any sense around that, Yixin? And then similar really on the UK, thinking about the shape of that growth into next year, obviously there's going to be a nice boost from the ADP program, but just curious how you're thinking at this stage on cost inflation into next year and any early thinking on the group's ability to sort of fully mitigate that with the cost savings and REFPA growth.

Yeah, so Vicky, why don't I take the first part of it, I'll talk a bit about Germany, and then I'll hand over to Hemant who can talk a little bit about shape. I mean, he obviously won't be able to go into the details year by year, but he can talk to you a little bit about his thinking about that. I think the key thing for us in Germany is we've still got a maturing estate, but actually those mature hotels that we've got are performing really well. They are now They're now consistently performing ahead of the market. They're generating profits. They're performing ahead of the market. And we're overall seeing really good performance as we pull those commercial levers in Germany. The brand awareness is building. Our guest satisfaction scores are at a record level. We've really sharpened up things like our digital marketing approach in Germany, our pricing on key events. Using online travel agents in a sensible way to generate incremental demand, putting all of that together, it's really supporting our growth in Germany. From a macroeconomic backdrop, I mean, Germany is probably a little bit more, I think, you know, I think generally people are feeling a bit more confident about the UK now, inflation coming down, interest rates likely to come down. Germany is probably lagging a little bit. Actually, we're not too worried about that because we've got this maturing estate and we've got so much headroom to catch up into. And I also think I'd back Germany over the next few years to continue to be a growth economy. But the biggest opportunity for us in Germany is to mature the business and mature the estate. And we've got a lot of headroom to grow into in Germany. So I guess that's part of the reason why we're feeling so confident. And the fact that the numbers back that up, you can see that in the numbers that we've outlined today. In terms of your question about the UK and inflation, I mean, for illustrative purposes, we said at the beginning, we've assumed that efficiencies and inflation net out with a like for like. The reality is, if you look pre-pandemic, As you know, Vicky, the actual historical kind of respire growth was over 2%. So I think we've been pretty conservative in the five-year plan assumptions that we've made. I would back us to do better than we've talked about today, but I think it's also sensible to have conservative assumptions. some conservatism built into the plan. But with the commercial levers that we've got open to us in the UK, just things like the ancillary revenues, the room with a view, the early check-in, late check-out, as well as continue to optimize our pricing, Premier Plus rolling out further, there are really good opportunities to drive RevPAR over the course of this plan.

i think there's inherent conservatism within the five-year plan i think that's a sensible thing um but i think that you know that's part of the reason why we say at least two billion pounds because we'd back ourselves to do better yeah if i if i if i start with germany and just just um just in terms of the uk as well so just on germany yeah i mean um just just adding to what dominic's talked about clearly we're announcing today that in five years we'll have an improvement of prosperity of 80 million pounds between now and then. Now, clearly that is a mix there between we've got 10,500 to 11,000 rooms open now. By that time, obviously, they will be fully mature. They will be within our target range of return on capital of between 10% and 14%. On average, we think for the full estate at that point will be 80 euros, but that includes approximately 9,000 rooms that obviously haven't opened yet and then that will be still maturing on average at that stage. So when you think about how you might model that over the next few years, I think you'd start with that mature cohort. It's likely that the REVPAR will steadily increase over that time, both through occupancy and ARR. We're not saying those sites are fully mature, by the way, at this stage. We've still got a delayed maturity because of the impact of the pandemic, and a lot of these sites still have only opened, really, in the last two to three years. So they're still maturing. But also, I'd assume cost as well, just average cost inflation and some of those. On the immature cohort, the 9,000 or so rooms that we're going to be opening, I think the phasing of the openings are likely to be back-ended. So not this year, next year, but then more into the three to four years after that. We'll start to see those coming through. Clearly, we've given you guidance in terms of costs that you could achieve, which you then apply inflation to. But also, in terms of RETPAR assumptions, clearly the RETPAR of these sites will be lower than the mature cohorts and will be building over time. As I said, the average, we expect to get to 80 euros on average at that time. We think that's conservative. We think that other players in the market, you know, trading above that now, let alone in five years' time. But, you know, we think this is a start point for what we would like to share with everyone. In terms of the UK, I mean, we're not getting specific guidance on cost inflation for next year. You know, as Dominic said, we haven't given cost inflation guidance across this five-year plan. We just talked about, you know, the fact that our life flights are likely to offset any cost inflation that we're not able to public through the efficiency plan as Dominic just mentioned. So I'm not giving specific cost inflation guidance yet. We will obviously do so when we get through January and we get to our final quarterly results. You do know obviously that there's a 20 to 25 million pound reversal from the experience and growth program that we're going to come through next year. But beyond that, we're not giving any specific guidance on UK profitability at this stage.

Okay, that's great. Thanks very much. Thank you, Vicky.

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Reneba Kayani of Bank of America. Reneba, your line is now open.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just on recent trading trends, if I heard correctly, you said that forward bookings are encouraging. So how do they compare with the minus 4% ref bar that you saw in the first six weeks. And what do you think is driving that kind of improvement? Then secondly, just going back to the share buybacks, how did you think about the 100 million new buyback as the right amount? And the question earlier around, should we be then modeling kind of recurring buybacks? Some framework around that would be helpful. Thank you.

Okay, thanks Minerva. So let me touch on your trading question. Excuse me. And then I'll probably hand over to Hemant who can reiterate the capital allocation framework. I mean, in the recent... We definitely saw a softer start to September. And I think for those of you who are based in London, you probably would have seen that. The first 10 days of September, London was noticeably quieter than it had been the year before. I think there was a little bit of... Normalization of business travel this summer versus last summer, which was definitely a spectacular summer of trading last year and some catch up post-COVID. What we saw kind of at the beginning of September was business travel was a little bit slower getting back to normal. Since that period, actually, we've seen business travel bounce back really nicely. And the last few weeks, we've seen that in numbers. I know that the STR data has been rocky and has been bouncing around a bit. I mean, what I would say is our outperformance versus the market over the last few weeks looks like it's extended. So I think just the last four weeks, for example, our performance versus the market was plus 1.6 percentage point versus the plus 1 percentage point for the entire current trading period. So you can see our performance versus the market has widened. I mean, moving forward, of course, it's hard to predict travel trends overall, but we've got this underpin of UK supply being materially down and not likely to get back to pre-pandemic levels until at least 2028 or 2029. So that, I think, is an underpin for the pricing environment within the UK. I guess that's the first point to make. The second point to make is we can just look at the data that's in front of us. We were booked ahead for October and November. Leisure demand overall, particularly for things like half terms and summer and events, is actually looking strong and resilient. I guess, you know, from a consumer perspective, it's probably likely to get slightly better, I think, from a consumer's perspective over the next six to 12 months. Interest rates are likely to come down. We think inflation looks like it's on the way down. It's a relatively benign consumer environment. underpinned by this reduction in supply. Week by week, you know, are we going to see ups and downs? Yes, of course, you can always see that in the data. But overall, we think we're entering, you know, a reasonably benign period. And we ourselves as a business have got these levers open to us, which I think give us a unique ability to really drive our performance. So whether that's Pricing levers because of the new reservation system we've got. We're really excited about our access to data. Remember nearly all of our customers in the UK book direct. We've got all of their data. We've really accelerated things like our CRM activity, our database activity to drive more frequency and recency of guests. And we've got this opportunity to drive ancillary revenues as well. So from a revenue perspective, we've got levers open to us. And then as I talked about in our five-year plan, we've got these strategic initiatives in place, which will drive a step change in our profits and returns moving forward. So overall, I think, you know, From a consumer perspective, probably we're entering a more benign place, and I think we have to back ourselves to be able to drive an overall improvement in performance because the lever's open to us. I'll hand over to Hemant to talk about the share buyback. I guess what I'd reiterate is we've got a clear capital allocation framework. What I said at the beginning, which is look at our track record, Over the last 12 months, we've returned over a billion pounds to our shareholders. And with at least two billion pounds worth of shareholder returns over the next five years, I think that gives us good opportunity to give strong returns to our shareholders.

Yeah, thanks for that. Yes, I mean, if I just reiterate the capital allocation very much to answer your question. Clearly, we've said we want to remain an investment-grade business, so we will maintain our leverage in line with those thresholds. Our focus is on investing capital in new rooms, whether it's the UK or Germany, that are high-returning, as well as maintaining those rooms for maintenance, capex, et cetera. We've got a consistent dividend policy. And then, obviously, depending on Outlook, we will return excess funds to shareholders through share buybacks. We reapply this framework regularly. So as Dominic says, we've got a good track record over this last year and a half of applying the framework. Last couple of years of applying the framework, we will do so again at the end of the year, depending on circumstances, and we'll see what that spits out. And that's how we've got to the £100 million further share buyback in the second half of this year, which will complete by the time we get to the full year results. If I think through the £2 billion that we are saying that we'll be able to generate in terms of future cash flows, at least £2 billion over and above the net capex required to fund the five-year plan that we've announced. Yeah, clearly the simplest thing to do would be to apply that, you know, if you want to model it, I can't tell you how you should model it, but, you know, you could model it as a share buyback to the parts, not dividends, if you want to. I guess, clearly, you know, we're giving you some guidance here that, you know, there's £2 million there for dividends for share buybacks and potentially other high return investments. Those would be outside of our current plan at the moment. And really, we're saying that just to make sure there's the optionality there. Because actually, if an opportunity comes up, such as a large piece of M&A that we think is the best investment that we can make on behalf of our shareholders, and it returns better than the share buyback, then we would obviously be recommending that. But we don't know. There's nothing on the horizon. We're not saying that that's what will happen. We want to make sure we build some optionality into the five-year plan. And so we'll be clear about that. But, you know, you can obviously model that any way you'd like to. The simplest thing to do would be to model that excess as share buybacks at this stage, because we want to get at least the return that we're making from share buybacks through any other investments we'd want to make.

That's helpful. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. And to remove yourself from that line of questioning, it will be star followed by 2. Our next question comes from Jared Castle of UBS. Jared, your line is now open.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Hey, Jared. Hey. Just coming back to Germany 2030, you know, 70 million of PBT, you know, broadly a doubling of rooms. You know, my understanding is you've invested about a billion already in Germany. You know, are we talking another billion? And then what kind of ROIC are we talking by then? Because it doesn't seem like it's double digits, you know, the 10 to 14. So I know some time away, but any thoughts, you know, within that framework? And then secondly, just in terms of U.K. growth, you know, over 40%. growth in terms of 125,000 rooms. You haven't given a timeline, but at least in terms of some of our data, we're seeing an increase in branded competition. Just big picture, when you look at that growth, how much of that would you say is pushing out independence, market growth coming along, or adding extensions? where the hotels have got extremely high occupancy. I guess the real question is, do you think the market might be saturated if you got to 125,000 rooms in the UK? Thanks.

Thanks, Jared. Let me start with the questions and then Hemant can build as appropriate. I mean, I think on Germany, we've been, what I'm enjoying about these questions is that we have clearly, we've clearly moved on from the kind of business gets profitability. And we're now talking about what can the business achieve over the next five years? Because I think, you know, collectively our confidence to getting the business to profitability. on kind of driving that growth successfully, I think has really built over the last 12 to 18 months. Remember, we only had six hotels when we came out of the pandemic. So we've learned an awful lot over the last 18 months and we're encouraged by what we see. We've been, we try to be really clear in the five-year plan to say that our estate as it stands, so circa 10,000 rooms, we will expect to hit double-digit returns by full year 30s. Remember the additional 10,000 rooms that we're talking about, they will still be hotels that are maturing. So we wouldn't expect them to hit that 10 to 14% range in that timeframe. Hotels still have a number of years that it takes for the hotels to mature. But within our mature hotel cohort, the hotels that we have open today will be mature by full year 30. We're expecting them to hit double digit returns in full year 30. So I would say we are bang on track with what we spoke about six months ago in terms of our aspirations overall for the business. What we've done today is actually really lay out clearly an endpoint for that full year 30 in terms of profitability, but also growth as well. So we've attached some numbers to our confidence. I think in terms of the UK, I mean, the beauty about this business that we've got is one, our brand strength is really unparalleled. The market share that we've got in the UK is really unique and is underpinned by the super strong guest scores and very strong brand preference. And we can see that in all of the data. That coupled with the fact that they are really high barriers to entry to this business. We see this every single day. When we go to look at a site, if we sign up that site, we know that it's going to take between three and five years to open that site. We are uniquely placed because we are well funded with a super strong balance sheet and covenant. And you can see that from the seven lease back numbers that we announced today on those two properties. So we are better placed than anyone in the UK to activate the growth. We also, of course, have the opportunity to add extensions to our existing hotels, which relatively few of our competitors have that opportunity. So we can add growth at a time where our competitors are struggling to add growth and at a time where supply is down. To your point about how long will it take to get 125,000 rooms, we haven't put a timeline on that. It takes time to find these sites. We're very, very confident there is the potential to get to 125,000 rooms. And we've done that analysis to a postcode level of detail. What we have done today, though, is be very clear about the number of rooms that we're going to drive by full year 30. And there's good, strong growth over the next five years. And we can say that with really high level of confidence. The sites have either already been transacted. The extensions are either kind of already planned or already in play. And then the future sites we feel confident in being able to get. So we can say that five-year plan growth number with a very high level of confidence. We also know that our competitors will not be growing at anything like that pace because they don't have the pipeline of growth. And funding is still relatively tight. in the UK market. To the point of view of whether the market will then be saturated by the time we get to 125,000 rooms, really hard to know, of course. The UK economy is still a growing economy. The population is growing. I actually think there's going to be investment going on throughout the UK, which is going to lead to increased demand over the next few years. And remember, supply is materially down versus pre-pandemic. So if I look at the data points, which is it's going to be at least 2029 until capacity is at pre-pandemic, and reality is probably going to take longer than that, that would indicate that we will not be at capacity when we're at 125,000 capacity. 125,000 rooms. The other point to note, I suppose, is as we get, build scale, we build efficiency. You can see that in our announcement today about our efficiency plan, which is our biggest ever efficiency plan that we've done. What that efficiency enables us to do is actually grow further because it means our marginal cost of the new rooms comes down and And that increases our overall performance, again, increases our edge versus our competitive set. So we can feel very good about that growth to full year 30. And I think we'll have a very strong pipeline of growth beyond full year 30. We've also now got the additional engine of a growing German business, which we're excited about.

And if I just add a couple of things to, I mean, just starting with the UK, clearly the UK isn't just one big commodity market, it's lots of small markets. All we are doing to get to the 125,000 room potential is replicating what we already do in lots and lots of markets in the UK already. It's part of our business model, allows us to be very forensic about where we can put sites. So there's nothing in there that we're not able to do now. And we are still over 40% of the market is independent. So there is, you know, even if you were to assume the independence, you know, we're growing from the independence, there's still an awful lot of independence for us to kind of like compete against. On the German point, just to say, I mean, yeah, we've spent 1.1 billion pounds of capital, but that's to build our current open respect as well as the pipeline that we've committed. Now, there's obviously a mix in there with freehold and leasehold, but we're not just going to be doubling the amount of capital that we'll need to get to 20,000 rooms because we've got 17,000 rooms in our open and committed pipeline. already, so we're adding another 3,000 to 4,000 rooms on top of that, 2,000 to 3,000 rooms on top of the open room committed pipeline. So no, it won't be quite as simple, the maths won't be as simple as that. And then, so therefore, we said that the mature part of the estate by the time we get to Wi-Fi 30, we'll be in that kind of 10% to 14% return on capital employed range. Thinking about Roic, if you take the mature part of the estate, we should be pushing those kind of double-digit range as well is what we'd expect to be doing. That's certainly where we're trying to get to in the long term in terms of profitability in Germany.

Okay. Thanks very much. Thanks, Eric.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Bridnell of Red Bear Atlantic. Alex, your line is now open.

Morning. Thanks so much for taking the questions. The first one, just in terms of the long-term plan, I guess the key thing that goes into that is the assumption on price versus inflation. As you outlined, you've been historically very, very good at managing your inflation. I guess the difference is that The starting point is this return on capital that's kind of quite a long way outside of the historical range, 15.5 last year versus the previous record of 13.5. Your plan kind of suggests that the return on capital is going to grow from there. So I guess the question is, is there a good reason why it should grow from there rather than go back into its historic range? And of course, the historic range would come back if the gap between your RESPA growth and cumulative inflation over the last four years, which has been very good for you, would close. So that's kind of the first question. And then the second question, I guess, is somewhat linked in that hotels have very, very little visibility on pricing, as we kind of all know. And in an environment where that is the case, you're doing another 100 million of buyback when your leverage even on kind of your covenant adjusted way of measuring it rather than the balance sheet leverage is kind of above pre-COVID levels of the interest rates are a lot higher now. So is that the right place to put your balance sheet in an environment where, you know, weakening demand could see a material change in your profitability? Thank you.

Thanks, Alex. I guess a couple of points about the margins. I mean, we are not dependent on price increases, on material price increase to drive a step change in margins and returns. That's one of the reasons why we wanted to talk about idea plan today. Because of some of the structural changes we're making to this business, so let's take accelerating growth, for example. We're removing loss-making restaurants and we're replacing with extension rooms at a time where occupancy is very high and supply is down. So we can be very confident about what the return is and what the revenue is from those extension rooms. That's actually a structural shift in our business model, removing a loss-making branded restaurant, replacing with a higher returning hotel hotel room our efficiency plan which is what every good value business should constantly be doing is drilling down into the nth level of detail in their business to see how do they find efficiencies to run the business better to further sharpen our ability to compete in the marketplace and drive increased returns and we've been able today to announce our largest ever efficiency program one of the benefits of this business is we're large, we're vertically integrated. That gives us control. It also gives us the ability to drive efficiencies overall in the business, which supports an increase in margins. And then, of course, Germany is moving from a headwind into a tailwind as we go into profitability. So kind of all of that said, that's why we said for illustrative purposes, our plan only assumes that UK like-for-like sales growth. and efficiencies equal UK cost inflation. So we don't have to assume materially strong like-for-like growth in order to drive quite a significant increase in margins and returns because of these structural changes to the business moving forward. All of that said, there was another school of thought that would say, okay, UK supply is materially down versus pre-pandemic. Actually, the budget operator's price gap has widened versus the four-star and five-star operators. And actual real pricing, once you take into account inflation, is at very similar levels than it was to pre-pandemic. Whereas, you know, whilst all of the other industries and sectors that we see have put in very material inflation through. So that coupled with the fact that we've got commercial levers open to us, again, a slightly different way of running our business commercially with a new reservation system. We can drive ancillary revenues and additionals. We can segment our market better with things like Premier Plus. That should all support a good revenue environment. We're not assuming that moving forward. And again, I think the beauty of this five-year plan is it's fundamentally built on structural shifts that we're making to our business that support that strong growth in margins and returns. I think in terms of your question about the share buyback and the balance sheet, we've got a very careful cash allocation framework. We've got a very strong balance sheet. We're very comfortable with the leverage and we're within all of our stated targets within our cash allocation framework. Hemant, anything else to build on that?

No, I mean, for both those points, I think the reality is that just because we are outside of the historical range, we're much more focused on where we are now and the things we can control, and that we will improve this business from where it is at the moment. So we're very confident, as Dominic said, that we have programs in place in our control that will lead us to improving returns on capital going forward the first point and then yes in terms of just how we're managing you know managing the balance sheet clearly yeah we want to get the balance right we are prudent in terms of you know of how we manage the balance sheet we want to make sure we stay within the stated leverage range. And again, just because we've been in a different range historically, it doesn't mean that we're not happy that actually that we've got a balance right here between managing strong balance sheet and being prudent because we haven't got massive visibility. But because we have programs in our control, such as the Excelsior growth program, such as the efficiency program, that we can then be able to manage any potential volatility in the market. Clearly, we're talking about five-year plan numbers over five years, obviously. But the point is, we know there'll be ups and downs over those five years. But over the five years, we know that with historical ranges of like-to-like growth that we've seen in the UK market, that we'll be able to continue to improve our returns and profitability and margins going forward.

Okay, fantastic. Really helpful. Thank you. Thanks, Alex.

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Jaina Mistry of Jefferies. Jaina, your line is now open.

Hi, good morning. I think all my questions around the FY30 plan have been answered, so maybe I'll just ask a couple of short-term questions. If I look at Germany consensus, for this year, so FY25. And if I back it out from the sensitivity that you gave, it looks like consensus is factoring in 30% RepR growth and a 10 million pound PBT loss for the full year. Now, given in H1, German RepR grew 15%, are you comfortable with an acceleration coming in H2 and what's driving that? Or in order to hit consensus, You're expecting to see more cost efficiencies coming in to the business. And then my second question is around OPEX inflation in FY26. I know you're not giving guidance just yet, but how much flex is there within your cost savings plan if it looks like there is above average OPEX inflation coming in FY26? Thank you.

Thanks, Jaina. I think I'll pass it to Hemant for both of those questions, actually. I think that makes sense.

Yeah. So just in terms of Germany this year, you've seen that we're seeing high levels of revenue and repart growth. both here today, but also in current trading. And that is accelerating. That's accelerating through last year into this year. We are likely to see continued higher power growth. And obviously, this is because we've been opening sites and they're maturing at a rapid rate. We're very focused on cost as well in Germany. So even though it's a maturing business and we're investing in in Germany. We're doing it in a cost-effective way. We're always looking at our operating model, making sure that we've got the right operating model in place to manage the German business as it grows. But we're doing so with the budget mindset in place. So there is an element of cost management going forward, but actually it is Repar growth that's going to continue to drive the German business through the second half of this year and obviously into next year. That's by far the major factor. In terms of OPEX inflation, there's always some optionality. And you've seen this year, we started the year at a 30 to 40, 40 to 50 million pound range in terms of our efficiency plans. And now it's 60 million pounds. That's because we've been able to manage, boost some of the plans we had in place, accelerate some other ones. and add some new ones in as well through the year as part of the work that Dominic mentioned earlier on the detailed piece of efficiency work we've done across the whole of the cost base that's populated our five-year program in terms of efficiencies. So in any given year, there will be some flex depending on what's happening with cost inflation. There will also be some movements as well that are unexpected. Clearly, although we expect to get the best possible results, we plan for worse results than that. So we build in contingency and we'll manage that very prudently. So I hope to be able to manage the cost base accordingly next year. Clearly, until we know what that might look like, it's difficult to comment really, Jayla. But as I say, when we get to January, we'll give some more guidance specifically on what on what next year looks like. We'll know things like the minimum wage rise by that point, which is obviously the single biggest factor that will drive our cost base next year. So that will help us and we'll give some further efficiency guidance as well in a bit more detail at that point.

That's really helpful. So on Germany, can I just confirm that to reach consensus of a 10 million pound loss on PBT, you'd need to see 30% rest part growth?

I think that sounds a bit high. We can confirm afterwards exactly what you might want to do, depending on what you've got in your model. But I guess I'll just reaffirm the fact, actually, we feel very confident that we're on track to achieve that break-even run rate.

Sure. Thank you.

Thanks, Jana.

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Jafar Mestari of BNP Paribas. Jafar, your line is now open.

Hi, good morning. I've got a couple if that's okay. Firstly, just to sort of wrap up a lot of the things we said here, there's a lot in this 2030 plan. I think in your opening remarks, you phrased it as we've summarized some of our ambitions into a new plan. So very bluntly, for investors, what's the part here that should really be seen as the most new, the most different and I know some of the numbers look different because you've put everything apples to apples on a fuller 25 basis. Sounds like maybe the cost efficiencies are the newest.

Can you...

Oh, I see.

I mean, to be honest, I think the beauty of the plan is it's a roundup of the initiatives that we have already announced and have already got in play. And I think the reason we can talk about this with confidence is all of these key initiatives, whether it's accelerating growth or its efficiencies or our momentum in Germany, are already in play and are building momentum. So that gives us this level of confidence in talking about the five-year plan. I think the two probably standout changes that I spoke about at the beginning are the fact that we are anchoring this in a net capex number of 500 million pounds. So I think that makes it easier to model for our analysts and shareholders and investors. But also that we have actually rooted ourselves and anchored ourselves into a profit before tax number that looks out to full year 30 and a number of shareholder returns, £2 billion worth of shareholder returns, which is at least £2 billion shareholder returns. So probably the area as well that we have really kind of amplified and made very clear is our Germany commitment. So, you know, you might remember a year ago there were questions about, OK, do we think we can get to profitability? We are underlining the fact that, yes, we are confident we can get to Germany to profitability and we will hit run rate breakage. But we've also laid out a five-year plan number for profitability for Germany and for returns, which is the first time we've done that. So you've got a combination of factors. You've got strategic initiatives, which we've already announced, but we've pulled together and shown the impact on margins and returns. We've got a set of numbers about Germany, which are providing more clarity on our five-year trajectory and what we're going to achieve in Germany. And you've got an underpin of a net CapEx number and a number of at least £2 billion worth of shareholder returns using our capital allocation framework, which is really clear. as our basis for that. So it's a combination of existing initiatives, some new information within that, but overall we think it gives a great deal of clarity and actually we're really excited about it, about what we can do with this business over the next five years.

Thank you. That's very clear. So food and beverage refurbs, et cetera, that's really just adjusting the base when you were talking about 24, now we're talking about 25. And then just on Germany, and sorry to labor the point, I know many people tried to get a little bit more out of you on those targets. Can you maybe just remind us your rocky calculations? The group, it's very clear. There's 11 adjustments. We can do it to the second decimal. For Germany, I don't think we have those details. So you had 1.2 billion of total fixed assets last February. Hemant Patel, you mentioned some of the puts and takes here. So what do I add to that or take out of that figure to get the perimeter on which the current... 10.5,000 rooms are open and will deliver 10% to 14% return, please.

Yeah, I mean, we obviously, we're not going into a full amount of detail. So I'm happy to take this offline if you really want to kind of like go through how we, you know, how we work out Rocky and what that might look like for moving parts. But I'll just reiterate, I guess, that what we're trying to get to in FY30 is it'll be a business that will be 55% mature in terms of the number of rooms that will mature at that stage. So it's a significantly immature business still. The mature part of the business will, on the definition of the return on capital that we employ, that we use, be in the 10% to 14% range, as we talked about at that stage. The rest of it will still be maturing. So I'm happy to kind of take that offline with a piece of tea, kind of talk to you, and we can talk you through the calculation if you want to.

Correct. And without those details, very, very, very roughly, is it more likely that 70 million is 70 plus zero, 70 on the mature portfolio and break even elsewhere? or, you know, 100-ish.

Yeah, we're not giving that level of detail, but we're going to talk through the offline.

Thank you very much. We can help you with that offline. I guess for us, the key point is that we're underlining the fact that our plan is to get to 70 million pounds PBT for the German business by full year 2030, which is kind of the first time we have given such a clear commitment about getting to a level of profitability in Germany. And our performance currently is giving us that confidence for our mature estate to get to 10% to 14% returns.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Our next question. Oh, sorry.

So we probably need to make this the next question, I think, because we have then got to get to the last question. We need to then get to investor calls.

Of course, that's absolutely fine. Our next question comes from Estelle Weingrod of JP Morgan. Estelle, your line is now open.

Hi, good morning everyone. Not much for me. You're talking about the extending room product availability through digital partners such as Trivago. Can you just provide a bit more color? I mean, now you're planning to use more OTAs going forward. It seems a bit different to the usual more direct oriented strategy. I think I just take to that question because it's already been a lot of questions today. Thanks.

Yeah, and of course, thanks as well. I mean, in the UK, we are still well over 90% of our business comes direct, which makes us unique in the hotel market. We use certain affiliates and partners like Trivago to drive business to our website at certain times. I think overall, we're really excited about the digital opportunity in the UK. Obviously, we've been direct for many, many years. We have pretty much all of our customer data ourselves. And I think our eyes have really been opened over the last few years about what we can do with that data. So I'll give you an example. We are getting much more segmented about the the CRM, the customer relationship management tools that we use to really encourage customers to come back to us and to generate demand. I think we feel really excited about the progress we're making in our app. The reason that's interesting is when customers come onto the app, they're generally stickier, so they buy with us more frequently, and it enables us to build a really direct relationship with them through notifications. And we're using affiliates and partners like Trivago to then also increase that traffic into our website. And we've done things like put family rooms on Trivago, for example, where a customer might be searching somewhere else, but then we can pull them into the Premier in world. So we're really excited about the opportunities we've got from a data perspective. And then once a guest has booked, how we can actually take them through that journey and sell them things that they want as they go through that journey. For example, they might want to buy early check-in or late check-out. For example, they might want to buy a room with a view. In a hotel so all opportunities to drive overall revenue and additional revenue from from existing customers Which I think is super exciting for us Germany is a little bit different We are using affiliates more widely, online travel agents more widely in Germany. Again, if you look back to the history of the UK, we've used online travel agents before in the UK at certain points in our development. That's exactly what we're doing in Germany. It gives us access to an incremental pool of guests that we wouldn't otherwise have access to. Remember, although we're growing very fast in Germany... We're still relatively small and our brand is relatively unknown. So using online travel agents to help us drive that increase in incremental guest numbers is proving to be a very interesting and very successful strategy. But the kind of bigger point I suppose I'd make is we are uniquely placed with the access to the data that we have from our customers to really commercialize that data and use it to drive increased guest numbers and more frequency from our guests. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you. Carly, shall I summarize?

Yeah. So I was going to hand back to you for closing remarks.

Thank you. I'm sorry we ran out of time today, but you know where we are. You've got our details, so we'll be happy to take follow-up questions and clarifications. You can probably sense from the announcement that we've made today and from this call, we're really excited about the plans. A slightly softer start to September, but our momentum looks to be building. And our five-year plan demonstrates our confidence in delivering at least £300 million more profit by full year 30. As well as continuing to drive like-for-like sales through our commercial programme, we're opening more rooms, we're optimising our food and beverage through our accelerating growth plan, and we're driving further growth in Germany. We're also extending our efficiency programme to deliver £50 million of savings each year to full year 30. Our business model means we generate significant cash flow, and by maintaining net capex of £500 million with leverage at or around current levels, we can fund our existing plans and generate more than £2 billion for dividends and share buybacks. Thank you for listening, and as I said, please do come back to the IR team should you have any further questions. Thank you for your time today.

Thank you. As we conclude today's call, we'd like to thank everyone for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.