Whitbread plc

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for the Whitbread Full Year 26 Q3 Trading Update Call. My name is Sammy, and I'll be coordinating your call today. During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two on your telephone keypad to remove yourself from the question queue. I'd now like to hand over to your host, Dominic Poole, CEO of Whitbread, to begin. Please go ahead, Dominic.

Thank you, Sammy. Good morning everyone and thank you very much for joining the call for our Q3 full year 2036 trading update. I'm joined by Hemant Kel, our group CFO. Hope you've had a chance to review our announcement this morning. I'm going to start with a brief overview for those who haven't seen it before opening up the call for Q&A when Hemant and I will be happy to answer your questions. I'll start with a few comments on our balance of performance in the quarter. We saw strong trading momentum in both the UK and Germany. And as I'll come on to shortly, I'm pleased to say this has strengthened into the current trading period. In the UK, the return to market growth that we saw in the summer has continued, and occupancy remains high at 83%. Redpile is up 3%, and we maintain a healthy premium, versus the rest of the mid-scale and economy market. We traded particularly well in London, where we increased both occupancy and rates, resulting in Redpile up 7%, versus the prior year. UK food and beverage sales were in line with our expectations as we continued to make excellent progress on our accelerating growth plan that will both improve the guest experience and drive higher returns to shareholders by transforming some of our lower returning brand restaurants into higher returning hotel extensions. Our German business also delivered a strong training performance in the period and we've remained confident in reaching profitability this year. Total accommodation sales up 12%, and rest power is up 7% in local currency. This performance reflects the increasing maturity of our estate and brand, supported by our commercial initiatives, and we continue to outperform the rest of the market on both accommodation sales and rest power growth. Now moving on to current trading and starting with new hits. Our performance has strengthened versus the third quarter, and in the six weeks from the 8th of January, 2026, total accommodation sales and rep par were both up 4%, and we outperformed the wider market. In Germany, trading during the first six weeks has also been strong, and total accommodation sales were 11% ahead of last year, and total estate rep par was up 5% to 56 euros. Our cohort of more standard hotels are also performing strongly, with rev par 66 euros up 8%. Now turning to costs, we have made great progress with our efficiency programme and certainly need to increase our expected savings in full year 20 states by a further £10 million to between £75 and £80 million. And looking forward to next year, Whilst there is no change to our underlying inflation assumptions, following clarification from the government on the mechanics of transitional relief on UK business rates across over 1,000 of our properties, we now expect the cost impact will be £35 million in full year 2027, which is lower than our preliminary estimate of £40-50 million. we continue to believe the proposed changes to business rates are punitive and will impact future investment and job creation, and we, along with the wider hospitality industry, are actively engaged in pressing the UK government for changes. Taking into account the £60 million of efficiency savings that we are on track to deliver next year, we therefore now expect net inflation in full year 27 at between 3% and 4%. And finally, a word on the outcome Starting with the UK, while forward visibility remains limited, our booked position for fall year 27 is building nicely and is ahead of last year, with positive long-leaved leisure bookings into peak periods. And in Germany, we are continuing to perform ahead of the market and remain on course to reach profitability this year. We are continuing to focus on what we can control and are making great progress on each of our strategic initiatives. Our accelerating growth plan is on track and we are building out our committed pipeline in the UK. We're growing our business in Germany and we're on track to become the country's number one hotel brand. Our commercial programs are continuing to drive life-like sales momentum. We're continuing to maintain a tight grip on costs with our ongoing efficiency program. And we are recycling capital by selling leasebacks into high-returning investments like the accelerating growth plan. As we said back in November, in response to the UK budget, we are exploring a variety of options to further drive profits, margins and returns. That work is ongoing and we expect to provide an update to the market regarding our five-year plan at the time of our full-year results in April. I'll now hand back to Sunny to host the Q&A. Could I please ask you to limit the questions to two per person so we can get through as many as possible? Thank you.

Thank you, Dominic. To ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. In preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Jamie Rollo from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open, Jamie. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning. The first question is just on UK Westpac, obviously encouraging to see that backing growth after six quarters of decline.

but your occupancy is still down year on year so I'm really wondering first what your sort of confidence level is in RevPath staying positive I know you don't guide but it'd be good to talk about the drivers there and also what drove the two percentage points out performance in the current trading period it's quite a big number and then the second question is just on the end of April on the variety of options that you're exploring with regards to the five-year plan I'm just wondering how wide-ranging That review, is it going to be mainly operational or is it also strategic? Is it just a response to the budget or is it also a response to the activist letter? And is this a review by Whitbread or does it involve an independent third party? Thank you. Thanks, Jamie. So let's talk about current UK trading first. I mean, occupancy was slightly back. year over year, but you also see in current trading it was very, very close to the year before. Pricing was strong. As you know, we optimise by room, by night, by hotel. And some of our hotels have higher optimises than the year before, some have slightly lower. The key thing is to optimise revenue every single room every single night, and I think we're doing a really strong job of doing that. So, occupancy is very slightly back, but it's actually pretty much at the edges, which I think is really encouraging. I think the market, and to your point about the six quarters, there was an infection point earlier in the summer. I think we feel very confident in the underpinning of the UK hotel market by its lack of supply and the supply growth coming into the market is still very low. And we've been able to call the hotel industry in the UK for a number of years. And we think we're best placed to take advantage of that. Super strong brand, fantastic operations, really strong commercial program. And I think we can see in the numbers that we're talking about today, real momentum building in that commercial program. You asked a question about time of trading in particular and what drove that. We had a really clear strategy to trade through December, the Christmas period and into the New Year period. We take every single period very carefully. We're very, very operationally and trading focused as an organisation. There are a number of things that drove that. One, consistency of the product, the strength of the brand, strength of our locations, the Frankly, no one in the UK market can match up on those things. And then we traded the business really well. We made some fantastic progress on things like our CRM, using the data. Remember, the majority of our customers were direct. We got that data from our customers to get us better and better at utilizing that data to drive revenues. And our pricing actions were very carefully orchestrated, very smart, and I think held under him the fact that we outperformed the market quite materially through that period. So I think really, really encouraging overall. I think we thought very good about that, and we feel confident about the underlying market in the UK. To your kind of question about Well, the independence review and I guess Codex in particular. I mean, the first thing I should say is we are very confident in delivering long-term value for our shareholders. We said in November that we were doing a range of options to drive profits, margins and returns and we're going to come back and update on the five-year plan at the end of April. We have got a fantastic board at Whitbread. We've got an experienced, strong board. We regularly review all the strategic options available to us in order to maximise the long-term value for our shareholders. I would reiterate that we are open-minded, we're subjective, we're critical in the assessments that we do, and we've got a really good track record of demonstrating this. Two examples, decisions to separate and sell coffee to coffees, and return capital to shareholders, and more recently, accelerating growth plans that we announced. These are structural changes to our business that we won't shy away from if they are the right thing to do for our shareholders. Part of the review that we'll do, of course, we're taking very careful consideration of the use of our shareholders. And we'll come back at the end of April and update on that. We're open-minded. We are very confident that we've got a strong plan that's going to deliver value for our shareholders. And I think the trading statement today kind of shows the momentum that we're building. But we're open-minded. We'll review all options. And we'll come back to the market and update on that at a full year with us at the end of April.

Thanks, Jerry. Great. Thank you very much.

Our next question comes from Leo Carrington. Good morning. Thank you.

Firstly, can I ask on the transaction this morning with London Metrics, can you give some more colour around this, just given the timing around the budget? So was this agreed before the budget? If not, in what way did the terms or valuation change over the last few weeks? And then secondly, on the net cost outlook, so I think that FY26, in the past, and I'm thinking of the cost savings, in the past you've mentioned the robot vacuum cleaners, the food procurements, et cetera, and the operations, but the quant of these savings and the increases itself suggests something else, possibly. If you could just give some colour on what you've managed to achieve since the last update, that would be really helpful.

Thank you. Thank you. I'll go next.

Yeah, so I think first of all, the transactions with London Metric, we started doing a and we were guiding £300 million of disposal proceeds for the full year. This part of that, the small tracts in it together, that includes selling this back as well as other disposals. It's an £89 million deal, nine sites, net initial yield of 5.3%, which we can just really evaluate the wide range of sites, regional sites, as well as London sites as well. So, we're very happy with our pricing. As you know, these deals don't just happen overnight. So, we've been talking to my brother for a while. The most important thing for us is to make sure that when we are making a purchase like that, we are maximizing the service to our shareholders. What we're trying to do here is raise funds here to actually invest into very high-experting projects like the Expiratory Growth Programme, which is returning up high-experting returns of capital. We're happy that we've got the best pricing for those in the marketplace. Clearly things like the change in business growth have a small impact on quite a few things like the sales effect, but it's not significant and we're still really happy that we've got very good pricing. We're making great sales by doing sales. Yeah, we've got a big cost base, 1.7 billion pound cost base, and we've got a good record of looking for efficiencies over the last few years, very comprehensively. It's a large process in terms of, you know, there are many different many different initiatives that make up, you know, the 35,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 As we get closer to the end of the year, obviously, we get more and more certainty in terms of what's going on. We're always looking to accelerate programs, bring them forward for next year. We're always looking to increase the scope of our individual program. and make them last better for example as you mentioned then you know it goes after that uh we're also we're finding things in as well uh that we haven't we haven't been able to affect it might be an increase from investing in technology so i could do that or even new ideas um it's a different other thing this is just something that we we can choose to do as inflation comes into the business we always find further opportunities um that come come uh come apparent yeah as labor costs go up It makes sense to invest in technologies. You mentioned Roboraptor. It's a great example where we invest in technologies that allow us to take those costs down. The same applies to utility costs. The same applies to procurement costs as well. You mentioned that there's a large supply triangle. You need to be able to accelerate that. That's where we've taken a... site by site and warehouse model for food and beverage supply and we've now made a whole store modelling which has cut the cost of the tulips, the actual individual items for us, we've been able to take advantage of the whole store supply scale but also the actual delivery cost for the much more efficient network for sharing it with other customers. Our program going forward is going to be informed heavily by things like AI, where we know there are more opportunities for things like, for instance, including load scheduling and forecasting. And then there are also other things which we've already thought of that AI is going to bring up. And obviously there are many examples in terms of day-to-day management of the business that we're looking at as well. We're very confident in the programme now. We've been able to, as I say, accelerate significant cost savings for this year. We're still happy. We've upstarted. We are, in November, the target for next year, £6 million. I'm very happy we're able to do that as well.

Thanks, Liam. Thanks, Cameron. Our next question comes from Jared Castle from UBS. Your line is open, Jared. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I guess you changed the impact you'll see from the race in 2027. Do you care to give any guidance on the profile post-2027 based on existing plans or indeed has your view improved, like it did for 2027 in terms of the race impact? And just because you raised this, you know, AI at Genentech, you know, we've obviously seen, like, findings with Google's Gemini. I mean, what are you doing on that branch of distribution? I know historically it's probably been the highest in the industry by far in terms of direct, but, you know, how do you view the challenge there in terms of having to potentially do more through third parties, et cetera?

Thanks. Thanks, Eric. I'll... Take the first part, and then I'll hand over to Claire. I mean, firstly, on the business rate, of course, you're right. We're now forecasting a 35 million pound increase in business rate next year. It is really complicated the way it's calculated. The government, when we came out with the 50 million preliminary number, the government paraphrased a few things. That brought it down to 35 million. Of course, that is a short-term financial hit. We've got a very strong track record of mitigating costs over time. And we feel very confident in our ability to drive long-term returns for our shareholders. And we'll be updating on that further, as I said, by the end of April. We are not just taking this increase in business rates lying down. What good leadership teams do is if they get a surprise increase in cost, they work out how to mitigate that. We're also... In ongoing conversations with the government about that, we do think the increase in business rates is punitive. We are having direct conversations with the government about that. Also, UK Hospitality and the PBI are lobbying the government hard on that. There is a consultation process running at the moment. It's due to finish by the middle of February. We are working on the assumption that those business rates won't get reduced further, but it's a consultation process. We do believe what we've set out is the worst case scenario. What we'll do is continue to work very, very hard on how we mitigate those increasing costs and how we drive the shareholder returns over the next few years. I will just quickly touch on the distribution point and then hand back to Hemant for the multi-year views. It's really interesting, isn't it? I mean, you're right, Premier Inns has got this incredibly strong direct distribution model in the UK. Our approach is actually to set ourselves up really well for whichever way this goes. So we are doing a lot of work behind the scenes on optimising our web and app content for AI. There is a school of thought that says actually agentic AI will threaten the big distributors because customers over time will increasingly go direct because they'll use agentic AI to do that as opposed to use a distribution platform. And we are setting ourselves up to ensure that we will benefit from that. We're also, as you know, using distribution to access incremental groups of customers. So Expedia inbound into the UK is an example of that. So the beauty of our model is I think we are very well set up for whichever direction this goes. But we are doing significant amount of work behind the scenes to make sure that our business is very well set up for this kind of movement to how customers are researching and choosing accommodation providers. The key thing that comes up very strongly is they look at guest ratings, they look at strength of brand, and we're very strong on both of those things. So the consistency of the product, the strength of the brand, actually is our biggest strength when it comes to a change in distribution platform. So I think we're well set up, and I feel very encouraged that we are approaching this with a very open mindset. We came up with a check off the budget with a view on how it's going to fit next year. We've updated that as more of our traditional releases have to be applied. This business rate rating is actually different to the previous ratings, not in the profile, but actually in the application of that. and hence be the estimate of £35 million for next year, which apparently is very clear on. We can't say anything about what that means over the longer term. I mean, clearly, it does use a map, but, you know, we have a mix of different hotels with slightly different setting of valuations, different traditional tri-trials. We've only, obviously, it's a three-year breaking regime. We don't know what's going to happen by year four and five. We feel confident that, you know, as Dominic said, that, you know, when we come back we'll talk about the overall mitigation, which is an update to our five-year plan. We'll give you some more detail in terms of what we think, you know, the overall saving looks like for the business, you know, in terms of that plan. So we'll give you some more detail at that point. I think the other thing is, obviously, there are rebates well but we will be challenging valuations as soon as we can from April onwards and then there will be a multi-year process of getting rebates back against the initial frames as we get those valuations, as we get those valuations approved. But again we don't know the phrasing of that, we don't know how quickly that will happen but that report, that we will guide to as part of our efficiency plans so these numbers will be articulated before any recently raised numbers and before any sexual lobbying governments. So, yeah, we'll get more details in terms of broadband and site facing, but we haven't done so at the moment, and we'll work through what Android 5 3.8.4 will try as well. The other thing, just building on what Hem said at the end there, Jared, I mean, the other point about business rates, which is interesting, is we are in a privileged position to do a lot of work behind the scenes to mitigate the impact of business rates over time, and we are well set up to do things like the challenges, for example, that Hem has just touched on. The independent sector is going to be particularly hit by this, and the supply constraints in the hotel market are going to become more exacerbated, we believe, because of the various increases in costs in the hotel industry, whether that's minimum wage or national insurance or business rates. which is actually going to support the hotel sector over the next few years. And we are very, very well-trained to take advantage of that. We have great track record and driving efficiencies. As we become more and more efficient and utilise the scale of the business that we've got, we can actually extend our leadership position versus our competitors and make it harder and harder to compete against. And that's our focus. How do we get even stronger as a brand and a business through this despite the headwinds?

Right. Thanks very much.

Our next question comes from Tim Barrett from Deutsche Neumann. Your line is open, Tim. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, both of you. Can I start with a question on cost? Obviously, that 10 million incremental for this year, It is very impressive with only six weeks to go. It wasn't in your plan at the interim. I'm just wondering, you know, how much of it is cash and how much of it is non-cash, please? And then a second thing, just going back to the RevPars, actually, in the third quarter, London was to stand out at 7%. Was that consistent through the quarter or is there lumpiness in London that we need to be aware of? Thanks very much.

Yeah, Tim, I... I'll pass to Hemant for the first part of the question and I'll pick up the second part of the question. Yeah, it's all cash. We have all through the year, we've got a large plan and a probability against what we're going to deliver in terms of the efficiency programme because of timing, because of the actual, you know, what's the trial things and how effective they are. So there's a large hopper of stuff we're always working on. And as things crystallise, we will commit to them and we'll talk them up throughout the years. You know, we've got, you know, in order to deliver 75 to 30 million pounds, or at the beginning of the year, obviously, we were aiming to sell about 50 million pounds. In order to deliver that, we had a very wide range of potential opportunities that we were going to be able to deliver. We've talked about that over time. It's real cash, real costs that are coming out of the T&L. Obviously we'll start this year and move into next year, a fund that's been accelerated from this year, for instance you mentioned earlier on, the change in our SMB supply. Through the year we've been able to bring that forward and we've got more and more of a benefit for this year. So we've been able to commit to that as we've seen that land. But it's realty and our money, it's real cash. And Tim, just on the question about London, consistently strong actually, not particularly lumpy, consistently strong through the quarter. And again, and I've said this on the calls before, we feel very good about London overall at the market, increasing our capacity in London, which is It's turning out these capabilities are rising. It's a high-quality market. We're relatively under-indexed in the London market. A number of our new hotels opening are there. They're driving very strong returns. And, you know, one of the reasons that we feel so confident about the profitability of the new rooms that we're putting in is they disproportionately are in London, which is, as I said, a consistently strong market. Thanks, Tim. Okay.

Thanks very much. Our next question comes from Alex Bridgnall from Rothschild & Co. Your line is open, Alex. Please go ahead. Morning. Thank you very much for taking the question.

First, just in terms of folio 26, TBT, how many, and I thought about it earlier, but the relief sort of says happy with folio expectations, but the kind of components of it suggest that there's probably a bit of an upside both in terms of the statement of the better competencies and also the better trading. I wonder if you could just give us an expectation of how those pieces drop through to BBT, Cognitive Guides, but just how we might think about it so formularly.

And then a couple on the concept of rates.

How have your sort of creditors and banks and the rate agencies kind of given you a

tell us what you're going to do in April, kind of comment in that situation where they're effectively waiting for your plan. And then the second bit of it would be, as the number one, you know, market share business in the UK, do you think that this is the moment where maybe you say, well, this is our opportunity to take a lot of share? You've talked a lot about supply coming out. Often these kinds of times of weakness are when the biggest businesses take a lot of market share. Is that sort of a theoretical aggressive route where you massively bolster your balance sheet and then you have a big arsenal of money that you can go and take a lot of share from some of your strongly competitive?

Thank you.

Thanks Alex. So let me take the second part of the question and then I'll hand it to you. I think we're at about full year 26. I think the first thing I'll say is we are extremely disciplined about our return focus. So what we won't do is just chase growth for the sake of growth. What we will do is add capacity and we are really confident that that capacity is going to be accrued overall for our returns. Now, we are in a fortunate position and a lot of our competitors are not in this position. We are in a fortunate position of having strong profit from the vast majority of our sales. Very strong profit and high margin. So, although the business rate next year has an impact on our business, the reality is the vast majority of our hotels will still deliver very, very strong, very, very strong returns and very strong profitability. Our focus, of course, is how we continue to drive that profitability moving forward, which is what we talked about updating at the end of April, where we'll update and talk about how we mitigate business rates over time, but also how we further drive margins and returns for the business. Now, in terms of going for growth, I do think that supply is going to remain constrained in the UK for quite a long time. That will mean that sites to us probably will offer strong returns. But just to reiterate the point, our growth program that we've got planned is fairly returns-focused, and we will continue that returns-next approach to our strategy. Then in terms of full year 26? Yes, on April 26, yes. Again, very clearly, we are going to a £10 million improvement in our cost base this year to the efficiency programme, which drops to the bottom line. So that should be an increase in your forecast £10 million. And again, depending on exactly what you're assuming for REFAR, we don't guide on REFAR, but the trade has been very strong across the past quarter. We've outperformed the market. So you'll be seeing weekly SGR market data. We've outperformed that. So again, depending on the view going forward, we might expect to see some upside from that REFAR as well against previous forecasts. Thank you very much. Yeah, I suppose just building on that point about the growth, which is, you know, we talked about this 018 growth plan, 3,500 extra rooms, big 018 growth plan. I mean, that is us taking market share in the market. It is also driving acclusive and incremental returns because we're removing the drag for lower-performing branded restaurants, replacing it with higher-performing extension rooms. That's a great example of how we can both drive growth but also drive returns and facilitate that kind of focus on the terms moving forward. Thanks, Dan.

Very fair. Thank you. Our next question comes from Kate Sher from Bank of America. Your line is open, Kate. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my questions. My first question is a follow-up on the 26 guide. Can I just confirm that UK net cost inflation is still the 2% to 3% range? I want to do the math of the 10 extra million of cost savings is equivalent to about 60 basis points of year-on-year increase of the UK cost last year of $1.63 billion. So if the rate still holds, can I understand this as the GAD used to be closer to the 3%, and now it should be closer to the 2% of your net costing inflation for UK costs. That's the first question. And then just the second question, can I ask on your property valuation? Obviously, you did at one age property valuation of $5.5 to $6.4 billion. I wonder what's your view on that valuation range? after the UK business rate change, are you looking to do another round of property valuation accordingly? Thank you.

Yeah, okay. So yeah, overall net cost inflation is now at the bottom of that range, effectively. So, yeah, I mean, you know, the important thing is if it's a £10 million reduction to the kind of, you know, the forecast you had, as long as you, you know, with an idea aligned with, like, I'll tell you this, cost guidance. But it's not a bottom-down pitch, you're absolutely right. £2.5 million. In terms of cost evaluation, I mean, we did a cost evaluation, as you say, and it's something you do every year, in reality, as a re-information. and also to give some support to our ability to recycle capital as well. There's other applications in the past that have been very much intensive, be it on a traffic, be it anything like that. So we've got something we'll do that often. um yeah business world obviously has an impact on um on that uh but clearly you know there's that's an unmitigated view um yeah we're going to come back on april 30th um with our full view of what our five year plan looks like a you know value property thinking about future future cash flow from our property overall um so uh yeah there's some impact from the business rates in terms of property valuation, but it's relatively minor and unmitigated as well. But, yeah, we don't need to be on the property valuation at this stage in time. Thanks, Dave.

As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Jafar Mestari from BNP Paribas. Your line is open, Jafar. Thank you, Jafar. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Just one follow-up on UK business rate impact. Hemant Patel, I think you said doing the math is relatively easy for year two and year three, but maybe it's worth doing it still out so we're on the same page. So if I assume that the 35 million impact for 27 is effectively right at the cap, it cannot increase more than 30%, that's the conditional release, would it be fair to assume it's sufficiently big In year two, you're also again right at the cap, so another 25% increase this time. You call it $37 million, and then I guess more debatable, in year three, it's still big enough that you're again right at the cap, and it increases another 25%, and that would be $45 million in year three. So, you know, it increased completely unmitigated, of course, but... 110, 120 million over three years? Is that what you're trying to mitigate?

Yes, well, hi.

I mean, we haven't given, you know, the details of what the impact looks like, but we want to be able to give a mitigated view of what the impact is for us across the next five years, which we'll do on April the 30th. It is, you know, how we're going to drive overall profit and return across the whole of the business I don't think it's easy but you can do the math to an extent. The reality is it's not quite as simple as you said because obviously some properties aren't going to go up at the full amount to get the forecast so by the time you get to year two there will be sub-properties that have already reached their increase in valuation and obviously by the time you get to year three you'll have some as well, even especially in year one. So why is it as simple as that? I'd say what we'll do, because this is not as simple as before COVID because actually there are different transitional relief profiles to different valuations of sites as well within that. and clear about other aspects of the district as well. We're talking about England here, effectively. There's a few other nations we need to consider as well, and other supplementary local authorities as well. It's not quite as simple as that. We would look at a better view of what looks like over the next five years, including a more mitigated view of what we think it needs to look like as well.

Thank you.

Just a couple of things. As we said at the beginning, the level of increase in business rates on the hotel industry overall is punitive. We're already working on how we mitigate those costs over time. We've got a very good track record of mitigating costs over time. We are open-minded. We will look at all of the different options open to us. And in parallel... we are working very hard with the government as they go through the consultation period to show why this isn't the right outcome for the hotel industry. Having said that, if the government does not change their view on it, we are better placed than any of our competitors to deal with it and make sure that we are one of the winners as we come out of this in terms of driving long-term returns and actually driving market share over time.

Thank you very much. Year one, it is 30% and then you can only get a little bit better.

Yeah, so we'll give a better service on April 30th. Thanks, Jafar.

Thank you.

Thank you. And Jafar, we can follow up separately post the call. I'm sure there'll be a number of questions on business rates, which we are happy to follow up on. I'd like to thank everybody for their time today. I mean, as you can see, we feel really good about the progress we're making, but also the momentum we've got in the business. We appreciate your time and thank you very much.

That concludes today's call. We thank everyone for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.