Phil Urban
CEO & Executive Director

Right. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Bang on 8:30, so we'll start. Welcome to the interim results presentation for Mitchells & Butlers. Our first half was a tale of 2 quarters with quarter 1 being very strong, culminating with a great festive period, followed by quarter 2 that was impacted by poor year-on-year weather and to a lesser extent, by the macroeconomic backdrop. That's why we're delighted with our first half year results as despite quarter 2 softer growth in quarter 2 and despite the impact of incremental employers national insurance and a very high cost of stake, we managed to bring profit in just slightly ahead of expectations and slightly ahead of last year.

To us, that demonstrates the power of our Ignite program and the work done on cost mitigation. And as we believe the macro issues are temporary, we are maintaining our focus on the midterm where debt service costs significantly reduce where the business is going to be very well placed. I'm delighted to say that we are joined today by Emma Harris, our new CFO, but Tim will deliver his final city presentation this morning, but both he and Emma will be available to meet with you after the presentation. So I'll now hand over to Tim, who will take you through the financial results, and I will return to add color to the things we're working on.