Patrick Coveney
Group CEO & Director

Okay. Are we right to get started? Yes.

Okay. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us here today, either in person or on our live webcast. I'm Patrick Coveney, the Group CEO of SSP, and I'm joined by Geert Verellen, our Group CFO today. In a minute, I will briefly summarize the progress that we've made in the first half. Geert will then cover the financials before I return to provide you with more detail on our delivery against 'Focus 26' and our outlook for the remainder of FY '26.

We said in December that we had to do more as a team to strengthen operational performance and to create value for shareholders. We shared our 'Focus 26' plan to drive sustainable improvements in profitability, cash generation and returns on capital, structured against the 5 pillars that you see on this slide. To be clear, there is more that we can and will do, but we're seeing the benefits of that focus coming through in what we would characterize as a resilient first half performance with tangible progress against each element of the strategy.

Sales for the first half have been where we planned them to be as we delivered like-for-like sales growth of