Chapel Down Group (LSE:CDGP) — Interim results for the period ending 30 June 2026

0:01 Good afternoon, and welcome to the CHAPEL DOWN GROUP PLC Interim Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO James Pennyfeather. Good afternoon. Great. Thank you, Alex, and a warm welcome to all our shareholders who are joining this call to hear about CHAPEL DOWN's interim results for the first half of the financial year 2026. I'm James Pennyfeather, and I'm joined by Lauren Mouton, our CFO, And we're representing the leadership team of the business today and our amazing 87 colleagues to take you through a reminder of our strategic objectives and value creation plan and the progress that we are making against them.

0:59 Lowen and I are joining you from our offices in London, but the real action is happening in Kent where we are midway through our harvest, which is keeping 20 people busy in our winery and over a 120 in our vineyards. This lovely Indian summer weather is certainly helping with the logistics of the harvest, and we will be providing a full update on the harvest next month. We expect today's presentation to take thirty minutes, after which there will be a chance for questions. Please type in any questions, and we will get through all of them. CHAPEL DOWN has a clear mission to change the way the world thinks about English wine.

1:46 Our first vines were planted in Tenterton forty nine years ago. We've refocused our strategy in recent years to be focused on sparkling wine as our core focus and are leading the creation of this profitable new category. We would describe our fresh approach as having the same quality credentials as champagne, but a more approachable positioning. This leads to our ambition to achieve an equivalent 1% share of the global champagne market by 2035. We have the vineyards and the winery in place to achieve this exciting ambition. I'm going to hand over to Lowen now to take us through the key headlines from today's results announcement. Good afternoon, everyone.

2:32 Turning to our performance in the first half of twenty six, I'm pleased to report another strong set of results. We delivered net sales revenue growth of 19% to £9,400,000, representing our seventh consecutive quarter of growth, with wine sales increasing by 18%. Importantly, this growth continues to be driven by our strategic focus on premium traditional method sparkling wines, which now account for 74% of total wine sales revenue, up from 70% a year ago. This premiumization continues to translate into improved profitability with gross profit increasing by 28% to GBP 4,700,000 and gross margin improving by 3.5 percentage points.

3:19 We also saw a significant improvement in operating cash flow and continue to invest in maturing wine stocks, which underpins our future growth ambitions. Thank you, Lauren. I'm going to turn now to the category opportunity for English sparkling wine, and I'm gonna show you eight charts which show why we remain so optimistic about the category. We've often talked about how English sparkling wine currently only represents 4% of the annual consumption of the 200,000,000 bottles of sparkling wine consumed each year in The UK. But underlying this, we continue to see clear structural tailwinds which underpin our confidence in sustained growth potential.

4:09 The first of these, top left, is the generational shift into English sparkling wine by millennials who now represent 57% of English sparkling wine drinkers, which bodes well for the future growth of the category. The second is that we are creating a subcategory that is distinct from champagne. Champagne has spent three hundred years successfully establishing itself as the drink of choice for formal celebration occasions as seen here in red, whereas CHAPEL DOWN seen here in blue has created a new accretive consumption space on less formal celebration occasions such as summer drinking occasions, festivals, and live music events.

4:56 English sparkling wine has given consumers positive reasons to trade up into these new occasions. Turning to the third chart here, bottom left, you can see that the English sparkling wine category remains a growing category with value sales up 14% over the past twelve months. And lastly, we still believe that there is further room for sparkling wine to grow in UK because penetration is still low amongst UK adults at only 47% compared with 78% in France. As quality credentials continue to grow, as shown here by the 50% figure, we believe that this penetration will also continue to grow. Within the category, CHAPEL DOWN continues to reinforce its leadership position.

5:48 Research shows that brand awareness is the number one driver for purchase in high value sparkling wine categories. The role high value sparkling wine plays in consumers' lives is to make occasions more memorable when celebrating with friends or family, and choosing a recognized brand certainly helps achieve that. CHAPEL DOWN has established itself as the clear brand leader in The UK with 46% brand awareness, albeit still with headroom for growth against the leading champagne brand, MOET, and has won two percentage points of market share in the off trade channel over the past year. Bottom right now, basket switching data from a top three retailer in The UK shows that 88% of shoppers switching into CHAPEL DOWN from another sparkling wine are trading up from lower value categories of sparkling wine, which shows how how CHAPEL DOWN is successfully helping to premiumize the whole category.

6:55 In summary, the board remains optimistic in the future growth potential for CHAPEL DOWN within the growing English sparkling wine category. I'm now going to provide a progress update in terms of how we're doing against our three strategic priorities. Firstly, a reminder of what these three priorities are. The first of these is that we have built a really strong brand and will continue to enhance it, remembering that there is no value attached to it at the moment on our balance sheet. The second area is to leverage our position as brand leader in an emerging category for commercial benefit, both in The UK and internationally. The third, disciplined capital management, reflects that the board is keen that we leverage our own resources as we expand over the medium term.

7:49 These in turn generate five priority value creation initiatives, The first four of which relate to the commercial side of our business, building the brand, single vineyard, expanding our UK market footprint, and international expansion. Starting with the brand, I'm proud of the progress that we have made so far during 2026. We continue to strengthen the brand by engaging with consumers in memorable ways and introducing our wines to more people. We have strengthened our partnerships with iconic British British associations such as Royal Ascot, where sales increased 45% compared with the previous year, as well as signing two new partnerships with the Jockey Club and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

8:44 In London, we ran a pop up bar during English wine week in Covent Garden and continued our program of experiential sampling at Pub in the Park and Big Feast Vault. We get 50,000 visitors each year to our brand home in Tenderton and have upgraded our tourism experience there with the new Hyde tasting room. We're now the leading site on TripAdvisor for UK wine tourism and won the Wine GB trophy for best door, best cellar door alongside 13 gold medals of quality in that and other international competitions this year. To help attract more millennials and Gen Z to our brand home in Tenterton, we ran our first magnum festival earlier this year, in fact, earlier this month, which was a sunny weekend of live music and great food and wines attended by over 600 guests.

9:46 Transport from the local station and back was provided by us, and this helped us attract more people from a much wider area. We were very pleased with how our inaugural festival went and we'll continue to work on how we can use this model to run more of them in a way that remains consistent with the peaceful ambiance of the village in which our brand home is situated. Sharp eyed shareholders will already have noticed some changes to our brand livery on our stills and carbonated wines, which have injected more personality, and I would encourage you to track down a bottle of our A Touch of Sparkle Bacchus limited edition, which is currently available in our retail shop or on our website.

10:35 The impact of this increased marketing investment has reinforced our brand leadership position. Compared with the same period last year, we remain at 46% brand awareness and have increased our affinity score. However, we have seen a slight drop off in penetration, which appears to be from regions outside the Southeast. If we look at two of our core focus areas, London and affluent millennials, you can see continued growth in awareness, and, clearly, we want to replicate this growth in all regions of The UK. Turning now to our premiumization strategy. I am delighted that in q four, we will be launching the CHAPEL DOWN single vineyard series, starting with our much loved Kitts Coty, which will soon be available in a gift box and with a new variant alongside the Blanc de Blanc and Curre de Cuvee.

11:38 You will need to wait until next month before this variant is revealed to the world. The proposition of our single vineyard series is to reveal the intense truth of micro terroirs in Kent's North Downs, and you will see the visual idea here of the single vineyard highlighted in gold on a map design. Shareholders should feel confident in the quality credentials of what Josh and his team are achieving at Kitskoti with an unprecedented six gold medals won this year across six different prestigious competitions. Excitingly, once we've established Kitscote as our first in the single vineyard series, we then have two further single vineyards, Boxley Abbey and Buckwell, to explore.

12:26 Investing and building these luxury sub brands will build a premium halo for CHAPEL DOWN and help deliver further growth in our traditional methods sparkling focus and average selling price. We are proud of the progress our small commercial team has made in The UK under the leadership of Tom Hepworth Bond, both in terms of distribution wins and in outlet activations. We have successfully activated across major retailers with a here's to summertime campaign, the on trade version of which was more gastronomy led under the banner of taste of England. We've won new listings across both channels, including some prestigious accounts such as the Gordon Ramsey Group and Handpicked Hotels and the Entrade, including 16% growth of by the glass listings and grew our direct to consumer ecommerce channel by 12% in the half.

13:26 We still see a significant footprint for growth in The UK market. Internationally, we have made significant progress in building a scalable platform for future growth. Revenue in this channel increased by 66% to naught 800,000, driven primarily by continued momentum in The United States with our imported Jackson Family Wines. Distribution in The US expanded from 11 states a year ago to 31 states during the period, and CHAPEL DOWN secured a significant listing in 250 Whole Foods stores. You can see a photo here of some of the Jackson Family team who visited The UK to learn more about CHAPEL DOWN at the start of the summer.

14:15 In addition, we continue to see good progress in Norway as well as in the travel retail channel, including a new by the glass listing in Cunard's fleet of four ships, and we've also launched in Portugal, Mexico, and West Canada. In terms of disciplined capital management, we are clear that we have the vineyard acreage, winery, and ERP systems we need for this next phase of growth. Boxley Abbey is now in full production, and Buckwell is on track to be fully productive for the 2027 harvest. We do not intend to plant any new vineyards in the medium term. To improve quality credentials from our existing vineyards, Ten to Ten is now focused as our center of excellence for traditional methods sparkling wines.

15:09 We have installed some additional tanks at the winery this year to enable us to hold back more reserve wines for future blending into non vintage wines, which will help Josh and team deliver year on year consistency of our house style. Further CapEx was spent on enhancing our tourism offer at Tenterton with the construction of the Hyde Tasting Room. We're extremely pleased with this development and would encourage all our shareholders to come and visit it when you have a chance. Before I hand over to Loewen, I want to remind shareholders of the KPIs that we have set against our three strategic priorities. Of the six KPIs, we have made good progress in this half on three of them, with two flat, which are brand awareness and net debt to EBITDA, and a sixth, a share of champagne, only measurable once a year, so we will not be able to update this for six months.

16:08 And I'd like to thank the whole CHAPEL DOWN team for all the work they have done to drive this level of progress for our business. Thanks, James. Turning now to our financial results. The first thing to highlight is that the growth we delivered in the first half was broad based across the business. Net sales revenue increased by 19% to £9,400,000 with growth achieved in every major channel. Off trade and on trade both grew 18%, while international was our fastest growing channel up 66%, reflecting the momentum we are seeing in The United States. Ecommerce also continued to perform well, growing 12% and bringing more than 3,800 new customers into the CHAPEL DOWN brand.

16:57 Alongside this growth, we continue to see good execution of our strategy to drive premiumization. Traditional method sparkling revenue increased by 26% and now represents 74% of total wine sales, up from 70% last year. This is important because it demonstrates consumers increasingly choosing our premium sparkling wines and reinforces... Forces the strategic focus we have placed on traditional method sparkling over the last few years. Overall, we are growing across the channels, expanding distribution, increasing market share, and improving our sales mix, which provides a strong foundation for future profit... Profitability.

17:44 Benefits of that premiumization can be seen clearly in our gross margin performance. Gross margin increased by 3.5 percentage points to 49.6%, which is one of the most encouraging aspects of these results. The improvement was driven primarily by two factors. Firstly, the increased mix of traditional method sparkling wines, which carry higher margins than our other wine expressions. And secondly, we benefited from the lower production cost associated with sparkling wines due to the exceptional 2023 harvest. These gains were partially offset by a higher weighting of off trade sales, some lower margin noncore bulk line sales, and marginal increased transportation costs as a result of fuel price increases.

18:34 Investments we have made in the CHAPEL DOWN brand and in growing demand for premium sparkling wine are now delivering tangible margin margin benefits. Those margin gains translated into strong improvement in profitability. Gross profit increased by 28% to GBP 4,700,000, ahead of revenue growth as the benefits of premiumization and margin expansion materialized. We continue to invest behind our long term growth strategy, consistent with the board's previous communicated intention to increase brand investment during 2026. Marketing investment increased to £1,400,000, representing 15% of net sales revenue as we strengthened brand awareness, activated new partnerships, and supported further distribution expansion.

19:27 These investments reinforce our brand leadership position and provide the platform for sustained profitable growth. While overheads increased as we analyzed prior year investments and absorbed inflationary costs, revenue growth and gross profit growth more grow... Grew more than... Growth... Sorry, more than offset these increases. As a result, underlying operating performance improved meaningfully compared to the prior year. This translated into a 27% increase in adjusted EBITDA to £1,300,000 Adjusted EBITDA is an important measure for the Board as it provides a clearer view of the underlying trading performance of the business by excluding noncash and nontrading items, including the fair value adjustment to biological produce.

20:16 Based on current harvest expectations, we expect the fair value adjustment this year to be immaterial. I believe this is a particularly encouraging set of results because it demonstrates the operating leverage within the business. We have been able to increase investment behind the CHAPEL DOWN brand in line with our long term growth strategy while still delivering strong growth and profitability. Turning finally to the balance sheet and cash flow. I firstly want to remind everyone that our net asset value represents reported book values according to IFRS accounting standards, which for some of our tangible assets are cost minus accumulated depreciation. The board believes the market value of some of our assets to be significantly higher than the reported book value.

21:05 One of the most pleasing aspects of the first half of the was the improvement in cash generation. Operating cash flow was positive at GBP 600,000 compared to an outflow in the prior year, reflecting both stronger underlying profitability and favorable working capital timing during the period. As expected, we continue to invest in the areas which underpin our future growth. Inventory is a strategic asset for CHAPEL DOWN, and stock levels increased by GBP 3,800,000 as we bottled the 2025 harvest and continue to build maturing sparkling wine reserves for future demand. Net debt increased to £14,000,000 which was in line with our expectations and capital allocation approach.

21:51 Importantly, this reflects investment in maturing stocks and our asset base rather than operating losses. Encouragingly, compared with the prior year, we used around GBP 600,000 less debt, reflecting the improving cash profile of the business. We should not ever remember that with additional acres becoming productive this year and next year at Boxley Abbey and Buckwal Vineyards, we will likely see an increase in working capital requirements over the medium term as we invest into maturing stocks. To support this future growth, we also increased our revolving credit facility from £20,000,000 to £25,000,000 during the first half, while retaining access to a further £5,000,000 accordion facility. This provides substantial liquidity and flexibility as we continue to execute our growth strategy.

22:44 Overall, our balance sheet remains underpinned by a substantial asset base, growing inventory of maturing wines and a disciplined approach to capital allocation, leaving us well positioned for the next stage of growth. And with that, I'll hand back to James to talk about our outlook for the remainder of '26. Thank you, Vern, and it's now time to finish with our 2026 full year outlook. Our trading performance. There's been continued growth momentum into q three. In addition, continued premiumization into TMS and activation plans in place for q four, including strong distribution gains already confirmed, mean the board now expects stronger gross profits for the full year 2026.

23:32 The board expects this to translate into a material improvement in adjusted EBITDA, excluding fair value adjustment to biological produce, of at least 10% compared to market expectations. Net debt, it is anticipated that trading performance and more effective inventory planning of our maturing sparkling wines should reduce working capital requirements this year alongside less capital expenditure than originally planned for. The board therefore expects net debt to be lower at 12/31/2026 compared to market expectations. And then lastly, on the harvest, with over 50% of the harvest now completed, the board believes the 2026 vintage will be of high quality and with a yield, tonnes per acre, of about 10% lower than the five year average.

24:27 The noncash uplift from the fair value adjustment to biological produce is therefore likely to be immaterial. A further update on the harvest will be given once final yields are confirmed. So that is the end of our presentation. We are now going to invite everyone to input any questions that they might have, some of which have been arriving. And what we... How we're going to do this is I will read them out, and then either or I will answer them. So the first is... Oh, this one looks like it's probably more a question for you as shareholders, but it is what impact will these latest results have on the share price? So, Lowen, can you answer this? Yeah. Sure. So I just... It's a reoccurring question. I'll probably tackle this one first as there might be a few more of these. Unfortunately, as a AM listed company, we're not able to comment on the movements in share price. What we can say is we're delighted, obviously, with the great set of results for for h one, and we'll continue to deliver on our progress for the remainder of the year.

25:45 K. Second question is, what is the status of the new off-site winemaking facility with reference to planning applications, etcetera? This this question, I think, is a little bit old because we have we have already announced that we won't be pursuing an additional winemaking facility. The original plans were to to do that at at Canterbury, and, actually, we have the capacity on-site in Tenton to be a center of excellence for traditional method sparkling wine. So those those expansion plans are no longer on the table.

26:31 Third question, are there any plans to develop the Tenterton site for overnight accommodation? This would be extremely popular in the area and encourage visitors for further afield to attend. The the answer to that is is no. We have quite a constrained site at the moment, and we we... And our core strategic focus is on building our traditional sparkling wine brand. And when when we'd had the the Magnum Festival two weekends ago, actually, a number of people there were staying overnight in the local area, either in Tenson or down in Rye, and we think this is really good for for the local economy. So no plans to to move into, overnight accommodation.

27:25 Alright. Is the long term growth strategy focused on higher acreage and volumes or stabilizing the amount of acreage and focusing on performance of the existing vineyard portfolio. As I think, I mentioned a few slides ago a few slides ago, the... She... And I didn't... Can I just ask Alex if? Or if anyone is moving the questions just just to to leave them on the screen, please, so that I can answer them... Triage them more efficiently. The the question here is around, are we gonna plant anymore acreage?

28:10 The answer to that is we have everything we need for for the medium term, so we're not looking to plant anymore. We've now planted a thousand acres of vineyards. That allows us to reach an equivalent 1% share of the global champagne market by 2035. Last year, we sold at naught point 4% equivalent of the global champagne market. So as you can see from the vineyards that we've we've now planted, we still have a long a long path to growth or road map to growth ahead of us with sustained double digit growth every year into the early twenty thirties. Shareholder new vintage launch events haven't happened this year, which has been disappointing.

29:03 Will these be picked up again? Actually, I think what we've done this year is we've merged our new vintage launches into other events. So when we launched the Hive earlier this year, that new... Wonderful new tasting room to shareholders, that was an item which we launched English Rose. Likewise, when we were... Did the shareholder event up in London at Covent Garden, I think we had three of our new wines available to taste there. And then watch this space for the Kitts Coty new variant launch coming next month as well. So we are we are ensuring that shareholders get an early look in at any new vintage expressions that are coming.

29:54 Sixth question. What is the company's plan to capitalize on the growth in wine tourism in The UK? Is CHAPEL DOWN on the radar for international tour organizers? We we certainly see wine tourism as as a key part of what makes CHAPEL DOWN special. The 50,000 visitors that we have every year, a number of them go away as strong advocates for for the brand, many of them long... Lifelong customers as well. So it it... It's key for the two two investments we've done this year that are new are the building of the Hive, but also the the Magnum Festival. So this absolutely remains a priority for us.

30:41 Oh, good. I think we've got a question here, which looks like Lowen can answer it, which is what is the current status of wine stocks looking on a year on year basis over the last five years? Thanks, James. Yes. So we don't... I recognize we don't publicly disclose our actual stockholding for our different wine expressions, but commercially sensitive. But what I would say, though, is we are targeting a a normal three to four years worth of TMS stockholding, so traditional method sparkling, which is our maturing wines, of course. And that underpins, of course, future demand and also protects us a bit against year on year volatility in the yield of the harvest.

31:31 And then for still wines and carbonated wines, that's usually between one and two years of stockholding. And I can say that at h one, we were within those norms. I would say, though, linking back to my earlier point on the... When I spoke about the balance sheet, might expect a small uplift in that over the next few years as, of course, Boxley Abbey and Buckwell, Vineyards become fully productive, which delivers additional acreage for us. Fantastic. Next question is, are there any plans to further diversify the portfolio of wine offerings over the current range? We're very happy with the range that we have at at the moment. As I mentioned earlier, there will be a new range in the Kitts Coty single vineyard series or CHAPEL DOWN single vineyard series coming out next month, and, obviously, that that series will have an exciting future ahead of it.

32:33 We have the discovery series, which is where the winemaker's skills are are really sort of showcased. And I imagine in the coming years, there will be some, you know, some some more interesting wines being launched there as well. And and I think there's a question further down about bringing back a pinot noir variant. And I think... I don't know whether that's the the same person who I saw at the Magnum Festival a couple of weeks ago. That... That's definitely something that that we're looking at, but it would only be if if we know that Josh would be happy with the the quality of it. So watch watch this space, I would say.

33:28 The shareholder event in London was well received this year. Was the London pop up a success, and are there further plans for this for next year? Yes. We had over a 100 shareholders attended that, and we were very pleased with how with how it went. And and that model of getting shareholders together insights that aren't just intended in is is certainly one that we want to continue. Another question, where are the biggest planned growth routes in the next five years? The the the value creation strategy that we have, which is on building brand awareness, driving premiumization, expanding our UK market footprint, internationalization, and then doing that with disciplined capital management.

34:22 That that... The the first four of those are the the big drivers of growth for us, and we're very focused on on the execution of those. This is question, Lauren, I'm gonna pass to you. Number 12, which is, it would appear that many of your public shareholders who subscribed initially via CDGP finding their shareholders... Shareholdings frozen as a result of their public takeover and move to AIM, and what can the company do about this? Yeah. James, I'll just see the next question. I'll maybe read out alongside this one.

35:09 Will shareholders who bought shares via CDGP and our Republic have an opportunity to sell those shares? As it stands, the investment fee... The investment fuels as an investment for shareholder benefits with no process or plan for exit. So there's been a few questions on here around CDGP and and Republic. We we have many shareholders that support the CHAPEL DOWN through the different raises over the last ten years or so on the CDGP platform that's now called Republic. With the with the move to AM for CHAPEL DOWN, that should not have restricted or should not restrict shareholders from from being able to sell their shares. However, you know, that... The process for following that sits with the shareholders and Republic themselves, and CHAPEL DOWN has no influence or...

36:04 Over that process. So the first instance, I'd encourage everyone who has these questions to reach out to Republic directly. However, you know, I do note I do note the feedback, so I will, you know, try and reach out to Republic and see if there's anything we can do. But... And in the first instance, I'd I'd I'd encourage everyone to reach out to Republic directly. K. Great. Thanks, Lynn. I think there's another question for you, which is about the the growing number of vineyards in The UK and what's happening to the average price of fruit. Yes. So thanks for the question. I... Firstly, I'd I'd rather not speculate on what the average price of fruit is.

36:51 The reason why I say that is the market is quite fragmented. There's also... You know, you've got various different factors, including... Never mind the the tonnage that's available for for for sale. We've also got the different varieties, different quality aspects, and even down to clone levels. So there's a huge amount of variables at stake for for pricing. I I... I'd speak to CHAPEL DOWN strategy, and, you know, we've got 2020% roughly of our access to acres come from contract growers, so... Of our supply, essentially. Those are long standing relationships. Some of them are over twenty years... Dating back over twenty years, and they were really high quality growers. And we've got longer term contracts in place with fixed pricing mechanisms around quality and yield, etcetera, that protects us against volatile movements in the markets.

37:54 And, you know, that that provides us with sufficient capacity in the in the longer term in order to underpin our growth plan. So the the moving prices in the market is is not something that that that we are actively looking at at the moment with our strategy. Okay. There's a question if... Has spotted the growth of canned wine being seen in Waitrose and M and S and asking what CHAPEL DOWN is doing about it. We have looked at this area. We couldn't find a compelling business case at the moment. However, it is an an area that we will continue to to to explore if if it continues the growth that we are seeing. There there are a lot of variables also to consider around quality in that as well, but thank you for for spotting that and raising it.

38:54 I have a question here for for Loewen around the admin costs are up significantly, some of which is marketing and a question on what constitutes the rest. Yeah. Thanks. So,, significantly, 400,000 marketing. What's the rest? Their interest, no. It's not their interest. Their interest is captured as a separate line as finance cost That would be relating to overheads. So overheads, which would constitute all of our operating costs to support our distribution cost, office costs, people costs, etcetera, that will all go through there. So as I mentioned earlier, we've analyzed some increases from last year around, for example, headcount as well as absorb some inflationary increases this year. The good news is the growth on the overheads year on year is behind our top line growth. So therefore, we are getting some leverage...

39:59 Operational leverage compared to our net net sales revenue. Great. Thanks. I was hoping a few questions were asked right at the beginning which got answered over the course of the presentation itself, but there's one here that wasn't. Given the increasing climate challenges, much hotter, dry summers, what if any mitigations is CHAPEL DOWN taking to conserve or retain water? So we don't irrigate our vineyards. What we found this year was that at the end of August, the vines were still looking in extremely good shape, leaves really green, and that's because the vines have very deep roots. They are well adapted to more sort of Mediterranean climates, and our expectation and and forecasts are that there will be sufficient rain over the course of the year in order for English viticulture to be very viable for for decades to come. So we're not planning to put in additional irrigation at the moment.

41:21 Is the long term plan to drop still wines entirely to focus exclusively on the sparkling? This would be a disappointment as the Bacchus and Flint wines are excellent. There there are no plans to drop still wines at all. They're very much a valued part of our mix. They showcase our winemaker skills, and likewise, they give us a really good footprint on shelf and and give us exposure to to more occasions. They also help with cash flow as well because you you sell them the year after the harvest. But what I would say is our our our core strategic focus and the real value creation for the company comes from the expansion of of our traditional methods sparkling wine portfolio and becoming one of the world's great sparkling wine houses.

42:24 There's a... An... Question number 27, learn around stock levels. 20,000,000 in stock, does this represent a buildup of unsold inventory? The question is... Oh, sorry. The answer to that is the... It's intentional the way that CHAPEL DOWN invest into maturing stock. So as you might know, we've got a a long maturing cycle for traditional method sparkling wine. So with aging of the non vintage expressions being at least eighteen months after going through tirage, so harvest in September, October means that triage in June, July, then eighteen months on top of that, then time on cork, then selling through to the different channels, be it through DTC or trade channels. So, really, we're talking about almost almost three years since harvest before a non vintage traditional method like our bruit or rose would would hit the shelves.

43:29 And and therefore, we need to be investing ahead of our growth curve. So, essentially, we need to be putting more into stock today for the volume we'll be selling in three years' time. Otherwise, we'll be out of stock. So we've been intentionally investing behind maturing stocks. And to do that, we've planted new acreage over the last five years that now is becoming productive, That'll help us with that pathway to get to 1% of champagne by 2035. Okay. I'm conscious we are... I only got one minute to go, but just a final question here then, and and all questions will be answered as usual that we haven't managed to get to today. But a question from Peter saying, why has the yield per acre dropped? We we work... We plan on a... On an average yield per... Which is tons per acre based on the five year average.

44:23 In 2025, the yield was 15% higher than that five year average. This year, it's gonna be... We we think, and we're only halfway through the harvest, about 10% lower than that five year average. What's driven that has been a frost incident that... In May that had impacted some of the the vines, and then sort of in August, slight lack of rainfall at that point, but but a a 10% tolerance either way over the course of the two the two years, that's very manageable for us in terms of our sales forecast moving forward. And the the best news, I suppose, is that the quality of the grapes both in 2025 but also '26 is looking excellent as well. So I'm really excited about our harvest updates, which we will be doing next month once the harvest is over.

45:23 So that is everything from me. I just wanted to thank everyone. Lo and I want to thank everyone for joining today's call. We're very grateful for the support of our shareholders, and we hope to see you at our brand home in Tenderton soon. And thank you, Alex, for for running today's IMC presentation. Fantastic, guys. Thank you so much indeed for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.