Christie Group (LSE:CTG) — Interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2026

0:00 Good afternoon, and welcome to The Christie Group PLC interim results investor presentation. For 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 set. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Daniel Prickett. Good afternoon. Thank you, Alex. Good morning to everybody or afternoon, in fact, I should say. Thanks for joining us today. We'll we'll run through the presentation, introduce myself and Simon, and talk you through all the slides, and then there'll be, as Alex has just referenced, we'll take q and a's at the end that have been posted and and answer as many of those as possible in the in the time we've got.

0:49 I'm Daniel Prickett. I'm the CEO for CHRISTIE GROUP, and I'm joined today by my chief financial officer, Simon Hawkins. We'll run through the half year results, give an overview of of the business and the group, what we do, and what we're trying to achieve, really, and then a bit of an update on the outlook and and and current trading. So we're an experienced management team. Myself and Simon have both been with the group the best part of twenty years, twenty years plus in Simon's case. I joined in 2,007, previously worked in in in chartered accountancy audit background, then I I spun out and and spent some time at educate retail in a in an acquisitive phase for that group, which was great fun and great experience. I've been with CHRISTIE GROUP since 2007 and on the board since 2010.

1:37 Served myself in roles in CFO and COO pretty much on every principal business that we've we've got in the group. I've served on the boards. I currently chair three of the businesses, CHRISTIE and Co, which is our largest business, CHRISTIE Insurance and Venice. And I've got a a an I'm a chartered accountant myself, but and and and a bit of a legal background as well. Simon's been with the the the group for longer than myself, previously spent twenty years as as finance director of three of our CHRISTIE branded businesses. So we both have a a very, very in-depth understanding of the group. And as part of a generally, I'm very wide, a very experienced management team across the whole business. I'll give an overview of the business, and then Simon will take us through the the h one twenty six financial highlights, and then I'll update on current trading outlook and really summarize where we are before. As I said earlier, we'll then run through q and a's as they as they've been submitted.

2:37 So who are CHRISTIE GROUP for those that haven't followed us before and and what do we do? We are a professional services group. We exist to help clients buy, operate, develop, and sell their businesses, and it's a full cycle suite of services that we offer in that respect through from somebody who wants to acquire their first business and all of the various aspects of of buy side advice that they may want to consider in that, feasibility studies, pricing, deal origination, and and the various bolt on services that we've got that help them with that if they're buying a business in terms of obtaining finance, insurance, and valuation. Once someone buys a business, they then have to operate and develop that business, and, obviously, we want to help them optimize the performance of that business, and we offer a range of services that help them with that.

3:26 Ultimately, then there's there's the process through that, and then they get to a point whether they either at the end of life cycle, they might want to dispose of that business and realize the value they've created, or they're part of a journey where they're looking to build out a group of businesses, and they're looking for then a a second business or to dispose of one and then effectively reinvest those those proceeds back into into growing their their own business empire, so to speak. That's what we do, and we work through that life cycle with clients on a on a repeat basis. We're a relationship business and a referral business. The strength of what we do and the success of what we do for our clients is served by the fact that if we do a good job, they come back to us, and we and we do that repeatedly and can point to very, very long term relationships with our clients where they do exactly that and where we do a good job for our client and we're involved with the advisers that they themselves use, we then benefit from very strong referral flows and recommendations.

4:21 For that reason, you know, we've been around a long time. Our ambitions are to be the internationally recognized and most active knowledge leader and adviser in our sectors. We operate in specialist sectors, which I'll come on to and talk about. And we wanna be seen very much in those sectors as the go to advisory group where we can offer a range of genuine value add services that are essential for somebody looking to go through that cycle that we've just talked about and work with us repeatedly and help them really optimize value and match their own ambition and energy and drive that that is is so crucial in building really great businesses that serve fundamental underpin to UK and European economies and employ people and create value and wealth. So as I said earlier, we are sector specialists and that is our part of our USP.

5:11 We have a very established market presence. We're in sectors where we believe we have very, very strong fundamentals, very clear growth opportunities either in The UK or as I'll talk about more broadly in expanding some of those sector specialisms geographically into Europe on a wider scale than we we've we've had in in up to now, and that's something we're focused on. But across these sectors, these are the headline sectors that that really we are known as the the specialists in hotels, public houses, health care, which is elderly care, specialist care, retail, which covers a broad range of of businesses, but principally for us convenience stores, PFS forecasts with with electric charging points and all the the retail points that go on those garden centers.

5:57 We're strong in medical, and that really is particularly two strands for us, which is pharmacies and dental practices, but we do do a lot of valuation work on on veterinary practice as well. And we do support and advise and broker where it's where you're able to do it on GP surgeries. It's not a market yet that's really sprung into the same volume as elsewhere, but we're very, very, very poised, were it, to do so and can bring our expertise that we apply across all these other sectors into a sector like that. Childcare and education, we are undoubtedly the market leaders in children's day nurseries, and there are related educational settings that we advise on and broke the sale of businesses on. Restaurants are there with franchise and independents. We tend to do less brokerage work there in terms of business sales because they tend to be leaseholds and the value is really at a franchised operations.

6:46 And there's less actually operational real estate value in those, but nonetheless, we help with franchise search and select and various other advisory and compliance aspects to that part of the market. And in leisure, which again has a wide a wide range of businesses that actually serve that, but we do a lot and have an emerging and ever strengthening team in caravan parks and holiday parks, and we and we do advise on various other aspects, sports clubs, gyms, golf courses. Anything on these, when we look at these markets, are really operational real estate property backed businesses. We look to work in markets where there's enough business, which I'll come on to here, enough businesses that we can make a market and a transparent market as a broker. 90% of the time in our business sales, we are operating for the vendor, and that helps helps us and is is good in terms of we know we will get paid instead of acting for one of several possible successful buyers. So about 90% of the time, we act for someone looking to sell their business and realize value, as I talked about earlier in the life cycle.

7:47 But we operate in markets where there is a lot of volume. Our USP alongside this is that we sell consistently a thousand plus businesses a year across these sectors and across The UK and our international markets. And that's a level of volume that gives us resilience. It gives us huge diversification across these various sectors so we can have good times in some sectors, and we might obviously a slightly more subdued period in another. But it's a real diversification of exposure that we have, But it also gives us massive market intelligence and data across these markets in The UK. So when you're looking at these markets, as I say, they're they're big enough. We don't wanna be involved in markets where you you haven't got enough businesses to to see regular transaction flow And the sectors we choose to go into have enough business volume that we can make a market.

8:38 We we operate where we we really leverage localized knowledge as well as this sector expertise. We have offices across The UK and in our various European locations so that we know regional buyers, regional sellers, and we we can really leverage the relationships and the knowledge. I mean, if someone comes to us and instructs us to sell their business, they can be very, very confident we can get best value for it and identify a credible buyer or number of buyers. And so that's that's really the the the essence of what we do in our USP. We've identified really for about twenty years, we were principally in the Europe, we were principally just hotel focused. And actually looking at our markets in The UK, we recognize that many of these markets have fundamental strong fundamentals in European markets as well, and we're looking to take that sector specialist expertise to those international markets.

9:33 So when you look at something like hotels, obviously The UK is a business there, a country there where we've got 15 and a half thousand in The UK, but you've got over 67,000 hotels in the markets in which we're we're already acting as brokers. And then you look at those other markets. So we're steadily looking to expand and broaden our international profile. In that respect, we started healthcare teams two and a half years ago, three years ago in France and Germany. And we have a lead time in terms of investing in staff and bringing that through to full income, but that's a process we're committed to and are ongoing with. We've just launched in Ireland and gone back into Ireland earlier this year and we're working on an active dental mandate there and we see opportunities in some of the other sectors there, a smaller market. But again, consistent with our strategy that we want to expand and do more internationally, where we can bring this amazing track record and knowledge of those sectors that we can showcase of having operated in and built very, very strong relationship and credentials in for ninety years in The UK, we believe we can really utilize an opportunity to do a lot more in Europe. And that's where we're focused over the coming years alongside trying to strengthen and broaden and steadily grow our UK presence.

10:53 So what's our vision and strategy? As I've just touched on, we aim to be the internationally recognized knowledge leader and a preeminent adviser in those sectors, operating with scale on a multinational basis. What is unique about us is we we the volumes that we do, which we really don't see matched by anyone else working on a sector specialized basis, is we really specialize in this mid market space. But the way we do that is by having a whole of market knowledge. We know the independent and SMEs who start their business, and we help them with their first business. And then many of those go on to build bigger portfolios. And, ultimately, then there you get into consolidation plays with larger corporate operators looking to buy small, mid sized groups. And equally then, once you're working with those corporates who trust you and know you know the market, if they're looking to do strategic divestments, they're selling back into back down the market to sort of more independent operators.

11:50 We, again, are the people who know those regional markets and those regional buyers. And that's absolutely fundamental to what we do. It's fundamental to bringing value to those clients. It's fundamental to recurring resilience and repeat relationship referral work, and it really means we have whole of market data both in terms of pricing, valuations, but also lender and investor appetite as well at the same time. It's real time. We see it, and we operate with a scale both in our brokerage and our valuation and our finance businesses, which gives us amazing data insight on market trends as they're happening. In fact, we've, you know, we've we've just been issuing over the last few few weeks our various market reviews from our sector specialist teams, and they really give a deep dive view and illustrate the expertise we have in those sectors.

12:40 It's a fully integrated service offering. As I said with the life cycle earlier, we we offer end to end support across business brokerage as we call it, finance brokerage. We can arrange insurance as well. We value those businesses, and we've got two valuation businesses, but that means we're seeing billions of assets in those sectors each year, seeing real time valuation, seeing lender views of valuation. And of course, we're benefiting at the same time of being in the frontline in terms of seeing what businesses changing hands for and what buyer demand is. So we have an absolute insight in and window into the world, a window across a wide range of sectors with all the headwinds that affect them and the regulatory environments, the very specialist trends and barometers that affect each of those sectors. We're the experts in those. It's deep, deep sector sector expertise.

13:34 We aim to be the the the number one in all of our sectors. We're typically number one or number two, and we we wanna be the market leader in all. So we're not we're not far off that, but there's always more you can do. We try and drive market scale and volume. And as I say, we've we've consistently have sold a thousand plus. The last two years, we've done over 1,100 business sales each year. In the first half of this year, we've already sold over 600 businesses as we'll touch on later. And what we wanna do is more of that. We know that's what we do well. We're focused on scalable but sustainable growth at a pace that's sensible and is achievable. We have we invest a lot of money in bringing in talent, developing that talent so that we can consistently stand behind that offering we give to clients.

14:22 But it's be really seen as a destination both for clients and for the talent that wants to work in those sectors. That's key to what we do. It's people, knowledge, and expertise, and we have a very multi decade record of doing that very, very well. But we're focused on doing more of that on an international scale alongside continuing to improve our UK presence. Historically, for people who don't know us, we've we've entered new sectors, something like dentistry where we are very, very strong and as I say, probably the market leader in that. We we we sort of built our dental team really in the last ten ten, fifteen years or so. We've done the same with childcare, and some of these spin out being small subsectors. We can apply the same skills, expertise, and track record. And if sectors become right before consolidation plays or transactional markets, we can apply the skills to that. We're now on that journey with Caravan Parks. We've been on that journey for a number of years with Garden Centers after helping Wyevale, Terrafirma divested the Wyevale estate. And we were uniquely placed to do that again because we could deal with a volume estate and we could know regional buyers. So we have some really compelling competitive advantages, scale and diversification across those sectors, volume, data, and ability to deliver best in class advice, which is underpinned by that data, and as I say, experience and market reach, which we we think is unprecedented.

15:53 We have established quality brands. We put the client at the absolute heart of everything we do. We're consistent in the way we deliver it, and and we do that through highly experienced talented teams, which we're always looking to add to while just making sure we invest to retain the talent we've got. And we have a longevity and track record that, as I commented on earlier, means we we celebrated over ninety years with our CHRISTIE and CO business last year. Our Venner's business has been around about a hundred and thirty years. CHRISTIE Finance and CHRISTIE Insurance are approaching fifty fifty years. And so and and PINDAS has been around since the late nineteen sixties. So we have very experienced teams in those businesses. We obviously try and balance all the time bringing in new talent, and that's key, but we also really value experience.

16:40 It's not unusual in our businesses to have teams that have been in place for ten, twenty, and we have individuals thirty and forty years experience. We're very pleased to do that because then when a client sits with them, they know they're getting a level of advice they simply couldn't access elsewhere. And real experience has seen multiple points in their sector, in their industry, and through numerous economic cycles. I'll hand over to Simon at this point, and he'll take us through the h one financial highlights. Okay. Thanks, Dan. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll start off by just referencing the footnote that all of the numbers on the following slides relate to underlying continuing operations and prior 400,000, which is a nonrecurring, noncash, curtailment pension cost, which we were forced to recognize under the accounting standards from the closure of the defined benefit schemes that we announced in April 2026.

17:36 Okay. So what happened in '21 h one twenty six? I'm pleased to say we continued the momentum from a strong strong end of twenty twenty five with underlying operating profit up 11% and the dividend up 67. Looking at some of the key metrics in a bit more detail, revenue in the first box there was up 5.4% to 36,000,000, and that was with growth across all our five trading brands, both in The UK and internationally. As I said, operating profit increased 11.1% to 2,400,000. And pleasingly, we've seen an improvement in the operating margin, which nudged up to 6.6 from 6.3% in the prior year and towards our long our goal of moving that towards 10% in the forthcoming period.

18:23 PBT was up also up at 12.3% to 1,900,000, and the EBITDA similarly, obviously, is up to nearly 9% to 3.1 with an operating margin of 8.6%. EPS was up 116% to 5.69%, and our cash position significantly improved on this time last year, which were at GBP 8,700,000, which was GBP 3,700,000 up on this time in the prior period. As a result of all that, the Board recommended a 60% increase in dividends to 1.25%, and that reflects the group's strong momentum in this period and the continued confidence in the the board has in the long term outlook.

19:12 Looking at a bit more detail in terms of the revenue. As I say, the revenue increased by 5.4% to 36. We can also cross all our brands. The graph there illustrated broken down by the two business divisions, the PFS division and professional financial services, which is the PFS division, and that was up to 30,400,000 or 6%. Looking by the individual businesses within within the PFS division, CHRISTIE and COA get sold 607 businesses in the in h one, which was up 11.2% on this time last year, with a total value of just short of under 800 and just over 835,000,000 and for the prior year period of nine seven eight. The 2025 included some large care portfolio assets, which have a higher asset value, and 2026 had a higher volume in our from our pub pharmacy and retail sectors than '21, which tends to have a lower average fee.

20:12 What that illustrates is that you can see that the mix movement is the resilience across the different sectors that we operate in. Looking at looking at our valuation and appraisal business, which has increased in co impinders, income was up over 4%, and we valued businesses in excess of 4,400,000,000. So again, it gives us a great insight into how the lender market is, what's happening in the m and a world, which is all interlinked then to all of the brands. Moving into the finance business, again, we have growth rate of 15% growth in in h h one year on year, and new instructions in the period has allowed us to grow our pipeline at 27% compared to the prior year.

20:59 In our other f x FCA regulated business, CHRISTIE Insurance, we maintained strong client retention rates with 80% 87% of renewals in the period. Industry average is greater than 85% is considered a good metric. And commissions were up 31% on the same period in '25. Looking at our stock and inventory systems services business, which now comprises our Venice business, which is our hospitality stockholder business. This delivered modest revenue growth despite the challenging conditions that's impacting the sector. Pleasingly, we had a subdued Q1, but pleasingly, the performance was improved in Q2 with revenues 5.5% higher than Q1.

21:54 Looking at operating profit margins, as I said previously, the operating profit increased by 11% to 2.4, and that's grown at a pace more than double the revenue growth. And that's driven by our increased productivity alongside tight controls on our operating costs. Margin, which we've touched upon, nudge forward to 6.6%. Looking at the profit by the two divisions, you can see the significant movements if you're looking at the bar. The graph is in the in the teal color from in PFS, where there was minimal in '24 and and moving forward in '25 for a significant movement again in '26. And you can see that since 2024, we've had a £2,000,000 increase in operating profit in this division.

22:43 The margin again has moved forward to 6.8%, against 6.2% in the prior year. We continue to invest in our people and grow and expand our PFS division, both in The UK and internationally, as we seek to create a broader multisector offering in Mainland Europe to support our medium and long term growth ambitions. This investment impacts our short term profitability as the investment is all people related cost and thus hits the P and L as compared. As previously noted in previous presentations, it takes two to three years generally for an agent to become fully productive given the time take it takes them to secure new instructions and then and then turn those instructions into revenue.

23:34 So with that without without this investment cost, which is what to support our long term growth, we are effectively depressing our our margin in in that period. Looking at the stock and inventory services division, we've got a modest profit of 0.3. However, we've transformed this division into a profitable division over the last two years through the strategic divestments of the loss making knowledge and Venice's brands, which are now complete. Although we've got a modest reduction in operating profit in this period, this is in line with management's expectations against the backdrop of the widely recognized challenging conditions for The UK hospitality sector. So what does that do in terms of our our cash position?

24:26 As the as the chart illustrates, it's we've had significant progress year on year from a million negative in '24 to 5,000,000 positive in '25 up to 8.7 in 2026. This has really come this invest this strong position in our cast allows us to continue investing, growing our our business and teams as well as providing resilience through expected short term cyclical downturn periods happen in the markets, which typically last twelve to eighteen months before M and A activity generally rebounds. As I say, the cash is was increased to 8.7, which is up 3.7 on the kind of corresponding period in '25.

25:15 This is up 9.6 since H1 twenty twenty four, driven by the strong trading performance, together with the proceeds and elimination of the losses on the divestment strategic divestments of the Origin Ventures brands. We continue to maintain strong banking relationships with flexible covenant life facility terms. And we we renewed our overdraft facility of 4,500,000 in the period. So in summary, we entered 2026 with a strong cash position, and we enter h two in a in a similar position. Looking at earnings and dividends, the first chart has our adjusted EPS.

26:01 As noted on the previous slide, we had a 116 growth in adjusted EPS to 5.69. The divestments of of Venasys, which is completed in January as part of the strategic divestments has repositioned the group to the growth the group even to deliver significant improved earnings going forward. Looking at the dividend, as I mentioned briefly, we've increased the dividend by 67% to GBP 1.25 per pay, whereas three quarters of a pay in 2025, and this reflects the positive momentum in h one, which builds on the strong '25 and the board's confidence in the group's long term outlook.

26:49 And I'll pass it back to you, Dan. Thanks, Simon. So where are we and and and what does the outlook look like? Well, second half has started well. We've got investment and lending appetite in our sectors looks robust. We see good instruction levels despite, obviously, geopolitical climate with events in The Middle East and ongoing in Ukraine that that might otherwise be seen as concerns. We're not seeing that impact our instruction levels. I think the nature of where we are, our sectors, fundamentals that underpin those sectors, and the broad spread of our client base in those mid market asset spaces that I talked about earlier when I showed that pyramid, really, we've seen shelter us from concerns around larger M and A appetite for larger assets.

27:38 So we think we're well placed. And as I say, I think our pipelines and our activity levels appear robust despite those political disruptions. Transactional and finance brokerage activity are the same. And as as Simon's touched on and I spoke about earlier, because we have this window across investors into The UK, domestic investment, buyer appetite, how much businesses are changing hand in point, how much offers are coming in relative to original target prices, we can really see in real time how resilient and strong appetite is in our markets, and and everything appears encouraging at the moment. We've got continued investment as a result of that. We want to grow our operations beyond what we do in The UK. We launched dental brokerage and advisory offer in The Republic Of Ireland and obtained up our brokerage license to operate there. Again, that sits alongside our our presence already in France, Spain, Austria, Germany, and, of course, our UK business.

28:33 So we're very focused on doing more of what we do well on a broader basis. We'll invest consistently and on a measured basis to achieve that. In line with that and actually in terms of enhancing our expertise and our operational real estate expertise on the board, we appointed Darren Bond, who is the global managing director of CHRISTIANCO to the group board a few weeks ago, and that's further strengthened the board's expertise and really supports and aligns with those growth ambitions we've got on that strategy of expanding more of our brokerage activities. Darren's been with the business himself for for for over twenty years, but comes with a different skill set. He's he's he's very strong operational real estate background, capital markets, leading major projects for us for twenty years, and I'm delighted to have him on the board alongside myself and Simon and our non execs.

29:22 With all of those things flowing into our outlook, we anticipate delivery of a full year performance in line with current market expectations. And we once again expect to sell in excess of a thousand businesses, well on track for that, 600 obviously in the first half. And I'll comment in a moment because I've seen some of the Q and As on the mix of that business and the effect of that. And the momentum that we've seen in that first half really has given us the confidence to continue to do what we're doing. We've tried to reflect that in a 67% enhancement in the interim dividend that that Simon referenced a moment ago. And we've got confidence in the group being well positioned for a continued growth in in this financial year. But beyond that, as we've just talked about and Simon's touched on, we invest for the long term. When And we bring people in and look to retain them, we know that typically a deal timing takes anywhere between twelve and eighteen months from being instructed to sell a business to actually completing on it. That varies across our sectors.

30:22 Some sectors have regulatory environments that make deals longer longer, and you need regulatory approval for a change of ownership. Some are shorter term, and so we see a a great a great range of deal timings. But on average, we're looking at somewhere around eighteen months just shy of that to instruct, market, sell, and and ultimately complete on a deal. So when we invest in people, we do so knowing that there is a lead time to getting people fully productive, and then we get the real benefit of having that longevity of service and experience that I spoke about earlier. And that's key to our model, key to our strategy. We will invest consistently and on a measured basis. The strength of everything that we do is in our people, and we're very happy with our culture and and our methodology of of attracting, developing, and then retaining expertise, and and we will do that on a pace that doesn't jeopardize that.

31:13 But, ultimately, it allows us to penetrate new markets and take that CHRISTIE CHRISTIE service elsewhere. So very happy with that and the direction of travel. And so the question then for anyone looking at us and following this is then is is, well, why invest in in CHRISTIE GROUP PLC? We've got a clear focused strategy. We are focused on the core brands. We've got driving strong momentum, improving margins that we've talked about. We believe strongly that an overall blended 10% operating margin is eminently possible from the existing brands, and we're focused on trying to do that, which is why we're pleased that we've seen a slight improvement in that first half margin to 6.6%. We have an established full service advisory platform. I talked earlier about coming to us in in any of those sectors. We we sell our our services or our teams work collaboratively offering expert service, knowledge of specialist lenders, knowledge of specialist insurers, knowledge of buyers and sellers, and the knowledge of all the regulatory environments in each of those sectors.

32:16 If if people want to work in in any of those sectors, they know that if they come to us, they get the absolute go to specialists, and we can offer them and introduce them to support services that give them value. Because of that, we can lean on and demonstrate extremely long standing recurring client relationships. They generate repeat business through cycles, and and and they really underpin the essence of what we do, and it's why we've been around through multiple economic cycles. We know what upturns, downturns look like. We have we have the scars, and and we've been around a long time, but we are very focused on doing more of what we do well and taking that on a further geographical field whilst continuing to strengthen and remain every bit as strong in The UK market.

33:07 Because of that, we will advise consistently on a thousand plus, and obviously, we're looking to steadily and consistently increase volume. And as I say, I think we've we've done over 1,150 deals in the last two years, and we've done over 600 in the first half this year. So we will we will consistently try to invest where we can grow market market share in those sectors. We consistently do over 10,000,000,000 evaluation activity, and that gives us huge data range, relationships with lenders, credibility in the market, and a real, again, a a really detailed knowledge of the businesses, multiples, yields, and all the metrics that affect a business and are of interest to our clients when they're looking to buy or sell. And we have a disciplined, highly cash generative model, which which we think supports our shareholder return ambitions. It's asset light. We have strong cash generation as we've just seen on the on the moves.

34:00 We will convert operating profit to cash. And then in terms of capital allocation, our approach really is quite simple. Because we're asset light, we look to to maintain and build a a strong balance sheet that's resilient. We know a downturn will come in m and a activity every now and then. And when it does, we also know that our markets rebound quickly and strongly within twelve to eighteen months, m and a activity comes back. It's key to us to be able to service that returning demand that we have our expert teams that we've invested so heavily over many years to build in place. So we want a strong balance sheet that allows us to do that and weather some of those downturns when they're when they come in. And then against that, we wanna be able to consistently invest in building those teams, noting that I said earlier, it can take two, three years before a new recruit on a fee earning side is is hitting their full income targets.

34:53 So we have a medium and a long term approach to investing in our people, and we recognize then that we get real value from from having that talent with the business and the group for the long term. And then alongside those two approaches to our cash, we wanna return a good dividend that that has an attractive yield. Obviously, what we've done with this interim dividend is is indicate our belief in that approach to shareholders. And and, you know, that's very much where we wanna focus our our spend. And beyond that, we'll always be open and look at opportunities if we get a chance to accelerate the growth of our teams through some targeted acquisition, then then we certainly would consider that. But what we found through many, many cycles is actually building and maintain building teams and maintaining the culture and the essence of what we've done is is quite often done best through an organic growth pattern. So we'll we'll we'll we'll continue to do both of those, but it's it's very focused. We think we're pleased with the progress we've made in the last two years. We're pleased with these first half results, and and we're certainly very happy to to continue pushing on with that strategic focus.

36:02 I won't go through the appendices to the presentation, but I will jump into the q and a's in the time we've got a lot left and try and answer some of those questions. So if I look at the first one, how do you expect a change in transaction mix and the lower average fee seen in the first half to develop through the second half? That's a great question. As we commented on in the presentation, our average fee was slightly lower purely because of the actual timing of the deals and the instructions of where they've emanated in terms of invoiced deals in that first half. And so across our range of sectors that we talked through earlier, we have a different value spread. And typically, the lower value but higher volume sectors that we operate in pharmacy, convenience stores, and pubs, They will give us slightly higher volume, sometimes often be quicker deals, but but can give a slightly lower average fee.

36:58 And then compared to some of our other sectors such as health care where which really has our largest average fee because of the size of the assets, hotels and childcare and education. In terms of how do we see that mix impact in the second half, it's purely deal timing and the way things have happened. We've got a very healthy pipeline as we head into the second half as we've talked about. And in terms of looking at the average fees when you look at them broken down, just to give you an example of it, that the care deals in our pipeline heading into the second half of the year, this this year, a 21% higher as an average fee than we were carrying in the pipeline of health care deals this time last year. So we see no so we see no areas of concern in terms of average fees. It's just a matter of mix and timing.

37:45 They always happen when they happen, obviously, with us advising and supporting to help them happen as quickly as possible if we've introduced credible buyers to to lend to to vendors. But we certainly see no fundamental trends in that mix of first half, second half, And it's we would expect to bring through deals in the second half to to maintain a reasonable trajectory. Ultimately, we get paid on a commission basis on value of businesses, much like a residential estate agent. And therefore, if businesses values are pushing up, if buyer demand is very strong in those sectors, that helps drive business values up as well pue through pure demand and supply economics. And fundamentally, we want set businesses that are trading well, delivering good EBITDAs.

38:31 That helps them in terms of multiples on which their businesses are valued and the vendors can ask sales prices. But all of our sectors look attractive. We see robust, resilient demand for those sectors, and we think that'll play through in a second half mix. A second question then, which I'll answer, which international markets offer the greatest growth opportunity and how do conversion rates compare with The UK? How should we think about the margin contribution from those operations as they scale? Internationally, we do a lot lower volume at the moment because we're principally been in one sector, and, obviously, we're now diversifying into a second, and and we plan to do more as I sort of touched on in the slide earlier. In terms of our average fee levels on the continent, they typically are three or four times higher as an average fee than we currently obtain in The UK, but that's partly because we are doing lower volume but higher asset values.

39:29 The strategy is very much about focusing, and we know what we do best is as we scale, we operate in that mid market space. And so the more volume we do internationally, we would expect our average fee levels to come down, but balanced by higher volumes. In terms of the overall margin mix of that, our margin in a sense of really the income that people generate and the cost of paying those people who can broker those deals and the experts are very, very similar. I won't disclose that here because that's market sensitive information for us that we don't disclose. But actually between the two markets, I think they're very analogous, and we're confident that we make good, strong, high levels of margin and variable margin conversion. So the key for us is we're a mature business with a very strong infrastructure in terms of marketing, management infrastructure, technology. All the all the infrastructure that supports our fee earners in various parts of our businesses is well established.

40:25 Obviously, you're always trying to tease in additional support and management costs where you need it to support that scale growth ambition. But principally, we wanna grow our field and our capacity. And across those two markets internationally and in The UK, we we we think they're fairly consistent. And our overall, those ambitions to be able to deliver a blended margin of 10% plus that Simon just talked about, we believe is completely supported by the margins we would make on our transactional brokerage business and our finance brokerage business, where we make margins that absolutely support and significantly exceed that, but it's about doing more of those high margin services on the transactional and finance brokerage side, balanced by the recurring nature and the value added services that we get elsewhere in the group at a slightly lower margin, like valuation, but they give us huge relationship, data point access and intelligence on the markets, and we're very happy to be in them, so and offer that complimentary service range. So we will continue to to push on, but the international expansion and the consolidation and enhancement of what we do in The UK on our transactional markets is where we see the strongest margin opportunities.

41:38 And then just reading the questions live as I look at these. You've continued to talk positively about the strength of the transactional pipeline. Could you give us a little more color on how the composition of that pipeline is evolving, whether in terms of deal size, sector mix, or the quality of instructions, and whether that gives you confidence that the higher average fee levels you've achieved can be sustained. Thank you to Matt for that question. Matt, a little bit of that overlaps with the earlier questions. Appreciate that the viewers to this can't see other questions that have posed it, but I'll try and there are some angles to that that are slightly different. So as I've just talked about, absolutely, we think that the the mix of our pipeline supports that. And I mentioned earlier that our our that the deals in our care trend care pipeline, for instance, are higher value than we had a year ago.

42:27 I think, ultimately, everything has a unique piece against the the particular business being sold and on which we're instructed. But in terms of giving you a bit of flavor about our pipeline, when we talk about transactional pipeline, we are referring to a point at which a a vendor and a buyer have agreed, offer agreed effectively and accepted, and it moves into due diligence phase and solicitors' hands to effectively get the deal to a point where we hope it it it reaches contractual and unconditional exchange and then completion. So everything in our pipeline is at that that kind of deal agreed stage and in solicitors' hands and working through through due diligence when it's in transactional pipelines. Those pipelines are up on a year earlier at the end of first half, and they've grown strongly through 2025.

43:12 So that further growth that we talk about in the results that we've released today is growth on that on that growth we had last year. So all of those things in our pipeline support a healthy outlook for us. Obviously, a deal isn't done until it's done, and we recognize our income at the point of exchanges. But our conversion rate in our pipeline is pretty good. It's 90% plus. So once something gets to pipeline in a normal market, then we would expect to convert 90% of what's in pipeline to an ultimate end point where we can invoice the income. And then before that, prior to that stage, in terms of what we're instructed on that hasn't yet got to a deal agreed stage, we then have about 50% conversion of our instruct instructions, ultimately, yeah, we get into a pipeline.

44:01 Typically, at any point in time, and at this point in time, we'll have between 900 and a thousand deals going on in pipeline, and then we have taken my 50% conversion point. We have about double that again that have not yet reached that stage. So at any point in time and certainly sitting here today, we'll have about 3,000 mandated businesses, unit businesses that we are mandated to sell and are in a various stage of that. We have a mix across our sectors. We have a range of fee spread in that. We have different regulatory environments, but all of our sectors that we're in that I spoke about earlier, we think are really underpinned by strong fundamentals, not just in The UK, but where we look to go into other markets in Europe, the same the same point. Something like health care, fundamentally, have a need. It's obviously very strong in the in the in the news at the moment in terms of social care agendas and things like that. Fundamentally, there is a very strong need for that. It's gonna continue to increase.

44:58 We see that in terms of the investor appetite, both domestically in country, but also overseas investors looking to invest in other geographies, so US REITs looking to invest in The UK, European investors looking to invest in The UK, and we create relationships through that. So we see very, very strong fundamentals across the full range of our sectors. We have a really, really diverse spread, high volume quality of earnings potential within that pipeline. And as we've reported this morning, our pipelines are up on where they were a year ago, that gives us the encouragement to do it. The risk in our in our in our business is always deal timing. That is the the the issue. We can only do a deal once. And in m and a, if a deal happens, it happens.

45:44 But the exact timing on that may may move. Obviously, due diligence deals can be targeted for a certain day and then they might happen a day later. And we have financial reporting calendars. So that is the the process from a financial reporting audience that creates, if you like, timing risk on our deals. Otherwise, we have a lot of KPI data that goes around that where we can track deals, the amount of deals that are being aborted or withdrawn, is that in stable, are our instruction levels healthy, How many of our instructions are what we would call consensual or badged as distressed? We have a huge amount of data, and we have, obviously, ninety plus years of expertise and experience in doing this. So that gives us a real window on the world. It gives us a forward looking view. The last thing I'll say about those pipelines, just to answer that question, is that our typical deal time is from instruction at the point it goes into a we're we're we're mandated to sell a business through to completing on it. It's currently running at about sixteen months on a blend, and it takes us about seven months from when it reaches deal agreed to then go through that due diligence phase and complete. But what that means is we have a very long term view.

46:55 So when I talked about those 3,000 businesses earlier, that's a 3,000 business sort of long term cycle where you've got this instruction time of sort of eighteen months. So the forward view we have on the world, if all other fundamentals stay the same and in those KPIs, we're not seeing changes in deals aborted or withdrawn instructions, they give us a confidence on the forward looking view. And that's how we look at our pipeline and we see the various headwinds and the various metrics within that. It's a very broad set of data that helps underpin our view of the future. And then the last the last question I've got there, what is the nature of the competition? Great question there. Our competition, because we're broadly spread across all those sectors, our competitive environment is varied across those sectors.

47:42 Typically, as a as a business broker, CHRISTIE GROUP is is that brand, we are typically number one or two in all of the sectors. And but the who the competitors are will vary. So there will be specialists in our pharmacy side of the business. For instance, there's another brokerage firm called Pharmacy Seekers. If you go into dental, there'll be Dental Elite. On the hotel side, you will get some of the the bigger names that everyone will recognize here, Snap or CBRE, etcetera. And so but we do have a range of a range of competitors in different different sectors that we operate. Nobody does what we do in terms of volume. No one does what we do in terms of that volume and diversification across those sectors, and no one does what we do in terms of that that specific makeup of those services. So there are professional advisory groups doing doing various bits of it, but in terms of the volume that we do and that very that sector expertise strength where people can point to being number one or two in all of those sectors or virtually all of those sectors is quite unique to us. We would consider ourselves the market leaders in health care, child care. We'd be one or two in dental and pharmacy, and we'll be in the in the top four or five in pubs, hotels.

48:59 But obviously, we have an ambition to do more. I think we're we're increasingly seen as the market leaders in in garden centers, and we're very strong in the convenience space, as I said, and and petrol four courses, etcetera. So that's our USP. It's what we do well. We look to do more, and if we're not the market leaders, that's our ambition to be so. I think that wraps up all of the questions. Hopefully, we've answered all of those that I can see. We've given an overview of of the business in the first half performance. Thanks to everyone for joining today, and we'll sign out at that stage. Thank you. Fantastic. Daniel, Simon, thank you very 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 help the company better understand your views and expectations.

49:47 Behalf of the management team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.