Vistry Group (LSE:VTY) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Good morning all and good to see you all. Welcome to the half year results presentation for 2026 for Vistri. Thanks to all those who are attending in the room and online. Today we'll talk you through our half year results but also cover the conclusions of our CEO review that we've carried out through the summer. I'm Adam Daniels. I was appointed as Chief Executive on the 13th of April of this year. I started my career in pure house building then moved into contracting housing before I joined the business in 2016 when I joined Countryside who were already doing partnerships at that time so I've got deep expertise in mixed tenure and partnerships house building I became part of history in 2022 when they acquired Countryside at that time a little bit what we're going to talk about today so I'll have a brief introduction into What we might go through and some of the early observations I've had during my time as Chief Exec. We'll then go across to Tim who'll talk about our half year results before we cover the CEO review.

1:01 After that we'll look at current market conditions and outlook and then conclusions and clearly a Q&A. So just to open and set the scene a little bit, we started a review of the business in May which is a detailed work stream with external support, so an internal team working alongside an external team to really look at the business in a root and branch way, building up from the quality of the sites into the way we operate and looking at what we're doing well and what we're not doing so well. We acknowledge that the execution of our model since 2023 is not all gone as we planned, but there is very good reassurance in the work we've done that the model's worked excellently in some areas despite the difficult market conditions we've had during that time. We've made very good progress on deleveraging the business and improving that cash generation and we're continuing to see the outcomes of that work. And there's early actions being taken to resize the land bank and look at where we're reinvesting in new land to make sure we've got those suitable land positions for our mixed penny model. We talked as a last statement about half-won profit being impacted by cash actions and we'll talk about that and summarise that shortly.

2:07 In very, very good news, the SAHP grant allocation was announced in August That was a £9.6 billion award across the affordable housing sector, going to 33 partners, 29 of which we're already in contract with up and down the country. We received £350 million of direct grants award, the top allocation in that award, clearly showing the market's confidence in history as a key deliverer of affordable housing. So a really good piece of news in August. Our refinance process is due to start in October as planned and we'll be aiming for less borrowing in the medium term as we bring down the size of the balance sheet and make the business less capital intensive. In summary, we are taking the necessary action to make this business less capital intensive, more profitable and more reliable.

2:56 A little bit of progress on deleveraging. Just first as a bit of a headline, peak debt lower in FY26 than it was in FY25. despite poorer market conditions, despite the continued delay of the SHP until the end of August, you know, peak debt did not reach the levels in FY26, it did in FY25, good reassurance, and we're past our peak debt point for this year, so won't return to that peak again between now and the end of the year. In relation to overall leverage, good progress on land creditors, so we reduced land creditors by another £100 million since half one, and we expect to further reduce that by 17 million pounds by the year end. So paying down those land credit is reducing that overall leverage. Overall in 2026, expect a reduction of circa 300 million pounds during this year.

3:44 We've started some work around reshaping the land bank. We made some good progress for how we reshape that to be more suitable to our model in the right areas, the right source of sites. And we've reduced land buying in H2 following that CEO review to ensure that we're really focused on the schemes that work best for us. In relation to private WIP, Morgan Progress, so unsold stock continues to fall. We talked in the July statement that we've made £300 million of progress in the year already, and we've made a further £80 million of progress since the half year. And as we talked about in July, we've exited our part exchange position, which brought in another £20 million of cash in quarter three. So good progress around Private Whip. What these things have allowed us to do is really look at the quality of the deals that we're doing with our partners. This is a business all about the quality of deals, the quality of land deals, the quality of partner deals that feed into those. So it's allowed us to step away and renegotiate some of those deals to improve returns and improve the quality of the underlying deals that are being fed into the business. Because of these self-help measures that we're making very good progress with, no expectations for an equity raise and we're very confident these self-help measures will deleverage the business as we work through the balance of 26 and into A few of Vistri's fundamentals I wanted to cover just at the start.

4:59 Firstly, Vistri is an excellent business. Underlying some of the challenges that we'll talk through today, we've got excellent people, excellent quality, comfortably maintaining our five-star HBS status, great feedback from our partners, and that is giving us fantastic reassurance that the business remains in very good shape. We've got lots of highly motivated people with deep delivery expertise in what we do. What we do is different to the rest of the market and our people understand it and know it and operate it well. Clearly the segments of the housing market we work in have high structural demand. There is lots of need for affordable housing, mixed-tenure housing all across the country and therefore we're in a good place to deliver in that. We can prove through some of the work I'll talk you through today that when executed effectively this model delivers those low upfront capital requirements, really good flexibility between the partner demands and open market channels.

5:52 And we've got a wide customer base between all of our private customers, our housing associations and our PRS investors that we can sell into. In summary, we are market leaders in what we do and we generate great value for our partners. The focus now is to increase the operational control, release cash and reduce complexity. There's an opportunity to really simplify Vistri and make it more reliable as we go forwards. So a bit of a snapshot of what I'll talk about later. So what is the vision as we move forward? We'll be industry-leading capital light, a specialist mixed-tenure house builder focused on that balance between partner-backed demand and open market. And clearly we'll prioritise cash conversion and returns over volume. The conclusion of the CEO review shows that we need to tweak the tenure mix to 60% partnerships and 40% open market and use that tenure mix in the right areas of our geography.

6:45 We want a more focused and agile platform. 12,000 units is the medium-term target. of the business to realise that balance between volume and quality. We'll reduce the balance sheet targeting a much smaller owned land bank position of 36,000 homes and we'll make sure there's consistent adherence to that mixed tenure model all across the geography with an overall target of 30% plus low key by the median term. As we reshape the land bank, really focusing our land teams on the quality of opportunity rather than the quantity of sites bought and tweaking the regional structure to move from 25 to 12, really focusing around the quality of our site teams and project-led focus, something that I'll cover a little bit later on. Hopefully that's a little bit of a snapshot of what I'll take you through the detail with later on. Before I do that, I'll hand to Tim for the finance review.

7:35 This is Tim's last action with us before Tim leaves the business very shortly. Just want to thank Tim for his work over the last few years and also thank him for his time with me over the last few months. I'm very pleased that we've made very good progress with Tim's replacement and we expect to announce a new CFO imminently. Thanks Tim. Thanks Adam. Morning everybody. So we'll start, I'll talk now about the half year position, I'll come back later for a bit of a recap on the financial implications of the strategy after Adam's taken you through the strategic changes. So half year, we had an extensive July trading update and we had a conference call. So I'll try and avoid being too duplicative of stuff we've said before.

8:23 I'm trying to race through the old news, if you like, on half year. So in terms of the group result at the half year, back in July we said our first half year was a £30 million loss excluding the impact of CEO review items. So that was clearly adverse to last year. Two principal reasons for that. One is that we took a lot of Discounting action the first half year to clear our stock down to generate cash The impact of that discount was around 50 million pounds of profits in the first half of the year And the other thing we saw in the first half of the year was that partner volumes were subdued there was a period of hiatus as partners waited for confirmation of what the new grant program is going to offer them and so there are less deals in the first half of the year than would normally have been expected The other thing we reported at half-year was that net debt was higher than last year, again impacted by the lower volume of partner deals.

9:21 So that's the old news. The new news for the half-year is that we've now completed the C-year review process. We're still in the process of working through the details of the exact financial quantification of all of those items and also working out whether there are exceptional or otherwise, and also whether they should be booked in H1 or H2. Now that last bit, the H1, H2 piece, is complicated by the fact that the CA reviews started back in April, effectively, when Adam took the reins. So what we've done is identified 50 million pounds of charges, and I'll go through the charges in a bit more detail later, but 50 million pounds of charges that should be booked in H1. So this was because the actions were fairly well progressed.

10:07 They were the lower hanging fruits, if you like, of the CEO review change. So these were things like accelerating closure of sites that we knew we weren't going to proceed with on the basis of the new strategy. They were things like the part exchange decision to take write-downs in part exchange, in a clear part exchange. So that's the 50 consults, the 30 we talked about before and the 83.3 that you can see on the slide for profits. The other two things that have been booked in the half year that we haven't talked about before are exceptional items. One around goodwill impairment, which I'll tell you about later, and also an additional charge on building safety. Right, so back to H1 trading. So as we've discussed before, the units were down 8% year on year and revenue down by a similar amount.

10:57 That was largely with down to the partner volumes coming down. The open market volumes were actually up because of the discounting action, but overall net-net we were down 8%. In terms of pricing, despite that discounting action, actually pricing didn't drop. The average sales price went up by about 3%. And the reason for that is because a lot of the discounting action that we took was to more expensive products. So the stuff that tend to be slower moving were the four- and five-bedroom houses and probably more in the south than the north. and hence the actual ASP of our sales went up despite the fact that we were doing this discounting. A couple of other things to call out here. One is that land sales got in the first half of the year.

11:44 It's something that we were evaluating. I think one of the things we've been doing over the course of the summer is pausing some activity while we identify the criteria that's appropriate for the new strategy. So I'll come back to some of the impacts of that later. So there were low land sales in the first half of the year. We expect further land sales in the second half. So land sales will be higher and not as high as the full year last year, but it will be higher in the second half of the year. And then finally, gross margin sales. The gross margin is adverse this year. If you add back the £50 million of cash generating actions and you add back the £50 million of CEO actions, our gross margin is a little above 10%. Working our way down the rest of the P&L. Overheads were down, so this is before the impact of the voluntary exit scheme and the further restructuring that Adam will describe later. Overheads were down because the headcount was lower from previous action.

12:43 We took steps around the voluntary exit scheme back in June, which has resulted in a large chunk of the exceptional charge within the £10 million that you see there. The benefits of that will start flowing through towards the end of the year. And then quickly, net finance costs is up overall. There's a few movements within there. Average daily net debt was higher in the first half than the previous year. Land creditors, the average land creditor balance was also higher in the first half than the first half of the previous year, which both drove finance costs up. It's slightly offset by the fact that our average cost of borrowings was down to closer to 6% from being around 6.5% last year. And finally, to mention tax. So the big charges that we'll talk about later will generate tax credits and hence taxes and add back to profitability.

13:39 So building safety. We took an overall charge in the first half of the year of £79 million, which is obviously higher than we expected. There was a surge in new buildings coming through assessment in the first half of the year. principally these were contracting business contracting projects where we've done the work back in the 1990s so we don't have any records of some of these developments that were put together by companies that were former incarnations of part of our business last year there was a pledge signed by developers which accelerated the need for assessments that acceleration led to more claims coming through in the first part of this year for the buildings where we have contractors, and hence an increase in the provision related to that.

14:30 So that's the main part. 31 of the additional 40 buildings are contractor buildings. We would expect that we're not going to see a surge like that again. Sure, there may be some other buildings that come out out of the woodwork over the next few years, but we think that the volume should be significantly smaller because this should have come out by now. In terms of cash, about £27 million of net cash outflow on building safety in the first half of the year. That's net of recoveries that we received, and we received about £6 million of recoveries in the period. So Goodwill, I've got 10 slides of Goodwill, because I thought you'd all be fascinated to know about Goodwill. I haven't really. So where's Goodwill come from?

15:17 Goodwill's come from the acquisition of three parts of the business, from Countryside, from Gallifrey Tri and from Linton Homes. all goes into one big bucket and it gets assessed when there's an indicator of impairment and clearly a lot has happened in the first six months of the year that has indicated that we needed to look at it so the market environment being difficult all of the noise that's created with the Iranian conflict our market capitalization has dropped and all the actions of the CEO review so all of that meant we needed to test it and we needed to test on the basis of a discounted cash flow based on our revised model so Again, I don't want to jump the gun, but we've got a different outlook for our five years, which got factored into the Group Will calculation. What gets spat out at the end of all of that is that more than half of our Group Will is impaired, so an impairment charge of £475 million.

16:09 It's non-cash, it doesn't impact our covenants, it doesn't impact our ROKI, but in terms of headline profit, it's a big number. But let's walk through the half-run cash flow quickly. So we opened the year with an exit of £144 million. We made losses of £83 million. A lot of those CEO review costs are non-cash and effectively reduce inventories. So while inventories increased slightly and there's cash outflow in the first half of the year, the underlying inventory build-up was slightly higher than that. and where we're seeing that inventory build up net is in infrastructure on some of the larger sites. So that's where the inventory is trapped and that's fed into our thinking in the CEO review.

16:58 More significantly, we've reduced our land creditor balance by over £100 million in the first half of the year. We expect further reduction in land creditors in the second half of the year. I'll pick up one more point in there which is around the net investment in JVs. Our investment in JVs picked up by £30 million. A large chunk of that was the funding that we put into the JVs to pay down the debt within the joint ventures. So joint venture debt and land creditors, our share has dropped by £23 million in the first half of the year. And then in terms of capital employed, so we always see capital employed jump up in the first half of the year. It's relatively seasonal. There's more activity in the second half. in the first half, and hence there's more capital employed generally in the first half. The impact was bigger than normal because the reduction in land creditors was abnormal. We don't normally see a land creditor reduction of the scale that we saw in the first half of the year.

17:55 And so as land creditors goes up or land creditors comes down, capital employed goes up. So work in progress, we're making good progress in terms of getting rid of the unsold, getting rid of our stock, and we'll see more of that in the second half of the year, but as I mentioned before, it's the infrastructure investment that is offsetting that. So finally, giving a little bit more colour in the presentation to covenants, because we've been asked about it a lot, and there's no reason to hide from what is actually a pretty good covenant story, the significant headroom for all our covenants at half year you'll see the interest cover which gets a lot of focus was actually way above the minimum requirements and that's because that the way it's calculated with some of the ad backs to interest costs so significant headroom for the half year covenant tests one of the things we did though in anticipation of the impact of the CEO review was we engaged with our banks to say look these CEO review items that are coming out are going to impact our profitability we can't be sure about the treatment of exceptional or otherwise so let's be prudent let's talk about these covenants in advance so we're talking about the covenants at the end of this year and at the half year point next year and we've had a very active engagement with our banks many people in the room here today from our banks it's been a very supportive process and the banks have waived the interest cover covenants for the end of this year and the

19:29 half year next year, recognising that these charges are one-off and the right thing to do for the business. So, you know, grateful for the banks for taking that area of uncertainty away. And I think what that demonstrates is the support that our banks have for fishery. And then in terms of growing concern, again, we've provided a lot of disclosure in our R&S to enable you to spend some time poring through the assumptions and assessing them. But we've looked at a severe but plausible downside case and concluded there was no material uncertainty on our going concern. That's been supported by obviously by the Board of Directors but also by the auditors and a clean opinion again for going concern. And I'll come back to the refinancing activity that we expect to commence in October later on. Good, that will do me for now.

20:24 So as I touched on earlier, I'll pause while I sort out some technical issues. Thank you very much. So as I talked about earlier, we did a root and branch review of the business. This is a very detailed piece of work with external support, working alongside our internal teams. And so we looked across all the sites in the portfolio, all the live sites, site by site review, and we did a detailed review of how we're operating, what's going well, what's not going so well. So the objectives were, how do we get this business performing rather than disappointing? That's a key driver.

21:20 I've got real faith that this business can perform well, and how do we get it into that shape? We want to understand where the model works and where it's letting us down. What scale of business do we want to create that gives us the requisite quality of returns that we want? We identify how those best performing sites succeed and therefore how we replicate that and see where those worst performing sites are and how we avoid that in the future. And then following that, we shape the overhead to ensure we've got those high quality teams delivering on the plan. So the review assessed our geographic footprint. It looked at margin quality, capital intensity, risk profile, all across those schemes. It looked at a detailed review of the market demand for the 10 years across our footprint. And it looked at the implementation challenges since we started moving to all partnerships in 2023. And I'll talk through in detail what we found in those sites.

22:09 We clearly looked at capital intensity and scale of the balance sheet. And we talked to our stakeholders, including our partners, about how we may improve as we move forwards. So key findings. Firstly, Vistri rapidly evolved through M&A. And that day was a differentiated mixed 10-year model at the end of that. History remains a high quality business. We have got the best relationships in the sector with partners, local authorities, landowners and our supply chain. And that transition from all the businesses we brought together into partnerships clearly offered some challenges. And the operating controls, culture and model didn't keep pace with that shift across to partnerships. And even though we had external market headwinds, that hasn't explained all of the underperformance in some areas of the business. And there was lots of site by site variability.

22:58 There's been a big focus on short-term targets, short-term growth, and that's compounded a misalignment between profit and cash. And that significant variation in site form, as I mentioned earlier, involved inconsistent commercial terms, operating processes, and discipline around capital deployment, particularly into land and WIP. The product remains very strong, so excellent product for our partners, very good private product with very good quality. But all of the sites that we looked at that were performing well had a consistent set of site characteristics, which I'll talk you through. The summary is that a mixed tenure model is the right model for Listerine. There are attractive structural economics and great demands for the type of sites that we all bring forward. So how did we get here? In 2020, BOVIS acquired Galliford Tri Partnerships and Linden. That was the first step to add partnerships into the wider group in 2020.

23:52 That was followed up in 2022 by the acquisition of Countryside, where they added more partnerships expertise into the business and from that point for a couple of years ran the business as a house builder and the partnerships business sitting alongside each other. In 2024 we shifted the strategy to all partnerships by discerning all the regions we've got into developing all the sites on a partnerships basis to try and maximise our capital efficiency and the 2024 step has shown some very good signs but wasn't executed exactly in the way that we should have done and caused us a few issues during that period of time. What it did give us, this rapid evolution in M&A, is great reach, very, very good people, really good capability in various areas of mixed tenure development, including partnerships and regen and mixed tenure.

24:41 And so some great positives by this piece of work. And since 2024, I can evidence some really good sites since then. I can also evidence some missteps. The goal of the CEO review is to simplify the platform. This business is quite complex. has come from lots of different areas and we can make it a lot simpler. So I'm not telling you anything new on this slide. We've had market challenges since 2023. We've had high bill cost inflation, high interest rates. The RPs have come under pressure with funding and how funding has flowed. And we've had fluctuating consumer confidence. But I do want to talk about how a majority of our sites have performed well despite these market conditions and this weakness in the market. Just to talk briefly about the the mixed tenure model.

25:26 So on this side, we've got how a house builder operates. They buy land, they don't bring any cash up front in land. Then they spend money building their plots. They bring a small amount of cash in through their RPs, through Section 106 units. And at the end, they bring all their cash back in when they sell their homes and hand them over to customers. They clearly want a higher gross margin, but there's more risk here and cash takes longer to come back into the business. From our perspective, we've got immediate recovery of cash up front. We buy our land and then we bring in cash from our partners straight away. 10% to 25% of the cash potential of the site arrives right up front. Following that, we build our units. Partners acquire circa 60% and therefore 25% to 35% of the cash comes forward as we build the site out, lowering the overall capital exposure. And at the end, we have a number of open market units and they recover cash, but far less than our house building counterparts.

26:22 So we'll look for a lower overall margin. but clearly easier cash conversion and that cash converting more earlier on in the process. And this graph, I think, shows very clearly the advantages to that. So if you take the purple line, this is a house builder. Buys land that's spent a lot of cash, invests in WIP, and gradually over time, as they sell their houses, comes back to this break-even point. You know, we've seen that, and we see that in that model, you want a high margin because of the risk you're taking, and you'll deliver a lower row key. history sits between this pink line and the blue line in this shaded area in the middle. The pink line at the bottom is a mixed tenure site more balanced towards private so it's got a small amount of upfront capital because we pay our land payment the same as a house builder but we recover this element from our partners giving us a capital like start to site. On a mixed tenure basis we then do invest in the site with some WIP but that recovers more quickly as partners pay us on a monthly basis alongside at first completions. We get to this break-even point much earlier in the process.

27:26 The blue line is our all-partner, what you may describe as contracting schemes, all-partner delivery schemes. So in these examples, we buy the land, but on the same day, we transact with a partner, they become cash-positive straight away, they're always very high road key, and they're always cash-positive through to the end. Lower margins in the blue line, because road key is extremely high and there's no cash investment, and better margins between 12% and 30%, depending on where on that scale we sit on the pink line. So I think a really good graphic to show exactly why mixed tenure should make us lower risk, more reliable, and more consistent. So short, such shallow troughs, 60% of the model funded from our own partners, and earlier break-even points versus house builders, which require greater capital investment.

28:15 So when we reviewed the sites, they ended up in two areas. Good sites on the left, and underperforming sites on the right. And the good sites had three consistent things we wanted to see. Low peak fund requirements, greater than 40% ROKI, and a margin best than 12%, all the way up to 30% plus margins in some of the sites. In underperforming sites, we had schemes that exhibited weak performance, mainly around balance sheet drag, so money going out the door without quick enough recovery, challenges related to tenure mix, so how does the open market play alongside the additionality affordable and the PRS, and poor commercial terms on transactions. And we could sort these into those areas and create a clear and concise list of the sites that we've got in our portfolio.

29:02 What the CRO review has done is converted these site level lessons into mandatory investment criteria, which will drive the future quality of our land, meaning we get more repeatable cash, margin and returns. And I think this pie chart is really interesting. If you look at the partnerships model, what our findings said is that 59% of our business, as it is today across all of our active sites, are performing well. 18.5% gross margin average in the 59%. That's a really reassuring stat. So despite all those market headwinds that I gave you at the start, despite the fact we've had those inflationary environments, low consumer confidence, et cetera, gap in funding, 60% of the business almost is doing exactly what we expect it to do. And this is a picture of what this business can achieve when executed effectively.

29:49 So a really, really reassuring pie chart that shows the purple is a great underlying business. The light blue shows some sites that have underperformed. And you're always going to get an element of the light blue. We're a developer. We take some risk. Sometimes things don't go quite as you planned. So you're always going to get an element of the light blue that holds back your performance. And in the grey at the top, that's the part of the business that really isn't performing, really is an area that's holding us back and not allowing us to show off the benefits of this 59%. So you can see here by the detailed work we've done, the reason why we're recommitting to mixed tenure is because we have evidence that it works. It works in the right geographies with the right tenure mixers. And with this average gross margin of 18.5%, with an estimated operating cost of around 5%, that 12% target that I've talked about in the future in the R&S this morning is very, very achievable.

30:48 So I'm going to take you through a couple of sites, a few really good performers and a few that are holding us back. This site is in the Northeast. It started in February 2020 and finished in September 2025. So it went through that process. It went through COVID. It went through high inflation. It went through poor consumer confidence. 375 units, a good scale, and a very, very strong gross margin. 25% on a mixed 10-year basis, a 45% open market, and 55% additionality through PRS, affordable, and Section 106. an extremely strong ROKI and low cash tie-up at any point through the job. So land payment went out, land monies came in from our partners, made us zero cash at the start and through that, the cash generative partner work paid for our WIP investment on the private.

31:35 So no cash tie-up, extremely high ROKI, fantastic margin. And you can see this is a finished site in difficult market conditions. So face those market headwinds and yet achieve some very, very good returns. a fantastic example of what is achievable even in difficult times. Here's a second example in the North West and I want to talk about this site because it shows how our 10-year flexibility should allow us to follow the market and that's what a partnership business should do. Our business should follow the market conditions and not speculate. Householders speculate, they buy land, they hope that they're going to get the private price that they want, they make better margins. We should adjust our plans to follow the market. So we bought this site in November 2024 and When we first bought the site of 250 plots, we were expecting to do 50% additionality affordable and 50% private.

32:26 As we got through the market conditions we'd been in, we said, you know, is private as reliable as we want in this market? Do we think we're going to sell at the rate we expect? And so we went out and we got an offer for taking 50% of the site as PRS. So we decided that in the market conditions we're in, making this lower risk all pre-sold would be a better outcome. the margin reduced slightly from 23 to 20 to allow for that discounting to bring in the POS but as you can see the Roki went through the roof to 311 and we still maintain a very strong margin percentage with a max cash tie up of 4.1 million so a very well structured partnership arrangement cash positive very early in the process very low cash upfront investment and an attractive scale of circa 250 plots but this is the benefit of the model if you're in a better time on private and you approach this site, you'd sell your 50% private, you make a bit more margin, and it will still keep a low footprint on your balance sheet.

33:24 If you're going into a market where private is less reliable, you can move it into partnerships and tie down your risk and keep your cash investment lower and drive your return on capital employed. So a really good example of following the market with our model rather than speculating. So what are the themes of those successful sites? And I'll allow you to read these in the packs in detail. But I'll call a few of these out. So where we've got that strong regional demand, something I'll come back to a little bit later on, concluding our land deals back to back with the partners. We've got to make sure that when we expense our capital and capital flows out, the partner is ready to give us that capital back and make sure those sites fit in a capital-like fashion on the balance sheet.

34:09 The locations and the proximity to infrastructure that our partners want, clearly very important. And standard house sites clear to any strategy and manageable complexity of infrastructure. We don't want to be spending millions of pounds on infrastructure going out unless the partners there are working with us to deliver those sites. So a key set of site characteristics that are now embedded into the investment committee decisions that we make and in our controls of new site delivery. So an example of a weaker site. This site's in southern England. It was bought in April 21. When we converted to partnership, there was an attempt to convert this site into a partnerships-type scheme. You can see how the tenures were adjusted. So this would originally have been an open market site with Section 106. When we flipped into partnerships, there was an attempt to try and move this into a partnerships-tenure mix. The challenges in this part of the country are very, very high open market average selling prices, which do not sit as well alongside additionality affordable and Section 106. The second issue, we're making very substantial land payments, £66.3 million of cash drive on this site at one time, and that cash is going out without income coming from our partners. And so you've got a big tie-up on the balance sheet, and that's taking longer to recover. And as you've seen through those market conditions, because the way the partner deal was structured, because the land payment terms didn't match the outflows, and because the exposure to that high value open market sales price margin has declined quite rapidly, through that three-year period.

35:39 And this is one of those sites in that grey section of the pie chart that I talked about earlier that is holding us back and really not letting us show off the quality returns that this business can make. So inconsistent site-level execution. Implementing the model effectively, getting the right commercial returns of our partners and making the operating model more efficient. And one I'll draw your attention to is this over-speculative land positions. We will follow the market and not speculate will buy land that's in the right locations and that's got the right amount of partner and open market interest. So just an example of what that over-speculation on land can lead to. So this is a site we bought previously. It's 2,000 plus units, purchase price of over £100 million and large infrastructure costs.

36:24 So a big investment for the business. It's a cracking site. Very high quality site, great location, very good price paid. But we've paid £30 million in land payments out in the first period of time before we secured our partner deal. So we speculated that we'll buy this site and a partner will be there to take a portion of it for us and we'll be able to back off some of that investment into a partner, which we eventually have been able to. But the gap between that investment and the income has been too long. So we've had £30 million investment and balance sheet drag before the time at which we've been able to bring the partner income in. So we do this site exactly the same in the future in relation to this type of site that quality of the scheme etc but we would pair these land payments to stages at which we would receive capital so you would not conclude this site until your partner has contracted on their side and that you're a guarantee of inflow and then you'd match your partner payments to your land payments out to keep that capital line much smoother you'd still have money invested here which is fine but not to the scale or the values that we've seen in this example so This slide, if you don't mind, just so we can see your summary slide for this.

37:38 It's there, just give me two seconds.

37:39 Okay, no problem. Apologies about this.

38:25 I can't get it to move on now I'll give it a go, hopefully we'll get through it. Okay, so when I was pulling together this section of the presentation, I asked, I wanted to pull together what was a picture-perfect history site. And I was going to create sort of an invented example, so I could just talk you through the sort of things we'll look through in a scheme. But a number of weeks ago, I visited a site in Crewe, and I think it showed off exactly what this mixed-penny model can do and how it will achieve this.

39:15 So this is Crewe, you know, town in sort of northwest of England. extremely well located town. So this is on the motorway network, as you can see, very close to the M6, great transport links up and down the country. Trains into London and trains into Liverpool and Manchester. So very well connected. So if you're in any tenure, if you're affordable, PRS or open market, you can get around, you can commute, you've got access to the motorway network. Then we look at the crew itself and where the site is located. So our site is on the left-hand side of the corner here. you can see that it's located in the top left hand corner and we're very well connected to a number of areas you want to be in the mixed tenure model. It's got education close by, it's got sort of leisure facilities, very good employment opportunities and not far from the train station and all three tenures would want to have some reliance on that sort of infrastructure, those semi-urban locations.

40:07 So really shifting the focus into semi-urban and urban locations less exposure to those more rural geographies we may have operated in the past. This is the site itself, so circa 450 units. Other developers on this site as well. And we're going to concentrate on this parcel in the top left-hand corner just to give you some examples. So 125 homes in this parcel. A few things that I want you to take away. Number one, the simplicity and consistency of the house types. You would not tell from this plan, apart from perhaps some detail around the roundabout as you come into the site, which tenure each of those plots were. They're all the same house types. There's nine house types on this site, and they're the same house types that the affordable provider wants and that our private customers want. And so it gives you that flexibility to move the model as you need to as you build through and market conditions change.

41:02 The left-hand side is private. What this means is that you can invest in this private site without too much WIP exposure. you only need to build these frontage plots and you can get to your mixed tenure site further down the bottom the other advantage of this layout is if you start on this site and sales aren't as good as you expect or the market changes you could sell this little parcel to a partner bearing in mind it's the same product as the second stage in this example in this market this site is sold at one a week for the last four weeks and that's before opening the showroom we're selling from a cabin on this site starting off here we open the showroom this weekend so you can see you can generate a good sales pace, a simple product, well-priced, in good locations. In addition, we've got the second part of the site, which is for additionality affordable in section 106. And this area, you can build as quickly as you can, bringing in your road, and build those plots at pace.

41:54 This is Alton Frame, coming out of our factory not far away in Warrington, and this area is cash generative. So you get onto site, you build this part at pace, generate cash, and that funds the private near the front, which is selling very well. And aligned with that, you keep this 10-year flexibility, simple house tax, all the same for the 10 years, so you can move between them as you wish. So a really, really good example of the sites we should be targeting, right product, right location, and right 10-year mix, with flexibility to navigate the model and the market as we move forward. So summary of the Root & Branch review. Very strong evidence the mixed 10-year works. and it can provide those excellent returns that we expect. The rapid M&A caused us some challenges, but things here are absolutely fixable.

42:44 And although market headwinds exposed some weaknesses, we could also evidence that market headwinds, we navigated well in a lot of areas of the business. Mixed tenure lowers that from capital and accelerates cash recovery. And although site economics vary sharply, we need to manage that land portfolio in a better way. The better sites align partners, funding, tenure and delivery. And using a standard tenure-flexible product is certainly the way we should operate. So as we move forward, we'll become smaller, more selective and capital-like, improving the quality of the business as we focus on the best partners and the best returns. And part of the financial impact that Tim will talk about later is that we're adjusting our strategies in the existing land bank to fit this model and to accelerate cash generation and improve these evergreens.

43:35 So I'm going to move into a strategic evolution. So the opportunity. The market need for what we do remains strong. There's great market need for all three tenures that we operate in. And the model gives us clear advantages. Established partner relationships and an integrated mixed tenure delivery model give us that differentiated proposition that we want. And we can show that attractive returns can be unlocked. We have an extremely attractive opportunity to create value by replicating that purple part of the pie chart across the business. We do not have a direct competitor in this space. You know, there's no other organisation with the relationships and the quality of teams that we have able to deliver this at scale, pace and quality.

44:23 So the unique position, we've got a differentiated mixed tenure model, attractive structural economics, but I'm not convinced that the terms we've used in the past are consistently understood What I feel we are is an expert mixed senior house builder. So we have a wide array of customers that we can work with. We've got a strong open market sales team. We've got very good relationships with affordable providers, both for profit and not for profit. We've got great relationships with local authorities who buy housing and we've got great relationships with PRS providers and investors. So we can be the specialist mixed senior house builder who really brings those customers through, diversifies the risk across those various areas of the market. We want strong operational performance, high quality, tight controls and consistency, and importantly, greater selectivity to improve the quality of returns.

45:16 So a piece of work we did to work out what type of business we want to be as we move forward. On the left-hand side, we did a detailed assessment of what the volumes could be of a model of our type. So this said, let's look at all the areas, RPs, local authorities, private rental sector and open market, and let's assess how much volume Vistri as an organisation could do. And we looked at the RPs and said most RPs only want to work with one developer as 25% of their output. We looked at local authorities in a similar way and PRS sector in a similar way. And we worked out that these are the scales at which a business of our size could theoretically operate. We then looked at open market and saw how we could sell alongside our additionality what is the absorption capacity, and we assessed that 7,000 to 8,000 units per annum of open market.

46:05 So the theoretical addressable opportunity based on the data, based on detailed review of our sector, shows that 19,000 per annum is the theoretical addressable opportunity. We then sat back and said, that may be what you could get to, but where can we operate to get the real quality of returns that we want? So we went through our partners and we focused on the attractiveness of those partners, how they behave, how they work with us, how they treat us, the quality of the deals we're able to do. We looked at pipeline and we looked at financial resilience. And through that assessment, we said that 7,000 of the 12,000 units are really going to drive that quality of return that we want to see, are really going to let us achieve that purple part of the pie chart I showed you earlier. We then looked at open market selection, went through the regions, saw where the demand was, and calculated that 5,000 units is a good target for us on open market, focused on the right quality areas where our product sits the best.

47:01 And this has led us to this revised annual target of 12,000 per annum. But as you can see, we're focusing on the real quality part of the market. So we're taking the two-thirds of the market that we think can deliver the best returns, of which 60% will be partnerships pre-sold and 40% will be open market. I'll come on to sales, which is really a key part of what we do. And I talked earlier about a great example of effective sales we've had. We're talking today for the first time about our pure open market sales rates. And as you can see from the top left-hand side, we have underwhelmed on open market sales. We have lagged behind the market in the last three or four years. We've had a slight uptick this year because of our discounting, but actually in prior years been less than 0.4, which is not a way you want to be, particularly with a focus on sales pace as a pre-sold mid-to-tenure business.

47:53 So we're going to change our sales strategy. We're going to target smaller units, maximum size, targeted at 1,500 square foot. Lower ASPs, maximum price point, £600,000, sitting better alongside that pre-sold affordable and additionality. We're going to move for those standardised house types, aiming for 35 standardised house types, but really a core of 12 simple interchangeable house types, a bit like the starting crew that I showed you. And targeting the lower end of the market, so building homes that are seen as good value and high quality at the lower end of the market. So to do that, we're going to simplify the sales branding. We've got three sales brands at the moment, and we'll retire Bovis and Countryside and invest in and create a fantastic sales brand in Linden. It's already known for the type of product we want to build, and we'll continue to improve that brand and make it a real market leader, refocused with a sensibly priced, modern, affordable, energy-efficient private sales offerings.

48:49 And these changes, as we get through the next few years, will allow us to get to this 0.6 open market sales rate that we would expect in a model like ours. So I'll talk a little bit about geographies. On the left-hand side of this slide is our historical geography. You can see it's relatively mixed, a bit of concentration in the centre of the country, but relatively mixed. On the right-hand side is where we'll move the forecast geography to. So you can see more focus in the Midlands and the west and into the north. with still substantial coverage in the South West and in London. And as part of this change we'll have a reduced exposure to the areas in the South of the country that have underperformed as we've found challenges in executing that mixed tenure model and we'll shift South East England to a fully pre-sold partner funded model. So the next few years we'll exit private sales in the South East of England and we'll be focusing on what are some very large partners down there and doing a number of all affordable or all PRS schemes in that part of the country to lower our risk and improve our return on capital employed in the South.

50:00 I want to touch on London, as I mentioned a little bit earlier. We have strong belief in the long-term success of London and demand for our mixed-tenure model. We've grown that business to 2,000 units per year, and our plan now will be to hold 2,000 units per year through the next five years of the plan, but to really reduce the capital allocation that we've got in that part of the business for between 100 and 150 million pounds. So a more capital efficient, sensibly sized business in London. At the moment, London is 90% pre-sold. And for the short to medium term, we expect that to continue. So a low risk, less exposure to private sales, well pre-sold working with our partners. And to make this business more efficient and drive more profitability, we're going to make it more efficient from an overhead perspective. And we're going to split London into East and West and move from three regions.

50:47 into two. So the combination of a more profitable London and a less capital intensive London at the right size will give us a really good position in London and it will continue to remain strategically attractive. And as we execute the model into the future, as I said earlier, we'll flex the 10 years based on the market conditions, follow the market. If we start to see open market conditions improve in London, I would expect us to drive a more open market in the future. And I'll just touch on South East as I mentioned earlier. So the interplay between high-value open market and partnerships is causing a challenge. High-value open market is not selling at the pace required when you've got additionality affordable. You've also got high land values and infrastructure costs. So when you start a site, it's very difficult to keep that capital low and keep your return on capital employed up.

51:36 The South tends to move downwards first in poor market conditions and come back last when it improves. And so exiting that part of the business will make us more reliable. and we will have a region down there focused purely on 100% pre-sold schemes. So how are we going to achieve this over the period? We'll sell some land, we'll have some increased discount on open market sales and we'll bulk sell to partners. And we've taken a charge in 2026 to allow us to have the discount to achieve the things on the left-hand side. This will bring forward £200 million of incremental cash generation over the next two years. So not only will we achieve what we'd already expected, a further £200 million in those first two years And once we've concluded that piece of work, we'll clearly be able to operate with lighter overheads in that part of the country.

52:21 So there's circa 2,700 plots to exit. All of the sites in this part of the country are in this part of the grey wedge. So if we can exit this at pace and move away from this part of the country that's underperforming for us and focus on the right sites in this area, we expect the balance of this pie chart to change substantially over that period of time. And this will significantly reduce the group's risk profile. So we want disciplined land acquisition. We want to have a portfolio-led land strategy that looks more widely across the geographies. Stronger investment discipline, using our investment committee, all the sites coming to me for final sign-off. And the right side of land bank. So we can really lighten the balance sheet of this business by moving from the 51,000 plots of owned land we've got now to the 36,000 plots of owned land that we would want. And this is how the land bank migrates.

53:11 over the coming years. So the blue at the bottom is the land bank runoff in the southeast, and you can see it retains for a couple of years as you exit that private sale. So volume sort of stays the same for two years as you convert to partnerships and exit and do that in FY27 and FY28, and it gradually declines. The red is the balance of those underperforming sites that I showed you on the pie chart earlier. So this section of the business is less than 12% gross margin, has lower ROKIs, and ties up more cash than you would like. But as you can see, we're working through that over the early part of the five-year plan and reducing our exposure to those sites. That really reassuring part of the pie chart is this purple section in the middle. Land Bank 43,000 units that's performing at those margins we talked about, an average gross margin of 18.5%. You can see that plays a really good part in the business as we go forward. And the new land in green is the new sites we add into the plan through that period that we acquire, limited exposure in 27, but clearly that's growing in the future years to give us this blend by FY31 and a volume of 12,000. So this sheet really explains the evolution of the Ham Bank and how we've got confidence that we'll achieve that 12% operating margin in FY31.

54:26 Little bit of time on contracting. So you can see some of the logos of the people we work with on a week in, week out basis. and we've got 150 partners currently in contract with us a big diverse mix of RPs, PRS providers and local authorities and particularly since the SHP award a good spike in conversations and negotiations with our partners with 3.4 billion in further value under negotiation across 60 partners so clearly huge continued interest for what we do and we maintain those deep partner relationships our largest partners account for 47% of our actual contract value So what we want to focus on here is who are the quality partners?

55:11 And we need to work with them on a repeatable basis consistently into the future. And so what we've been working hard on for the last few months, even in this team, since our July announcement where I talked about having strategic development agreements or framework agreements with partners, is signing a number of our larger partners into strategic development agreements to give us more certainty on volume delivery in the five-year period. We want to focus business around a smaller number of high quality partners. We'll still work with a very large array, but we want the bulk of our work to come with partners we can repeat business with, simpler contracts, simpler commercial terms, easy for us to work at pace. And we've executed five of those since July, so very good progress. And we've got 10 more at advanced stage that we expect to sign in the coming months.

55:59 And delivery through those partner arrangements will start in October 20th to 26th. And what this does is gives us 20,000 committed homes over the five-year period with partners who really want to work with Vistri and really want to develop affordable homes, PRS homes with us. And you can see the split between RPs, for-profit RPs and PRS providers. This, alongside our award from Homes England of £350 million, absolutely underlines the quality of the business that remains. We will not be getting the support like this from our partners or the award from Homes England without continually delivering high quality affordable housing across the country. So VistriWorks, we continue to use VistriWorks well and it's feeding a number of our regions around the country. And it's key to delivering those partnership sites and extending sites at pace. We've achieved volumes this year between 5,000 and 6,000 homes and we'll hold that volume at 6,000 as we go forward.

56:59 We won't look to grow that. That will be our steady state for History Works. That will be meaning that we're feeding half the business for timber frame, 12,000 medium term target, 6,000 coming from timber frame. And the key shift is to make it more efficient. So we'll shift our focus to the right geographic locations. Previously, we've used timber frame all across the country from our factories in Leicester and up in the Northwest. And clearly that's not as efficient as it could be. So focusing our delivery of timber frame around where the factory is based, the Midlands and the North, is going to make us more efficient in our VistraWorks capability. Really aligning VistraWorks to where we buy land, simplifying that product mix down to that 35 house types that I talked about earlier, and ensuring there's that discipline and planning around the operations to make the frame work very well.

57:44 Lots and lots of examples where this is working excellently across the business. I'll say a few that I touched on earlier on. And so to achieve this, we'll reorganise the business. We currently run with 25 regions across the country, and we will move to 10 operating areas as per the left-hand side map, two in London and 10 outside London. The shift here is that we want more of our focus of overhead in the site-based teams. Our projects are challenging to operate with multiple partners and with fast build pace out on sites. And so improving the quality of our project-based teams and ensuring that our operational teams are collectively based on site together, working in project teams, our commercial, technical, sales, customer service and build teams will really, really help support the quality delivery that we expect this business to provide.

58:38 Those 10 larger operating areas will be focused as per the table on the right and we have good evidence of regions already doing 1,000 to 1,200 plots in a very good way. So this will refocus we can pick the absolute best people that we've got in our business to be part of our 12 regions and really, really deliver those great results and let these teams lead and take the business forward. One change as part of this is it will take land buying away from regions and move it into the divisional teams so that those land teams have got a wider view of the business and are really, really focused on the best quality land. Rather than focusing on volume of sites bought they'll focus on quality of sites bought and then we'll work closely with the regions and feed them in so these regions can become expert operators out on sites delivering quality returns and we can buy the best quality land to feed them with.

59:32 So we'll draw some efficiency from that. We'll focus the people investment at site level and with high quality management teams based in the regions. And we're targeting £50 million of overhead savings in 2027 with further improvements by 2029 and in the medium term. Those will come from the BAU savings regional reorganisation that I've talked about clearly reduced activity and a slimming down of our central services team in order to support the revised size of the business and that will be a gradual piece of work over the near term in order to bring us into the right shape by the time we achieve the medium term targets in FY31 We should continue to tighten our controls so we can manage risk effectively so stronger governance around land proactive CEO intervention from myself to ensure that we're controlling the land pipeline effectively and earlier involvement of the Investment Committee in our land decisions. Increasing that standardisation and consistency.

1:00:29 We have evidence that when we do this well, we can create great returns and it's about replicating that all across the business. Ensuring the structure and people suit the way we want to operate. Site-based teams working well along high-quality management teams and we measure and monitor that work closely using data to make sure that we manage this change and implementation effectively. Clearly alongside that we'll continue to build the right culture. We have a large portion of the business with a very strong culture that really understands the purpose-led mixed tenure model that we operate and we need to continue to replicate that all across the business. So understand the strategy clearly. Now I want to simplify what we're doing and make it more understandable so people can really be on board with the plans. foster that unified culture that we want all across the regions and in the group teams and ensure we set consistent expectations.

1:01:25 I'm extremely reassured by the engagement to the CAO review. We have a huge amount of very talented people and a very strong core of colleagues who are aligned with our purpose and want to continue to build high quality housing that solves the housing crisis. So I've talked a little while there. and giving you a lot of detail about what's gone well, what's not gone well, how we get this business to perform. But this is not as complicated as I perhaps have made out in the last half an hour. This is about simplifying Vistri. 25 regions down to 12, 16,000 volumes to 12,000,100 standard house types is roughly where we are at the moment, down to 35, three brands to one, Vistri works refocused, an own land bank of 51,000 down to 36,000.

1:02:10 This is making this business easier to operate, more reliable, more consistent, and less risky. I want to take a few things away. As I said, in my view, this is not complicated, and you can simplify these into three things. The success of this business is the right deal structure on the land and the partner side, and we can evidence we've done that a hell of a lot of times. It's about the right tenure strategy, a complementary mix between the tenures, and a flexibility to move between those tenures to suit the market conditions, and it's about the right execution. And the changes we're making to the business today will ensure that we do those things time and time again and deliver a high-quality business as we move forward. And those three things are what I'd like to take away as how we simplify the business and how we get it performing and how we get more and more of these sites that deliver high cashback returns, good margins, and return on capital employed.

1:03:08 So, the financial benefits of strategic evolution. Lower debt, higher margin, reduced capital employed, and more consistent returns. If we move forward on this course and achieve the build-up of those sites that I talked about earlier, this will come and we'll be able to operate the business in this way. And we're confirming our five-year targets today for FY31, so 12,000 units per annum. which I talked about the reasons behind that and focusing on the quality of those volumes. A 60-40% mix between open market and partner. A 12% operating margin. You can see already we have got a bulk of our sites achieving 18.5% gross margin. As I touched on earlier, 5% of operating costs will be able to get us comfortably to this 12%.

1:03:55 A 30% plus return on capital employed. Industry leading return on capital employed from this model. A really key stat that we'll go out and achieve. bringing that land bank down to 36,000 owned plots, a target of average daily net debt of £300 million in the medium term, with operating profit of £450 million and a capital employed of £1.5 billion. So that is our five-year targets of history by FY31. And just to touch on capital structure, you can see the allocation hierarchy on the right-hand side, clearly focusing on cash generation and strengthening the balance sheet before we move down that flow. and we're targeting 100% free cash flow conversion supported by that tighter discipline of land acquisition and consistency of build programmes.

1:04:42 Average daily net debt, we expect in the medium term to be not exceeding normalised role in 12 months EBITDA or 30% of tangible net assets. So we're aiming for £300 million from FY29. And to get there, we're targeting reductions £500 million in FY27 and below £400 million in FY28. Peak debt will look to maintain a headroom of at least 20% of our total committed utilities, but very importantly, aim for this smoother profile. So we tend to see that we have a lot of outflow in January and July through land payments, and smoothing that profile will really help. We'll continue to use land creditors where possible to help the timing of payments, but we'll manage the profile of that to remove the lumpiness, as I talked about earlier.

1:05:30 And in relation to shareholder distributions, look to reintroduce those once sufficient progress has been made on the balance sheet. And as I work with the new CFO into 2027, we'll look to review that distribution policy and update the market on that in due course. So I think a really compelling case about why Mixed Tenure works. I think a really compelling case about how we need to move the business forward. And I'll pass to Tim now to talk about the financial evolution on the back of the CIO review. Thank you. Thank you. Hopefully you've still got some brain capacity for some numbers. So let's run through the financial journey then from here to the end of the year and through to FY31 with some building blocks.

1:06:17 So the first one, there's quite a lot of information on this slide. This is to try and orientate to what we're saying for the end of the year because it's a slightly confusing picture. Let me start at the top. Last year we delivered £269 million of profits. Back in July, we said that excluding the impact of the CEO review, we would get to around £200 million of profits. And we said that the reason for that is largely the cash discounting of open market sales. So 200 is the starting point then for the reconciliation of today's news. First thing is that there's been trading deterioration that frankly is not anything really to do with the CEO review. It is due to the open market conditions that were disappointing in the summer.

1:07:04 So the equivalent of the 200 now is 165. We're calling that normalised for the benefit of reconciling in the future page around how we get to FY31. Within the 165 and within the 200, we had £40 million worth of profits that we assumed we were going to get from deals under the previous criteria that was being used to determine what sort of deals we were prepared to do. So in the course of the summer we've refreshed those criteria as Adam's talked about and concluded that we need to go and renegotiate those deals. So the deals are still there but that won't happen in 2026 because we need to look at the terms and conditions of those so we'd expect them to get them back. So there's an abnormally lower run rate of partner deals in 2026. So what that takes you to is a number of 125.

1:07:59 Now that 125 then is effectively the maximum ABPT that we're guiding to this year. After the 125, then we've got the impact of these actions that are being implemented. So there's the change in the strategy for the southeast of England, there's the reshaping of the land bank, and there's a few other bits. Now the sort of things we're talking about here are changing the tenure mix on our sites as we review each and every site strategy to see is it the right thing to be doing. So changing the tenure mix in the southeast, for example, would be moving more product from private to partner sales. and hence you've got a discount on price and you need to write down your inventory or take a provision or reduce your margin going forward.

1:08:46 Also what we do is look to accelerate the exit from the South East by discounting the private sale so not necessarily changing the tenure but changing the pricing in order to accelerate the cash and coming out to the South East. Then other things we'll be doing in this area will be looking at the the timing and the programming of build. So we might be accelerating some costs. We might look at some additional risk contingency that we need to be putting in to account for the transition risk that's going ahead. So all of those things go into the site by site calculation that will be finalized in the second half of the year. We're working through this with the support of some external consultants to work through the precise numbers. and our current estimate is that the impact of those combined is 470 million.

1:09:35 Now some of those will be clearly exceptional items. Some of those things may not meet the classification of exceptional items and hence some of the 470 will be charged against APBT and some will drop into exceptionals. So at the moment there's a range of APBT for the full year which we'll update on as we develop the work in the second half of the year. Then there are those items that we know are exceptionals and won't go into profit before tax. So restructuring, where we took the £10 million charge in the first half of the year, we're expecting a £30 million additional charge to be taken in the second half of the year to cover the costs of exiting headcount and also to reduce the office footprint that we need for our original offices.

1:10:24 So £40 million there. I talked earlier on about the £475 million of goodwill impairments. and within other exceptionals we've got the 73 million or 79 million building safety costs that again I covered earlier on. So all of that takes us to a profit before tax of 975. So what about getting to FY31? So starting with that 165 that I referenced on the previous page, add back the finance costs to get to an AOP number of around 260 for this year. the building blocks to get from the 260 to the 450 in our targets have got these chunks. First of all, the reduction in volumes by 3,000 to 4,000 will clearly take out volumes at standard margins, so about a £90 million impact to profits from the volume reduction.

1:11:21 We make that back by margin improvements from the actions that Adam's talked about. So category one, the one off of low margin sites, that 90, what that 90 is is improved performance. So that's saying we're not going to have all of these low margin sites. Of course, there will be some that can't get everything right. But the general blend will improve because we've got a more standardised approach. We're more selective about what we're working on. And then you land we expect to come in at a higher margin than the average margin at the moment. So 90 million really from better site performance. The next chunk 70 is a 10 year exchange. So at the moment we're at sort of 70-30 over the last few years 70% partner funded, 30% private by moving to 60-40 you're going to get a higher margin because of the higher open market makes so it's the 70 then there's an element from partner funded pricing so the less we chase volume the more selective we can be about the deals we do and the harder we can be about taking only those deals that work and by moving away from the rush for deals in June and December, it will strengthen our negotiating position.

1:12:33 So being prepared to walk away. So while most of the partner funded deals are good pricing terms, there are some that have been overly discounted under the new structure we wouldn't proceed with, and that will lift margin. Other margin movements are more around cost efficiencies within what we build. So the more we standardise, the more mature we are about how we're doing this, the lower the unit cost we expect every house we build. And then finally, in overheads, we talk about a £70 million improvement over the five-year period. So that is the £25 million that we talked about earlier that's coming from the efforts that were underway back in July, including voluntary exit scheme, and a further £50 million from the additional restructuring that we're starting now.

1:13:21 And the reason why it's £70 million is because we're assuming we're going to get around £5 million of benefit within the 26th number. So that's the conceptual bridge to get to 450 in FY31. Turning to debt. So here we're starting with an average daily debt of 775 for 2026. The left-hand column of the table on the left-hand side of the chart shows a reconciliation to get to 500 million of average debt next year. So how are we delivering that? Well, the first piece is that we're expecting that we're going to start the year with 140 million lower debt than we started 26 with. And that's going to come from the influx of a number of deals that we're doing during the course of the fourth quarter. So expecting to be, as I said earlier on, broadly net debt neutral at the end of this year. So then the trick is holding on to that 140.

1:14:20 and what we saw last year, or sorry, in 2026 is that there's a big outflow in the first quarter. We're not expecting the same level of outflow, so we should be able to hold on to that 140 through the year. Then there's going to be just the cash that's generated from operations, lower profits, lower profit run rate next year, some costs from building safety, but still that's going to contribute to the average debt coming down next year. and then there's going to be the contribution form starting some of this capital release including reducing the South East Land Bank during the course of next year. So 75 million from capital release next year. So that's the bridge to the 500. Then we're saying we want to get to 300 of average net debt, of daily net debt by FY29.

1:15:06 So we've still got the 140 in there but now we've also got three years of earnings contributing towards that debt reduction and a greater level of capital release. So expecting broadly £300 million to come out of the land bank in that period that's going to impact the average debt. What that says at the bottom is there's a buffer actually of £255 million to get to that £300 million. So what is that buffer? Well, that's some mix of contingency, the option for additional investments or its shareholder distributions. We're keeping the optionality rather than declaring what we expect the distributions to be, but we certainly expect to be starting distributing to shareholders within this three-year period.

1:15:52 So then on the right-hand side, you can see the average debt profile and re-emphasis that we are committing to stabilising average daily debt at 300 by FY29. So what are the next steps on financing in a bit more detail? So the jumping off point for debt, as we've said, average debt now is forecast at 750 for the second half of the year. There's a higher level of debt than we previously forecast because of the delay of market sales principally. And our full year debt will be broadly neutral. Our land creditors, however, will have come down to 700 million by the end of the year, having started at 990. So significant pay down of land creditors during the course of FY26.

1:16:40 We've got a billion pounds of committed facilities. 100 million of that is in the form of USPP, which we expect to pay out of existing cash flows in February next year. They're not expecting to refinance that. And while the rest of the 900 with our banking syndicate runs out till April 28, to ensure that we've got 18 months visibility for our going concern assessment in March next year when we report our results, we'll be looking to conclude whether it's a refinance, full refinancing or an extension with banks during the course of the fourth quarter. So we've waited until we've concluded the CEO review. So we've got a firm foundation upon which you're going to have that discussion with the banks. As I said earlier on, we've had very productive discussions with the banks during the course of the last month or so around covenant waivers, and we expect to continue with those discussions as soon as the investor roadshow is finished.

1:17:36 And we're confident we'll reach a good conclusion and keep the markets appraised of progress as we go. I think that'll do for me. Back to you, Adam.

1:17:52 So I wanted to touch briefly on implementation. Clearly some change here and a clear implementation plan required. And so just the selection of the work streams needed to bring together this plan and execute it during the next 12 to 18 months. So in land, clearly a focus around the quality of our land acquisition and the quality of the land portfolios, optimising that between now and the middle of 2028, bringing those sites forward that we know work and exiting those sites that aren't suitable for us. drive a real improvement in our delivery efficiency and that site standardisation. We can see how much standardisation helps us to deliver. The reorganisation of our business, simplifying the operating model and making that organisational structure suited to A, how we want to run the business and B, our new scale and strengthening our leadership, performance and accountability by really focusing those regions around our best management teams. So an internal team has been formed to support with this implementation. and that team will report directly to me.

1:18:52 That team will be supported by our external consultants who we use during the review, will help us to implement this change and that transformation office will meet regularly, clearly to implement across these work streams. I'll provide regular updates to the board so they can see our progress through this transformation and we will share updates with you to the market as and when necessary. We clearly need to finalise the financial impact that Tim talked through during the balance this year and into next year as we see the classification of those various items we've discussed with you today. So we've done a number of things already since July, since we talked about the CEO review, some tighter controls around site starts and build pace, reduce that land buy-in that I talked about earlier. We're looking at those deals that we want to do but don't meet our commercial requirements. We clearly have got evidence that lots of deals meet our commercial requirements. This is not a new bar.

1:19:46 It's just making more consistent the commercial terms that literally operate those deals. Reshaping and exiting those transactions that don't work for us and looking at the continued targeting price and actions on that slower moving stock that's worked well for us year to date. More to do in Q3, the initial restructure starting with land and planning teams and then the wider restructuring process, continuing that entire introduction of controls, ensuring that sites that are being brought forward to the investment committee have got those criteria that I talked you through earlier. and will continue to take that ongoing action to reshape the land bank. So it's a good progress so far, but more to do in the balance of 26 and into 27. So a clear delivery plan, a detailed delivery plan to bring forward the implementation of those changes. Clear visibility and accountability on the progress of that work with the governance and reporting required and making sure we meet that transformation in a good timeline and with sustained delivery momentum.

1:20:47 changes here needed, but a clear plan in how we execute those changes and bring this business into the shape that we expect in the medium term. So a brief summary. As I said earlier, we can bring this to a number of simple points. A refocused geography, a reduced capital like land bank, site strategies revised to deleverage the Group, letting us work in a lower risk profile by existing the open market in exposure in South East England. increasing that project level oversight that I've talked about today and enhancing our governance and controls, giving us a reshaped business to focus on the best quality opportunities across our geography. And that will give us more consistent partner deals with those high quality partners that I've talked to you about today.

1:21:37 But just before we conclude, I'll give you my thoughts on the current market conditions and outlook as we move forward. So clearly we've seen subdued customer confidence and stretched affordability in the open market, particularly for first-time buyers. We're seeing some good momentum now in affordable housing following the SEHP awards, and we've got a really good pipeline of future opportunities both to use our grant with and to take advantage of the wider award with our affordable partners and the grant they've been awarded. PRS continues currently to underwhelm because of the multi-decade high bond yields, but this is an intrinsic part of the 10-year mix going forward and will certainly recover. The demand for PRS is absolutely there to go at, and as market conditions change, we expect that to dramatically improve.

1:22:24 We've refined how we talk about these forward order books, and we're talking about a forward order book of 3.3 billion on those terms as we move forward. And we had very challenging open market conditions through the summer. I think a lot of organisations suffered with that, and we slowed to 0.3 reservations per outlet per week, which is hurt some of that year-end profit delivery. As noted in July, H2 will see the conclusion of certain transactions late from H1, which will help us to reach that year-end number. But we have noted today that a number of those deals we are continuing to renegotiate to provide the right outcomes, and the number of those will flow into 2027. So guidance as we move forward. We've talked in detail through the FY26 numbers today.

1:23:09 Tim has given you a breakdown of how we get to those numbers and talked about the profitability and the debt. In FY27, we're targeting an APVT of 185 million and that average daily net debt coming down to that 500 million pound average through next year. In a medium term, 12,000 units, 60-40 split between partner and private, 12% margin, an APVT of circa 400 million pounds and a 30% plus return on capital employed with that average daily debt coming down to 300 million pounds in the medium term. So conclusions. Here's a bit of history on a page and I will leave this up during the Q&A so you can see. But capital like industry leading return on capital employed.

1:23:56 We can show through the work we've done that that is achievable. Focused on the areas where our model works best with high quality partners in those stronger geographic locations and a scale and size to suit the opportunity that's ahead of us. So that 12,000 units from the 19 that I talked about earlier. History will be lower risk, capital light, a specialist mixed penny house builder focused on that balance between partner-backed demand and open market exposure. Simpler, more focused and more disciplined. That is the direction of travel. And you can see the summary that I showed earlier about the way we're going to achieve that. So thank you, Simon. Thank you for letting me walk you through those slides. We'll move to Q&A.

1:24:41 There is a microphone in the room so we'll take questions and Jade will bring the microphone over. Thank you. One is from Geoffrey's. I seem to have got the mic and have a few questions, so let me just go. A couple long-term, a couple short-term. Long-term, in terms of the framework agreements, it looks like you've negotiated approximately half your delivery by year five to come from five contracts. You talk about another ten being talked about. So where would you like to get those framework agreements to in terms of The coverage of your partnership delivery. Second of all, your 2031 target is an operating profit target, not a PBT. Is there some influence there in terms of JVs that we should be thinking about? And then thirdly, on the long term, the 300 million average daily debt. Is that the right level of debt for a business that is anticipated to have a capital employment of 1.5 billion?

1:25:36 And then short term. Capital employed in South East of England. How much is it? Can you give us a number? That would be very helpful. The South East of England 541 says 2,900. Sorry, 540 says 2,900 plots to exit. There's 10,000 in the chart on the next page. Can you just bridge the gap between that? And the last one, forgive me, last one. On the new covenants in terms of the headroom that's due sort of the last Friday of every month. How many times in the last six months have you got near to that? Just to give us an idea of the sensitivity of that government.

1:26:12 So on the partner slide where we showed the agreements with the partners, the wheel included the five that we negotiated and the ten that we're negotiating. So Stephen, I don't know if you want to give a little bit of detail on progress and expectation on those agreements. Thanks Adam. We think that 12 to 15 of those strategic development agreements is the right volume. It intensifies our relationship with those organisations and gives both of us visibility of opportunities and visibility of committing capacity. Outside of that, we will continue to work with partners that we already work with, but we expect the bulk of what we do will be through those partners that we have those strategic agreements with. But 12 to 15 is about the right bandwidth for us to achieve what we want to within this plan.

1:27:07 What level of homes would that be then? Because that looks like it's 4,000 homes by tenth year 5. and you're looking to deliver seven. That's those five strategic development agreements. So if we get to 12, does that get to 7,000? So if we get to 12, depending upon the scale of ambition of each of those partners. So I don't want to call that yet because obviously they're working through their SAHP agreements. What's important to recognise is some of those partners are strategic partners, they're within those 33, and some of them are not strategic partners and rely on our grant allocation. So it's a mix of the two.

1:27:52 I think the next one was on guidance in 31, so we showed on the tiles originally AOP of 450, this slide confirms guidance APVT of 400, so there's no sort of, no, it's probably presentation more than anything. The reason why we tend to talk about AAP for longer term is because that's part of the WOKI calculation, but then our primary measure is APVT to try and avoid all the confusion that we have around joint ventures. Yeah, I haven't got the number precisely to mind. I think it's somewhere between three quarters of a billion and a billion pounds. Next one was for covenant headroom question. So just to be clear, you were referring to the additional covenants.

1:28:40 So I did mention this in the presentation that within the covenant waiver, we've agreed to a minimum headroom of £70 million at month end. And we don't believe that that is because we tend to get our income in towards the end of the month. That is not an additional constraint. So it's not something that we've got close to in the past. to 300 million in terms of average daily debt. Is that the right number?

1:29:09 I think that gives us the right level of flexibility in investment in the business for a balance sheet that size and the profit we want to deliver. So I think it's a sensible target. We talked about keeping average net debt below EBIT as a sort of general rule, but in all the modelling we've done, 300 million feels like a sensible number and the right balance between debt and delivery of the business. at the South East, 2,900 on slide 40, and then it goes up to 10,000 on slide 41.

1:29:37 Are you on about the sort of graph of the land bank runoff, this one? Yeah, okay, so this here... Yes, so 2,700 is the total private units that will exit as part of this plan. This one shows the whole entire land bank. So this is private, other tenures, joint ventures, etc. So this is the whole land bank in the southeast, of which 2,700 to wind down in those first couple of years. Charlie Campbell at C4, just a couple really.

1:30:28 First one, quite a big question. In terms of the underperforming sites, you talked a lot about them and gave us some very helpful examples, but it wasn't quite clear to me whether the underperformance is fundamentally a kind of people problem, that people made bad decisions, or it was a system problem that the system wasn't picking up the bad decisions. So I just wonder if you could help me with that a bit and to understand sort of the cultural problems behind some of those underperformers?

1:30:58 I think decision making is probably the one I would lean towards. A real push to grow the business at pace and perhaps an assumption that it works over here so it will work over there and a decision that we'd speculate on that basis. So I'd say that was the main area. Clearly we've done a huge amount of work on our controls and I'm comfortable with the controls we've got. and I think with a slightly different set of decision making principles there we can improve the consistency of delivery across the whole business. And then the supplementary to that, which is, are you happy then that you've got the right people in place to consistently buy new land in at the 18% gross margin that that chart requires?

1:31:43 Yeah, we've got excellent land teams. I'm very, very confident of that. We slimmed down those land teams to be focused geographically in different ways. We've got excellent land teams across the country. And I think that section of the pie chart that shows that almost 60% of the business is performing well shows that we've got some very good land teams out there buying very good land, delivering some very good returns. Thank you. And then on the reduction capital employed, we could do some maths on the land part of that, but can you just help us a bit on the WIP and how much of that reduction comes from WIP reduction? On the debt reduction slide, let me just go... It takes too long. On slide 58... We've given a sense there of the reduced WIP elements.

1:32:31 So we're expecting about 100 million to come out of the overall WIP balance to reduce our net debt. And that's across the group or is that mainly a South East issue again? Just to go over.

1:32:45 That's across the group. We've already made a decent amount of progress this year on sort of private WIP. So that's a sort of further amount that adds on top of that. Okay, thank you. Thanks, it's Will Jones from Rothschild & Co. Redburn. I think three or four as well, please. The first is whether you could run us through your underlying assumptions for the 2027 target in terms of sales rates, price versus cost, and so on, please.

1:33:16 Yeah, sales rate target in 2027 is 0.52, assumed. and we have in all those projects have talked about you know obviously today's cost and today's values with the relevant allowances for inflation and contingencies you would expect so we're assuming broadly moderated conditions between now and then Second, just around discounting generally, I think you gave us a figure of 7% or so in the first half trading update. Where's that trending today? Does it need to carry on for longer given the southeast exit? And maybe just add to that where we are at the moment on PRS discounts, just given your point earlier about bond yields.

1:33:59 Yeah, okay. On discounting, it's moved up slightly to near 8% as a percentage year to date. doesn't need to continue. The sudden shift has clearly been taken as a charge and so that is sort of covered now and we'll exit that business through that mix of open market sale, speeding of open market sale, selling to partners and perhaps selling a bit of land. But we've taken a one-time discount that allows us to do that and then pull those levers as we see fit over the next 18 months in order to exit that position. At PRS, we've done a number of PRS deals through the summer. We're seeing discounts between 10 and 15 cent on PRS. There's a number of companies out there that are wanting more than that, clearly, and are pushing the market conditions to do deals that are lower than that.

1:34:48 And that's part of the shift to make sure we're only doing those deals that bring us the relevant quality. So a reason why we're focusing on making sure we negotiate the correct positions on our PRS and affordable deals. The last one's really just a high level, I suppose. Clearly the group's been through a lot in the last couple of years and a lot of it has played out in public. Just wondering how you would assess the state of your stakeholder relationships, be it the partners, your customers, but particularly also the supply chain.

1:35:15 I think it's probably my biggest observation since I took the role is that the external noise is very different to the internal discussions. I've been out and visited eight regions in the last eight weeks who I didn't work with before to meet people and see people on the ground. and the supply chain are extremely happy working with Vistri. We work with thousands of different suppliers and contractors and they all very much value the relationship. The partnerships are there to be seen by some of the framework conversations and the Homes England work that has already been evidenced. And so I think the sort of relationships and standing of the business is not in line with what you're seeing externally in the press, not only from my experience but from experiences across the ALT and from our senior leadership team. Amigala from UBS. A few questions from me.

1:36:00 The first one is slightly similar to Charlie's question. Why do you think open market in Southeast cannot work? Historically, I can understand it was a function of the land that you bought or the sort of price points that you locked into. But as you think about new investments, is it because the intake margins are not there with the sort of land opportunities that you see in the Southeast? Or is it the sort of product type that you're offering is not something that you think fundamentally doesn't work?

1:36:26 Yes, a combination of issues. Firstly, land values in the South East are much higher, so pound note investment out the door and capital tie-up is greater in that part of the country than it perhaps is in the Midlands and the North. Secondly, more difficult in the South East from a planning perspective to get to that standardised product that you expect, more expectations in that part of the world for slightly different design code, etc., etc. So bringing that standardised product is more tricky. And the third issue is the difference in value, even if you're achieving the same discount percentage between your private product and your mixed tenure product. So at the moment we're trying to sell very expensive private houses on sites that have predominantly mixed tenure and that is proving a challenge. It's an even bigger challenge in this market but my view is in a normal market that will still continue to be a challenge. In other parts of the country that gap between the values of open market and pre-sold are smaller and therefore we tend to see that sales places are quicker and are maintained even in poor market conditions.

1:37:22 Second was just a clarification on a couple of points. I think in your outlook slide you kind of said FI27 guidance assuming stable market conditions. Do you mean stable versus the market that we see today or is it largely a year-on-year comment that you're making?

1:37:38 Stable versus the market we see today. What we're talking about there is open market conditions. We are expecting that the partner market will be better in 27 and 26 as we see some of the benefit come through from the affordable housing program. So that's part of the uplift in 27. Thank you. Another clarification is the land write-off incrementally in the second half. Is that 345 million that you had presented in the 26 slide in terms of the land adjustments as well as the Southeast run-off? Capital employed in London, I think you touched upon one of the slides that you expected to reduce, but can you give us a colour of where does that sit today?

1:38:37 it's fluctuating between 200 and 300 million in previous years and we've brought that down quite a lot in recent times and we'll keep it between 100 and 150 as we move forward. And the last one, just a clarification in terms of your supply chain and the sort of discussions that you've had in light of the sort of profitability that we see in the market so far have you had to change credit terms with them?

1:39:00 No, no impact on any sort of payments to subcontractors or the credit terms you know there was some noise extremely previously that has an impact any of the pricing or the payment terms we've got with any of the supply chain. Thank you. Thank you. Two questions for me, probably one for Tim. On slide 58 you've got the bridge How much cash tax are you assuming with regard to that profit after tax number? In doing this, it's a fairly rough calculation. We're assuming about a 20% tax rate. and the reality is we've got a most big tax credit from all these write-offs that will reduce the amount of tax going out so if anything I think we're erring on the Conservative side but 20% you can assume.

1:39:53 Okay and the second question probably relates around to slide 46 where you've given the breakdown of the regional offices. You're taking the number of regional offices from 25 to 12 and at the same time imposing greater discipline What kind of day-to-day functions are you going to retain in the regional offices? How much goes to the site and then how much it goes to the centre?

1:40:23 Yeah, okay. So land moves out of the regions into divisions, so different sort of geographical oversight of the land teams. Those people are looking wider across the geographical patch, really focused on quality of opportunity. All the other functions, build, customer service, commercial, technical, sales, etc., finance, still staying in those regional management teams. But what we'll see is a shift of the operational based teams out to sites. So I expect the commercial teams, technical teams, customer service teams, sales teams out on site supporting those construction teams on a day to day basis. So we'll get an enhanced level of control at site level and therefore I think that will improve on that basis and those regions more focused taking land away from them on the operating quality of the business.

1:41:09 And so I think historically there's been a view that if you're in house building, you need lots of regional offices around the place. In my view, and the work we've done on the information is, it's the quality of the project teams that really make the difference here. And the management teams need to oversee and provide strategy and steer the business. But if you get the quality of the project teams right and the quality of the project returns right, clearly the add-up across the board will give a good quality business. Alastair Stewart from Progressive Equity Research. A couple of quick questions I think. First of all, a couple of questions ago you said the market assumptions for FY27 were stable. Open Market and Better Partner Funded. Within the Partner Funded, how do you see the PRS market, just for completeness?

1:42:02 And secondly, on slide 36, you've got eight to nine thousand registered providers, 0.5 to one with local authorities. You know, with the emphasis in government now on council housing, I would have imagined that would have shifted a bit from the RPs to local authorities. Any thoughts on that?

1:42:36 Yeah, okay, so in PRS, not an assumption that PRS improves for the first half of next year, assuming some return of the PRS market in the second half of next year, but I wouldn't say that next year's wider improvements are based on a huge bounce back in the PRS market. Got very good confidence in the sort of medium term of PRS demand. Demand is huge. Lots of interactions with PRS providers but just want to wait for those quality of offers to be in the right place on enough schemes to bring that forward. In relation to the mix between RP and local authorities they've announced the SEHP which is focused around RPs. They're clearly considering what to do with the balance but I don't think there's confirmation either way of how that will work how that might flow out they're clearly reviewing how they might be able to make that work a bit more locally but our view is that the slide we put up about sort of volumes is based on the fact they've given out this SEHP to RPs rather than through local authorities I think interesting and I'll come to Stephen shortly but interesting that when they announced the SEHP there was some local authority awards in there but also they linked together how much of that investment came through mayors and through devolution.

1:43:46 So there's clearly a view that they want to get invested in the right areas, but currently no sort of official step to say we're not going to give it to RPs, we're going to give it to local authorities. That may change, but there's a lot of work to do before that becomes the case. Stephen, anything you'd add? The SAHP, the £9 billion that has been distributed, has gone primarily to registered providers. There are three local authorities included there who have received funding. What we know is that the government's position is very clear, Andy Burnham's position is very clear, that they're looking to provide funding back through particularly the established combined authorities, those strategic mayoral authorities.

1:44:32 And we're already engaging with all 11 of those authorities. We already have a number of schemes with some of them. and we expect the relationship with those combined authorities to deepen over the course of this plan. So, in theory, over time, that balance could shift a little bit between RPs. Yeah, I think there'll be a central role for Homes England in the way that those funds are distributed and in overseeing how that coalescence of investment works. But undoubtedly, as well as our relationship with Homes England, our relationship with those combined authorities is going to be important because they will be directly commissioning schemes going forward.

1:45:28 Hi, I'm Rebecca Parker from Goldman. I just wanted to ask more about the shift to open market tenure, just given that, I guess, if you exclude the south of England, that would probably be even a little bit higher. I also wanted to just clarify on one of the slides, it said new joint ventures only undertaken where The JV partner brings the land to some more colour on that. And thirdly, how confident are you in that 470 million charge? If we were to see a further deterioration in market conditions, could we see that increase? And what's the likelihood that we would see further charges in 27?

1:46:10 Okay, so the shift to open market, previously we talked about a mix of 35 to 65, so overall not a huge move in the mix between the two. you're quite right to take out some account as it becomes slightly more in the balance but when you focus on lower value lower land price open market the impact on the balance sheet is therefore lighter so you can afford to do a slightly higher percentage of open market to protect your margin for a similar amount of capital investment so because we'll be moving to those areas of the country where sales price will be lower it'll allow us to do that additional open market without any more capital and continue to lighten the business so Yes, outside of some counties you probably have slightly higher mix than 60-40 as we talked about to get the overall balance but all focus on those areas where we'll be able to keep the capital light and on those sites that I talked about where max cash tie-up is low and ROKIs are high.

1:47:03 On the 470, Tim, I don't know if you can comment. Well, at the moment it's still being worked through. Obviously, we're not putting loads of optimistic assumptions in there to give ourselves a big risk that we have to top it up later. the exposure within that 470 to open market assumptions isn't that significant anyway. A lot is around getting the costs right and making sure that we're looking at the timings of sites right. So, sure, 470 won't be the final number, but it'll be because it'll get through that to a more accurate number. You could see they're pretty big buckets, but we wouldn't expect it to be significantly different. In terms of FY27, to the extent that there are elements within there that are site margin reductions rather than just impairments, there will be some playthrough to 27, which is taken account of in arriving at 185 guidance for next year.

1:47:53 Yeah, and then just the clarification on new JVs having to tender their own land.

1:47:59 So it's a shift towards the fact that when we do joint ventures, we want parties to all bring something to the table. So we've used joint ventures in different ways in the past. We're very good at working on JVs with our partners. We can create very good returns that we therefore share. But we want the partners to bring something along as well. So the land being one of that pieces, but also perhaps the acquisition of the affordable plots on that site as well. So it's just trying to make sure the joint ventures are focused around the balance between our expertise and the House Association's expertise as well. And land is a key contributor to that. Thanks. Thank you. Emily Biddles from Barclays. I've got two, please. Firstly, I just wanted to come back on the guidance for next year of 185 million PBT and just see if you could help us bridge that a little bit more.

1:48:49 In your list of potential exceptions for the second half of this year, sorry, I don't have the number in front of me, but I think it was about 250 million, 300 million of potential write-downs on resulting from the CEO review of sort of reduced future profitability it sort of feels from that like you should have a whole chunk coming through in the relative near term that's sort of effectively at zero margin so am I wrong on that or is just a phasing of that really long so the impact on next year isn't actually huge or are there other sort of big offsets against it that I need to bear in mind? No I think I think Within the 470 total, the area in the pink here which we're talking about, most of that is impairment and provision. So a large chunk of this relates to the southeast where already the margins are very slim because of some of the issues we've experienced in the past. Hence most of the pain is taken in year one rather than carried through.

1:49:44 I think our rough estimate for next year is the 470 has about an £80 million impact in 27. So that's the ongoing margin implication. of that write-down. Then it takes you to the bridge question. So if we take the 165 here on this chart as the starting point, we'd expect that you take off the 80 of the pink stuff that goes through for next year, takes you down to 85. To get to 185, that £100 million of improvement, half of that, around 50, comes from restructuring savings and the overhead savings. The other 50 will come from overall trading and overall performance, so less bad news, better partner market and better overall mix.

1:50:30 Thank you. Then my second question was just on the covenant. I appreciate you've given us that new covenant of 70 million headroom and sort of said you've cleared that really comfortably in the past. But I remember at the start of this year, you said that average net debt was relatively high in the first couple of months of the year because there were various outflows, like there were land credits outflows, et cetera, in the first few months. as we look through to the first few months of next year if we're mindful that the 100 million USPP needs settling are there other outflows we need to sort of bear in mind or sort of as you look at cash flow forecast for the early part of next year how does it look?

1:51:06 Yeah I mean the difference between this year at 27 and 26 will be that due to the reduction in land buying through this year you've got a lot less land payments coming out in January so January 26th had a large amount of land payments coming out which floated us down into that debt position as we've not bought forward land through this year, we tend to have those land payments in January as well. There's a huge amount less for those in January. So we wouldn't expect to see that trough down in January as we've seen in the past and therefore very confident that we're sort of in good position ahead of the PP rolling off at the end of February. And that £70 million at month end was clearly used as part of the concern review and everyone absolutely comfortable that that's not a challenge for us. Our month end positions have never over anywhere near the sort of top of our facility. So very comfortable with the cash flow modelling as we go into next year. Thanks.

1:52:01 Hi, Lewis Roxburgh from Goodbody. Three questions for me, please. First, just to confirm if all of the 470 future special charges are non-cash as well. Secondly, just in the bridge, you've given to lower average net debt. What sort of broad assumptions are embedded in the profit line and how much confidence do you have generally given average net debt has been quite difficult to lower historically and the market outlook is obviously quite challenging and then the last question is just on some colour of the drivers of underperformance in the open sales rate and how do you expect to improve that I know you mentioned in the South East people are reluctant to pay high prices alongside other tenders so I know you're exiting that area but just some other measures you can do to help potentially Yeah, so non-cash is a term that we've deliberately avoided using in the R&S and today because it's open to interpretation.

1:52:55 The 470 that were taken this year is effectively non-cash this year. In other words, it is not a cash outflow this year. But you might argue that over time that is £470 million of profit that you're not going to get which would have been in the form of cash. So effectively it's lower cash than was previously forecasted from here onwards, but it's non-cash in here. Does that make sense? The second one, your second question was around what's in the profit assumptions. Well, this is built on a steady profile of improvement from the 185 that we're talking about of PDT next year to the PDT of 400 in FY31. So it's not a great hockey stick in that flow.

1:53:41 And so this is built from our models to get from that as I say, from the 185 through to the 400. Third question is around why we have more confidence around average net debt. I don't know if anyone wants to answer that.

1:53:54 Yeah, I mean, I think you've seen in recent periods we continue to invest in the business even though talking about lowering net debt and we've changed that behaviour, you know, 180 degrees in the last few months and therefore that's why the confidence on that debt coming down is there to see. lower investment in land buying land but only in the terms that I talked about earlier where you've got that back to back partner deal coming in and therefore the business is naturally generating cash from the big forward order book that we've got and so the behaviours in the last six months are very different to what you've seen before hence the confidence to really reduce that net debt as we go through the year ending into next year and then continue that sort of journey into years beyond on the sales rate so yes a slightly different mix away from the south east will help That said, really focusing around one sales brand and investing in the product, the quality of that sales brand, and making sure that the teams really are well versed on the benefits of that product and the brand is a piece of work we've got to do as part of the implementation.

1:54:52 I'm very confident that if we invest in that brand, we'll have a real industry-leading sort of product there that we can sell on those next 10-year sites. So there's a piece of work to do to refocus those sales team around that one brand. Morning, Peter. I just had a go from Morgan Stanley. Three questions are all land related. First was just quite a bit of colour on the owned land bank today. I was just wondering if there was any additional information just around the strategic land bank, any shift there in terms of strategy, any shift in terms of how you expect strategic land to convert into owned land going forward. The second was just around, I think you mentioned being less speculative on land purchasing and not wanting to hold land for too long before having a partner in place. I just wanted to ask whether that was kind of like a definitive stance or you would still be maybe dimble in terms of attractive opportunities that came by on an ad hoc basis. And then the third was just around selling land. I know that a lot of your house-building pairs have talked around walking away or reducing land purchasing at this point in time.

1:56:07 I'm just wondering if in this environment you find it a bit more difficult to sell land, what land buying appetite from you has been like and perhaps what corners that appetite in terms of who you're selling to, where that demand has been coming from.

1:56:22 Thank you. Okay, so strategic land bank expect it to still play a good part in our future land delivery. it's geographical focus we've got to shift over years to come so historically a lot of the strategic land focused in the sort of east of the country particularly out of countryside legacy which is focused over that side of the patch and over recent years we've really tried to refocus the strategic land teams more into the midlands the north and the west so we expect to see those opportunities start to flow through and they are doing which is positive news so continue to invest and focus on strategic land but right locations and right sites that align with what I've talked about today In relation to a definitive view on that sort of arrangement of back-to-back, definitely definitive in the short term, bearing in mind the push to deleverage the business, if in three years' time and the leverage is in a very good place and very consistent and a great land deal cutting along for a sensible level of investment, smaller numbers than maybe I showed on the screen, you would probably have some flexibility if it was the deal of the century, as it were.

1:57:21 But in the short to medium term, certainly really want to be robust about those rules that I talked about earlier. Just on land sales, we talked at the half year about looking to get ourselves out some land positions. I've talked about it today. We've been working through quarter three on quite a big piece of work around reshaping that land bank. We've had excellent interest in that land. I think the difference is between maybe our experience and some of the things you're hearing in the market, our asset base is of high quality. We've bought a lot of land, but we've bought some excellent land as well. We've had a huge number of very high quality bids on the land we have taken to market interest is coming from a few of the PLCs in various different locations a couple of the larger privately owned businesses as well and we're only selling that land where we think we're getting the right value in return because we know it's of high quality but I've been very reassured about A the interest and B the quality of offers we've had on any land that we've taken to market Thank you very much Yeah, I don't think there's any more hands anyway.

1:58:28 So we're at 10.30. We've kept you for a couple of hours. Thanks very much for your time. Thank you.