Lords Group Trading (LSE:LORD) — Annual General Meeting

0:01 Good afternoon, and welcome to the LORDS GROUP TRADING PLC Annual General Meeting. Throughout this recorded meeting, attendees will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be answered at any time by the q and a tab situated in the right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question submitted today. However, all questions will be reviewed with responses published on the investment company platform, which is appropriate to do so. I'd now like to hand you over to Gary O'Brien, our executive chairman.

0:32 Okay. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, and welcome to the twenty twenty two annual general meeting of the LORDS GROUP TRADING PLC. My name is Gary O'Brien. I'm the chairman of the company, and I'll also be chairing the annual general meeting today. Thank you for everybody who's joined us today at Cenkos' offices and also via the investor meet company platform. Where there are at least two members present in person and I therefore declare that the quorum is present and the meeting will proceed. For this morning's AGM in the room, I have with me Shankh Patel, who's the chief executive officer Chris Day, who's the chief financial officer Don Moore, an independent non executive director and Andrew Harrison, last but not least, our senior independent non executive director.

1:23 Now before going into the formal aspects of the business, the company did release an RNS this morning in respect of the AGM. But within that RNS, we also did a trading update. So I thought, you know, I will read that out before we actually get into the process of the meeting. So excuse me, we'll actually read it from the RNS myself. Since we issued our full year results on the 05/24/2022, demand for the group to repairs, maintenance and improvement sector focused product offering has remained resilient. And notwithstanding inflationary pressures and the current macro outlook, the group continues to trade in line with market expectations for the full year ending 12/31/2022.

2:12 The group has further evidence its three P strategy, which is people, plants and premises via the complete redevelopment and transformation of the LORDS GROUP TRADING PLAYING PLAYING PLAYING

2:31 PLAYING PLAYING with revenues of 2,500,000 PLAYING and these have since grown organically to £8,000,000 under our strategic management. The refurbishment of the Beck And Field branch provides additional organic group opportunities via product range extensions as First Advantage roofing supplies implant following the group's acquisition of the business in January 2022. Boiler supply constraints persist within AP and P. However, underlying customer demand remains strong and indication support of the boiler supply issues release later in fiscal year twenty twenty two. Management actions continue to ensure plumbing and heating profitability remains in line with management expectations.

3:19 Current 2022 revenues, fiscal year twenty twenty two revenues and profitability expectations remain unchanged from the April trading update with revenues of approximately GBP $438,000,000 and adjusted profit before tax of GBP 16,000,000. That ends the reading of the RNS statement. So what I'd like to do is go into the formal aspects of the business of the AGM. We will be during this process going into a Q and A session because we have got members who have attended the meeting and have voted accordingly. We'll do we'll before we actually say what the results of the poll is, we will be going into Q and A session. So please bear with us before we do that.

4:06 So shareholders, we are given the opportunity to submit questions in advance of the AGM and questions can also be submitted to our team at any time during the meeting using the Q and A function on the investor meet company platform as it's just been described. For this meeting, in line with good governance practice, all resolutions will be voted on by poll And that's basically to ensure that the proxy votes of all of our members not in attendance today are counted on the resolutions. The results of the poll for each resolution will be announced following the meeting and published on the company's website as soon as recently as taxable. And now unless there are any comments or questions to the board concerned of the matters referred to in the notice, including any of the proposed resolutions, then I propose that we proceed to the business of the meeting.

4:57 I will put the resolutions to the meeting one after another. The actual terms of the resolutions are actually set out in full in the notice. So unless any member has any objections, I propose to take the notice as read. Thank you. So turning to the resolutions, I propose the following 10 ordinary resolutions, the first two of which are to receive the company's audited accounts for the financial period ended 12/31/2021, together with the directors and the auditors report later on to approve the reports on directors' remuneration for the year ended 12/31/2031,

5:38 then resolutions three to seven, as you'll see, are all to reelect actually, it's a reelection of the pool board, which includes Shankar Patel, Christopher Day, Don Moore, Andrew Harrison and myself, Gary O'Brien. Resolution eight seeks to reappoint RSM UK Audit, LLP, as the company's auditor and Resolution nine seeks to authorize the directors to fix said auditors' remuneration for the ensuing year. Resolution 10 is the final ordinary resolution, which seeks to authorize the directors to allot shares up to the limits set out in the notice of the meeting.

6:17 Resolution 11 is proposing a special resolution which seeks to authorize the directors to allot equity securities for cash other than on a preemption basis. So with that, I will now declare the poll open. And if I can pass pass back to investor me, Mark, if you could please assist us with the q and a session. And for this process, I'll be asking Chris to basically manage the questions. And between Chris and Shankar, I'm sure we'll be able to answer anything that's come forward. Chris? Okay. So one just one question at the moment online, which is why did Shankar Patel, the company CEO, go his £200,000 annual bonus? And what will the company use the funds for?

7:15 Dawn? Yep. So just by way of introduction as rem chair, that was a decision taken on an individual basis by Shankar was in line with some of the objectives that the company has specifically around ESG and supporting those. Shankar, can I invite you to talk about a couple of those from your So in general, the the bonus is used to fund and support our ESG initiatives?

7:46 Specifics are where we have branches that we call local leaders, and we firmly believe that those branches should have the ability to support local communities. Some of the funds that have been given up can be used to support local communities, especially in the current environment where many of the communities where we trade from see different levels of hardship or requirement for funding and support. We're also using these funds to to support our ESG strategy creation. ESG is a rapidly advancing new area that companies such as ours really have to to to focus on. And in order to do that, we require the business to reach out to external experts.

8:35 One such expert is Mazars, who are supporting us with how we should be developing this strategy. And we're also using funds to support activities that assist our colleagues during these challenging times. A few that that we can call out to are our family fun days where every employee in the business is invited to attend two events, one in The Midlands, one in London, to bring their family members and have a day out on on us. So in in general, the the bonus has been waived to to really indicate our support and my support to to to this business. I can just say, I think it's highly appreciated. I'm sure that you've sacrificed 200,000 of your bonus for the benefit of the group and the world at large, hopefully.

9:29 Thank you, Shankar. Any other questions?

9:32 That's the only question online. So I swear that there's any questions in the room. Any any member appear to ask anything? James Williams, shareholder. ESG is your environmental side, is it?

9:46 No. ESG ESG is a combination of environmental, social, and governance. So it covers a variety of areas, and it's it's it's something that is developing rapidly as a requirement from many stakeholders, not least our shareholder fraternity, but there's also governmental pressure for companies to to effectively look outside of just commercial benefits and look at the wider impact businesses have to environment, to their social to the social environment and how you're governed and the decision making. So all of this, and and especially for a business that's newly listed, we we want to be at the forefront of these sort of changes that are heading our way rather than being followers.

10:32 How do you see how do you see the production selling price developing

10:39 with the environmental situation changing as it is there? In in the same way as as a business, we're required to to take the environmental impact of what we do into consideration. Many of and most of our suppliers will be doing the same, and there are many avenues by which they have no choice but to to move along those things like heat pumps. Yes. Correct. And and that is what that is part of our specializing in your your heating site, specializing in in ground heat pumps or Not not in ground heat pumps, but in air source heat pumps, we're starting to have a a have

11:13 a look at how we can position our business to be able to serve that growing market. Absolutely. And there are other products in plumbing heating in addition to heat pumps that are that are also a big focus of of our product strategy moving forward. So controls in particular Yeah. They help to reduce the amount of energy consumed by by homes and buildings. Did you tie that with individual customers or In the plumbing and heating side, we are a general distribution. Specialize something. Obviously, you need specialize. Correct. So we have we we have we have specialized specialist capability in each of our businesses as these product areas grow and, you know, become greater in demand. And then we work with chosen suppliers.

12:00 So as our supply chain has many suppliers, as they start to build up their their their product portfolio,

12:08 which are more environmentally friendly, we then we then have those relationships to be able to select those products just on the sale. So reports, but your annual report is when you you obviously sell timber. So something so sort of that timber paper and which you have the least environmental paper being used If you write a report, you seem to have pretty low levels of sectors up. You're gonna set yourself up at fault in

12:40 having having something to look at environmentally. Mhmm. You could actually start with your end report, which is, as I said, the least, environmentally frankly, least of what annual report there is. Well, actually, we have limited our annual report to only 50 copies. In printing. Sorry? Even the I said, I was talking about what you do print, not what I know you look for online. I'm about what you do print. You print so many reports because I have one. Yeah. It's a the annual report is on request, basically, because we do it online. So we try to do it electronically, but I hate to say it's some say, you know, the world at large, not everybody works likes electronics. So yeah. But but we don't issue that to all shareholders. So it has to be based basically on your your your your particular If you look at designs. Environmentally friendly paper.

13:30 Oh, yeah. So I think Oh, sorry. Give that a little Yeah. On paper. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I just I just wondered if it's it might be. I don't know. I I can't answer that. Do you know? I don't have to follow-up, but if if it isn't, then we'll address that connection. Really? Yeah. It's on the FSC mix, which is the lowest one we get. Oh, is it? Actually be supporting Russia. Mhmm. Big paper. Okay. With the council. Mhmm. Approved paper. Sure. Mix mix, you can bring in whatever you like. Well, yeah. Okay. Well, as Chris said, we'll certainly take that into account. Vehicles and that sort of stuff. Electric electric ones or not. Yeah. Yes. Yes. We do. I mean, we can't get electric trucks at the moment that are commercially viable enough, but

14:15 not HEVs. Right. Maybe yeah. We'll we'll look at that and correct it because I think you can look at companies who are abroad with using some. Mhmm. If either Tesco's have got one that's under, you know, are using I gotta say it's something the company is continually looking at. Shankar particularly is involved in vehicles because he's always enjoyed that aspect of the business. So he has been very close at looking at it. But we will have another look and just see using the examples you've just given us. I I think there's a there's a metric in the annual report on the c o £2,000,000 of revenue as well. And you can see that there is actually quite a step forward year on year. So we have managed to reduce that by about 10%.

15:27 Right. Mhmm. You can do you grow the market by incentives to your customers or not? Special offers incentives? Yes. Giving away free goods. Specifically around carbon emissions or Oh, no. Actually, generally. Encouraging sales, need to get started with where it is. Yeah. By giving away How to the industry? Free goods? Sorry. Did you say we do we give away free goods? Yeah. Some organizations have run promotions Yeah. Which get a free bike or free or free diet. The company does various incentives, such as in the plumbing and heating side, the thing Shankar was just mentioning ago, there's a they've been incentivizing the control systems quite dramatically. So people are buying heating systems.

16:12 They've been promoting a very very significant discount. There's the that type. Add it all? Yeah. Absolutely. It's another one. Yeah. Absolutely. So their installers have got 78 character. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. But we also have a leading brand in Google Nest, who have a fully connected home often on automated product, and we bundle those as an offer. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for those questions. Any more questions I've come across from No. Nothing else on the platform. In which case, excuse me, I'm not at time here. I'll get back into my script. Think sorry. Bear with me. Mark, it's okay if we know if you hand back to us as a meeting.

17:01 We've collected the results of the poll and can you confirm? Yep. Please do confirm that all the resolutions have passed. You'll see the detail of each resolution and the voting percentages. As I say, we'll put that out. We are in RNS and we'll also put it on our website so everybody can see that. And basically, that concludes the business of the Annual General Meeting for today, and I therefore declare the meeting closed. And thank you all for your attendance, whether it be personally or whether it be through Investor Meet. Thank you. Thank you very much for updating attendees today. Could I please ask attendees not to close the session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the Board can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few minutes to complete, and I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company.

17:47 On behalf of the board of LORDS GROUP TRADING PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's annual general meeting, and good afternoon to you all. Thank you.