Marston'S Plc Unsp/Adr (MRTPY) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning everybody. Welcome to the Marsden's interim results for financial year 26. My name is Justin Platt. I'm the CEO and with me I have Stephen Hobson, our Chief Financial Officer. We'll take you through the results today and we'll do so with the following running order. I'll give some quick headlines. Stephen will then talk to the financials. I'll then come back to give an update on some of the strategic progress we've made in the first half and then we'll take some time for questions. So it's been a really good first half for us. It's been a first half when we've made really excellent strategic progress. And that progress sets us up for a very strong year overall. Profit-wise, we've done pretty well. So we've grown profit before tax at almost 8%. Alongside that, yet another period of margin expansion. And we've done that despite some of the well-known cost headwinds. but also with some of the closure periods that we've taken as we've refurbished our estate in line with the formats. The formats have been a key success of the first half. We've done 60 of them against a plan of 50, and as we've come to, they've all performed very, very well. So all of that leaves us feeling very encouraged and positive about the second half, and hence we maintain our view on expectations for the year. So that's the headlines. I'll let Stephen take you through the financials and then I'll come back shortly. Thank you. Thanks, Justin. And good morning, everyone. So I'm going to give you an update on what we feel is a strong financial performance in the first half, which has set up very well to deliver a good result for the year in line with all your expectations. If I start with the group's key financial highlights for the period, which show EBITDA margins continuing to expand a...