Mitchells & Butlers plc (MAB) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Right. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Bang on 8.30, so we'll start. Welcome to the interim results presentation for Mitchells and Butlers. Our first half is a tale of two quarters, with quarter one being very strong, culminating with a great festive period, followed by quarter two that was impacted by poor year-on-year weather and to a lesser extent by the macroeconomic backdrop. That's why we're delighted with our first half year results, as despite quarter two, softer growth in quarter two, and despite the impact of incremental employers' national insurance and the very high cost of stake, we managed to bring profit in just slightly ahead of expectations and slightly ahead of last year. To us, that demonstrates the power of our Ignite program and the work done on cost mitigation. And as we believe the macro issues are temporary, we are maintaining our focus on the midterm, where debt service costs significantly reduce, where the business is going to be very well placed. I'm delighted to say that we're joined today by Emma Harris, our new CFO. But Tim will deliver his final City of French presentation this morning. But both he and Emma will be available to meet with you after the presentation. So I'll now hand over to Tim, who'll take you through the financial results, and I will turn to add colour to the things we're working on. Morning. So, as Phil said, I'd like to take through the summary of the financial results for the 32nd and final time. LAUGHTER We feel we had a really good first half of the year, as you can see here on this slide. Sales remained strong, certainly well ahead of the markets, such that despite very stiff cost headwinds that we talked about previously, we were able to maintain our operating profits at 181 million. And EPS, which continues...