PORTMEIRION GROUP PLC (PMP) — Interim Results

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good afternoon, and welcome to the PORTMEIRION GROUP PLC interim results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Mike Raybold. Good afternoon to you. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to PORTMEIRION GROUP's 2023 interim results presentation. You have myself, chief executive, and Dave's Boston, our group finance director. I'd like to start with some headlines, and then I'm gonna pass on to Dave who will talk us through some of our financial summary slides. So in terms of an overview, our sales in the first half were down three points year on year, albeit against a tough record sales last year and against a backdrop of much tougher consumer markets generally around the world. The challenges we faced were centered really in North America, which for us is is The US and Canadian markets where our sales were 13% down, and that really reflected destocking from major customers against the backdrop of tougher consumer sentiment. Outside of North America, we were pleased with our performance and saw growth in The UK, our second biggest market, South Korea, our third biggest market, and within our rest of world sales markets, a key part of our long term growth strategy. The reduction in sales has fed through to reduced profit l...