Smiths News plc (SNWS) Q1 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Smiths News PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab that's just situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and will publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the InvestorMeet company platform. And before we begin, as usual, we would just like to submit the following poll. And if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from Smiths News PLC. John, good afternoon, sir. Thank you, Jay. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to SmithsNews interim results for the 26 weeks ending the 1st of March 2025. I'm John Bunting, CEO of SmithsNews, and with me today to talk through a half year results presentation is Paul Baker, our Group CFO. So starting with the headlines, we've made a good start to the current financial year and the business is on track to deliver the FY25 results in line with market expectations. We've seen an increase in operating profit up 3.2% alongside a strong cash flow performance in the period. As highlighted in our full year results in November last year, we continue to leverage our news and magazine business whilst also seeking to drive growth. We have made progress across all three growth verticals comprising Smith News Recycle, New Categories and Final Miles. Our internal investment programme has also ga...