Theworks.co.uk (LSE:WRKS) — Preliminary Results

0:00 Good afternoon, and welcome to the wrks.co. UK PLC FY 'twenty six Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they 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. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Gavin Peck. Good afternoon to you.

0:27 Good afternoon. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Rosie and I look forward to updating you on the great strategic progress that we've made in the last twelve months and the step change that that has delivered in our financial performance and the momentum that we've taken forward into f y twenty seven. We'll have plenty of time at the end to answer questions. Just before I get into the results, just wanted to spend a few minutes recapping the background to the works, which I appreciate. Some would have heard before, but, yeah, I think it's important context to the story. So THEWORKS was originally established as a high street presence forty five years ago, initially as a discount book chain called Remainders Limited selling clearance books. And over the next four to five years, we've evolved into the proposition that we've got today, which is a value retailer focused on selling four key product categories being books, arts and crafts, stationery, and toys and games.

1:19 And we have been bringing that proposition together, under affordable screen free activities for the whole family for about the last eighteen months. And, really, it's all about connecting people with feel good ways to spend their time away from screens, something that we call time well spent. And as I come to talk about later, usually relevant when concerns are rising around too much screen time, particularly amongst children. As well as a fantastic proposition, we've got a great culture. We regularly rank to one of the best places to work in The UK, recently placed in the Sunday Times best places to work, very big organization category. And our colleagues are on with delivering against our new five year strategy that we launched in January 2025, which gives us a great opportunity to transform our brand, our operations, and our financial performance.

2:09 We're already delivering great results just through the first year, and, really, delivery of this will bring to life one of The UK's best kept retail secrets. Our proposition is delivered through our profitable and growing store portfolio. That is the lifeblood of our business. We have over 500 stores across a range of formats in The UK and Ireland, playing an an important role in the local communities via as the local bookshop, stationers, pocket money store, or providing art and craft essentials. The store estate is profitable with over 98 of stores, generating a contribution, and that's supported by consistent like for like sales growth ahead of the wider market. It's flexible in terms of having around about one and a half years to the next break or expiry point on leases, which means we can be agile and move, reduce rents, or leave where the pitch changes.

3:02 We've got an opportunity for a further 100, additional stores over the medium term. We've got a net 60 to add in the, current strategy. We added five last year. We'll add a net 10 this year, and we're still seeing strong payback of less than two years on new store openings. And our stores are now our sole trading channel. We closed our transactional website in March this year, and that followed a thorough review by the board. Took into consideration that sales online were less than 10% of the whole business. It was an unprofitable channel, and it experienced fulfillment challenges with two different third party providers in the last two peak trading periods, which have negatively impacted our financials and customer experience. Having made the decision, we've now got huge benefits as a business. We have simplified the business. We can now all focus our time, money, and energy on our stores, and the website now becomes a shop window to our brand and stores.

4:00 We've got had encouraging early signs, early four months into it, but, it's definitely been a contributor to the improved like for likes in recent months has been the footfall benefit from customers who would have shopped online, now shopping in stores, and that online website now acting as a shop window to the brand and driving further footfall to stores as well. As a side point to this and reflecting this change, we plan to change our corporate name from and drop the .co.uk to move from the works.co.uk PLC to the works PLC at the upcoming AGM.

4:34 So moving on to the results update. In summary, f y twenty six was a pivotal year here at THEWORKS. We're seizing the opportunity to transform our brand operations and financial performance, made really strong progress in the first full year delivering on our transformational elevating the work strategy. We've strengthened the screen free proposition. We've grown our store estates, we've improved operational execution and efficiency. That's delivering improved customer experience and improved profitability. That's translated into significant financial performance improvements, delivered like for like sales of 3.3%, which is well ahead of the nonfood retail market and reflects the increased relevance and strength of our proposition. Pre IFRS 16 adjusted EBITDA increased 47% to 14,000,000, which puts us well on track for our f y thirty target of EBITDA of at least 22,500,000.

5:27 We saw strong momentum at the end of q four with high flex of plus 50.3%, and that's continued into the start of FY 'twenty seven, where like for like sales in the first eleven weeks are plus 8.8% on top of a strong comp of plus 7%. And that really underpins the confidence in our recently upgraded FY 'twenty seven market expectations for pre IFRS 16 adjusted EBITDA of 15,000,000. So overall, really proud of what we have achieved and delivered in the last twelve months, but it is only year one of a five year plan. We've got lots more exciting opportunities ahead of us. I'll talk more about that later, but for now, I will hand over to Rosie to talk through the financials. Thanks, Gavin, and hi, everybody. I'll start by taking you through the highlights, and then we'll get into the detail. So as Gavin's mentioned, following the closure of the transactional website in the year, we're gonna be recognizing the performance of the website as discontinued throughout these results. So unless you see stated otherwise, these are on a continuing basis.

6:25 We delivered revenue of $260,000,000 reflecting those strong like for likes of 3.3, which significantly outperformed the market. Overall, revenue grew 3.1% and this reflected a 0.2% sales headwind from the timing of store openings and closures. However, FY 2027 will see a positive sales impact from the net store portfolio activity. Our continued focus on sustainable product margins has seen a significant margin growth of two forty basis points to 62% in the year. And we delivered against our £2,000,000 cost reduction program that we set at the start of the financial year. These combined have resulted in the year on year profit growth of 47% with the pre IFRS 16 adjusted EBITDA of 14,000,000.

7:14 Adjusted profit before tax grew 44% to 7,200,000 And on a statutory basis, profit before tax was down GBP 2,700,000 to GBP 6,800,000 and this reflected the prior year impairment reversal, which resulted in a net credit to adjusting items of GBP 4,500,000 in FY 2025. This compares to the £500,000 charge this year, which reflects £300,000 of store impairment and £200,000 of exceptional system transformation costs as we commenced our systems transformation program that Gavin is going to talk about later. Net cash was marginally down year on year, reflecting a net cash inflow from continuing operations offset by the discontinued operations cash outflow.

8:01 So let's take a look at the impact on the financials of discontinued operations. Due to the proactive action that we took during the year, we were able to minimize the impact of the operational challenges at our third party fulfillment center. However, it still resulted in a 4,800,000 loss before tax from discontinued operations. This included $2,500,000 operating loss as a result of the significantly inflated third party fulfillment costs on a lower revenue basis. And we also had $2,300,000 of adjusting items, reflecting 800,000 of h one transition costs to the new provider and 1.8 1,500,000 of exceptional closure costs, including onerous contracts and redundancies.

8:48 Given the issues we face, the channel's relatively small revenue contribution and the fact that it continued to be loss making, the transaction transactional website is no longer sustainable. But as Gavin's mentioned, now gives us the chance to fully focus on our profitable store estate. So let's get back to understanding the great store performance. Full year like for like growth of 3.3% compares to the British Retail Consortium's nonfood like for like decline of naught point 1%. So we've performed really, really well in a tough retail environment. We've increased focus on year round appeal resulting in strong like for like performance outside of peak with performance significantly ahead of the wider market across both q one and q four, with q one like for likes of 8.3% versus the wider market of naught point 3% growth.

9:40 And in q four, our 5.3% like for likes compared to a decline in the wider market of 1.1. Our outperformance reflects the growth in the existing stores resulting from the great progress against our strategic initiatives, including strengthening our brand marketing to support our unique screen free proposition. Gavin will talk more about that shortly.

10:05 So let's look at product margin. We achieved this significant product margin growth of 240 basis points from a combination of better buying with stronger supplier negotiations and improved control of product mix. We continue to focus on managing markdown and targeted selective price increases at the start of the year. FX and container freight rates supported margin improvement with the hedged rate FX rate of 1.28 versus 126 in the prior period. And average container rates in FY '26 were $2,200 per container, half those that we saw in FY '25 resulting in a 90 basis points improvement in margin. We've made really great progress in growing product margin over the last two years and we now believe we're operating at a sustainable margin rate.

10:57 Going forward, we don't expect to see the same level of step change and improvement in margin. However, we continue to actively manage the balance of supplier negotiations, product mix, customer demands, and markdowns to protect margin and to mitigate against any headwinds that we face. So moving on to our profit bridge. With pre IFRS 16 adjusted EBITDA increasing from 9,500,000 to 14,000,000, the largest driver was increased product margin, which contributed 11,000,000 of incremental profit through a combination of sales growth and that stronger product margin rate. Importantly, these gains more than offset the 6,000,000 headwind from national minimum living wage and the increase in the higher national insurance costs.

11:47 We delivered against our 2,000,000 cost reduction program and continue to invest in the business, including that strategic investment in brand marketing, which now has a clearer focus on amplifying our time well spent message. Our product margin growth demonstrates the increasing resilience and scalability of our model. We're not simply benefiting from sales growth. We're improving the quality of earnings through better product margins, disciplined cost management and targeted investment creating a stronger foundation for our future growth. So turning to look at our balance sheet. During FY '26, continuing operations generated 4,300,000 cash, more than double the prior year. This reflects the combination of that increased profitability improved from improved product margins and that disciplined cost focused mindset along with disciplined working capital management.

12:42 Importantly, cash generation enabled us to fund 5,900,000 of capital investment across new stores, refits, our distribution center and the technology transformation program. We finished the year with 3,600,000 of net cash and have successfully refinanced our banking facility, securing a new 20,000,000 RCF through to November 2029. This provides a significant liquidity and flexibility to support seasonal working capital requirements and future strategic opportunities. So as we look ahead, we formalized our capital allocation framework. We'll continue to balance investment in growth, maintaining financial resilience and supporting those future shareholder distributions. So as we enter FY 2027 with an increasingly cash generative business, a strong balance sheet and financial capacity to continue investing in the next phase of growth of our strategy.

13:40 So let's take a look at our transformational profit growth. FY twenty six represents another significant step forward in the transformation of THEWORKS. The 47% year on year increase to pre IFRS 16 adjusted EBITDA of 14,000,000 reflects a double in doubling of the EBITDA we would recognize in FY '24 of 6,000,000. The improvement has been driven by stronger product margins, disciplined cost management and continued strategic strategic progress against the business. And importantly, we view FY twenty six as a milestone and not a destination. So looking ahead, we expect further progress with pre IFRS 16 adjusted EBITDA increasing to 15,000,000.

14:27 And beyond FY '27, our five year plan outlines a clear path to further value with EBITDA growing to approximately $22,500,000 by FY 'thirty, representing 137% growth versus FY 'twenty five. This growth is supported by targeted investment in our strategic initiatives whilst maintaining disciplined capital allocation. Improving this profit is expected to be accompanied by strong cash generation and a robust balance sheet. This gives us the flexibility to invest for growth, while continuing to create value for shareholders, which will support future shareholder distributions. So thank you everybody for listening. I'll now hand you over to Gavin. Thank you, Rosie. So I'll now talk through the strategic progress we made in f y twenty six and our plans for the year ahead.

15:21 Just to start, the foundation of our strategy and business is our unique brand positioning that you see on this slide, And this really carves out our niche and the reason to exist and thrive as the works for generations to come. Our purpose remains unchanged. It's to inspire reading, learning, creativity, and play. And that's all about, really, we believe in the benefits of these activities, and it's more than just selling great value products in our categories. Our mission, as I said earlier, is to be the favorite destination for affordable screen free activities for the whole family. There's three key parts to that. Favorite destination, we want to be a retailer of choice for key moments. Affordability is key and in terms of not just being great value, but also offering low prices that make our products accessible. And for the whole family, we have something for the kids and for the grown ups.

16:10 As I also said, our positioning is about connecting people with feel good ways to spend their times away from screens, and we call that time well spent. So that's reading a book on holiday, crafting with the kids on a rainy day, or playing a family board game on a Saturday night, all time well spent courtesy of THEWORKS. And there's three things that we want to be famous for. The first is great value. The customers to be wowed by prices and the value for money that we offer. Our average transaction value in stores is less than £10, and customers can get three to four items in their basket for that. 95% of what we sell is priced under £10, and 75% is priced under £5. So really making our products accessible. Fantastic ranges is all about newness and to surprise and delight customers when they visit. And on top of that, having core items for things like art, craft, and stationery.

17:02 And screen free activities is focused on supporting with thousands of ideas for activities to spend time away from screens. So say the last eighteen, twenty four months, we've really put screen free activities at the heart of the business and brand and just wanted to explain briefly why. Importantly, we're not anti tech. You know, we know that tech and screens are an important part of modern life, but we now also know that there's a growing concern regarding the impact of too much screen use, particularly amongst children. We see that from the government guidelines regarding, screen time directions for under fives and the planned social media ban for under sixteens. We also do our own research. And for example, that shows that forty percent of parents were actively looking to reduce screen time, but the children that need practical activities and alternatives to help them do so. And as a parent of two young girls, I can attest to that.

17:59 And our positioning really leans into this. You know, we are there to apply provide alternative screen free ways to connect. And the campaigns that I'll talk through shortly have been really bringing this to life. So as I mentioned, we've got our elevating the work strategy, a five year transformational strategy, which really brings to life that mission will transform our brand operations and financials. It's built on three pillars. The first one is growing our brand fame. We have a loyal customer base that loves us, but we want more people to understand us and what we offer. Improving customer convenience is all about making shopping at the works even more enjoyable and convenient. And being a lean and efficient operator is about being able to maintain the great value for money we offer our customers and deliver profitable sales growth.

18:51 But by we need to do that. We need to be more efficient and keep our costs low. So there's a huge opportunity. Importantly, we've got a really clear plan. We're on with delivering against it, and we're seeing the financial benefits from it. I'm really excited about what delivery of it can do for our brand operations and all our stakeholders. And from a financial perspective, as Rosie says, by FY thirty, we'll be delivering a step change in EBITDA to an excess of £22,500,000. So just taking each driver in turn and growing our brand fame, so we started some brand tracking with YouGov nearly a year ago, and and that's giving us insight that we've not had about before about perceptions of the brand. That's a monthly report that we get.

19:38 And we can see from that that we have reasonable awareness as a as a brand. So 75% of people are able to say they've heard of THEWORKS, but that compares to the competitor set at 82%. So reasonably well known, but we know that we we can become better known. That then drops to a consideration of who would you purchase from at 23% of customers say, yes, the WRKS, and 26% say for our competitors. Then in terms of real purchase intent in terms of who are you most likely to buy from, that's at 2.3% for us at THEWORKS versus 6.5% of the competitor set. So there's a huge opportunity for us to, one, not just get more people aware of the brand, but also what does the brand stand for, get more people to discover us, come into the store and try us, and then confident that they will come back and keep shopping with us.

20:30 We're making really good progress on sharpening up that proposition around screen free, and as I say, it's resonating really well. We've been doing much sharper brand campaigns and bringing to life that time well spent message. We've seen really good cut through in engagement. I'll talk about the find your story campaign we've been running shortly. But f y twenty six was very much a test and trial, and we now go into f y twenty seven with more confidence to invest. We've increased the product newness really from spring twenty twenty five. We started to increase the frequency of new products landing in our store, and that's had a particularly strong reaction in kids' pocket money where kids are coming in with their pocket money and seeing something new each time, that's and trending items, but also in categories like art, which are more stable in terms of their offering. But, again, looking at bringing newness and innovation to those categories.

21:19 We've also been looking at how, as Rosie said, how we drive all year round relevance and growing outside of peak. The campaigns that we've been doing are are helping with that, and also how we drive ancillary seasons such as Easter, back to school, and Halloween that are growing. We've also been bringing in extended ranges. So Block Tech, which is the value alternative to Lego, we tried that in our biggest stores. It worked well. We've then rolled that out into nearly the whole state. And similarly, with our six for five party bag fillers range, tried that into larger stores, again, rolled it out into more stores across the estate. And we'll do more of that in FY twenty seven. We've got continuing to increase the level of newness and extended range trials. Alongside that, we've been looking to improve the customer experience within the works. It's a huge differentiator for us versus the likes of the general merchandise discounters.

22:11 We launched a customer experience program in f y twenty six, which really explained what we wanted a good job to look like, and those badges handed out to recognize performance in line with that. We're reinforcing that with customer experience training. Our fame customer experience training has been rolled out to all store colleagues over the coming months and underpinning that by an ongoing mystery shopper program to to reinforce expectations.

22:39 The find your story campaign is a great example of how we're now thinking about and executing our brand campaigns. This launched in spring twenty twenty six in support of the National Year of Reading and in partnership with the National Literacy Trust, And it ran as our main campaign in April, and is running in the background throughout 2026. It really encourages children to follow their interests and discover books that excite and engage them. We know from National Literacy Trust research that reading boosts children's confidence, well-being, and empathy, and that's something we feel passionately about at THEWORKS. And there's some worrying statistics in that less than one in three children enjoy reading in their free time, and almost half say they only read because schools say they have to. And we want to change that. So we've been doing that through our find your story campaign, which we've been bringing to life through a national bus tour, which is going to about a dozen locations across The UK. You can see the pictures there focused on

23:35 disadvantaged communities where literacy levels are low. Every child that attends the bus gets a free book. We've had authors come in to do reading sessions to the children. You can see WRK PEDELF, the author there on a picture, and then other creativity and engagement events such as character meets. So I was pictured with Zog in Matlock recently and also Paddington Bear with InShore. Alongside that, we're bringing it to life across PR and, social media through much more storytelling, getting the softer benefits of reading across and some lifestyle imagery. Then in store, we are highlighting our affordable and great value books, for example, our 10 for 10 picture flats. Alongside all of that, we've also pledged, we've got a read pledge for the National Year of Reading, which pledges to raise a £150,000 for National Literature Trust and donate $250,000 to children.

24:29 This compares to previous approaches where we would have had a kids campaign, and we typically have just put a poster in the window saying 10 kids books for £10. We'd have sent out an email saying that, and we'd have done some social posts along that lines. We're seeing huge success, much, much greater levels of engagement in our content, much further reach. And from a commercial perspective, kids' books have moved from a category that's been a decline in last two years to double digit growth in 2026 to date. The second pillar is improving customer convenience. So that's all about wanting shopping at the works to be more enjoyable and convenient, and we're making good progress. We've grown the store estate in f y twenty six, and we were doing again, in f y twenty seven. I'll talk about that shortly.

25:17 We've also improved the stock distribution and product availability, particularly in our platinum stores. They are our top 50 stores where we have been providing greater breadth of range and depth of stock, and that's been driving strong like for likes in excess of the company average. At the other end of the scale, we've got our compact stores, which are typically our smaller, lower turnover stores where we've been reducing the stock holding to reduce the slow turning stock, and we've been successful in doing that without negatively impacting sales. One of the most exciting opportunities we've got ahead of us is the opportunity to make better use of space in our stores. We're starting to use demographics and sales data to inform space decisions in stores. That started with university towns and introducing extended ranges of our stationery products.

26:05 We've also been making changes within categories where we can see different sales densities. So for example, in kids books, increasing the the range of activity books and reducing what's known as our best sellers category and putting that just into the relevant sections. As I mentioned, we've also been taking extended ranges in our bigger shops, trialing those, and then rolling those out into the estate based on sales density analysis. The challenge we've got at the minute is very manual. We're using Excel, outdated systems, manual workarounds with a colleague that we recruited eighteen months ago. But to get after the the huge opportunity that's ahead of us, we need a systematic solution, and we're developing that this year, and that will start to inform our space and ranging decisions and buys from f y twenty eight.

26:52 So the really encouraging thing is that the trials that we've been doing manually show the size of the prize, and when we get to that in f y twenty eight, we know the opportunities there. And in the meantime, we'll continue to do what we can manually through the current ways of working.

27:09 I mentioned upfront the strength of our store estate and the opportunity for a 100, more stores. So we want a net 60 by f y thirty. We opened a net five last year, and we've got a plan to open a net 10 this year. They're still seeing really strong payback of less than two years. But the portfolio activity is much broader than just opening new stores. So we've closed, loss making stores and or where landlords have been unrealistic on rents. We've closed 24 stores in the last two years, and that's helping keep that state fresh and profitable. We have also relocated seven stores in the last two years where we've managed to secure a better pitch and or a better rent deal. And opening a net 10 stores in the year ahead will mean probably opening a gross 25 stores, closing 15, and of that, five will probably be relocations.

27:57 We're still seeing opportunities across a range of formats, whether it's retail parks, towns, or city centers. And some of the fallout from other competitors and retailers, you know, we would we don't like to see that. We'd much rather have thriving high streets with more competition. But where those are they are closing, that is giving us a good availability of new sites.

28:20 As Rosie touched on, we're making good progress about making the business leaner, more efficient, and more simple, and that's really important to say that we can offer great value for money to our customers and deliver sustainable profit margins.

28:33 The big benefit here was of closing the transaction the website in the year and the fact that had on our profitability. Moses also mentioned the step change in our product margin, the 2,000,000 cost savings that we did in f y twenty six. We've got more planned for f y twenty seven, further margin growth, and driving cost efficiencies. One, through the store store labor model, we have a £55,000,000 spend there. We're looking at how can we use that spend more efficiently to help improve both colleague and customer experience. And we started on our systems transformation roadmap as Rosie mentioned earlier. So this is hugely exciting for us as a business. The objective of it is to replace our legacy and outdated systems, have significant manual workarounds with a new ERP system with a suite of best in class solutions.

29:22 It will involve spending £6,000,000 of exceptional spend over the next four years, but that would create a more resilient, scalable, and efficient operating platform that will fundamentally transform our ways of working and make us much more efficient as a business and introduce new capabilities as well as future proofing our business.

29:42 We're aware that this is a huge amount of change, and we're therefore following best practice to ensure successful delivery. We've set up a separate project team. We're bringing in place strong governance. We're looking at third party assurance, and we'll select key top class, top tier partners to work alongside us with the implementation. The way we structured the program is we've started with the areas that give us the biggest commercial value out upfront, which means we can get the commercial benefits, which then help to support the investment in the sort of more core underlying systems. So we started that in f y twenty six with a new financial planning tool. And as we move into f y twenty seven, we're looking at a new ranging tool, store grading, and space optimization software. In f y twenty seven, we'll also select our new ERP vendor and our partners to help implement that, And that will then lead us to deliver on our core finance, HR and stock systems in FY twenty eight and FY twenty nine.

30:40 Alongside this systems investment, we're also investing CapEx to upgrade the store connectivity, replacing our outdated current method of connection, and introducing and upgrading new TILs that we've successfully piloted in the last twelve months, and we're on with rolling out now and that that rollout will continue into FY twenty eight.

31:01 We've got lots to do, but it's hugely transformational for the capabilities of the business and our efficient ways of working and really will transform those ways of working. And it helps underpin everything that we're looking to achieve as part of our elevating the work strategy.

31:17 So in summary, FY twenty six was a pivotal year for us. We've delivered strong progress in the first full year of delivering on our transformation elevating the work strategy. We're building a brand with a unique positioning around affordable screen free activities for the whole family. We've refocused our store trading model with the closure of the transactional websites. We've seen a significant improvement in our financial performance off the back of that. We've taken really strong momentum into f y twenty seven with like for likes of plus 8.8% for the first eleven weeks. And whilst the macroeconomic environment remains uncertain and we still got our peak trading periods of back to school and then the golden quarter still to come, we're confident of achieving our recently upgraded pre IFRS adjusted EBITDA target of £15,000,000 for FY '27.

32:06 And that puts us on in a great position to be in line with our EBITDA target of 22,500,000 EBITDA in FY '30. So I'm really proud of the progress we've made in the last twelve months. There's lots of opportunities still ahead of us, and I'm excited about what that will do for THEWORKS as a business and for all its stakeholders in the years ahead. So thank you for listening. And at that point, we will take questions. Q and A tab situated on the top right corner of your screen. While the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you the recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can be accessed via investor dashboard.

32:58 Gavin, Rosie, we have received a number of questions from investors, and I wanted to start off the Q and A session with the first one here, which reads as follows. I understand you held a supplier conference recently. What criteria did you apply to selecting attendees? And what were the benefits of this conference? Okay. I'll take this one. Thank you. Yeah. So we recently we hold an annual supplier conference, and we generally approach the attendees through spend value and the potential future spend value with those suppliers. So we covered 60% of the value through a UK and Far East supply conference that covered about 36 different suppliers, with a virtual supply conference for those in the Far East. And now the real benefit of this was bringing together those key suppliers who we really recognize that we've got a strong partnership with and want to build that partnership for the future so that we can continue to collaborate with them and bring the best proposition for our customers at great value and really focusing on bringing innovation to those customers.

33:59 So it was a real success and something that we look to do every year because we really build on those key supplier partnerships. Thank you, Rosie. Next one up here is, now that you are no longer transacting on the website, what actions have you taken to ensure all items carried by the works are listed on the website so as to act as the online catalog? Yep. That was that one. So we will continue to refine this, but on as a starting point, we've taken a a rule that any product that's in at least a 100 shops will appear on the website. What we don't want to do is put lots of products on there that aren't available in in the majority of our stores, And we'll keep that under review and keep evolving it in time as we look to really develop their website as a proper brand tool and and supporting our stores.

34:50 We would love to look at bringing in store stock checker functionality, but we've got work to do behind the scenes on that. So that would probably be twelve months or so away. But, yeah, at the minute, we're we're we're doing that through a that rule of a 100 stores stocking the product. Thank you, Gavin. And two questions here from an investor. Is there scope to increase product gross margin above 62% in 2627? And can you quantify any further cost savings from annualization of last year's measures or new initiatives that will help to offset general cost inflation in 2627? Okay. I think that sounds very much like a question for me. So, yeah, as I mentioned in the product margin slide, you know, we have made really great progress, but we believe we're now at a quite sustainable margin rate.

35:41 So we don't expect to see the same level of improvement. We are expecting and sort of, like, targeting a small marginal improvement in margin rates in f y twenty seven, but we really wanna focus on making sure that we can continue to ensure that those negotiations with suppliers are giving our customers the best value products, managing that product mix and that cuss and that supplier that stock markdown, and then really protecting margin against any potential headwinds that we face. And then what we're really doing to sort of, like, step change that profitability as well is we've got another, cost reduction program for f y twenty seven. So we'll look to save a further £2,500,000 against our cost base in the year that we've just started. Fantastic. Thank you. Another one here asks, the work has may has made a great progress on sales and profitability, and the stores are clearly at the heart of the strategy. Could you tell us how many of the five zero eight stores have been refurbished into the current brand format? What proportion of the state still requires investment?

36:43 And what your medium term plans are for refreshing the existing store state? Quite a few there. Yeah. I'll break it down and chunk it up. And if if I miss anything, I'm sure Rosie will jump in. So, yeah, we the the real change to the the interior of the store and the actual shop fit itself hasn't changed significantly. It's more how we put that together and the level of stock that we put into it. What has changed is the branding above the door, and we've now got the new branding in around about a 100 stores. So still a a significant proportion of the estate that's that's on the old branding. But, again, it's it's very much cosmetic. We don't see a strong return on investment from doing that. So at the minute, we are very much focused on investing where we see a stronger return as we've outlined in our capital allocation framework around new store systems and and other areas.

37:36 But as we're coming up to rent deals and renewals with landlords, we are seeing if we can get capital contribution towards either new signage or a light touch refit. And and, importantly, where we've got very old stores that are in need of a refit just because it's you know, the the the fit's starting to look tired, we've got that down to about 30 stores, and we would hope to address the vast majority of those in the next two to three years. Thank you. And moving on to CapEx. With the new with net new store openings increasing from five to 10 and new store CapEx having been £2,300,000 in FY 2026, should we expect that figure to rise further, allowing for lower warehouse spend in the year ahead, say circa £200,000 versus £700,000 as the mezzanine investment drops out. Is it fair to model FY '27 CapEx in the seven point five million pounds to £8,000,000 range?

38:41 Yep. So I'll take that one. Yes. That is a very well asked question and concluded almost in itself. We are looking to spend around £8,000,000 of CapEx investment this year, which will include openings of, like, a net 25 new stores, which will result in about 10 a net 10 new stores. And then including, as Gavin's mentioned, investing in the existing store estate where we can and where we believe we'll get the right returns as well. And then I think just at the end of that question, there's, a mention of the IT transformation spend. So within f y twenty seven, we'll be spending, and investing in the new store in new tills across the store estate and store connectivity. So that's included in the 8,000,000 range that we're we've set out to achieve. And then as Gavin's mentioned, the approximately 6,000,000 investment in our systems transformation program is specifically with reference to our ERP program and the new system capability from best in class solutions, which we'll see be an exceptional cost across the next four years.

39:46 Thank you very much, Rosie. And one regarding statutory profit swings. Is it fair to say that the big year on year swings in statutory profit are almost entirely driven by the noncash IFRS 16 store right of use impairment reversals and charges, which being noncash are more of an accounting figure than meaningful indicator of the underlying business performance. Is that correct? Is that a correct read? Yes. So thank you. Again, another very well articulated question, and indeed probably somebody who's as a bigger fan of IFRS 16 as we are. And, yes, the swings are purely down to, noncash IFRS 16 impairments and reversals of impairments that we've sort of, like, seen over the last few years. Unfortunately, yes, it does swing that underlying number, and therefore, that's why we tend to explain everything on an adjusted basis so that it gives a real feel for what that true underlying performance of the business is.

40:47 Thank you. And moving on. The web performance was poor in f y twenty four and f y twenty five, but this was impacted by poor third party execution. Did your evaluation look prior to these poor years? Yeah. So I'll take that one, Rosie, if you want. And so the I think the history of the website was pre COVID. It on a stand alone basis, it was a loss making channel. During COVID, when all 500 of our shops were closed, it did very well and and made a profit. But then coming back out of COVID, as sales normalized at a at a sort of a more normal level going back to the trend of pre COVID times, we saw that the on an underlying basis, the website was loss making. And the the real reason for that is we were selling a lot of high volume, low average selling price items, which means that it's just a a lot of work for not a lot of margin coming out of it.

41:44 That was then made worse by the challenges in both f y twenty five, f y twenty six. But, yeah, when we looked at it and with the risks involved with moving to another third party supplier, the history of being outside of COVID, you know, loss making just about got it to break even in one year, the best thing we could do is remove remove the transactional nature, focus our time and efforts on on our stores as well as our investment, and it was it's the distraction factor as much as anything that for a channel that was less than 10% of sales, at times last year, was taking up thirty, forty, 50% of people's time. And I think we can see now in the first eleven weeks of this year and the back end of last year when since we've closed the website, you know, the strong like for likes have definitely, in part, helped by that website closure.

42:36 Thank you. Next one here is you mentioned the benefit of lower contained rates in 2526. What is the likely p and l impact of higher rates in 2627? I'll take that one. I think it's referencing container rates. So, yes, we have seen slightly higher freight costs in the market, particularly because of the disruption in The Middle East. But we've managed you know, we're not seeing any material impact on our p and l this year so far. So managing to contain that within the budgeted rates that we had, albeit that we're certainly seeing them slightly adverse year on year. Thank you very much. Another question from an investor is, will there be any more exceptional charges in the current full year financial year?

43:24 Thank you. I will take this one as well. Yes. So we are expecting to see sort of about $1,300,000 of exceptional costs in FY 'twenty seven in relation to that systems transformation program, particularly, you know, for the cost that we can't capitalize because it's, a SaaS product. And then, ongoing, that will we will continue to see a similar rate over the four years, to hit that sort of approximate 6,000,000 investment that Gavin's talked about. Thank you, Rosie. One on payroll here. Payroll costs increased by over 10% to £55,300,000. Is this just due to increases in the national minimum wage and NI, or are there any other factors behind the increase? I'll take that one as well. So, yes, unfortunately, you know, as I mentioned upfront, we were hit with a 6,000,000 headwind from the national minimum living wage impact and that hike in national insurance up to 15% in April 2025.

44:24 So we saw the full impact of that in f y twenty six, which reflects the 10% increase in store, payroll. We have been trying to mitigate that obviously through, you know, actions taken in terms of managing the store labor model. And as Gavin said, we've got more to do there so that we can focus on the customer experience and then really focusing on how we can mitigate that through the other cost lines as we've mentioned in that margin bridge earlier. Thank you very much. A question here reads, ERP implementations often overrun on time and budget. What measures are you taking to derisk the project? I'll give you a break, Rosie, and handle this, and you can chip in if I miss anything again. Yeah. So we are very mindful of that. It's got, from a nonexec perspective as well, huge huge oversight in this area. But as I mentioned in the presentation, we're looking at we've got strong team internally who know the business well.

45:21 We're supplementing that with knowledge of transformation projects like this. We've put a strong governance framework internally where both the other members of the ops board are are very close to the whole program, and we will be getting third party assurance from a, you know, a big consultancy firm who who do these regularly to oversee what what we're doing, what the partners that will get to implement the system are doing, which should give us that additional assurance. So, yeah, they are not without risk, but we're we're doing all we can in terms of best practice to to mitigate that risk. Thank you. Next question here is, you say that in the first eleven weeks of FY twenty seven, like for like was plus 8.8%.

46:07 Can you confirm that the gross margins have not reduced in FY '27? Yeah. I think that's a straightforward one. Yeah. I think, you know, obviously, the only risk that you might have seen externally to our gross margins would be those freight rates, and we're managing those within. We haven't seen a material impact. So, yes, there's not really been a change from that perspective. Perfect. Thank you. There's three questions in the next one. So I'll just read the first one here. First one reads, delivered four fifty basis points of product margin improvements in two years. Can you give some indication of which of the buckets provides the greatest opportunity going forward? Yeah. I think for us, as we've mentioned, sort of, like, really focusing on product margin sustainability, It's all around making sure that we can manage and negotiate the best cost prices, but working with our suppliers on product product engineering to sort of, like, support them with the cost inflation that they also see and making sure that, therefore, the real opportunity is that we can grow our own brand products and sales in those areas because they create a higher margin so that we can really invest in the lower margin, you know, licensed product products that a lot of people have heard about that would drive footfall into stores to make sure that we can really balance that product mix. So I'd say it's more of a footfall drive in managing the proposition as an opportunity rather than significant

47:38 centered growth rate in that product margin. Thank you. And the second question was, how are competitors reacting to what you're doing? Yeah. I think we've we've got quite a diverse range of competitors. We've got you know, what we would call the full price specialist, which is the likes of Hobbycraft and Art and Craft, Ryman, TG Jones in Stationery, Smith's Toys and Entertainment in in toys and games, and, you Watsons and TG Jones in books. And from that perspective, you know, we see those specialists, you know, just continuing to focus on their ranges. We see the the word screen free being dropped in in certain places within some of those competitors. But for us, you there's know, nothing we see within that competitor set that unduly concerns us, but we we keep a close eye on it and monitor it carefully.

48:32 At the other end, we've got sort of the GM discounters, the BNMs, their own bargains, the range of pound land. You know, they continue to offer fantastic value across their whole propositions. They're probably as cheap, if not in some places cheaper than us. And so we we remain mindful of that. Our differentiation there is we have got specialist knowledge and specialist categories, and we've got great customer experience in our stores, which I do believe differentiates us from from those. But we do keep an eye on on pricing and make sure that we are we are offering our customers great value. But, yeah, overall, we're not seeing a specific reaction in against us, but we do keep very close to what the competition are doing. Thank you. And the last question here on store openings.

49:17 Are the new products leading to new stores reaching maturity quicker than previously? I wouldn't say so. I think the stores have always matured fairly quickly. We We typically in a in a in a sort of town, high street shopping center, we tend to reach maturity pretty much in in year one and have done historically. I think as the proposition just strengthens generally, then the sales potential of new stores improves. What we are seeing is in retail parks, which we we've definitely under indexed in in the portfolio in the past. We've only got 20 retail park stores out of 508, and, you know, the vast majority of those have opened in the last three or four years. And we're seeing that they, as a store cohort, take longer to mature. So, really, from a maturity perspective, it's more about the retail park stores, but that's that's less about their products in them, but more about the nature of those shopping parks, the frequency of visits, and the the time it takes to build awareness.

50:21 That's great. And we've got one final question at the moment here. You described the £6,000,000 system spend as exceptional. Does this mean it will be treated as an adjusting item and so stripped out of the underlying p and l numbers? Yes. That's correct. So I our referencing to exceptional is sort of the old school referencing. Yes. They will be stripped out and treated as adjusting items. That's great. Gavin, Rosie, you have addressed all those questions for investors today, so thank you very much indeed. But Gavin, before we direct investors to provide you with their feedback, which one is particularly important to yourself and the company, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments? Yeah. Sure. I just wanna say, first of all, thank you very much for joining and for your interest in us. As I said, we're really proud of what we've delivered in what was a pivotal year in f y twenty six, but that was year one of a five year plan, and there's still so much more opportunity ahead of us. We're really excited. We've got a really meaningful purpose and and mission and a really huge opportunity to transform our business in terms of, you know, the brand, the operations, and the financial performance. And we we look forward to delivering on that in the years ahead, and that will generate significant shareholder value and returns.

51:33 Fantastic. Gavin, Rosie, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.