Travis Perkins plc (TPK) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

finally, to the Travis Perkins results presentation. For any of you who don't know me, I'm Geoff Drabble. I became formerly the chairman of Travis Perkins on the 1st of February this year. So it's been an interesting first couple of months culminating in today's results. I'm going to do a brief introduction and also just make a few observations before I hand over to Duncan, who will take us through the majority of the presentation. But then obviously we'll get into Q&A, which I think will be the most interesting once that presentation is complete. Sorry, there we go. So it's been a while since I did this. I'm a little bit out of practice. Look, once I started on the 1st of February, really I was working closely with Pete from the moment he joined. And look... We're all very disappointed that Pete is unable to build on the good work that he started in his brief tenure with us. But he and I had very, very similar views of this business. you'll be tired of us all telling you this. But the group does have incredibly strong fundamentals. It's got a great network, got good people. It's got longstanding relationships and some good brands. And I can promise you the vast majority of our competitors in this industry would love to have all the strong fundamentals that we have as a business in Travis Perkins. Having said that, we have this unerring knack of scoring own goals and messing up the strong fundamentals that we have. And over recent years, in my opinion, there have been a number of strategic changes. And in particular, around about a year ago, where we had something of a management void, there were some quite serious tactical blunders, which has resulted in us having way too much attrition in our staff. When I look through those strategic missteps or those tactical blu...