Vertu Motors plc (VTU) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Welcome to the results presentation of the interim results of VirtuMotors PLC for the six months ending August 2025. My name is Robert Forrester, Chief Executive, and I've got Karen Anderson, our long-serving CFO, who's going to go through the financials. If we turn to the investment case for Virtue Motors, we continue, we believe, to do the right things to create a very strong business within UK motor retail. We believe scale drives benefit, and actually we believe these benefits are increasing over time, particularly in the area of the ability to invest in technology to drive productivity increases and cost reductions, and the benefit of having large single brands across the national space to drive brand awareness. In the period, we've announced today the appointment of two new managing directors, two new roles for internal promotions, who will take the operational responsibilities of the divisions and provide greater bandwidth at a very senior level. We continue to focus on delivering great colleague and customer satisfaction levels. Our customer experience scores, as measured by the manufacturers, are well above national average. We continue to invest in technology, and this is proving absolutely pivotal in the cost initiatives that we are driving through, not only to lower costs, but also to make us more efficient and to help the customer journeys. We have delivered in these results excellent cost trends despite the headwinds, and that focus on costs through the use of technology will indeed continue. Portfolio management and capital allocation remain an absolute priority. We are clearly seeking to manage the growth of Chinese brands within the UK market, but also the need to modify the portfolio to recycle capital from low return to high return activities, whic...