WH Smith PLC (SMWH) Q2 2023 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everyone. I'm Carl Cowling, Group CEO, and I'm here with Robert Moorhead, our Group CFO and COO. Thanks for coming. It's great to see those of you who are here in person, and welcome to everyone who's joined on the webcast. As usual, we'll give you an update on our performance for the six months ending 28 February 2023, and we'll also run through the highlights and important strategic tenders we have won across the globe. In a moment, I will hand over to Robert, who will take you through the numbers, and then I will then take you through the operational performance of the business, and we will end with your questions. Before handing over to Robert, a quick overview from me and turning to slide three. We've had a strong first half, delivering profits of £45 million, and the group continues to trade ahead of 2019 levels. I've been saying for a while now that the group is in its strongest ever position as a global travel retailer. and I'm pleased to say that these results reinforce my confidence in the business as it goes from strength to strength. This has been an excellent half, successfully opening 62 new stores across North America, the rest of the world, and in the UK, with 60 new stores won. This takes our new store pipeline to over 120 stores due to open over the next three years. The strong momentum we saw at the end of last year is continuing, And with passenger numbers still not yet at pre-COVID levels, there's a lot more sales to go for. And we continue to see substantial growth opportunities using our broad suite of brands across the globe, particularly in North America. It's been another half of executing our strategy and at the core of everything we do and a key driver of our success is our ongoing forensic approach to retailing across each o...