WH Smith PLC (SMWH) Q4 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 has joined on the webcast. As usual, we will give you an update on our performance for the 12 months ending the 31st of August, 2023, and we'll also run through the highlights and important strategic growth opportunities for the group. In a moment, I will hand over to Robert who will take you through the numbers and 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 on the year from me and turning to slide three. 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 the results we've announced this morning reinforce my confidence in the business as it goes from strength to strength. We have a clear strategy which is being well executed, resulting in another strong year, delivering profits of 143 million pounds. We continue to see strong momentum, and with passenger numbers not yet at pre-COVID levels, there's a lot more sales to go for. During the year, we have successfully opened 118 new travel stores across North America, the rest of the world and in the UK. And we now have a new store pipeline of over 110 stores due to open over the next three years. So we continue to be successful and we are growing across each of our markets and have opportunities to grow further, particularly in North America. A real strength of this group is that it's also very cash generative. This is reflected in the proposed full year dividend and also our ability to invest for future growth. ...