Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Lords Group Trading PLC Interim 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&A tab just situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please simply type in your questions at any time and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll, and I'm sure the company will be most grateful for your participation. I'd now like to hand over to CEO, Shanker Patel. Good morning.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us for our interim 2024 results presentation. On the agenda, I'll be going through the highlights. I'm Shanker Patel, the CEO. My colleague, Stuart Kirkpatrick, the CFO, will go through the financial review, and then I'll take you through our strategic update and outlook, followed by a Q&A, which we will share between myself and Stuart. In terms of the highlights, we're very pleased with our resilient performance in challenging market conditions in our first half of 2024. Group revenues have come in at GBP 214.2 million. H1 2023, it was GBP 222.6 million, a like-for-like revenue decrease of 6.1% and in line with the market.
In particular, our plumbing and heating division recovered in Q2 after a significant disruption in Q1 due to the Clean Heat Market Mechanism being introduced and then removed in the first quarter of twenty twenty-four. We're very pleased with maintaining our gross margin, which reflects our focus on customer service and the fact that our colleagues continue to ensure that they provide our customers with the best experience they can, buying our products. In line with prudent management, we've taken decisions and actions, decisive decisions and actions that expect to deliver annualized savings of GBP 2.6 million in costs in full year twenty-five. I'm also pleased to announce that our twenty twenty-three acquisitions have been fully rebranded and fully integrated into our wider business. Another positive for our business has been the sales of air source heat pumps, which are up 492% on last year.
All in all, we believe we're well positioned to deliver operational gearing from a recovery in our end markets. On the next slide, we'd like to reiterate our investment case. Lords is a leading high-growth distributor for building materials in the UK. We characterize our investment case through six major areas, first being our unique customer-first proposition. We can see that through consistently high Feefo scores in all of our brands, and we achieve this through having engaged colleagues, who in turn, make sure that our customers are fully satisfied and get a great experience. We also have a great management track record that's demonstrated through the fact that we're consistently a top 10 UK merchant. We also have a strong financial profile, and that's demonstrated through our free cash flow, which was 59% in full year 2023. Our strategy has been value-added M&A.
That makes, again, another strong case for investing in Lords, and you can see that through what we've done and achieved through the acquisitions of Alloway, Chiltern, Advance Roofing, and A.W. Lumb in the last few years. Our markets are large and substantial, especially as we are in the RMI segment of the construction industry, and that is reflected through our ten-year revenue CAGR of 36%. Finally, we also have organic margin accretive growth opportunities. Again, a demonstration of that is the air source heat pump category, which has increased by 492% year on year. Stuart will go through some of the financial highlights.
Thank you, Shanker. If I can just talk about the financial summary for the first half, and as Shanker said, revenue GBP 214.2 million, and it was 3.8% lower than last year. The difference between the like-for-like numbers of 6.1% decline and the 3.8 is where the businesses we acquired in 2023, namely Chiltern Timber and Alloway Timber. Our gross margin held up particularly well at 20.2%, compared to 20.4%, and shows an improving trend over full years 2023 and 2022. That's a tribute to our customer service excellence and how we deliver our products. Adjusted EBITDA at GBP 12.6 million was 16.6% lower, and that's impacted by the market conditions we faced and also the operational leverage.
We still have a target of 7.5% for our EBITDA margins, which fell down to, or decreased down to 5.9%. We still think that medium-term target is in range. If you add, say, 5% to our revenue, our run rate revenue, that will deliver GBP 45 million of additional EBITDA, and that takes us into the mid-6% range. We think with a bit more leverage and a bit more volume, we can still achieve that medium-term target. Adjusted earnings per share was 1.57 pence in the first half, compared to 3.3 pence last year. We're pleased to announce a dividend at the interim stage of 1.32 pence per share, which has been scaled on a prudent basis in line with the earnings per share.
There's been no change to our progressive dividend policy through the cycle, so we expect dividends to move up as the financial performance improves going forward. Net debt at the end of the year, which is our cash less our borrowings, is at GBP 36.3 million, and it's 4.5% lower than this time last year, where it was 38 million precisely. If I can now turn to our two divisions, firstly, our Merchanting division. Revenue at Merchanting was 4.4% lower than the previous year, at GBP 104.6 million. Our like-for-like statistics have improved through the quarters. So the first quarter was slightly worse than the second quarter, which improved. But overall, our like-for-likes are mostly with 9.3% lower than the previous year.
Gross profit, as you can see, has improved in terms of margin. So our gross margin has gone up by 100 basis points, or 1%, from 26.5% to 27.5%. And that reassures our customer service excellence that we provide, particularly in a challenging market where it's clear we haven't reduced margin to gain sales in these tough, tough conditions. Overheads have increased slightly, and there's a couple of dynamics within that. So the full year impact of the businesses we acquired in 2023, about 2.4 million to the first half of overheads. And we received a credit in respect of our Park Royal site, which is an important distribution site for us, of 1.7 million pounds following the lease renegotiation.
Adjusting those two items, our underlying overheads were 2% lower, despite inflation, really running through the business, and every business, I guess, so overall, our adjusted EBITDA margin was 7.3%, compared to 7.7%, last year, and the business we bought last year, the main business, Alloway Timber, we bought it for about GBP 2 million - 2.3 million in September 2023, and despite the challenging trading conditions, the turnaround is on track, and we're expecting it to be profitable in full year 2025. I then move to our plumbing and heating division. Our revenue at GBP 109.6 million for the first half, 3% lower than last year.
As Shanker touched upon, we felt the impact of the Clean Heat Market Mechanism being introduced in January 2024, and then later being withdrawn in March 2024 and deferred. Well, that's how that impacted the company or the business was we saw a boost in sales in the last month or so in 2023, as boiler manufacturers put up their prices to compensate for the fact that they weren't going to achieve the targets and therefore face levies or fines. So we saw a surge in revenue in the last quarter of 2023, and that led to a drop in revenue in the first quarter of 2024.
So you can see in the first quarter, we were 15.1% down on a like-for-like basis, which recovered in the second quarter, and we're 16.7% at the end of the second quarter. So overall revenue, 3% down in the first half. But that disruption from the mechanism coming in and being withdrawn, severely impacted our gross margin, and we saw several manufacturer promotions and more lower margin boiler sales as a result. And you can see our margin drifted down 14.5% to 13.2%, and that impacted gross profit by just under £2 million, which we clawed back a little bit in overhead savings. Overheads were £300,000 less than the previous year. Our adjusted EBITDA did drop by £1.6 million compared to £5 million in the period.
But we have tightly controlled overheads, so that's good progress from that perspective of what, and the things we can control. But we still have continued momentum in the business, so continued momentum in renewables. As we mentioned in the highlights, air source heat pumps were up 492%, and that's a key target market, market for us as we go forward, and a key opportunity. Now I turn to the summary of the group results. Adjusted EBITDA, as I've mentioned, was 12.6 million pounds. We've seen an increase to our depreciation and amortization in the half of 600,000 pounds, which is the effect of the acquisitions I've touched on from 2023. We acquired five new properties, which leads to an IFRS 16 adjustment of right of use amortization.
So that increased by GBP 600,000 due to those new businesses. Our finance costs increased by GBP 1.9 million to GBP 3.4 million. That's partly the average rate being 1% higher, which added 400,000, and partly due to average borrowings being slightly higher, plus the right of use interest costs from an accounting basis. I then turn to adjusting items. It's very similar to previous year, about GBP 2 million for acquisition related, mainly amortization, a little bit of restructuring costs, and some share-based payments of GBP 1.3 million. Our first half cash flow is in this table presented here.
As you can see, we seasonally have a working capital outflow in the first half, and that chart shows our working capital to sales ratio going up every point in June, and going back down again in December, and we expect that to happen this year. So our working capital outflow was 6.7 million GBP in the first half, compared to 15.6 million GBP last year. Significantly lower, nearly 9 million GBP lower, but we did have boiler supply issues in 2023, which increased inventory. But we expect our working capital to reverse in the second half. We do have a strong track record on free cash flow conversion. 2023 was 59%, and we'd expect similar numbers as we go through the second half of 2024 .
We tightly controlled capital expenditure, so GBP 2.6 million of outflow in the first half of 2024 compares to GBP 4.3 million last year. And a little bit of acquisition related to further consideration of GBP 1.8 million, but again, significantly reduced from the previous year at 5.2. And that's a reducing amount going forward. All in all, our cash flow was GBP 7.8 million outwards, and that increased our debt to 36.3, as I mentioned, but still 5% lower, nearly 5% lower than June 2023. I turn now to the balance sheet.
So our focus really in these challenging conditions has been on cost efficiency, as I've mentioned, where we've peaked out about GBP 2.6 million on an annualized basis, but also in terms of working capital management. It's very critical for us to maintain a high level of customer service and a high level of stocking availability to our customers. So you can see we've reduced inventory quite significantly, compared to this time last year. Most of that is due to boiler supply issues, as inventory days are seven days lower, because of that, but we've actually improved it by one day since the end of last year, end of December, and we've improved payables by one day as well. So we're eking out small improvements in our working capital management, but operating capital is GBP 10.6 million less than the previous year.
We do have, within that operating capital, GBP 20 million of tangible fixed assets and about GBP 13 million of freehold property as part of our asset base and part of our branch network, which is about six or seven properties. But then turning to our financing and committed bank facilities, we have GBP 95 million of facilities in place, a revolving credit facility for GBP 70 million, and invoice financing for GBP 25 million with a group of three banks, HSBC, NatWest, and BNP Paribas. We extended the revolving credit facility in May 2024 and extended the maturity date to April 2027. So you can see we've got three years to go on that maybe. Our headroom has remained fairly constant, still at GBP 47 million at the end of June 2024.
Pretty similar number to the end of December, so we've got plenty of headroom on facilities and plenty of liquidity, so it's a good, good financial position going forward. I come back to you, Shanker, for the strategic update.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Stuart. In terms of our strategic update, a few things to mention. First is to confirm our track record of organic and acquisitive growth. We have delivered a revenue and EBITDA 10-year CAGR of 35%, plus we're well-placed and have shown and demonstrated really good track record in growing our business. We have considerable organic opportunities, one of them being expanding our geographic footprint. We opened a Mr. Central Heating branch last year in Edinburgh, and we've now identified a potential site for George Lines, which is our civils brand, and we will be aiming to bring that on stream within the next three to four months. We've also got a great opportunity in the decarbonization of the U.K. housing stock, and I'll talk a little bit about that in the following few slides.
Fundamentally, the RMI market remains strong, which is where we're well positioned. The market is 60% of housing stock was built more than 50 years ago, and that's a great opportunity for us. In addition to the RMI market being strong, we have taken decisive action in digital and direct sourcing, investing in these channels to gain market share. Overall, our market is fragmented at GBP 55 billion, and Lords Group Trading is less than 1%, which is providing an opportunity for selective acquisitions and consolidation. An update on our acquisitions from 2023. Alloway Timber is a highly strategic geographic expansion, which grew our presence in 5 locations in the southeast of London. These are highly affluent locations, Mitcham, Byfleet, Putney, Cheam, and Kingston. Pre-acquisition, the business was loss-making, circa GBP 1 million and rising.
But since the acquisition, we have invested in our strategy of investing in our three Ps: invested in our people, invested in property, and invested in the plant of the business. All four branches have been refurbished, investing GBP 500,000. And in addition to investing in the property and the plant, we have also invested in the business development of this business and improved the branch management. We can see some of the effects of this in the fact that the business is delivering gross margins of over 30%, and it is expected to be profitable in 2025. Another acquisition we made, which was Chiltern Timber, in the first quarter of 2023, a single-site specialist timber merchant that is now fully integrated into the wood merchant.
The business provides a product range extension to existing merchant customer base, and is highly complementary to Lords Builders Merchants brand because of its milling capacity. We're also pleased with the performance of this business, with its revenue up 3.2% from pro forma H1 2023. So how are we driving profitable growth? There are a few product areas in particular that I'd like to call out. One is in the boiler space, 80% or 85%, sorry, of our business in plumbing and heating is boilers, and we're really excited to announce an exclusive UK distributorship with a boiler manufacturer called Navien, and that's providing 24-hour availability to over 2,500 independent plumbers, merchants, and builders merchants.
Navien is one of the world's largest boiler manufacturers based out of South Korea, and they provide high-efficiency heating solutions which are competitively priced and aesthetically well-placed for our customers. There's also a great opportunity with this brand to support the home space distribution and product storage in the UK. Following on from Navien, we've also commenced a distribution agreement with Viessmann Climate Solutions portfolio. Their portfolio of gas boilers, heat pumps, and commercial heating solutions. While this is not exclusive, we are very fortunate to be able to be a distributor of a very large European manufacturer, which is leading in this space. Like the boilers, we've also commenced a distribution agreement in radiators with Thermotechnic radiators. Thermotechnic has 30% of the UK radiator market, a product area that we don't currently distribute.
Although we do sell radiators, we don't distribute them in quantity to our two and a half thousand merchant customers, and all of the above signifies and demonstrates our continued strategy of product group diversification. We're also supporting the energy transition, in particular, in air source heat pumps. We're pleased to announce an exclusive distribution agreement with an Italian manufacturer, Clivet, to distribute their air source heat pumps. Clivet is a global market leader, and it currently manufactures for other European brands in heat pumps. Our relationship with Viessmann will also lead to another strong brand in air source heat pumps, becoming part of the portfolio of products offered by our Plumbing and Heating division, and to help the UK transition to clean heat, we're aiming to establish a design and installation service for air source heat pumps.
We're also aiming to provide end-to-end design, which is critical for system efficiency for our customers and installers, and finally, we're looking to get an MCS accreditation, which facilitates our customers in getting grant recovery of £7,500 as part of the government's plans for energy transition in the heating market. Our growth in renewables will come from not only air source heat pumps and the fact that we are well-placed in renewables because of the existing channel that we have to customers, that can be leveraged with no major further investment. We believe that getting accreditation installation will also assist towards driving these government targets of 600,000 heat pumps by 2028. The growth will also come from the fact that we have market-leading brands and customer service excellence.
We'll continue to win market share, and our continuous investment in new branch rollout, Mr. Central Heating and George Lines, will add to our organic growth. As Stuart mentioned earlier, efficiencies implemented in the last twelve months provide operational gearing when our markets recover. I reiterate, a 5% increase in our last twelve months' sales adds between £4 million to £5 million to our earnings. An update on our actions in environmental, social and governance. We have implemented our strategy and framework in place. We have worked tirelessly in ensuring that we have a robust strategy. The strategy has led to an implementation of new environmental policy that outlines our ambition to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 90% by 2035. In addition to that, reduce our scope 3 emissions by 90% by 2050.
Scope 3 is much harder, but we're pleased that we're working in collaboration with our buying group, H&B, and also with most of our major suppliers to combat climate change and reduce our emissions. In our business, our environmental progress in H1 2024 is identified by forklift fleet being progressively replaced with electric forklifts. 50% of our fleet is now electric. HVO, which is a substitute for diesel, has been trialed in some of our branches with our HGVs, and we have selected solar panel installations planned of between two to four branches per annum. Finally, we are really pleased with the fact that our foundation, Lords Group Foundation, has distributed GBP 120,000 towards good causes within the local communities where we trade from over the last twelve months. I'll finish off with an outlook for the future.
We remain well-positioned in highly fragmented and essential RMI sector to grow market share organically and through selective accretive acquisitions. We do not expect H2 trading conditions to change, but the medium-term outlook is positive, supported by industry data and demand fundamentals. One of the key fundamentals is interest rate reduction, which we are encouraged by the recent reduction and the expectation of future rate cuts. A new government sentiment and new build should also improve the construction sector in the medium term, and we are well-placed to benefit from that. Finally, recognizing the important autumn season ahead, particularly in plumbing and heating, we anticipate adjusted EBITDA to be in line with our expectations. Thank you.
That's great, Shanker. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab just situated on the right-hand corner of the screen. But while the guys take a few moments to review your questions submitted already, I'd just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your Investor Meet Company dashboard. Shanker, Stuart, as you can see, you've had a number of questions from investors this afternoon, though, this morning, so thank you to everybody for your engagement. If I may just hand back to you, ask you to read out the questions where it's appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.
Okay, we've got a whole host of questions, so I think we'll take it in turns to. I'll call out one and call out another. I'll do the easy ones. You'll do the easy ones. Okay. So we've got a question from Yannick: How has trading been since the reporting period?
So we were expecting that H2 would be stronger than H1, and July and August, unfortunately, have not shown too many signs of encouraging trading, but the start of September has been encouraging. And as we've maintained, we remain to see how the important autumn season trading pans out. Early indications from macro indicators are that there is a slow growing set of leading indicators that should feed through into our end markets.
So another question from David S, which maybe I'll let Stuart take. Gross margins have remained steady. What strategies have you implemented to protect and even slightly improve margins during challenging market conditions?
Yeah, I think it's a great credit for the business that gross margins have remained fairly steady. Obviously, our branches have a fair bit of control over what they sell at, and some of our competitors have been more aggressive in terms of winning volume rather than keeping margin. So our strategy really is to try and maintain our margins, but also provide excellent customer service that cut nicely. It depends on what our customers are doing as well. So it's getting that balance right. Shanker has talked quite extensively about some of the new arrangements we've got and the new distribution arrangements, and we have. We're always looking for improved margins as we develop our spread of products and what, and the thing that we do sell to our customers.
So I think it's more about product diversification, and it's a little bit about just trying to hold our nerve in these challenging conditions.
Thank you, Stuart. John S has a question. Given the fragmented U.K. building supply sector, what is your strategy for future acquisitions, and how do you balance growth through M&A with organic market share gains? How do you prioritize between these two approaches? We've always maintained that we've got two elements to our business: organic opportunities and selective, accretive, acquisitions. And, you know, at the moment, with the market being in a quite difficult trading position, we believe that acquisitions have to be highly selective. We see in merchanting, like for likes are still challenged, and therefore, to make acquisitions in this particular period, we'd have to be highly selective because, of course, what we're all looking for is what is the right valuation in a down market.
But you see that in this kind of, you know, difficult trading position, what we've tilted to is organic opportunities. Particularly, I've called out some of the actions we've taken in our plumbing and heating business and division in tying up with manufacturers where the products are margin accretive. We've got a good opportunity to take market share and to offer our customers a wider portfolio of products. So all in all, as we see the market improve, we'll again balance out between the organic opportunities and the M&A opportunities. However, just to reiterate, there are always acquisition opportunities that avail themselves to us. But right from day one, we've said that we're very disciplined in our acquisitions.
An old adage that I always use with our business, and that is, "You can change everything about an acquisition the day after you bought the business. But the one thing you can't change is the price you pay for it." And in these challenging terms of we have to be very, very focused in making sure that we don't overpay. That can sometimes lead to a mismatch between our expectations on valuation and vendors.
If I take the next one, which is from Michael J, which says, "How is trading in the third quarter to date compared to 2023? Is it likely we can expect the second half to improve?" I think as we said in the outlook, that we're not forecasting that the second half trading conditions do improve. There's some good positive news flow and positive dynamics for the sector, but those will take a little bit of time to come through. We had the first interest rate cut, and I guess when we came into this year, we were hoping to be further along on that journey by now. But various things have got in the way, like elections, et cetera. So we're not calling any great increase. We've seen...
We've had a very, I suppose, difficult first half in terms of showing trends, given the Clean Heat Market Mechanism. So July was probably better than we expected, and August was not quite as good as we expected. So it's a very mixed picture, but we're not seeing enough green shoots or increase on last year to start predicting any upturn in the second half just yet.
Nothing to add to Stuart, the point around interest rates. You know, at this point, we were expecting to see two interest rate reductions and possibly three for the year. Right now, we've only seen one, potentially a second one in November, which is what the market is expecting, and that delay does feed into our markets. There's a lag between interest rate reduction and those then feeding into the RMI market in particular. So the delay in interest rate reductions, we also believe, has delayed the potential recovery in our markets. However, there are still two very strong, three very strong months left in the year, which is September, October, and November. And we are seeing some positive leading indicators. It's whether those then feed into our markets. We've got one from Gavin around acquisitions.
Are potential sellers now more receptive to selling, CGT business sales being a tailwind? I think with the potential budget tax squeeze that might be coming, unfortunately, the timing between the announcement of that and the potential tax increases is a bit short. So I don't think that we're seeing any direct correlation between the two. But there are always plenty of sellers willing to sell. What we do have potentially at the moment is, as I mentioned earlier, a sort of valuation mismatch. It's very difficult in a falling market to value companies correctly, especially small to medium-sized businesses, the likes of which we buy, to generally turn around or business improvement plays.
And we are very disciplined in the sense that we won't buy a business at valuations that we feel cannot be sustained and are not beneficial for our shareholders.
Question from Ben Jeynes, and in terms of how confident are you in the turnaround of recently acquired companies like Alloway Timber and Chiltern Timber, and what metrics will indicate their successful integration into the group? Well, firstly, Ben, Chiltern was not, wasn't a turnaround. It's a profitable company, bought on a profit target as well, and it's delivering sales at 3.2% better than last year. So that one is going as expected. Alloway was bought on a turnaround basis, as I mentioned, was losing about GBP 1 million a year when we bought it. The indications that we need to see it turning into the right direction are sales growth, and with some of our branches are growing month on month in terms of sales.
Now, we typically see, and we've done this kind of turnaround several times, the sales drop off in the first few months of new ownership, and they start to come back, and that's the trend that we've started to see. It's obviously been more challenging in terms of the market being as I've mentioned, 6% down on a like-for-like basis, has not been assisting us in that turnaround. So it may be that our internal hopes would have been that we'd have turned around a bit quicker, but it's going in the right direction. So it's all about revenue growth. We've addressed and right-sized the cost base. So it's all about growing on that cost base, which we think is suitable for the business.
Question from Michael: Are there going to be further cost impacts, like redundancies or major refurbishment costs? Well, we're not planning on redundancies. Of course, that is directly correlated to activity. And in terms of major refurbishment costs, we have a program of investing in our property and our plant, and that program, sorry, not usually, but inevitably always leads to a good return. So, you know, our strategy in investing in our property and our plant is not going to change. Of course, we're prudent, and we will do so in terms of timing, to match the cash flows of the business and the requirements for the investments that need to be made. Question from Yannick , what are your expectations for the EBITDA? They haven't been disclosed.
Yes, Yanni, I think, I think we have disclosed our expectations for EBITDA. They're on that last bullet point of the outlook side slide, where we said, we anticipate adjusted EBITDA to be in line with, with expectations. So that's we're holding our expectations for the full year, on this announcement as we stand at the moment.
Okay, we've got some questions from...
From Mandy. What about pickup sales, about £1.6 million in the first half, Mandy? How much of our turnover is from new build? Do you want to take that one or-
Yeah. Less than 10% of our turnover is from new build. Now, while we don't directly supply the national house builders, we do supply into their supply chain through our several of our divisions, and in particular, we supply the ground workers that work on behalf of the major house builders. Maybe one more?
Can we talk about how we incentivize branch managers? In the traditional way, I guess, is the answer to that one, which is a bonus scheme and also a longer-term scheme as well, but essentially, each branch manager will have a trigger, a target, and a stretch target to achieve their bonus, so they're remunerated in that way in terms of incentivization financially.
Yeah, and that's profit linked.
Yeah.
Directly they get ownership of their branch, and it's their branch profitability that is then shared with them through a remuneration incentive.
One more question. Dennis, are you looking to expand geography, geographically to other areas of the UK?
Yes, we're consistently looking at expanding into other areas of the UK. In particular, Mr. Central Heating and George Lines are two places where we believe there is opportunity for us outside of our current London, Southeast centric market. In fact, Mr. Central Heating is well-placed geographically across the nation with locations as far as Edinburgh down to Portsmouth and Bristol. George Lines, which has generally been a more Southeast-based business, has got opportunity in expanding up north as well as east and southeast of the UK.
That's great. Shanker, Stuart, thank you for addressing those questions, and I know it's the first day of your roadshow, and you have several back-to-back meetings. If any further questions do make themselves available, we'll obviously let you have those, post today's call. Shanker, Stuart, I know investor feedback is important to you. I'll shortly redirect those on the call to give you their thoughts and expectations. But, Shanker, before doing so, if I may just ask you for a couple of closing comments.
Okay. Well, thank you very much, everyone, for taking the time to join us today and listening to us present our H1 2024 results. I'll summarize by saying we still maintain that we're a leading high-growth distributor for building materials in the UK with a bright future. Thank you.
That's great. Shanker, Stuart, thank you once again for updating investors. If I could please ask investors not to close this session, as we'll now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the company can really better understand your views and expectations. It'll only take a couple of moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Lords Group Trading PLC, I would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.